This life with Maggie, hidden away in Three Elms Farm, in the wilds of Holderness, it could not be called dissipation, but it was division. Where once he had been whole he was now divided. The sane, strong affection that should have knit body and soul together was itself broken in two.

And it was she, the helpmate, she who should have kept him whole, who had caused him to be thus sundered from himself and her.

They were all wrong, all frustrated, all incomplete. Anne, in her sublime infidelity to earth; Maggie, turned from her own sweet use that she might give him what Anne could not give; and he, who between them had severed his body from his soul.

Thus he brooded.

And Maggie, with her face hidden against his knee, brooded too, piercing the illusion.

He tried to win her from her sad thoughts by talking again of the house and garden. But Maggie was tired of the house and garden now.

"And do the Pearsons look after you well still?" he asked.

"Yes. Very well."

"And Steve—is he as good to you as ever?"

Maggie brightened and became more communicative.

"Yes, very good. He was all day mending my bicycle, Sunday, and he takes me out in the boat sometimes; and he's made such a dear little house for the old Angora rabbit."

"Do you like going out in the boat?"

"Yes, very much."

"Do you like going out with him?"

"No," said Maggie, making a little face, half of disgust and half of derision. "No. His hands are all dirty, and he smells of fish."

Majendie laughed. "There are drawbacks, I must own, to Steve."

He looked at his watch, an action Maggie hated. It always suggested finality, departure.

"Ten o'clock, Maggie. I must be up at six to-morrow. We sail at seven."

"At seven," echoed Maggie in despair.

They were up at six. Maggie went with him to the creek, to see him sail. In the garden she picked a chrysanthemum and stuck it in his buttonhole, forgetting that he couldn't wear her token. There were so many things he couldn't do.

A little rain still fell through a clogging mist. They walked side by side, treading the drenched grass, for the track was too narrow for them both. Maggie's feet dragged, prolonging the moments.

A white pointed sail showed through the mist, where the little yacht lay in the river off the mouth of the creek.

Steve was in the boat close against the creek's bank, waiting to row Majendie to the yacht. He touched his cap to Majendie as they appeared on the bank, but he did not look at Maggie when her gentle voice called good-morning.

Steve's face was close-mouthed and hard set.

She put her hands on Majendie's shoulders and kissed him. Her cheek against his face was pure and cold, wet with the rain. Steve did not look at them. He never looked at them when they were together.

Majendie dropped into the boat. Steve pushed off from the bank. Maggie stood there watching them go. She stood till the boat reached the creek's mouth, and Majendie turned, and raised his cap to her; stood till the white sail moved slowly up the river and disappeared, rounding the spit of land.

Majendie, as he paced the deck and talked to his men of wind and weather, turned casually, on his heel, to look at her where she stood alone in the level immensity of the land. The world looked empty all around her.

And he was touched with a sudden poignant realisation of her life; its sadness, its incompleteness, its isolation.

That was what he had brought her to.



CHAPTER XXIX

The rain cleared off, the mist lifted, and at nine o'clock it was a fine day for Peggy's birthday. Even Scale, where it stretched its flat avenues into the country, showed golden in the warm and brilliant air.

The household in Prior Street had been up early, making preparations for the day. Peggy had waked before it was light, to feel her presents which lay beside her on her bed; and, by the time Majendie's sail had passed Fawlness Point, she was up and dressed, waiting for him.

Anne had to break it to her gently that perhaps he would not be home in time for eight-o'clock breakfast. Then the child's mouth trembled, and Anne comforted her, half-smiling and half-afraid.

"Ah, Peggy, Peggy," she said, as she rocked her against her breast, "What shall I do with you? Your little heart is too big for your little body."

Anne's terror had not left her in three years. It was always with her now. The child was bound to suffer. She was a little mass of throbbing nerves, of trembling emotions.

Yet Anne herself was happier. The three years had passed smoothly over her. Her motherhood had laid its fine, soft, finishing touch upon her. Her face, her body, had rounded and ripened, year after slow year, to an abiding beauty, born of her tenderness. At thirty-five Anne Majendie had reached the perfect moment of her physical maturity.

Her mind was no longer harassed by anxiety about her husband. He seemed to have settled down. He had ceased to be uncertain in his temper, by turns irritable and depressed. He had parted with the heaviness which had once roused her aversion, and had recovered his personal distinction, the slender refinement of his youth. She rejoiced in his well-being. She attributed it, partly to his open-air habits, partly to the spiritual growth begun in him at the time of his sister's death.

She desired no change in their relations, no further understanding, no closer intimacy.

To Anne's mind, her husband's attitude to her was perfect. The passion that had been her fear had left him. He waited on her hand and foot, with humble, heart-rending devotion. He let her see that he adored her with discretion, at a distance, as a divinely, incomprehensibly high and holy thing.

Her household life had simplified itself. Her days passed in noiseless, equable procession. Many hours had been given back to her empty after Edith's death. She had filled them with interests outside her home, with visiting the poor in the district round All Souls, with evening classes for shop-girls, with "Rescue" work. Not an hour of her day was idle. At the end of the three years Mrs. Majendie was known in Scale by her broad charities and by her saintly life.

She had fallen away a little from her friends in Thurston Square. In three years Fanny Eliott and her circle had grown somewhat unreal to her. She had been aware of their inefficiency before. There had been a time when she felt that Mrs. Eliott's eminence had become a little perilous. She herself had placed her on it, and held her there by a somewhat fatiguing effort of the will to believe. She had been partly (though she did not know it) the dupe of Mrs. Eliott's delight in her, of all the sweet and dangerous ministrations of their mutual vanities. Mrs. Eliott had been uplifted by Anne's preposterously grave approval. Anne had been ravished by her own distinction as the audience of Fanny Eliott's loftier and profounder moods. There could be no criticism of these heights and depths. To have depreciated Fanny Eliott's rarity by a shade would have been to call in question her own.

But all this had ceased long ago, when she married Walter Majendie, and his sister became her dearest friend. Fanny Eliott had always looked on Edith Majendie as her rival; retreating a little ostentatiously before her formidable advance. There should have been no rivalry, for there had been no possible ground of comparison. Neither could Edith Majendie be said to have advanced. The charm of Edith, or rather, her pathetic claim, was that she never could have advanced at all. To Anne's mind, from the first, there had been no choice between Edith, lying motionless on her sofa by the window, and Fanny at large in the drawing-rooms of her acquaintances, scattering her profuse enthusiasms, revolving in her intellectual round, the prisoner of her own perfections. To come into Edith's room had been to come into thrilling contact with reality; while Fanny Eliott was for ever putting you off with some ingenious refinement on it. Edith's personality had triumphed over death and time. Fanny Eliott, poor thing, still suffered by the contrast.

Of all Anne's friends, the Gardners alone stood the test of time. She had never had a doubt of them. They had come later into her life, after the perishing of her great illusion. The shock had humbled her senses and disposed her to reverence for the things of intellect. Dr. Gardner's position, as President of the Scale Literary and Philosophic Society, was as a high rock to which she clung. Mrs. Gardner was dear to her for many reasons.

The dearness of Mrs. Gardner was significant. It showed that, thanks to Peggy, Anne's humanisation was almost complete.

To-day, which was Peggy's birthday, Anne's heart was light and happy. She had planned, that, if the day were fine, the festival was to be celebrated by a picnic to Westleydale.

And the day was fine. Majendie had promised to be home in time to start by the nine-fifty train. Meanwhile they waited. Peggy had helped Mary the cook to pack the luncheon basket, and now she felt time heavy on her little hands.

Anne suggested that they should go upstairs and help Nanna. Nanna was in Majendie's room, turning out his drawers. On his bed there was a pile of suits of the year before last, put aside to be given to Anne's poor people. When Peggy was tired of fetching and carrying, she watched her mother turning over the clothes and sorting them into heaps. Anne's methods were rapid and efficient.

"Oh, mummy!" cried Peggy, "don't! You touch daddy's things as if you didn't like them."

"Peggy, darling, what do you mean?"

"You're so quick." She laid her face against one of Majendie's coats and stroked it. "Must daddy's things go away?"

"Yes, darling. Why don't you want them to go?"

"Because I love them. I love all his little coats and hats and shoes and things."

"Oh, Peggy, Peggy, you're a little sentimentalist. Go and see what Nanna's got there."

Nanna had given a cry of joyous discovery. "Look, ma'am," said she, "what I've found in master's portmanteau."

Nanna came forward, shaking out a child's frock. A frock of pure white silk, embroidered round the neck and wrists with a deep border of daisies, pink and white and gold.

"Nanna!"

"Oh, mummy, what is it?"

Peggy touched a daisy with her soft forefinger and shrank back shyly. She knew it was her birthday, but she did not know whether the frock had anything to do with that, or no.

"I wonder," said Anne, "what little girl daddy brought that for."

"Did daddy bring it?"

"Yes, daddy brought it. Do you think he meant it for her birthday, Nanna?"

"Well, m'm, he may have meant it for her birthday last year. I found it stuffed into 'is portmanteau wot 'e took with him in the yacht a year ago. It's bin there—poked away in the cupboard, ever since. I suppose he bought it, meaning to give it to Miss Peggy, and put it away and forgot all about it. See, m'm"—Nanna measured the frock against Peggy's small figure—"it'd 'a' bin too large for her, last birthday. It'll just fit her now, m'm."

"Oh, Peggy!" said Anne. "She must put it on. Quick, Nanna. You shall wear it, my pet, and surprise daddy."

"What fun!" said Peggy.

"Isn't it fun?" Anne was as gay and as happy as Peggy. She was smiling her pretty smile.

Peggy was solemnly arrayed in the little frock. The borders of daisies showed like a necklace and bracelets against her white skin.

"Well, m'm," said Nanna, "if master did forget, he knew what he was about, at the time, anyhow. It's the very frock for her."

"Yes. See, Peggy—it's daisies, marguerites. That's why daddy chose it—for your little name, darling, do you see?"

"My name," said Peggy softly, moved by the wonder and beauty of her frock.

"There he is, Peggy! Run down and show yourself."

"Oh, muvver," shrieked Peggy, "it will be a surprise for daddy, won't it?"

She ran down. They followed, and leaned over the bannisters to listen to the surprise. They heard Peggy's laugh as she came to the last flight of stairs and showed herself to her father. They heard her shriek "Daddy! daddy!" Then there was calm.

