"Am I? I had an old-fashioned mother, you see. Perhaps my ideas about women are out of date."

"Tell me them."

He regarded her reflectively.

"Shall I? Well, I like to think of a woman as something sweet and fragrant, infinitely tender and compassionate—not as a marauder and despoiler. Wherever she comes, the place should be the happier for her coming—not bereft by it. She should be the helper and healer in this battered old world. That's the sort of woman I should want my wife to be; that's the sort of woman my mother was."

"And you think I'm—not like that? I'm the marauder, I suppose?"

He remained silent, and Magda sat with her bent head, fingering the stem of her wine-glass restlessly.

"You like my dancing?" she said at last.

"You know I do."

"Well"—she looked at him with a mixture of defiance and appeal. "My dancing is me—the real me."

He shook his head.

"You're not the 'Swan-Maiden,' whose love was so great that she forgot everything except the man she loved—and paid for it with her life."

"The process doesn't sound exactly encouraging," she retorted with a flash of dry humour. "But how do you know I'm not—like that?"

"How do I know? Because, if you knew anything at all about love, you couldn't pay with it as you do. Even the love you've no use for is the biggest thing the poor devil who loves you has to offer you; you've no right to play battledore and shuttlecock with it."

He spoke lightly, but Magda could hear the stern accusation that underlay the words. She rose from the table abruptly.

"I think," she said, "I think I'm afraid of love."

As she spoke, she made a movement as though to quit the supper-room, but, either by accident or design, Michael barred her way.

"Love," he said, watching her face intently, "means sacrifice—surrender."

"And you believe I'm not capable of it?"

"I think," he replied slowly, drawing aside to let her pass, "I think I'm afraid to believe."

Something in the deep tones of his voice sent a thrill of consciousness through her. She felt her breath come and go unevenly and, afraid to trust herself to speak, she moved forward without response in the direction of the door. A moment later they were drawn into the stream of people wending their way by twos and threes towards the ballroom.

As they entered, Antoine Davilof broke away from a little group of men with whom he had been conversing and came to Magda's side.

"The next dance is just beginning," he said. "Are you engaged? Or may I have it?"

"No, I'm not engaged," she answered.

She spoke flurriedly. She was dreading this dance with Antoine. She felt as though the evening had drained her of her strength and left her unequal to a battle of wills should Antoine prove to be in one of his hotheaded moods.

She glanced round her with a hint of desperation in her eyes. If only Michael had asked her to dance with him instead! But he had bowed and left her as soon as the musician joined them, so that there was no escape to be hoped for that way.

Davilof was watching her curiously.

"I believe," he said, "that you're afraid to dance with me!"

On an impulse she answered him with perfect candour.

"I believe I am."

"Then why did you promise? You did promise, you know."

"I know. I promised. I promised because Coppertop had croup and they had telephoned down for his mother to go to him. And you wouldn't accompany me unless I gave you this dance. So I promised it."

Davilof's eyes held a curiously concentrated expression.

"And you did this so that Mrs. Grey could go to her little boy—to nurse him?"

Magda inclined her head.

"Yes," she said simply.

"But you hated asking me—loathed it!"

"Yes," she said again.

He was silent for a moment. Then he drew back from her. "That was kind. Extraordinarily kind," he commented slowly. His expression was one of frank amazement. "I did not believe you could be so kind—so womanly."

"Womanly?" she queried, puzzled.

"Yes. For is not a woman—a good woman—always ready to sacrifice herself for those she loves?"

Magda almost jumped. It was as though she were listening to an echo of Quarrington's own words.

"And you sacrificed yourself," continued Davilof. "Sacrificed your pride—crushed it down for the sake of Mrs. Grey and little Coppertop. Mademoiselle"—he bowed gravely—"I kiss your hands. And see, I too, I can be generous. I release you from your promise. I do not claim that dance."

If any single thing could have astonished Magda more than another, it was that Davilof should voluntarily, in the circumstances, renounce the dance she had promised him. It argued a fineness of perception and a generosity for which she would never have given him credit. She felt a little warm rush of gratitude towards him.