Then Peggy's voice dropped from its high joy and broke. "Oh, daddy, are you angry with me?"

Anne came downstairs. Majendie had the child in his arms and was kissing her.

"Are you angry with me, daddy?" she repeated.

"No, my sweetheart, no." He looked up at Anne. He was very pale, and a sweat was on his forehead. "Who put that frock on her?"

"I did," said Anne.

"I think you'd better take it off again," he said quietly.

Anne raised her eyebrows as a sign to him to look at Peggy's miserable mouth. "Oh, let her wear it," she said. "It's her birthday."

Majendie wiped his forehead and turned aside into the study.

"Muvver," said Peggy, as they went hand in hand upstairs again; "do you think daddy really meant it as a surprise for me?"

"I think he must have done, darling."

"Aren't you sorry we spoiled his surprise, mummy?"

"I don't think he minds, Peggy."

"I think he does. Why did he look angry, and say I was to take it off?"

"Perhaps, because it's rather too nice a frock for every day."

"My birthday isn't every day," said Peggy.

So Peggy wore the frock that Maggie had made for her and given to Majendie last year. He had hidden it in his portmanteau, meaning to give it to Mrs. Ransome at Christmas. And he had thrown the portmanteau into the darkest corner of the cupboard, and gone away and forgotten all about it.

And now the sight of Maggie's handiwork had given him a shock. For his sin was heavy upon him. Every day he went in fear of discovery. Anne would ask him where he had got that frock, and he would have to lie to her. And it would be no use; for, sooner or later, she would know that he had lied; and she would track Maggie down by the frock.

He hated to see his innocent child dressed in the garment which was a token and memorial of his sin. He wished he had thrown the damned thing into the Humber.

But Anne had no suspicion. Her face was smooth and tranquil as she came downstairs. She was calling Peggy her "little treasure," and her eyes were smiling as she looked at the frail, small, white and gold creature, stepping daintily and shyly in her delicate dress.

Peggy was buttoned into a little white coat to keep her warm; and they set out, Majendie carrying the luncheon basket, and Peggy an enormous doll.

Peggy enjoyed the journey. When she was not talking to Majendie she was singing a little song to keep the doll quiet, so that the time passed very quickly both for her and him. There were other people in the carriage, and Anne was afraid they would be annoyed at Peggy's singing. But they seemed to like it as much as she and Majendie. Nobody was ever annoyed with Peggy.

In Westleydale the beech trees were in golden leaf. It was green underfoot and on the folding hills. Overhead it was limitless blue above the uplands; and above the woods, among the golden tree-tops, clear films and lacing veins and brilliant spots of blue.

Majendie felt Peggy's hand tighten on his hand. Her little body was trembling with delight.

They found the beech tree under which he and Anne had once sat. He looked at her. And she, remembering, half turned her face from him; and, as she stooped and felt for a soft dry place for the child to sit on, she smiled, half unconsciously, a shy and tender smile.

Then he saw, beside her half-turned face, the face of another woman, smiling, shyly and tenderly, another smile; and his heart smote him with the sorrow of his sin.

They sat down, all three, under the beech tree; and Peggy took, first Majendie's hand, then Anne's hand, and held them together in her lap.

"Mummy," said she, "aren't you glad that daddy came? It wouldn't be half so nice without him, would it?"

"No," said Anne, "it wouldn't."

"Mummy, you don't say that as if you meant it."

"Oh, Peggy, of course I meant it."

"Yes, but you didn't make it sound so."

"Peggy," said Majendie, "you're a terribly observant little person."

"She's a little person who sometimes observes all wrong."

"No, mummy, I don't. You never talk to daddy like you talk to me."

"You're a little girl, dear, and daddy's a big grown-up man."

"That's not what I mean, though. You've got a grown-up voice for me, too. I don't mean your grown-up voice. I mean, mummy, you talk to daddy as if—as if you hadn't known him a very long time. And you talk to me as if you'd known me—oh, ever so long. Have you known me longer than you've known daddy?"

Majendie gazed with feigned abstraction at the shoulder of the hill visible through the branches of the trees.

"Bless you, sweetheart, I knew daddy long before you were ever thought of."

"When was I thought of, mummy?"

"I don't know, darling."

"Do you know, daddy?"

"Yes, Peggy. I know. You were thought of here, in this wood, under this tree, on mummy's birthday, between eight and nine years ago."

"Who thought of me?"

"Ah, that's telling."

"Who thought of me, mummy?"

"Daddy and I, dear."

"And you forgot, and daddy remembered."

"Yes. I've got a rather better memory than your mother, dear."

"You forgot my old birthday, daddy."

"I haven't forgotten your mother's old birthday, though."

Peggy was thinking. Her forehead was all wrinkled with the intensity of her thought.

"Mummy—am I only seven?"

"Only seven, Peggy."

"Then," said Peggy, "you did think of me before I was born. How did you know me before I was born?"

Anne shook her head.

"Daddy, how did you know me before I was born?"

"Peggy, you're a little tease."

"You brought it on yourself, my dear. Peggy, if you'll leave off teasing daddy, I'll tell you a story."

"Oh!—"

"Once upon a time" (Anne's voice was very low) "mummy had a dream. She dreamed she was in this wood, walking along that little path—just there—not thinking of Peggy. And when she came to this tree she saw an angel, with big white wings. He was lying under this very tree, on this very bit of grass, just there, where daddy's sitting. And one of his wings was stretched out on the grass, and it was hollow like a cradle. It was all lined with little feathers, like the inside of a swan's wing, as soft as soft. And the other wing was stretched over it like the top of a cradle. And inside, all among the soft little feathers, there was a little baby girl lying, just like Peggy."

"Oh, mummy, was it me?"

"Sh—sh—sh! Whoever it was, the angel saw that mummy loved it, and wanted it very much—"

"The little baby girl?"

"Yes. And so he took the baby and gave it to mummy, to be her own little girl. That's how Peggy came to mummy."

"And did he give it to daddy, too, to be his little girl?"

"Yes," said Majendie, "I was wondering where I came in."

"Yes. He gave it to daddy to be his little girl, too."

"I'm glad he gave me to daddy. The angel brought me to you in the night, like daddy brought me my big dolly. You did bring my big dolly, and put her on my bed, didn't you, daddy? Last night?"

Majendie was silent.

"Daddy wasn't at home last night, Peggy."

"Oh, daddy, where were you?"

Majendie felt his forehead getting damp again.

"Daddy was away on business."

"Oh, mummy, don't you wish he'd never go away?"

"I think it's time for lunch," said Majendie.

They ate their lunch; and when it was ended, Majendie went to the cottage to find water, for Peggy was thirsty. He returned, carrying water in a pitcher, and followed by a red-cheeked, rosy little girl who brought milk in a cup for Peggy.

Anne remembered the cup. It was the same cup that she had drunk from after her husband. And the child was the same child whom he had found sitting in the grass, whom he had shown to her and taken from her arms, whose little body, held close to hers, had unsealed in her the first springs of her maternal passion. It all came back to her.

The little girl beamed on Peggy with a face like a small red sun, and Peggy conceived a sudden yearning for her companionship. It seemed that, at the cottage, there were rabbits, and a new baby, and a litter of puppies three days old. And all these wonders the little girl offered to show to Peggy, if Peggy would go with her.

Peggy begged, and went through the wood, hand in hand with the little beaming girl. Majendie and Anne watched them out of sight.

"Look at the two pairs of legs," said Majendie.

Anne sighed. Her Peggy showed very white and frail beside the red, lusty-legged daughter of the woods.

"I'm not at all happy about her," said she.

"Why not?"

"She gets so terribly tired."

"All children do, don't they?"

Anne shook her head. "Not as she does. It isn't a child's healthy tiredness. It doesn't come like that. It came on quite suddenly the other day, after she'd been excited; and her little lips turned grey."

"Get Gardner to look at her."

"I'm going to. He says she ought to be more in the open air. I wish we could get a cottage somewhere in the country, with a nice garden."

Majendie said nothing. He was thinking of Three Elms Farm, and the garden and the orchard, and of the pure wind that blew over them straight from the sea. He remembered how Maggie had said that the child would love it.

"You could afford it, Walter, couldn't you, now?"

"Of course I can afford it."

He thought how easily it could be done, if he gave up his yacht and the farm. His business was doing better every year. But the double household was a drain on his fresh resources. He could not very well afford to take another house, and keep the farm too. He had thought of that before. He had been thinking of it last night when he spoke to Maggie about giving him up. Poor Maggie! Well, he would have to manage somehow. If the worst came to the worst they could sell the house in Prior Street. And he would sell the yacht.

"I think I shall sell the yacht," he said.

"Oh no, you mustn't do that. You've been so well since you've had it."

"No, it isn't necessary. I shall be better if I take more exercise."

Peggy came back and the subject dropped.

Peggy was very unhappy before the picnic ended. She was tired, so tired that she cried piteously, and Majendie had to take her up in his arms and carry her all the way to the station. Anne carried the doll.

In the train Peggy fell asleep in her father's arms. She slept with her face pressed close against him, and one hand clinging to his breast. Her head rested on his arm, and her hair curled over his rough coat-sleeve.

"Look—" he whispered.

Anne looked. "The little lamb—" she said.

Then she was silent, discerning in the man's face, bent over the sleeping child, the divine look of love and tenderness. She was silent, held by an old enchantment and an older vision; brooding on things dear and secret and long-forgotten.



CHAPTER XXX

Though Thurston Square saw little of Mrs. Majendie, the glory of Mrs. Eliott's Thursdays remained undiminished. The same little procession filed through her drawing-room as before. Mrs. Pooley, Miss Proctor, the Gardners, and Canon Wharton. Mrs. Eliott was more than ever haggard and pursuing; she had more than ever the air of clinging, desperate and exhausted, on her precipitous intellectual heights.

But Mrs. Pooley never flagged, possibly because her ideas were vaguer and more miscellaneous, and therefore less exhausting. It was she who now urged Mrs. Eliott on. This year Mrs. Pooley was going in for thought-power, and for mind-control, and had drawn Mrs. Eliott in with her. They still kept it up for hours together, and still they dreaded the disastrous invasions of Miss Proctor.