"No, no!" she cried impulsively, "you shan't give up your dance." Then, as he still hesitated: "I should like to dance with you—really I should, Antoine. You've been so—so decent."

Davilof's face lit up. He looked radiant—like a child that has been patted on the back and told it is good.

"No wonder we are all in love with you!" he exclaimed in low, vehement tones; adding quickly, as he detected a flicker of apprehension in Magda's eyes: "But you need not fear to dance with me. I will be as your brother—I will go on being 'decent.'"

And he was. He danced as perfectly as any of his music-loving nationality can dance, but there was a restraint, a punctilious deference about him that, even while it amazed, availed to reassure Magda and restore her shaken confidence in the man.

She did not realise or suspect that just those two simple actions of hers—the good turn she had done Gillian at some considerable cost to herself in the matter of personal pride, and her quick recognition of the musician's sense of fair play in renouncing his dance with her when he knew the circumstances which had impelled her to promise it—these two things had sufficed to turn Davilof's heady, emotional devotion into something more enduring and perhaps more dangerous, an abiding, deeply rooted love and passion for her which was stronger than the man himself.

He left the house immediately after the conclusion of his dance with her, and Magda was speedily surrounded by a crowd of would-be partners. But she felt disinclined to dance again, and, always chary of her favours in this respect, she remained watching the dancing in preference to taking any part in it, exchanging small-talk with the men who, finding she could not be induced to reconsider her decision, clustered round her chair like bees round a honey-pot.

It was towards the end of the evening that Michael Quarrington finally joined the group. Magda's eyes rested on him with a mixture of annoyance and approval—annoyance because she had expected him to ask her for a dance quite early in the course of the programme and he had failed to do so, and approval because he was of that clean-cut, fair-haired type of man who invariably contrives to look particularly well-groomed and thoroughbred in evening kit.

She had no intention of permitting him to request a dance at this late hour, however, and rose from her seat as he approached.

"Ah! You, Mr. Quarrington?" she said gaily. "I am just going home. It's been a charming evening, hasn't it?"

"Charming," he rejoined courteously. "May I see you to your car?"

He offered his arm and Magda, dismissing her little court of disgruntled admirers with a small gracious nod, laid her slim hand on his sleeve. As they moved away together the orchestra broke into the swinging seductive rhythm of a waltz.

Quarrington paused abruptly.

"Don't go yet!" he said. "Dance this with me."

His voice sounded strained and uneven. It was as though the words were dragged from him without his own volition.

For an instant the two pairs of eyes met—the long, dark ones with their slumbrous fire brooding beneath white lids, and the keen, hawk-like grey ones. Then:

"Very well," she answered a trifle breathlessly.

She was almost glad when the waltz came to an end. They had danced it in utter silence—a tense, packed silence, vibrant with significances half-hidden, half-understood, and she found herself quivering with a strange uncertainty and nervousness as she and Quarrington together made their way into the dim-lit quiet of the winter-garden opening off the ballroom.

Overhead the green, shining leaves of stephanotis spread a canopy, pale clusters of its white, heavy-scented bloom gleaming star-like in the faint light of Chinese lanterns swung from the leaf-clad roof. From somewhere near at hand came the silvery, showering plash of a fountain playing—a delicate and aerial little sound against the robust harmonies of the band, like the notes of a harp.

It seemed to Magda as though she and Michael had left the world behind them and were quite alone, enfolded in the sweet-scented, tender silence of some Garden of Eden.

They stood together without speaking. In every tingling nerve of her she was acutely conscious of his proximity and of some rapidly rising tide of emotion mounting within him. She knew the barrier against which it beat and a little cry escaped her, forced from her by some impulse that was stronger than herself.

"Oh, Saint Michel! Can't you—can't you believe in me?"

He swung round at the sound of her voice and the next moment she was crushed against his breast, his mouth on hers, his kisses burning their way to her very heart. . . .

Then voices, quick, light footsteps—someone else had discovered the Eden of the winter-garden, and Michael released her abruptly.



Behind the chimneystacks the grey fingers of dawn were creeping up in the sky as Magda drove home. In the wan light her face looked unusually pale, and beneath the soft lace at her breast her heart throbbed unevenly.

Five minutes ago Michael had held her in his arms and she had felt herself stirred to a sudden passionate surrender and response that frightened her.

Was this love—the love against which Diane had warned her? It had all happened so suddenly—that last, unpremeditated dance, those tense, vibrant moments in the winter-garden, then the jarring interruption of other couples seeking its fragrant coolness. And she and Michael suddenly apart.

Afterwards, only the barest conventionalities had passed between them. Nothing else had seemed possible. Their solitude had been ruthlessly destroyed; the outside world had thrust itself upon them without warning, jerking them back to the self-consciousness of suddenly arrested emotion.

"I must be going." The stilted, banal little phrase had fallen awkwardly from Magda's lips, and Quarrington had assented without comment.

She felt confused and bewildered. What had he meant? Had he meant anything at all? Was it possible that he believed in her now—trusted her? It had been in answer to that low, imploring cry of hers—"Saint Michel, can't you believe in me?"—that he had taken her in his arms.

Looking out through the mist-blurred window at the pale streamers of dawnlight penciling the sky, Magda's eyes grew wistful—wonderingly questioning the future. Was she, too, only waiting for the revelation of dawn—the dawn of that mysterious thing called love which can transmute this everyday old world of ours into heaven or hell?



Gillian was at the door to welcome her when at length the car pulled up at Friars' Holm. She looked rather white and there were purple shadows under her eyes, but her lips smiled happily.

"Coppertop? How is he?" asked Magda quickly.

"Sleeping, thank God! He's safe now! But—oh, Magda! It's been awful!"

And quite suddenly Gillian, who had faced Death and fought him with a dogged courage and determination that had won the grave-eyed doctor's rare approval, broke down and burst into tears.

Magda petted and soothed her, until at last her sobs ceased and she smiled through her tears.

"I am a fool!" she said, dabbing at her eyes with a moist, screwed-up ball of something that had once been a cambric handkerchief. "But I've quite recovered now—really. Come and tell me about everything. Did Davilof play for you all right? And did you enjoy the dance afterwards? And, oh, I forgot! There's a letter for you on the mantelpiece. It was delivered by hand while we were both at Lady Arabella's."

Mechanically, as she responded to Gillian's rapid fire of questions, Magda picked up the square envelope propped against the clock and slit open the flap. It was probably only some note of urgent invitation—she received dozens of them. An instant later a half-stifled cry broke from her. Gillian turned swiftly.

"What is it?" she asked, a note of apprehension sharpening her voice.

Magda stared at her dumbly. Then she held out the letter.

"Read it," she said flatly. "It's from Kit Raynham's mother."

Gillian's eyes flew along the two brief lines of writing:

"Kit has disappeared. Do you know where he is?—ALICIA RAYNHAM."



CHAPTER VIII

THE FIRST REAPING

At breakfast, some hours later, Magda was in a curiously petulant and uncertain mood. To some extent her fractiousness was due to natural reaction after the emotional excitement of the previous evening. Granted the discovery of the Garden of Eden, and add to this the almost immediate intrusion of outsiders therein—for everybody else is an "outsider" to the pair in possession—and any woman might be forgiven for suffering from slightly frayed nerves the following day. And in Magda's case she had been already rather keyed up by finding the preceding few days punctuated by unwelcome and unaccustomed happenings.

They all dated from the day of the accident which had befallen her in the fog. It almost seemed as though that grey curtain of fog had been a symbol of the shadow which was beginning to dog her footsteps—the shadow which stern moralists designate "unpleasant consequences."

First there had been Michael Quarrington's plain and candid utterance of his opinion of her. Then had followed Davilof's headlong wooing and his refusal, when thwarted, to play for her again. He, too, had not precisely glossed things over in that tirade of accusation and reproach which he had levelled at her!