Miss Proctor rode roughshod over the thought-power, and trampled contemptuously on the mind-control. Mrs. Gardner's attitude was mysterious and unsatisfactory. She seemed to stand serenely on the shore of the deep sea where Mrs. Eliott and Mrs. Pooley were for ever plunging and sinking, and coming up again, bobbing and bubbling, to the surface. Her manner implied that she would die rather than go in with them; it also suggested that she knew rather more about the thought-power and the mind-control than they did; but that she did not wish to talk so much about it.

Mr. Eliott, dexterous as ever, and fortified by the exact sciences, took refuge from the occult under his covering of profound stupidity. He had a secret understanding with Dr. Gardner on the subject. His spirit no longer searched for Dr. Gardner's across the welter of his wife's drawing-room, knowing that it would find it at the club.

Now, in October, about four o'clock on the Thursday after Peggy's birthday, Canon Wharton and Miss Proctor met at Mrs. Eliott's. The Canon had watched his opportunity and drawn his hostess apart.

"May I speak with you a moment," he said, "before your other guests arrive?"

Mrs. Eliott led him to a secluded sofa. "If you'll sit here," said she, "we can leave Johnson to entertain Miss Proctor."

"I am perplexed and distressed," said the Canon, "about our dear Mrs. Majendie."

Mrs. Eliott's eyes darkened with anxiety. She clasped her hands. "Oh why? What is it? Do you mean about the dear little girl?"

"I know nothing about the little girl. But I hear very unpleasant things about her husband."

"What things?"

The Canon's face was reticent and grim. He wished Mrs. Eliott to understand that he was no unscrupulous purveyor of gossip; that if he spoke, it was under constraint and severe necessity.

"I do not," said the Canon, "usually give heed to disagreeable reports. But I am afraid that, where there is such a dense cloud of smoke, there must be some fire."

"I think," said Mrs. Eliott, "perhaps they didn't get on very well together once. But they seem to have made it up after the sister's death. She has been happier these last three years. She has been a different woman."

"The same woman, my dear lady, the same woman. Only a better saint. For the last three years, they say, he has been living with another woman."

"Oh—it's impossible. Impossible. He is away a great deal—but—"

"He is away a great deal too often. Running up to Scarby every week in that yacht of his. In with the Ransomes and all that disreputable set."

"Is Lady Cayley in Scale?"

"Lady Cayley is at Scarby."

"Do you mean to say—"

"I mean," said the Canon, rising, "to say nothing."

Mrs. Eliott detained him with her eyes of anguish.

"Canon Wharton—do you think she knows?"

"I cannot tell you."

The Canon never told. He was far too clever.

Mrs. Eliott wandered to Miss Proctor.

"Do you know," said Miss Proctor, searching Mrs. Eliott's face with an inquisitive gaze, "how our friends, the Majendies, are getting on?"

"Oh, as usual. I see very little of her now. Anne is quite taken up with her little girl and with her good works."

"Oh! That," said Miss Proctor, "was a most unsuitable marriage."

It was five o'clock. The Canon and Miss Proctor had drunk their two cups of tea and departed. Mrs. Pooley had arrived soon after four; she lingered, to talk a little more about the thought-power and the mind-control. Mrs. Pooley was convinced that she could make things happen. That they were, in fact, happening. But Mrs. Eliott was no longer interested.

Mrs. Pooley, too, departed, feeling that dear Fanny's Thursday had been a disappointment. She had been quite unable to sustain the conversation at its usual height.

Mrs. Pooley indubitably gone, Mrs. Eliott wandered down to Johnson in his study. There, in perfect confidence, she revealed to him the Canon's revelations.

Johnson betrayed no surprise. That story had been going the round of his club for the last two years.

"What will Anne do?" said Mrs. Eliott, "when she finds out?"

"I don't suppose she'll do anything."

"Will she get a separation, do you think?"

"How can I tell you?"

"I wonder if she knows."

"She's not likely to tell you, if she does."

"She's bound to know, sooner or later. I wonder if one ought to prepare her?"

"Prepare her for what?"

"The shock of it. I'm afraid of her hearing in some horrid way. It would be so awful, if she didn't know."

"It can't be pleasant, any way, my dear."

"Do advise me, Johnson. Ought I or ought I not to tell her?"

Mr. Eliott's face told how his nature shrank from the agony of decision. But he was touched by her distress.

"Certainly not. Much better let well alone."

"If I were only sure that it was well I was letting alone."

"Can't be sure of anything. Give it the benefit of the doubt."

"Yes—but if you were I?"

"If I were you I should say nothing."

"That only means that I should say nothing if I were you. But I'm not."

"Be thankful, my dear, at any rate, for that."

He took up a book, The Search for Stellar Parallaxes, a book that he understood and that his wife could not understand. That book was the sole refuge open to him when pressed for an opinion. He knew that, when she saw him reading it, she would realise that he was her intellectual master.

The front doorbell announced the arrival of another caller.

She went away, wondering, as he meant she should, whether he were so very undecided, after all. Certainly his indecisions closed a subject more effectually than other people's verdicts.

She found Anne in the empty, half-dark drawing-room waiting for her. She had chosen the darkest corner, and the darkest hour.

"Fanny," she said, and her voice trembled, "are you alone? Can I speak to you a moment?"

"Yes, dear, yes. Just let me leave word with Mason that I'm not at home. But no one will come now."

In the interval she heard Anne struggling with the sob that had choked her voice. She felt that the decision had been made for her. The terrible task had been taken out of her hands. Anne knew.

She sat down beside her friend and put her hand on her shoulder. In that moment poor Fanny's intellectual vanities dropped from her, like an inappropriate garment, and she became pure woman. She forgot Anne's recent disaffection and her coldness, she forgot the years that had separated them, and remembered only the time when Anne was the girlfriend who had loved her, and had come to her in all her griefs, and had made her house her home.

"What is it, dear?" she murmured.

Anne felt for her hand and pressed it. She tried to speak, but no words would come.

"Of course," thought Mrs. Eliott, "she cannot tell me. But she knows I know."

"My dear," she said, "can I or Johnson help you?"

Anne shook her head; but she pressed her friend's hand tighter.

Wondering what she could do or say to help her, Mrs. Eliott resolved to take Anne's knowledge for granted, and act upon it.

"If there's trouble, dear, will you come to us? We want you to look on our house as a refuge, any hour of the day or night."

Anne stared at her friend. There was something ominous and dismaying in her solemn tenderness, and it roused Anne to wonder, even in her grief.

"You cannot help me, dear," she said. "No one can. Yet I had to come to you and tell you—"

"Tell me everything," said Mrs. Eliott, "if you can."

Anne tried to steady her voice to tell her, and failed. Then Fanny had an inspiration. She felt that she must divert Anne's thoughts from the grief that made her dumb, and get her to talk naturally of other things.

"How's Peggy?" said she. She knew it would be good to remind her that, whatever happened, she had still the child.

But at that question, Anne released Mrs. Eliott's hand, and laid her head back upon the cushion and cried.

"Dear," whispered Mrs. Eliott, with her inspiration full upon her, "you will always have her."

Then Anne sat up in her corner, and put away her tears, and controlled herself to speak.

"Fanny," she said, "Dr. Gardner has seen her. He says I shall not have her very long. Perhaps—a few years—if we take the very greatest care—"

"Oh, my dear! What is it?"

"It's her heart. I thought it was her spine, because of Edie. But it isn't. She has valvular disease. Oh, Fanny, I didn't think a little child could have it."

"Nor I," said Mrs. Eliott, shocked into a great calm. "But surely—if you take care—"

"No. He gives no hope. He only says a few years, if we leave Scale and take her into the country. She must never be overtired, never excited. We must never vex her. He says one violent crying fit might kill her. And she cries so easily. She cries sometimes till she's sick."

Mrs. Eliott's face had grown white; she trembled, and was dumb before the anguish of Anne's face.

But it was Anne who rose, and put her arms about the childless woman, and kissed and comforted her.

It was as if she had said: Thank God you never had one.



CHAPTER XXXI

The rumour which was going the round of the clubs in due time reached Lady Cayley through the Ransomes. It roused in her many violent and conflicting emotions.

She sat trembling in the Ransomes' drawing-room. Mrs. Ransome had just asked whether there was anything in it; because if there was, she, Mrs. Ransome, washed her hands of her. She intimated that it would take a good deal of washing to get Sarah off her hands.

Sarah had unveiled the face of horror, the face of outraged virtue, and the wrath and writhing of propriety wounded in the uncertain, quivering, vital spot. During the unveiling Dick Ransome had come in. He wanted to know if Topsy had been bullying poor Toodles. Whereupon Topsy wept feebly, and poor Toodles had a moment of monstrous calm.

She wanted to get it quite clear, to make no mistake. They might as well give her the details. Majendie had left his wife, had he? Well, she wasn't surprised at that. The wonder was that, having married her, he had stuck to her so long. He had left his wife, and was living at Scarby, was he, with her? Well, she only wanted to get all the details clear.

At this Sarah fell into a fit of laughter very terrifying to see. Since her own sister wouldn't take her word for it, she supposed she'd have to prove that it was not so.

And, under the horror of her virtue and respectability, there heaved a dull, dumb fury, born of her memory that it once was, her belief that it might have been again, and her knowledge that it was not so. She trembled, shaken by the troubling of the fire that ran underground, the immense, unseen, unliberated, primeval fire. She was no longer a creature of sophistries, hypocrisies, and wiles. She was the large woman of the simple earth, welded by the dark, unspiritual flame.

Dick Ransome turned on his sister-in-law a pale, puffy face in which two little dark eyes twinkled with a shrewd, gross humour. Nothing could possibly have pleased Dick Ransome more than an exhibition of indignant virtue, as achieved by Sarah. He knew a great deal more about Sarah than Mrs. Ransome knew, or than Sarah knew herself. To Dick Ransome's mind, thus illumined by knowledge, that spectacle swept the whole range of human comedy. He sat taking in all the entertainment it presented; and, when it was all over, he remarked quietly that Toodles needn't bother about her proofs. He had got them too. He knew that it was not so. He could tell her that much, but he wasn't going to give Majendie away. No, she couldn't get any more out of him than that.

Sarah smiled. She did not need to get anything more out of him. She had her proof; or, if it didn't exactly amount to proof, she had her clue. She had found it long ago; and she had followed it up, if not to the end, at any rate, quite far enough. She reflected that Majendie, like the dear fool he always was, had given it to her himself, five years ago.