And now, just when it seemed as though she had put these other ugly happenings behind her, Kit Raynham, who for the last six months had been one of the little court of admirers which surrounded her, had seen fit to complicate matters by vanishing without explanation; while his mother, in an absurd maternal flurry of anxiety as to what had become of him, must needs write to her as though it inevitably followed that she was responsible for his disappearance!

Magda was conscious of an irritated sense of injury, which Gillian's rather apprehensive little comments on the absence of further news concerning young Raynham scarcely tended to allay.

"Oh, don't be tiresome, Gillian!" she exclaimed. "The boy's all right. I expect he's been having a joy-day—which has prolonged itself a bit."

"It seems he hasn't been seen or heard of since the day before yesterday," responded Gillian gravely. "They're afraid he may—may have committed suicide"—she brought out the word with a rush. "They've been dragging the lake at his home."

Magda flared.

"Where did you hear all this—this nonsense? You said nothing about it last night."

"Lady Raynham told me. She rang up half an hour ago—before you were down—to ask if by any chance we had had any news of him," replied Gillian gently.

Magda pushed away her plate and, leaving her breakfast unfinished, moved restlessly across to the window.

"There's nothing about it in this morning's paper, is there?" she asked. Her tone sounded apprehensive.

Gillian's eyes grew suddenly compassionate.

"Yes. There is—something," she returned, laying her hand quickly over the newspaper as though to withhold it.

But Magda swung round and snatched it from her. Gillian half rose from her chair.

"Don't look—don't read it, Magda!" she entreated hastily.

The other made no response. Instead, she deliberately searched the columns of the paper until she found a paragraph headed: Disappearance of the Honourable Kit Raynham.

No exception could reasonably be taken to the paragraph in question. It gave a brief resume of Kit Raynham's short life up to date, referred to the distinguished career which had been predicted for him, and, in mentioning that he was one of the set of brilliant young folks of whom Magda Wielitzska, the well-known dancer, was the acknowledged leader, it conveyed a very slightly veiled hint that he, in particular, was accounted one of her most devoted satellites. The sting of the paragraph lay in its tail:

"It will be tragic indeed if it should eventually transpire that a young life so full of exceptional promise has foundered in seas that only a seasoned swimmer should essay."

It was easy enough for Magda to read between the lines. If anything had happened to Kit Raynham—if it were ultimately found that he had taken his own life—society at large was prepared to censure her as more or less responsible for the catastrophe!

Side by side with this paragraph was another—a panegyric on the perfection of Wielitzska's dancing as a whole, and dwelling particularly upon her brilliant performance in The Swan-Maiden.

To Magda, the juxtaposition of the two paragraphs was almost unendurable. That this supreme success should be marred and overshadowed by a possible tragedy! She flung the newspaper to the ground.

"I think—I think the world's going mad!" she exclaimed in a choked voice.

Gillian looked across at her. Intuitively she apprehended the mental conflict through which her friend was passing—the nervous apprehension and resentment of the artiste that any extraneous happening should infringe upon her success contending with the genuine regret she would feel if some untoward accident had really befallen Kit Raynham. And behind both these that strange, aloof detachment which seemed part of the very fibre of her nature, and which Gillian knew would render it almost impossible for her to admit or even realise that she was in any way responsible for Kit Raynham's fate—whatever it might be.

Of what had taken place in the winter-garden at Lady Arabella's Gillian was, of course, in ignorance, and she had therefore no idea that the intrusion of Kit Raynham's affairs at this particular juncture was doubly unwelcome. But she could easily see that Magda was shaken out of her customary sang-froid.

"Don't worry, Magda." The words sprang consolingly to her lips, but before she could give them utterance Melrose opened the door and announced that Lady Raynham was in the library. Would Mademoiselle Wielitzska see her?

The old man's face wore a look of concern. They had heard all about the disappearance of Lady Raynham's son in the servants' hall—the evening papers had had it. Moreover, it always seems as though there exists a species of wireless telepathy by which the domestic staff of any household, great or small, speedily becomes acquainted with everything good, bad, or indifferent—and particularly bad!—which affects the folks "above-stairs."

A brief uncomfortable pause succeeded Melrose's announcement; then Magda walked quietly out of the room into the library.