Men's sins take care of themselves. It is their innocent good deeds that start the hounds of destiny. When Majendie sent Maggie Forrest's handiwork to Mrs. Ransome, with a kind note recommending the little embroideress, by that innocent good deed he woke the sleeping dogs of destiny. Mrs. Ransome's sister had tracked poor Maggie down by the long trail of her beautiful embroidery. She had been baffled when the embroidered clue broke off. Now, after three years, she leaped (and it was not a very difficult leap for Lady Cayley) to the firm conclusion. Maggie Forrest and her art had disappeared for three years; so, at perilous intervals, had Majendie; therefore they had disappeared together.

Sarah did not like the look in Dick Ransome's eye. She removed herself from it to the seclusion of her bedroom. There she bathed her heated face with toilette vinegar, steadied her nerves with a cigarette, lay down on a couch and rested, and, pure from passion, revised the situation calmly. She was an eminently practical, sensible woman, who knew the facts of life, and knew, also, how to turn them to her own advantage.

Seen by the larger, calmer spirit that was Sarah now, the situation was not as unpleasant as it had at first appeared. To be sure, the rumour in which she had figured was fatal to the matrimonial vision, and to the beautiful illusion of propriety in which she had once lived. But Sarah had renounced the vision; she had abandoned the pursuit of the fugitive propriety. She had long ago seen through the illusion. She might be a deceiver, but she had no power to hoodwink her own indestructible lucidity. Looking back on her life, after the joyous romances of her youth, the years had passed like so many funeral processions, each bearing some pleasant scandal to its burial. Then there had come the dreary funeral feast, and then the days of mournful rehabilitation. Oh, that rehabilitation! There had been three years of it. Three years of exhausting struggle for a position in society, three years of crawling, and pushing, and scrambling, and climbing. There had been a dubious triumph. Then six years of respectable futility, ambiguous courtship, and palpable frustration. After all that, there was something flattering in the thought that, at forty-five, she should yet find her name still coupled with Walter Majendie's in a passionate adventure.

It might easily have been, but for Walter's imbecile, suicidal devotion to his wife. He had got nothing out of his marriage. Worse than nothing. He was the laughing-stock of all his friends who were in the secret; who saw him grovelling at the heels of a disagreeable woman who had made him conspicuous by her aversion. Of course, it might easily have been.

Sarah's imagination (for she had an imagination) drew out all the sweetness that there was for it in that idea. Then it occurred to her sound, prosaic commonsense that a reputation is still a reputation, all the more precious if somewhat precariously acquired; that, though you may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, hanging is very poor fun when for years you have seen nothing of sheep or lamb either; that, in short, she must take steps to save her reputation.

The shortest way to save it was the straight way. She would go straight to Mrs. Majendie with her proofs. Her duty to herself justified the somewhat unusual step. And, more than her duty, Sarah loved a scene. She loved to play with other people's emotions and to exhibit her own. She wanted to see how Mrs. Majendie would take it; how the white-faced, high-handed lady would look when she was told that her husband had consoled himself for her high-handedness. She had always been possessed by an ungovernable curiosity with regard to Majendie's wife.

She did not know Majendie's wife, but she knew Majendie. She knew all about the separation and its cause. That was where she had come in. She divined that Mrs. Majendie had never forgiven her husband for his old intimacy with her. It was Mrs. Majendie's jealousy that had driven him out of the house, into the arms of pretty Maggie. Where, she wondered, would Mrs. Majendie's jealousy of pretty Maggie drive him?

Though Sarah knew Majendie, that was more than she would undertake to say. But the more she thought about it, the more she wondered; and the more she wondered, the more she desired to know.

She wondered whether Mrs. Majendie had heard the report. From all she could gather, it was hardly likely. Neither Mrs. Majendie nor her friends mixed in those circles where it went the round. The scandal of the clubs and of the Park would never reach her in the high seclusion of the house in Prior Street.

Into that house Lady Cayley could not hope to penetrate except by guile. Once admitted, straightforwardness would be her method. She must not attempt to give the faintest social colour to her visit. She must take for granted Mrs. Majendie's view of her impossibility. To be sure Mrs. Majendie's prejudices were moral even more than social. But moral prejudice could be overcome by cleverness working towards a formidable moral effect.

She would call after six o'clock, an hour incompatible with any social intention. An hour when she would probably find Mrs. Majendie alone.

She rested all afternoon. At five o'clock she fortified herself with strong tea and brandy. Then she made an elaborate and thoughtful toilette.

At forty-five Sarah's face was very large and horribly white. She restored, discreetly, delicately, the vanished rose. The beautiful, flower-like edges of her mouth were blurred. With a thin thread of rouge she retraced the once perfect outline. Wrinkles had drawn in the corners of the indomitable eyes, and ill-health had dulled their blue. That saddest of all changes she repaired by hand-massage, pomade, and belladonna. The somewhat unrefined exuberance of her figure she laced in an inimitable corset. Next she arrayed herself in a suit of dark blue cloth, simple and severely reticent; in a white silk blouse, simpler still, sewn with innocent daisies, Maggie's handiwork; in a hat, gay in form, austere in colour; and in gloves of immaculate whiteness.

Nobody could have possessed a more irreproachable appearance than Lady Cayley when she set out for Prior Street.

At the door she gave neither name nor card. She announced herself as a lady who desired to see Mrs. Majendie for a moment on important business.

Kate wondered a little, and admitted her. Ladies did call sometimes on important business, ladies who approached Mrs. Majendie on missions of charity; and these did not always give their names.

Anne was upstairs in the nursery, superintending the packing of Peggy's little trunk. She was taking her away to-morrow to the seaside, by Dr. Gardner's orders. She supposed that the nameless lady would be some earnest, beneficent person connected with a case for her Rescue Committee, who might have excellent reasons for not announcing herself by name.

And, at first, coming into the low lit drawing-room, she did not recognise her visitor. She advanced innocently, in her perfect manner, with a charming smile and an appropriate apology.

The smile died with a sudden rigour of repulsion. She paused before seating herself, as an intimation that the occasion was not one that could be trusted to explain itself. Lady Cayley rose to it.

"Forgive me for calling at this unconventional hour Mrs. Majendie."

Mrs. Majendie's silence implied that she could not forgive her for calling at any hour. Lady Cayley smiled inimitably.

"I wanted to find you at home."

"You did not give me your name Lady Cayley."

Their eyes crossed like swords before the duel.

"I didn't, Mrs. Majendie, because I wanted to find you at home. I can't help being unconventional—"

Mrs. Majendie raised her eyebrows.

"It's my nature."

Mrs. Majendie dropped her eyelids, as much as to say that the nature of Lady Cayley did not interest her.

"—And I've come on a most unconventional errand."

"Do you mean an unpleasant one?"

"I'm afraid I do, rather. And it's just as unpleasant for me as it is for you. Have you any idea, Mrs. Majendie, why I've been obliged to come? It'll make it easier for me if you have."

"I assure you I have none. I cannot conceive why you have come, nor how I can make anything easier for you."

"I think I mean it would have made it easier for you."

"For me?"

"Well—it would have spared you some painful explanations." Sarah felt herself sincere. She really desired to spare Mrs. Majendie. The part which she had rehearsed with such ease in her own bedroom was impossible in Mrs. Majendie's drawing-room. She was charmed by the spirit of the place, constrained by its suggestion of fair observances, high decencies, and social suavities. She could not sit there and tell Mrs. Majendie that her husband had been unfaithful to her. You do not say these things. And so subdued was Sarah that she found a certain relief in the reflection that, by clearing herself, she would clear Majendie.

"I don't in the least know what you want to say to me," said Mrs. Majendie. "But I would rather take everything for granted than have any explanations."

"If I thought you would take my innocence for granted—"

"Your innocence? I should be a bad judge of it, Lady Cayley."

"Quite so." Lady Cayley smiled again, and again inimitably. (It was extraordinary, the things she took for granted.) "That's why I've come to explain."

"One moment. Perhaps I am mistaken. But, if you are referring to—to what happened in the past, there need be no explanation. I have put all that out of my mind now. I have heard that you, too, have left it far behind you; and I am willing to believe it. There is nothing more to be said."

There was such a sweetness and dignity in Mrs. Majendie's voice and manner that Lady Cayley was further moved to compete in dignity and sweetness. She suppressed the smile that ignored so much and took so much for granted.

"Unfortunately a great deal more has been said. Your husband is an intimate friend of my sister, Mrs. Ransome, as of course you know."

Mrs. Majendie's face denied all knowledge of the intimacy.

"I might have met him at her house a hundred times, but, I assure you, Mrs. Majendie, that, since his marriage, I have not met him more than twice, anywhere. The first time was at the Hannays'. You were there. You saw all that passed between us."

"Well?"

"The second time was at the Hannays', too. Mrs. Hannay was with us all the time. What do you suppose he talked to me about? His child. He talked about nothing else."

"I suppose," said Mrs. Majendie coldly, "there was nothing else to talk about."

"No—but it was so dear and naif of him." She pondered on his naivete with down-dropped eyes whose lids sheltered the irresponsibly hilarious blue.

"He talked about his child—your child—to me. I hadn't seen him for two years, and that's all he could talk about. I had to sit and listen to that."

"It wouldn't hurt you, Lady Cayley."

"It didn't—and I'm sure the little girl is charming—only—it was so delicious of your husband, don't you see?"

Her face curled all over with its soft and sensual smile.

"If we'd been two babes unborn there couldn't have been a more innocent conversation."

"Well?"

"Well, since that night we haven't seen each other for more than five years. Ask him if it isn't true. Ask Mrs. Hannay—"

"Lady Cayley, I do not doubt your word—nor my husband's honour. I can't think why you're giving yourself all this trouble."

"Why, because they're saying now—"

Mrs. Majendie rose. "Excuse me, if you've only come to tell me what people are saying, it is useless. I never listen to what people say."

"It isn't likely they'd say it to you."

"Then why should you say it to me?"

"Because it concerns my reputation."

"Forgive me, but—your reputation does not concern me."

"And how about your husband's reputation, Mrs. Majendie?"

"My husband's reputation can take care of itself."

"Not in Scale."

"There's no more scandal talked in Scale than in any other place. I never pay any attention to it."

"That's all very well—but you must defend yourself sometimes. And when it comes to saying that I've been living with Mr. Majendie in Scarby for the last three years—"

Mrs. Majendie was so calm that Lady Cayley fancied that, after all, this was not the first time she had heard that rumour.

"Let them say it," said she. "Nobody'll believe it."

"Everybody believes it. I came to you because I was afraid you'd be the first."

"To believe it? I assure you, Lady Cayley, I should be the last."

"What was to prevent you? You didn't know me."

"No. But I know my husband."

"So do I."

"Not now" said Mrs. Majendie quietly.

Lady Cayley's bosom heaved. She had felt that she had risen to the occasion. She had achieved a really magnificent renunciation. With almost suicidal generosity, she had handed Majendie over intact, as it were, to his insufferable wife. She was wounded in several very sensitive places by the married woman's imperious denial of her part in him, by her attitude of indestructible and unique possession. If she didn't know him she would like to know who did. But up till now she had meant to spare Mrs. Majendie her knowledge of him, for she was not ill-natured. She was sorry for the poor, inept, unhappy prude.

Even now, seated in Mrs. Majendie's drawing-room, she had no impulse to wound her mortally. Her instinct was rather to patronise and pity, to unfold the long result of a superior experience, to instruct this woman who was so incompetent to deal with men, who had spoiled, stupidly, her husband's life and her own. In that moment Sarah contemplated nothing more outrageous than a little straight talk with Mrs. Majendie.

"Look here, Mrs. Majendie," she said, with an air of finely ungovernable impulse, "you're a saint. You know no more about men than your little girl does. I'm not a saint, I'm a woman of the world. I think I've had a rather larger experience of men—"

Mrs. Majendie cut her short.

"I do not want to hear anything about your experience."

"Dear lady, you shan't hear anything about it. I was only going to tell you that, of all the men I've known, there's nobody I know better than your husband. My knowledge of him is probably a little different from yours."

"That I can well believe."

"You mean you think I wouldn't know a good man if I saw one? My experience isn't as bad as all that. I can tell a good woman when I see one, too. You're a good woman, Mrs. Majendie, and I've no doubt that you've been told I'm a bad one. All I can say is, that Walter Majendie was a good man when I first knew him. He was a good man when he left me and married you. So my badness can't have hurt him very much. If he's gone wrong now, it's that goodness of yours that's done it."

Anne's lips turned white, but their muscles never moved. And the woman who watched her wondered in what circumstances Mrs. Majendie would display emotion, if she did not display it now.

"What right have you to say these things to me?"

"I've a right to say a good deal more. Your husband was very fond of me. He would have married me if his friends hadn't come and bullied me to give him up for the good of his morals. I loved him—" She suggested by an adroit shrug of her shoulders that her love was a thing that Mrs. Majendie could either take for granted or ignore. She didn't expect her to understand it—"And I gave him up. I'm not a cold-blooded woman; and it was pretty hard for me. But I did it. And" (she faced her) "what was the good of it? Which of us has been the best for his morals? You or me? He lived with me two years, and he married you, and everybody said how virtuous and proper he was. Well, he's been married to you for nine years, and he's been living with another woman for the last three."

She had not meant to say it; for (in the presence of the social sanctities) you do not say these things. But flesh and blood are stronger than all the social sanctities; and flesh and blood had risen and claimed their old dominion over Sarah. The unspeakable depths in her had been stirred by her vision of the things that might have been. She was filled with a passionate hatred of the purity which had captured Majendie, and drawn him from her, and made her seem vile in his sight. She rejoiced in her power to crush it, to confront it with the proof of its own futility.

"I do not believe it," said Mrs. Majendie.

"Of course you don't believe it. You're a good woman." She shook her meditative head. "The sort of woman who can live with a man for nine years without seeing what he's like. If you'd understood your husband as well as I do, you'd have known that he couldn't run his life on your lines for six months, let alone nine years."

Mrs. Majendie's chin rose, as if she were lifting her face above the reach of the hand that had tried to strike it. Her voice throbbed on one deep monotonous note.

"I do not believe a word of what you say. And I cannot think what your motive is in saying it."

"Don't worry about my motive. It ought to be pretty clear. Let me tell you—you can bring your husband back to-morrow, and you can keep him to the end of time, if you choose, Mrs. Majendie. Or you can lose him altogether. And you will, if you go on as you're doing. If I were you, I should make up my mind whether it's good enough. I shouldn't think it was, myself."

Mrs. Majendie was silent. She tried to think of some word that would end the intolerable interview. Her lips parted to speak, but her thoughts died in her brain unborn.

She felt her face turning white under the woman's face; it hypnotised her; it held her dumb.

"Don't you worry," said Lady Cayley soothingly. "You can get your husband back from that woman to-morrow, if you choose." She smiled. "Do you see my motive now?"

Lady Cayley had not seen it; but she had seen herself for one beautiful moment as the benignant and inspired conciliator. She desired Mrs. Majendie to see her so. She had gratified her more generous instincts in giving the unfortunate lady "the straight tip." She knew, perfectly well, that Mrs. Majendie wouldn't take it. She knew, all the time, that whatever else her revelation did, it would not move Mrs. Majendie to charm her husband back. She could not say precisely what it would do. Used to live solely in the voluptuous moment, she had no sense of drama beyond the scene she played in.

"Your motive," said Mrs. Majendie, "is of no importance. No motive could excuse you."

"You think not." She rose and looked down on the motionless woman. "I've told you the truth, Mrs. Majendie, because, sooner or later, you'd have had to know it; and other people would have told you worse things that aren't true. You can take it from me that there's nothing more to tell. I've told you the worst."

"You've told me, and I do not believe it."

"You'd better believe it. But, if you really don't, you can ask your husband. Ask him where he goes to every week in that yacht of his. Ask him what's become of Maggie Forrest, the pretty work-girl who made the embroidered frock for Mrs. Ransome's little girl. Tell him you want one like it for your little girl; and see what he looks like."

Anne rose too. Her faint white face frightened Lady Cayley. She had wondered how Mrs. Majendie would look if she told her the truth about her husband. Now she knew.

"My dear lady," said she, "what on earth did you expect?"

Anne went blindly towards the chimney-piece where the bell was. Lady Cayley also turned. She meant to go, but not just yet.

"One moment, Mrs. Majendie, please, before you turn me out. I wouldn't break my heart about it, if I were you. He might have done worse things."

"He has done nothing."

"Well—not much. He has done what I've told you. But, after all, what's that?"

"Nothing to you, Lady Cayley, certainly," said Anne, as she rang the bell.

She moved slowly towards the door. Lady Cayley followed to the threshold, and laid her hand delicately on the jamb of the door as Mrs. Majendie opened it. She raised to her set face the tender eyes of a suppliant.

"Mrs. Majendie," said she, "don't be hard on poor Wallie. He's never been hard on you. He might have been." The latch sprang to under her gentle pressure. "Look at it this way. He has kept all his marriage vows—except one. You've broken all yours—except one. None of your friends will tell you that. That's why I tell you. Because I'm not a good woman, and I don't count."

She moved her hand from the door. It opened wide, and Lady Cayley walked serenely out.

She had said her say.



CHAPTER XXXII

Anne sat in her chair by the fireside, very still. She had turned out the light, for it hurt her eyes and made her head ache. She had felt very weak, and her knees shook under her as she crossed the room. Beyond that she felt nothing, no amazement, no sorrow, no anger, nor any sort of pang. If she had been aware of the trembling of her body, she would have attributed it to the agitation of a disagreeable encounter. She shivered. She thought there was a draught somewhere; but she did not rouse herself to shut the window.

At eight o'clock a telegram from Majendie was brought to her. She was not to wait dinner. He would not be home that night. She gave the message in a calm voice, and told Kate not to send up dinner. She had a bad headache and could not eat anything.

Kate had stood by waiting timidly. She had had a sense of things happening. Now she retired with curiosity relieved. Kate was used to her mistress's bad headaches. A headache needed no explanation. It explained everything.

Anne picked up the telegram and read it over again. Every week, for nearly three years, she had received these messages. They had always been sent from the same post office in Scale, and the words had always been the same: "Don't wait. May not be home to-night."

To-night the telegram struck her as a new thing. It stood for something new. But all the other telegrams had meant the same thing. Not a new thing. A thing that had been going on for three years; four, five, six years, for all she knew. It was six years since their separation; and that had been his wish.

She had always known it; and she had always put her knowledge away from her, tried not to know more. Her friends had known it too. Canon Wharton, and the Gardners, and Fanny. It all came back to her, the words, and the looks that had told her more than any words, signs that she had often wondered at and refused to understand. They had known all the depths of it. It was only the other day that Fanny had offered her house to her as a refuge from her own house in its shame. Fanny had supposed that it must come to that.

God knew she had been loyal to him in the beginning. She had closed her eyes. She had forbidden her senses to take evidence against him. She had been loyal all through, loyal to the very end. She had lied for him. If, indeed, she had lied. In denying Lady Cayley's statements, she had denied her right to make them, that was all.

Her mind, active now, went backwards and forwards over the chain of evidence, testing each link in turn. All held. It was all true. She had always known it.

Then she remembered that she and Peggy would be going away to-morrow. That was well. It was the best thing she could do. Later on, when they were home again, it would be time enough to make up her mind as to what she could do. If there was anything to be done.

Until then she would not see him. They would be gone to-morrow before he could come home. Unless he saw them off at the station. She would avoid that by taking an earlier train. Then she would write to him. No; she would not write. What they would have to say to each other must be said face to face. She did not know what she would say.

She dragged herself upstairs to the nursery, where the packing had been begun. The room was empty. Nanna had gone down to her supper.

Anne's heart melted. Peggy had been playing at packing. The little lamb had gathered together on the table a heap of her beloved toys, things which it would have broken her heart to part from.

Her little trunk lay open on the floor, packed already. The embroidered frock lay uppermost, carefully folded, not to be crushed. At the sight of it Anne's brain flared in anger.

A bright fire burned in the grate. She picked up the frock; she took a pair of scissors and cut it in several places at the neck, then tore it to pieces with strong, determined hands. She threw the tatters on the fire; she watched them consume; she raked out their ashes with the tongs, and tore them again. Then she packed Peggy's toys tenderly in the little trunk, her heart melting over them. She closed the lid of the trunk, strapped it, and turned the key in the lock.