Lady Raynham rose from a low chair near the fire. She was a little, insignificant woman, rather unfashionably attired, with neat grey hair and an entirely undistinguished face, but as she stood there, motionless, waiting for Magda to come up to her, she was quite unconsciously impressive—transformed by that tragic dignity with which great sorrow invests even the most commonplace of people.

Her thin, middle-aged features looked drawn and puckered by long hours of strain. Her eyes were red-rimmed with sleeplessness. They searched Magda's face accusingly before she spoke.

"What have you done to my son?"

"Where is he?" Magda's answering question came in almost breathless haste.

"You don't know!"

Lady Raynham sat down suddenly. Her legs were trembling beneath her—had been trembling uncontrollably even as she nerved herself to stand and confront the woman at whose door she laid the ruin of her son. But now the spurt of nervous energy was exhausted, and she sank back into her chair, thankful for its support.

"I don't know where he is," she said tonelessly. "I don't even know whether he is alive or dead."

She fumbled in the wrist-bag she carried, and withdrawing a crumpled sheet of notepaper held it out. Magda took it from her mechanically, recognising, with a queer tightening of the muscles of her throat, the boyish handwriting which sprawled across it.

"You want me to read this?" she asked.

"You've got to read it," replied the other harshly. "It is written to you. I found it—after he'd gone."

Her gaze fastened on Magda's face and clung there unwaveringly while she read the letter.

It was a wild, incoherent outpouring—the headlong confession of a boy's half-crazed infatuation for a beautiful woman. A pathetic enough document in its confused medley of passionate demand and boyish humbleness. The tragic significance of it was summed up in a few lines at the end—lines which seemed to burn themselves into Magda's brain:

"I suppose it was cheek my hoping you could ever care, but you were so sweet to me you made me think you did. I know now that you don't—that you never really cared a brass farthing, and I'm going right away. The same world can't hold us both any longer. So I'm going out of it."

Magda looked up from the scrawled page and met the gaze of the sad, merciless eyes that were fixed on her.

"Couldn't you have left him alone?" Lady Raynham spoke in a low, difficult voice. "You have men enough to pay you compliments and run your errands. I'd only Kit. Couldn't you have let me keep him? What did you want with my boy's love. You'd nothing to give him in return?"

"I had!" protested Magda indignantly. "You're wrong. I was very fond of Kit. I gave him my friendship."

Her indignation was perfectly sincere. To her, it seemed that Lady Raynham was taking up a most unwarrantable attitude.

"Friendship?" repeated the latter with bitter scorn. "Friendship? Then God help the boys to whom you give it! Before Kit ever met you he was the best and dearest son a woman could have had. He was keen on his work—wild to get on. And he was so gifted it looked as if there were nothing in his profession that he might not do. . . . Then you came! You turned his head, filled his thoughts to the exclusion of all else—work, duty, everything that matters to a lad of two-and-twenty. You spoilt his chances—spoilt his whole life. And now I've lost him. I don't know where he is—whether he is dead or alive." She paused. "I think he's dead," she said dully.

"I'm sorry if—"

"Sorry!" Lady Raynham interrupted hysterically. Her composure was giving way under the strain of the interview. "Sorry if my son has taken his own life—"

"He hasn't," asserted Magda desperately. "He was far too sensible and—and ordinary."

"Yes. Till you turned his head!"

Lady Raynham rose and walked towards the door as though she had said all she came to say. Magda sprang to her feet.

"I won't—I won't be blamed like this!" she exclaimed rebelliously. "It's unfair! Can I help it if your son chose to fall in love with me? You—you might as well hold me responsible because he is tall or short—or good or bad!"

The other stopped suddenly on her way to the door as though arrested by that last defiant phrase.

"I do," she said sternly. "It's women like you who are responsible whether men are good—or bad."

In silence Magda watched the small, unassuming figure disappear through the doorway. She felt powerless to frame a reply, nor had Lady Raynham waited for one. If her boy were indeed dead—dead by his own hand—she had at least cleared his memory, laid the burden of the mad, rash act he had committed on the shoulders that deserved to bear it.