Then, crawling on slow, quiet feet, she went to bed. Undressing vexed her. She, once so careful and punctilious, slipped her clothes like a tired Magdalen, and let them fall from her and lie where they fell. Her nightgown gaped unbuttoned at her throat. Her long hair lay scattered on her pillow, unbrushed, unbraided. Her white face stared to the ceiling. She was too spent to pray.

When she lay down, reality gripped her. And, with it, her imagination rose up, a thing no longer crude, but full-grown, large-eyed, and powerful. It possessed itself of her tragedy. She had lain thus, nearly nine years ago, in that room at Scarby, thinking terrible thoughts. Now she saw terrible things.

Peggy stirred in her sleep, and crept from her cot into her mother's bed.

"Mummy, I'm so frightened."

"What is it, darling? Have you had a little dream?"

"No. Mummy, let me stay in your bed."

Anne let her stay, glad of the comfort of the little warm body, and afraid to vex the child. She drew the blankets round her. "There," she said, "go to sleep, pet."

But Peggy was in no mind to sleep.

"Mummy, your hair's all loose," she said; and her fingers began playing with her mother's hair.

"Mummy, where's daddy? Is he in his little bed?"

"He's away, darling. Go to sleep."

"Why does he go away? Is he coming back again?"

"Yes, darling." Anne's voice shook.

"Mummy, did you cry when Auntie Edie went away?"

Anne kissed her.

"Auntie Edie's dead."

"Lie still, darling, and let mother go to sleep."

Peggy lay still, and Anne went on thinking.

There was nothing to be done. She would have to take him back again, always. Whatever shame he dragged her through, she must take him back again, for the child's sake.

Suddenly she remembered Peggy's birthday. It was only last week. Surely she had not known then. She must have forgotten for a time.

Then tenderness came, and with it an intolerable anguish. She was smitten and was melted; she was torn and melted again. Her throat was shaken, convulsed; then her bosom, then her whole body. She locked her teeth, lest her sobs should break through and wake the child.

She lay thus tormented, till a memory, sharper than imagination, stung her. She saw her husband carrying the sleeping child, and his face bending over her with that look of love. She closed her eyes, and let the tears rain down her hot cheeks and fall upon her breast and in her hair. She tried to stifle the sobs that strangled her, and she choked. That instant the child's lips were on her face, tasting her tears.

"Oh, mummy, you're crying."

"No, my pet. Go to sleep."

"Why are you crying?"

Anne made no sound; and Peggy cried out in terror.

"Mummy—is daddy dead?"

Anne folded her in her arms.

"No, my pet, no."

"He is, mummy, I know he is. Daddy! Daddy!"

If Majendie had been in the house she would have carried the child into his room, and shown him to her, and relieved her of her terror. She had done that once before when she had cried for him.

But now Peggy cried persistently, vehemently; not loud, but in an agony that tore and tortured her as she had seen her mother torn and tortured. She cried till she was sick; and still her sobs shook her, with a sharp mechanical jerk that would not cease.

Gradually she grew drowsy and fell asleep.

All night Anne lay awake beside her, driven to the edge of the bed, that she might give breathing space to the little body that pushed, closer and closer, to the warm place she made.

Towards dawn Peggy sighed three times, and stretched her limbs, as if awakening out of her sleep.

Then Anne turned, and laid her hands on the dead body of her child.



CHAPTER XXXIII

The yacht had lain all night in Fawlness creek. Majendie had slept on board. He had sent Steve up to the farm with a message for Maggie. He had told her not to expect him that night. He would call and see her very early in the morning. That would prepare her for the end. In the morning he would call and say good-bye to her.

He had taken that resolution on the night when Gardner had told him about Peggy.

He did not sleep. He heard all the sounds of the land, of the river, of the night, and of the dawn. He heard the lapping of the creek water against the yacht's side; the wash of the steamers passing on the river; the stir of wild fowl at daybreak; the swish of wind and water among the reeds and grasses of the creek.

All night he thought of Peggy, who would not live, who was the child of her father's passion and her mother's grief.

At dawn he got up. It was a perfect day, with the promise of warmth in it. Over land and water the white mist was lifting and drifting, eastwards towards the risen sun. Inland, over the five fields, the drops of fallen mist glittered on the grass. The Farm, guarded by its three elms, showed clear, and red, and still, as if painted under an unchanging light. A few leaves, loosened by the damp, were falling with a shivering sound against the house wall, and lay where they fell, yellow on the red-brick path.

Maggie was not at the garden gate. She sat crouched inside, by the fender, kindling a fire. Tea had been made and was standing on the table. She was waiting.

She rose, with a faint cry, as Majendie entered. She put her arms on his shoulders in her old way. He loosened her hands gently and held her by them, keeping her from him at arm's length. Her hands were cold, her eyes had foreknowledge of the end; but, moved by his touch, her mouth curled unaware and shaped itself for kissing.

He did not kiss her. And she knew.

Upstairs in the bedroom overhead, Steve and his mother moved heavily. There was a sound of drawers opening and shutting, then a grating sound. Something was being dragged from under the bed. Maggie knew that they were packing Majendie's portmanteau with the things he had left behind him.

They stood together by the hearth, where the fire kindled feebly. He thrust out his foot, and struck the woodpile; it fell and put out the flame that was struggling to be born.

"I'm sorry, Maggie," he said.

Maggie stooped and built up the pile again and kindled it. She knelt there, patient and humble, waiting for the fire to burn.

He did not know whether he was going to have trouble with her. He was afraid of her tenderness.

"Why didn't you come last night?" she said.

"I couldn't."

She looked at him with eyes that said, "That is not true."

"You couldn't?"

"I couldn't."

"You came last week."

"Last week—yes. But since then things have happened, do you see?"

"Things have happened," she repeated, under her breath.

"Yes. My little girl is very ill."

"Peggy?" she cried, and covered her face with her hands. Then with her hands she made a gesture that swept calamity aside. Maggie would only believe what she wanted.

"She will get better," she said.

"Perhaps. But I must be with my wife."

"You weren't with her last night," said Maggie. "You could have come then."

"No, Maggie, I couldn't."

"D'you mean—because of the little girl?"

"Yes."

"I see," she said softly. She had understood.

"She will get better," she said, "and then you can come again."

"No. I've told you. I must be with my wife."

"I thought—" said Maggie.

"Never mind what you thought," he said with a quick, fierce impatience.

"Are you fond of her?" she asked suddenly.

"You know I am," he said; and his voice was kind again. "You've known it all the time. I told you that in the beginning."

"But—since then," said Maggie, "you've been fond of me, haven't you?"

"It's not the same thing. I've told you that, too, a great many times. I don't want to talk about it. It's different."

"How is it different?"

"I can't tell you."

"You mean—it's different because I'm not good."

"No, my child, I'm afraid it's different because I'm bad. That's as near as we can get to it."

She shook her head in persistent, obstinate negation.

"See here, Maggie, we must end it. We can't go on like this any more. We must give it up."

"I can't," she moaned. "Don't ask me to do that, Wallie dear. Don't ask me."

"I must, Maggie. I must give it up. I told you, dear, before we took this place, that it must end, sooner or later, that it couldn't last very long. Don't you remember?"

"Yes—I remember."

"And you promised me, didn't you, that when the time came, you wouldn't—"

"I know. I said I wouldn't make a fuss."

"Well, dear, we've got to end it now. I only came to talk it over with you. There'll have to be arrangements."

"I know. I've got to clear out of this."

She said it sadly, without passion and without resentment.

"No," he said, "not if you'd rather stay. Do you like the farm, Maggie?"

"I love it."

"Do you? I was afraid you didn't. I thought you hated the country."

"I love it. I love it."

"Oh, well then, you shan't leave it. I'll keep on the farm for you. And, see here, don't worry about things. I'll look after you, all your life, dear."

"Look after me?" Her face brightened, "Like you used to?"

"Provide for you."

"Oh!" she cried. "That! I don't want to be provided for. I won't have it. I'd rather be let alone and die."

"Maggie, I know it's hard on you. Don't make it harder. Don't make it hard for me."

"You?" she sobbed.

"Yes, me. It's all wrong. I'm all wrong. I can't do the right thing, whatever I do. It's wrong to stay with you. It's wrong, it's brutally wrong to leave you. But that's what I've got to do."

"You said—you only said—just now—you'd got to end it."

"That's it. I've got to end it."

She stood up flaming.

"End it then. End it this minute. Give up the farm. Send me away. I'll go anywhere you tell me. Only don't say you won't come and see me."

"See you? Don't you understand, Maggie, that seeing you is what I've got to give up? The other things don't matter."

"Ah," she cried, "it's you who don't understand. I mean—I mean—see me like you used to. That's all I want, Wallie. Only just to see you. That wouldn't be awful, would it? There wouldn't be any sin in that?"

Sin? It was the first time she had ever said the word. The first time, he imagined, she had formed the thought.

"Poor little girl," he said. "No, no, dear, it wouldn't do. It sounds simple, but it isn't."

"But," she said, bewildered, "I love you."

He smiled. "That's why, Maggie, that's why. You've been very sweet and very good to me. And that's why I mustn't see you. That's how you make it hard for me."

Maggie sat down and put her elbows on the table and hid her face in her hands.

"Will you give me some tea?" he said abruptly.

She rose.

"It's all stewed. I'll make fresh."

"No. That'll do. I can't wait."

She gave him his tea. Before he tasted it he got up and poured out a cup for her. She drank a little at his bidding, then pushed the cup from her, choking. She sat, not looking at him, but looking away, through the window, across the garden and the fields.

"I must go now," he said. "Don't come with me."

She started to her feet.

"Ah, let me come."

"Better not. Much better not."

"I must," she said.

They set out along the field-track. Steve, carrying his master's luggage, went in front, at a little distance. He didn't want to see them, still less to hear them speak.

But they did not speak.

At the creek's bank Steve was ready with the boat.

Majendie took Maggie's hand and pressed it. She flung herself on him, and he had to loose her hold by main force. She swayed, clutching at him to steady herself. He heard Steve groan. He put his hand on her shoulder, and kept it there a moment, till she stood firm. Her eyes, fixed on his, struck tears from them, tears that cut their way like knives under his eyelids.

Her body ceased swaying. He felt it grow rigid under his hand.

Then he went from her and stepped into the boat. She stood still, looking after him, pressing one hand against her breast, as if to keep down its heaving.

Steve pushed off from the bank, and rowed towards the creek's mouth. And as he rowed, he turned his head over his right shoulder, away from the shore where Maggie stood with her hand upon her breast.

Majendie did not look back. Neither he nor Steve saw that, as they neared the mouth of the creek, Maggie had turned, and was going rapidly across the field, towards the far side of the spit of land where the yacht lay moored out of the current. As they had to round the point, her way by land was shorter than theirs by water.

When they rounded the point they saw her standing on the low inner shore, watching for them.

She stood on the bank, just above the belt of silt and sand that divided it from the river. The two men turned for a moment, and watched her from the yacht's deck. She waited till the big mainsail went up, and the yacht's head swung round and pointed up stream. Then she began to run fast along the shore, close to the river.

At that sight Majendie turned away and set his face toward the Lincolnshire side.

He was startled by an oath from Steve and a growl from Steve's father at the wheel. "Eh—the—little—!" At the same instant the yacht was pulled suddenly inshore and her boom swung violently round.

Steve and the boatswain rushed to the ropes and began hauling down the mainsail.

"What the devil are you doing there?" shouted Majendie. But no one answered him.

When the sail came down he saw.

"My God," he cried, "she's going in."

Old Pearson, at the wheel, spat quietly over the yacht's side. "Not she," said old Pearson. "She's too much afraid o' cold water."

Maggie was down on the lower bank close to the edge of the river. Majendie saw her putting her feet in the water and drawing them out again, first one foot, and then the other. Then she ran a little way, very fast, like a thing hunted. She stumbled on the slippery, slanting ground, fell, picked herself up again, and ran. Then she stood still and tried the water again, first one foot and then the other, desperate, terrified, determined. She was afraid of life and death.

The belt of sand sloped gently, and the river was shallow for a few feet from the shore. She was safe unless she threw herself in.

Majendie and Steve rushed together for the boat. As Majendie pushed against him at the gangway, Steve shook him off. There was a brief struggle. Old Pearson left the wheel to the boatswain and crossed to the gangway, where the two men still struggled. He put his hand on his master's sleeve.

"Excuse me, sir, you'd best stay where you are."

He stayed.

The captain went to the wheel again, and the boatswain to the boat. Majendie stood stock-still by the gangway. His hands were clenched in his pockets: his face was drawn and white. The captain slewed round upon him a small vigilant eye. "You'd best leave her to Steve, sir. He's a good lad and he'll look after 'er. He'd give his 'ead to marry her. Only she wuddn't look at 'im."

Majendie said nothing. And the captain continued his consolation.

"She's only trying it on, sir," said he. "I know 'em. She'll do nowt. She'll do nubbut wet 'er feet. She's afeard o' cold water."

But before the boat could put off, Maggie was in again. This time her feet struck a shelf of hard mud. She slipped, rolled sideways, and lay, half in and half out of the water. There she stayed till the boat reached her.

Majendie saw Steve lift her and carry her to the upper bank. He saw Maggie struggle from his arms and beat him off. Then he saw Steve seize her by force, and drag her back, over the fields, towards Three Elms Farm.



CHAPTER XXXIV

Majendie landed at the pier and went straight to the office. There he found a telegram from Anne telling him of his child's death.

He went to the house. The old nurse opened the door for him. She was weeping bitterly. He asked for Anne, and was told that she was lying down and could not see him. It was Nanna who told him how Peggy died, and all the things he had to know. When she left him, he shut himself up alone in his study for the first hour of his grief. He wanted to go to Anne; but he was too deeply stupefied to wonder why she would not see him.

Later they met.

He knew by his first glance at her face that he must not speak to her of the dead child. He could understand that. He was even glad of it. In this she was like him, that deep feeling left her dumb. And yet, there was a difference. It was that he could not speak, and she, he felt, would not.

There were things that had to be done. He did them all, sparing her as much as possible. Once or twice she had to be consulted. She gave him a fact, or an opinion, in a brief methodic manner that set him at a distance from her sacred sorrow. She had betrayed more emotion in speaking to Dr. Gardner.

But for these things they went through their first day in silence, like people who respect each other's grief too profoundly for any speech.

In the evening they sat together in the drawing-room. There was nothing more to do.

Then he spoke. He asked to see Peggy. His voice was so low that she did not hear him.

"What did you say, Walter?"

He had to say it again. "Where is she? Can I see her?"

His voice was still low, and it was thick and uncertain, but this time she understood.

"In Edie's room," she said. "Nanna has the key."

She did not go with him.

When he came back to her she was still cold and torpid. He could understand that her grief had frozen her.

At night she parted from him without a word.

So the days went on.

Sometimes he would sit in the study by himself for a little while. His racked nerves were soothed by solitude. Then he would think of the woman upstairs in the drawing-room, sitting alone. And he would go to her. She did not send him away. She did not leave him. She did nothing. She said nothing.

He began to be afraid. It would do her good, he said to himself, if she could cry. He wondered whether it was wise to leave her to her terrible torpor; whether he ought to speak to her. But he could not.

Yet she was kind to him for all her coldness. Once, when his grief was heaviest upon him, he thought she looked at him with anxiety, with pity. She came to him once, where he sat downstairs, alone. But though she came to him, she still kept him from her. And she would not go with him into the room where Peggy lay.

Now and then he wondered if she knew. He was not certain. He put the thought away from him. He was sure that for nearly three years she had not known anything. She had not known anything as long as she had had the child, when her knowing would not, he thought, have mattered half so much. It would be horrible if she knew now. And yet sometimes her eyes seemed to say to him: "Why not now? When nothing matters."

On the night before the funeral, the night they closed the coffin, he came to her where she sat upstairs alone. He put his hand on her shoulder and spoke her name. She shrank from him with a low cry. And again he wondered if she knew.

The day after the funeral she told him that she was going away for a month with Mrs. Gardner.

He said he was glad to hear it. It would do her good. It was the best thing she could do.

He had meant to take her away himself. She knew it. Yet she had arranged to go with Mrs. Gardner.

Then he was certain that she knew.

She went, with Mrs. Gardner, the next day. He and Dr. Gardner saw them off at the station. He thanked Mrs. Gardner for her kindness, wondering if she knew. The little woman had tears in her eyes. She pressed his hand and tried to speak to him, and broke down. He gathered that, whatever Anne knew, her friend knew nothing.

The doctor was inscrutable. He might or he might not know. If he did, he would keep his knowledge to himself. They walked together from the station, and the doctor talked about the weather and the municipal elections.

Anne was to be away a month. Majendie wrote to her every week and received, every week, a precise, formal little letter in reply. She told him, every week, of an improvement in her own health, and appeared solicitous for his.

While she was away, he saw a great deal of the Hannays and of Gorst. When he was not with the Hannays, Gorst was with him. Gorst was punctilious, but a little shy in his inquiries for Mrs. Majendie. The Hannays made no allusion to her beyond what decency demanded. They evidently regarded her as a painful subject.

About a week before the day fixed for Anne's return, the firm of Hannay & Majendie had occasion to consult its solicitor about a mortgage on some office buildings. Price was excited and assiduous. Excited and assiduous, Hannay thought, beyond all proportion to the trivial affair. Hannay noticed that Price took a peculiar and almost morbid interest in the junior partner. His manner set Hannay thinking. It suggested the legal instinct scenting the divorce-court from afar.

He spoke of it to Mrs. Hannay.

"Do you think she knows?" said Mrs. Hannay.

"Of course she does. Or why should she leave him, at a time when most people stick to each other if they've never stuck before?"

"Do you think she'll try for a separation?"

"No, I don't."

"I do," said Mrs. Hannay. "Now that the dear little girl's gone."

"Not she. She won't let him off as easily as all that. She'll think of the other woman. And she'll live with him and punish him for ever."

He paused pondering. Then he delivered himself of that which was within him, his idea of Anne.

"I always said she was a she-dog in the manger."



CHAPTER XXXV

Anne was not expected home before the middle of November. She wrote to her husband, fixing Saturday for the day of her return.

Majendie, therefore, was surprised to find her luggage in the hall when he entered the house at six o'clock on Friday evening. Nanna had evidently been waiting for the sound of his latchkey. She hurried to intercept him.

"The mistress has come home, sir," she said.

"Has she? I hope you've got things comfortable for her."

"Yes, sir. We had a telegram this afternoon. She said she would like to see you in the study, sir, as soon as you came in."

He went at once into the study. Anne was sitting there in her chair by the hearth. Her hat and jacket were thrown on the writing-table that stood near in the middle of the room. She rose as he came in, but made no advance to meet him. He stood still for a moment by the closed door, and they held each other with their eyes.

"I didn't expect you till to-morrow."

"I sent a telegram," she said.

"If you'd sent it to the office I'd have met you."

"I didn't want anybody to meet me."

He felt that her words had some reference to their loss, and to the sadness of her home-coming. A sigh broke from him; but he was unaware that he had sighed.

He sat down, not in his accustomed seat by the hearth, opposite to hers, but in a nearer chair by the writing-table. He saw that she had been writing letters. He pushed them away and turned his chair round so as to face her. His heart ached looking at her.

There were deep lines on her forehead; and she was very pale, even her small close mouth had no colour in it. She kept her sad eyes half hidden under their drooping lids. Her lips were tightly compressed, her narrow nostrils white and pinched. It was a face in which all the doors of life were closing; where the inner life went on tensely, secretly, behind the closing doors.

"Well," he said, "I'm very glad you've come back."

"Walter—have you any idea why I went away?"

"Why you went? Obviously, it was the best thing you could do."

"It was the only thing I could do. And I am glad I did it. My mind has become clearer."

"I see. I thought it would."

"It would not have been clear if I had stayed."

"No," he said vaguely, "of course it wouldn't."

"I've seen," she continued, "that there is nothing for me but to come back. It is the right thing."

"Did you doubt it?"

"Yes. I even doubted whether it were possible—whether, in the circumstances, I could bear to come back, to stay—"

"Do you mean—to—the house?"

"No. I mean—to you."

He turned away. "I understand," he said. "So it came to that?"

"Yes. It came to that. I've been here three hours; and up to the last hour, I was not sure whether I would not pack the rest of my things and go away. I had written a letter to you. There it is, under your arm."

"Am I to read it?"

"Yes."