Normally a shy, retiring kind of woman, loathing anything in the nature of a scene, the tragedy which had befallen her son had inspired Alicia Raynham with the reckless courage of a tigress defending its young. And now that the strain was over and she found herself once more in her brougham, driving homeward with the familiar clip-clop of the fat old carriage-horse's hoofs in her ears, she shrank back against the cushions marvelling at the temerity which had swept her into the Wielitzska's presence and endowed her with words that cut like a two-edged sword.

Like a two-edged sword in very truth! Lady Raynham's final thrust, stabbing at her with its stern denunciation, brought back vividly to Magda Michael Quarrington's bitter speech—"I've no place for your kind of woman."

Side by side with the recollection came a sudden dart of fear. How would all this stir about Kit Raynham—the impending gossip and censure which seemed likely to be accorded her—affect him? Would he judge her again—as he had judged her before?

She was conscious of a fresh impulse of anger against Lady Raynham. She wanted to forget the past—blot it all out of her memory—and out of the memory of the man whose contempt had hurt her more than anything in her whole life before. And now it seemed as though everything were combining to emphasise those very things which had earned his scorn.

But, apart from a certain apprehension as to how the whole affair might appear in Michael's eyes, she was characteristically unimpressed by her interview with Lady Raynham.

"I don't see," she told Gillian indignantly, "that I'm to blame because the boy lost his head. His mother was—stupid."

Gillian regarded her consideringly. To her, the whole pitiful tragedy was so clear. She could envisage the point of view of Kit's mother only too well, and sympathise with it. Yet, understanding Magda better than most people did, she realised that the dancer was hardly as culpable as Lady Raynham thought her.

Homage and admiration were as natural to Magda as the air she breathed, and it made very little impression on her whether a man more or less lost his heart to her or not. Moreover, as Gillian recognised it was almost inevitable that this should be the case. The influences by which Magda had been surrounded during the first ten plastic years of childhood had all tended to imbue her with the idea that men were only to be regarded as playthings, and that from the simple standpoint of self-defence it was wiser not to take them seriously. If you did, they invariably showed a disposition to become tyrants. Gillian made allowance for this; nevertheless she had no intention of letting Magda down lightly.

"I believe you were created without a soul," she informed her candidly.

Magda smiled a little.

"Do you know you're the second person to tell me that?" she said. "The idea's not a bit original. Michael Quarrington told me the same thing in other words. Perhaps, perhaps it's true."

"Of course, it's not true!" Gillian contradicted her warmly. "I only said it because I was so out of patience with you."

"Everybody seems to be hating me rather badly just now." Magda spoke somewhat forlornly. "And yet—I don't think I'm any different from usual."

"I don't think you are," retorted Gillian. "But it's your 'usual' that's so disastrous. You go sailing through life like a beautiful cold star—perfectly impassive and heartless."

"I'm not heartless. I love you—and Marraine. You surely don't blame me because I don't 'fall in love'? . . . I don't want to fall in love," she added with sudden vehemence.

"I wish to goodness you would!" exclaimed Gillian impatiently. "If only you cared enough about anybody to do something really outrageous—run off with another woman's husband, even—I believe I should respect you more than I do now."

Magda laughed.

"Gillyflower, I'm afraid you've no morals. And you here in the capacity of watchdog and duenna, too!"

"It's all very well to make a joke of everything. But I know—I'm sure this business about Kit Raynham is going to be more serious than you think. It's bound to affect you."

Magda stared at her blankly.

"What nonsense! Affect me—why should it? How can it?"

"How can it?"—with bitterness. "Everyone will talk—more than usual! You can't smash up people's only sons—not lovable, popular boys like Kit—without there being a fuss. You—you should have left a kid like that alone."

And she went out of the room, banging the door behind her like a big full-stop.



Gillian's prophecy proved only too accurate. People did talk. Kit Raynham had been a general favourite in society, and his disappearance, taken in conjunction with the well-known fact of his infatuation for Magda, created a sensation.

Even when the theory of suicide was finally disproved by his mother's receiving a letter from Australia, whither it appeared, the boy had betaken himself and his disappointment, people seemed at first disinclined to overlook Magda's share in the matter. For a time even her immense prestige as a dancer suffered some eclipse, but this, with a performer of her supreme artistry, was bound to be only a passing phase.

The world will always condone where it wants to be amused. And—now that the gloom of young Raynham's supposed suicide was lifted from the affair—there was a definite aroma of romance about it which was not without its appeal to the younger generation.

So that gradually the pendulum swung back and Magda's audiences were once again as big and enthusiastic as ever. Perhaps even more enthusiastic, since the existence of a romantic and dramatic attachment sheds a certain glamour about any well-known artiste.

All of which affected Magda herself comparatively little—though it irritated her that her actions should be criticised. What did affect her, however, absorbing her thoughts to the exclusion of all other matters, was that since the night of Lady Arabella's reception she had received neither word nor sign from Michael Quarrington.

She could not understand it. Had he been a different type of man she might have credited him with having yielded to a sudden impulse, kissing her as some men will kiss women—lightly and without giving or asking more than the moment's caress.

But Quarrington was essentially not the man to be carried away by a passing fancy. That he had cared for her against his will, against his better judgment, Magda could not but realise. But he had cared! She was sure of it. And he was the only man for whom her own pulses had ever beaten one whit the faster.

His touch, the sound of his voice, the swift, hawk-like glance of those grey eyes of his, had power to wake in her a vague tumult of emotion at once sweet and frightening; and in that brief moment in the "Garden of Eden," when he had held her in his arms, she had been tremulously ready to yield—to surrender to the love which claimed her.

But the days had multiplied to weeks and still the silence which had followed remained unbroken. As far as Magda was concerned, Michael seemed to have walked straight out of her life, and she was too proud—and too much hurt—to inquire amongst her friends for news of him. It was her godmother who finally tersely enlightened her as to his whereabouts.

Characteristically, Lady Arabella had withheld her judgment regarding the Kit Raynham affair until it was found that he had betaken himself off to Australia. But when the whole of the facts were evident, she allowed nothing—neither the romantic dreams of the episode nor her own warm affection for her god-daughter—to obscure her clear-sighted vision.

Magda twisted her slim shoulders irritably when taken to task.

"I think I'm tired of being blamed for Kit Raynham's idiocy," she said, a note of resentment in her voice. "No one seems to consider my side of the question! I was merely nice to him in an ordinary sort of way, and there wasn't the least need for him to have chucked up everything and rushed off to the other side of the world like that. I couldn't help it!"

Lady Arabella made a gesture of despair.

"I don't believe you could," she acknowledged helplessly. "I'm really beginning to have a sneaking sympathy with poor Hugh for shelving the responsibility of having brought you into the world. But at least you might refrain from baby-snatching!" she added wrathfully.

Magda protested.

"Marraine! You're abominable! Kit is four-and-twenty if he's a day. And I'm barely twenty."

"That has nothing whatever to do with it," retorted Lady Arabella incisively. "Kit is a babe in arms, while you—you're as old as Eve." She paused. "Anyway, you've broken his heart and driven him to the ends of the earth."

"Where he'll probably paste together the pieces and offer the repaired article to someone else."

Lady Arabella looked up sharply. Cynicism was usually far enough away from Magda. She was too full of the joy of life and of the genuine delight an artist finds in his art to have place for it. Egoist she might be, with the unthinking egotism of youth, irresponsible in her gay acceptance of the love and admiration showered on her, but there was nothing bitter or sour in her composition. Lady Arabella, seeking an explanation for the unwonted, cast her mind back on the events of the last few weeks—and smiled to herself.

"I suppose you know you've driven someone else out of England besides Kit Raynham?" she said.

"Whom do you mean?"

Magda spoke mechanically. A faint colour crept up under her white skin, and she avoided her godmother's keen gaze.

"That charming artist-man—Michael Quarrington."

"Has—he left England?" Magda's throat felt suddenly parched. Then with an effort she went on: "You're surely not going to put the entire steamship's passenger list down to me, Marraine?"