He turned his back on her, and read the letter.

"I see. You say here you want a separation. If you want it you shall have it. But hadn't you better hear what I have to say, first?"

"I've come back for that. What have you to say?"

He bowed his head upon his breast.

"Not very much, I'm afraid. Except that I'm sorry—and ashamed of myself—and—I ask your forgiveness. What more can I say?"

"What more indeed? I'm to understand, then, that everything I was told is true?"

"It was true."

"And is not now?"

"No. Whoever told you, omitted to tell you that."

"You mean you have given up living with this woman?"

"Yes. If you call it living with her."

"You have given it up—for how long?"

"About five weeks." His voice was almost inaudible.

She winced. Five weeks back brought her to the date of Peggy's death.

"I dare say," she said. "You could hardly—have done less in the circumstances."

"Anne," he said. "I gave it up—I broke it off—before that. I—I broke with her that morning—before I heard."

"You were away that night."

"I was not with her."

"Well—And it was going on, all the time, for three years before that?"

"Yes."

"Ever since your sister's death?"

He did not answer.

"Ever since Edie died," she repeated, as if to herself rather than to him.

"Not quite. Why don't you say—since you sent me away?"

"When did I ever send you away?"

"That night. When I came to you."

She remembered.

"Then? Walter, that is unforgivable. To bring up a little thing like that—"

"You call it a little thing? A little thing?"

"I had forgotten it. And for you to remember it all these years—and to cast it up against me—now—"

"I haven't cast anything up against you."

"You implied you held me responsible for your sin."

"I don't hold you responsible for anything. Not even for that."

Her face never changed. She did not take in the meaning of his emphasis.

He continued. "And, if you want your separation, you shall have it. Though I did hope that you might consider that six years was about enough of it."

"I did want it. But I do not want it now. When I wrote that letter I had forgotten my promise."

"You shall have your promise back again if you want it. I shall not hold you to it, or to anything, if you'd rather not."

"I can never have my promise back—I made it to Edie."

"To Edie?"

"Yes. A short time before she died."

His face brightened.

"What did you promise her?" he said softly.

"That I would never leave you."

"Did she make you promise not to?"

"No. It did not occur to her that I could leave you. She did not think it possible."

"But you did?"

"I thought it possible—yes."

"Even then. There was no reason then. I had given you no cause."

"I did not know that."

"Do you mean that you suspected me—then?"

"I never accused you, Walter, even in my thoughts."

"You suspected?"

"I didn't know."

"And—afterwards—did you suspect anything?"

"No. I never suspected anything—afterwards."

"I see. You suspected me when you had no cause. And when I gave you cause you suspected nothing. I must say you are a very extraordinary woman."

"I didn't know," she answered.

"Who told you? Or must I not ask that?"

"I cannot tell you. I would rather not. I was not told much. And there are some things that I have a right to know."

"Well—"

"Who is this woman?—the girl you've been living with?"

"I've no right to tell you—that. Why do you want to know? It's all over."

"I must know, Walter. I have a reason."

"Can you give me your reason?"

"Yes. I want to help her."

"You would—really—help her?"

"If I can. It is my duty."

"It isn't in the least your duty."

"And I want to help you. That also is my duty. I want to undo, as far as possible, the consequences of your sin. We cannot let the girl suffer."

Majendie was moved by her charity. He had not looked for charity from Anne.

"If you will give me her name, and tell me where to find her, I will see that she is provided for."

"She is provided for."

"How?"

"I am keeping on the house for her."

Anne's face flushed.

"What house?"

"A farm, out in the country."

"That house is yours? You were living with her there?"

"Yes."

Her face hardened. She was thinking of her dead child, who was to have gone into the country to get strong.

He was tortured by the same thought. Maggie, his mistress, had grown fat and rosy in the pure air of Holderness. Peggy had died in Scale.

In her bitterness she turned on him.

"And what guarantee have I that you will not go to her again?"

"My word. Isn't that sufficient?"

"I don't know, Walter. It would have been once. It isn't now. What proof have I of your honour?"

"My—"

"I beg your pardon. I forgot. A man's honour and a woman's honour are two very different things."

"They are both things that are usually taken for granted, and not mentioned."

"I will try to take it for granted. You must forgive my having mentioned it. There is one thing I must know. Has she—that woman—any children?"

"She has none."

Up till that moment, the examination had been conducted with the coolness of intense constraint. But for her one burst of feeling, Anne had sustained her tone of business-like inquiry, her manner of the woman of committees. Now, as she asked her question, her voice shook with the beating of her heart. Majendie, as he answered, heard her draw a long, deep breath of relief.

"And you propose to keep on this house for her?" she said calmly.

"Yes. She has settled in there, and she will be well looked after."

"Who will look after her?"

"The Pearsons. They're people I can trust."

"And, besides the house, I suppose you will give her money?"

"I must make her a small allowance."

"That is a very unwise arrangement. Whatever help is given her had much better come from me."

"From you?"

"From a woman. It will be the best safeguard for the girl."

He saw her drift and smiled.

"Am I to understand that you propose to rescue her?"

"It's my duty—my work."

"Your work?"

"You may not realise it; but that is the work I've been doing for the last three years. I am doubly responsible for a girl who has suffered through my husband's fault."

"What do you want to do with her?"

"I want, if possible, to reclaim her."

He smiled again.

"Do you realise what sort of girl she is?"

"I'm afraid, Walter, she is what you have made her."

"And so you want to reclaim her?"

"I do, indeed."

"You couldn't reclaim her."

"She is very young, isn't she?"

"N—no—She's eight—and—twenty."

"I thought she was a young girl. But, if she's as old as that—and bad—"

"Bad? Bad?"

He rose and looked down on her in anger.

"She's good. You don't know what you're talking about. She isn't a lady, but she's as gentle and as modest as you are yourself. She's sweet, and kind, and loving. She's the most unworldly and unselfish creature I ever met. All the time I've known her she never did a selfish thing. She was absolutely devoted. She'd have stripped herself bare of everything she possessed if it would have done me any good. Why, the very thing you blame the poor little soul for, only proves that she hadn't a thought for herself. It would have been better for her if she'd had. And you talk of 'reclaiming' a woman like that! You want to turn your preposterous committee on to her, to decide whether she's good enough to be taken and shut up in one of your beastly institutions! No. On the whole, I think she'll be better off if you leave her to me."

"Say at once that you think I'd better leave you to her, since you think her perfect."

"She was perfect to me. She gave me all she had to give. She couldn't very well do more."

"You mean she helped you to sin. So, of course, you condone her sin."

"I should be an utter brute if I didn't stand up for her, shouldn't I?"

"Yes." She admitted it. "I suppose you feel that you must defend her. Can you defend yourself, Walter?"

He was silent.

"I'm not going to remind you of your sin against your wife. That you would think nothing of. What have you to say for your sin against her?"

"My sin against her was not caring for her. You needn't call me to account for it."

"I am to believe that you did not care for her?"

"I never cared for her. I took everything from her and gave her nothing, and I left her like a brute."

"Why did you go to her if you did not care for her?"

"I went to her because I cared for my wife. And I left her for the same reason. And she knew it."

"Do you really expect me to believe that you left me for another woman, because you cared for me?"

"For no earthly reason except that."

"You deceived me—you lived in deliberate sin with this woman for three years—and now you come back to me, because, I suppose, you are tired of her—and I am to believe that you cared for me!"

"I don't expect you to believe it. It's the fact, all the same. I wouldn't have left you if I hadn't been hopelessly in love with you. You mayn't know it, and I don't suppose you'd understand it if you did, but that was the trouble. It was the trouble all along, ever since I married you. I know I've been unfaithful to you, but I never loved any one but you. Consider how we've been living, you and I, for the last six years—can you say that I put another woman in your place?"

She looked at him with her sad, uncomprehending eyes; her hands made a hopeless, helpless gesture.

"You know what you have done," she said presently. "And you know that it was wrong."

"Yes, it was wrong. But the whole thing was wrong. Wrong from the beginning. How are we going to make it right?"

"I don't know, Walter. We must do our best."

"Yes, but what are we going to do? What are you going to do?"

"I have told you that I am not going to leave you."

"We are to go on, then, as we did before?"

"Yes—as far as possible."

"Then," he said, "we shall still be all wrong. Can't you see it? Can't you see now that it's all wrong?"

"What do you mean?"

"Our life. Yours and mine. Are you going to begin again like that?"

"Does it rest with me?"

"Yes. It rests with you, I think. You say we must make the best of it. What is your notion of the best?"

"I don't know, Walter."

"I must know. You say you'll take me back—you'll never leave me. What are you taking me back to? Not to that old misery? It wasn't only bad for me, dear. It was bad for both of us."

She sighed, and her sigh shuddered to a sob in her throat. The sound went to his heart and stirred in it a passion of pity.

"God knows," he said, "I'd live with you on any terms. And I'll keep straight. You needn't be afraid. Only—See here. There's no reason why you shouldn't take me back. I wouldn't ask you to if I'd left off caring for you. But it wasn't there I went wrong. I can't explain about Maggie. You wouldn't understand. But, if you'd only try to, we might get along. There's nothing that I won't do for you to make up—"

"You can do nothing. There are things that cannot be made up for."

"I know—I know. But still—we mightn't be so unhappy—perhaps, in time—And if we had children—"

"Never," she cried sharply, "never!"

He had not stirred in his chair where he sat bowed and dejected. But she drew back, flinching.

"I see," he said. "Then you do not forgive me."

"If you had come to me, and told me of your temptation—of your sin—three years ago, I would have forgiven you then. I would have taken you back. I cannot now. Not willingly, not with the feeling that I ought to have."

She spoke humbly, gently, as if aware that she was giving him pain. Her face was averted. He said nothing; and she turned and faced him.

"Of course you can compel me," she said. "You can compel me to anything."

"I have never compelled you, as you know."

"I know. I know you have been good in that way."

"Good? Is that your only notion of goodness?"

"Good to me, Walter. Yes. You were very good. I do not say that I will not go back to you; but if I do, you must understand plainly, that it will be for one reason only. Because I desire to save you from yourself. To save some other woman, perhaps—"

"You can let the other woman take care of herself. As for me, I appreciate your generosity, but I decline to be saved on those terms. I'm fastidious about a few things, and that's one of them. What you are trying to tell me is that you do not care for me."