"Only those names for which I happen to know you're responsible."

"You don't know about Saint Mi—about Mr. Quarrington. It's mere guesswork on your part."

"Most of the things we really know in life are mere guesswork," replied Lady Arabella sagely. "But in this case——"

"Yes. In this case?"

There was a long pause. Then Lady Arabella answered slowly:

"In this case I'm speaking from first-hand information."

Magda's slender figure tautened. She moistened her lips.

"Do you mean that Mr. Quarrington told you he was leaving England on my account?" she asked.

"I don't often meddle, Magda—not really meddle." Lady Arabella's voice sounded unusually deprecating. "But I did in this instance. Because—oh, my dear, he's the only man I've ever seen to whom I'd be glad to give you up. He'd—he'd manage you, Magda."

Magda's head was turned away, but the sudden scarlet flush that flew up into her face surged over even the white nape of her neck.

"And he loves you," went on Lady Arabella, her voice softening incredibly. "It's only a man here or there who really loves a woman, my dear. Most of them whip up a hotch-potch of quite commonplace feelings with a dash of passion and call it love, while all they actually want is a good housekeeper and presentable hostess and someone to carry on the name."

No answer came from Magda, unless a stifled murmur could be regarded as such, and after a few minutes Lady Arabella spoke again, irritably.

"Why couldn't you have left Kit alone?"

Magda raised her head.

"What has that to do with it?"

"Everything"—succinctly. "I told you I meddled. Michael Quarrington came to see me before he went away—and I know precisely why he left England. I asked him to go and see you before he sailed."

"What did he say?" The words were almost inaudible.

Lady Arabella hesitated. Then she quoted quickly: "'There is no need. She will understand.'"

To Magda the brief sentence held all the finality of the bolting and barring of a door. So Quarrington, like everyone else, had heard the story of Kit Raynham! And he had judged and sentenced her.

That night in the winter-garden he had been on the verge of trusting her, ready to believe in her, and she had vowed to herself that she would prove worthy of his trust. She had meant never to fall short of all that Michael demanded in the woman he loved. And now, before she had had a chance to justify his hardly-won belief, the past had risen up to destroy her, surging over her like a great tidal wave and sweeping away the whole fabric of the happiness she had visioned.

She had not wholly realised before that she loved. But she knew now. As the empty weeks dragged along she learned what it meant to long for the beloved one's presence—the sound and touch of voice or hand—with an aching, unassuagable longing that seems to fuse body and soul into a single entity of pain.

Outwardly she appeared unchanged. Her pride was indomitable, and exactly how much Michael's going had meant to her not even Gillian suspected—though the latter was too sensitive and sympathetic not to realise that Magda had passed through some experience which had touched her keenly. Ignorant of the incidents that had occurred on the night of Lady Arabella's party, she was disposed to assign the soreness of spirit she discerned in her friend to the general happenings which had followed from the Raynham episode. And amongst these she gave a certain definite place to the abrupt withdrawal of Quarrington's friendship, and resented it. She felt curiously disappointed in the man. With such fine perceptive faculty as he possessed she would have expected him to be more tolerant—more merciful in his judgment.

Once she had tentatively approached the subject, but Magda had clearly indicated that she had no intention of discussing it.

Not even to Gillian, whom she had gradually come to look upon as her closest friend, could Magda unveil the wound to her pride. No one, no one in the whole world, should know that she had been ready to give her love—and that the offering had been silently, but none the less decisively, rejected.

Diane's warning now found its echo in her own heart: "Never give your heart to any man. If you do he will only break it for you—break it into little pieces like the glass scent-bottle which you dropped yesterday."

"She was right," Magda told herself bitterly. "A thousand times right!"



CHAPTER IX

THE BACK OF BEYOND

The season was drawing to its close. London lay sweltering under a heat-wave which had robbed the trees in the Park of their fresh June greenness and converted the progress of foot-passengers along its sultry pavements into something which called to mind the mediaeval ordeal of walking over hot ploughshares.

Even the garden at Friars' Holm, usually a coolly green oasis in the midst of the surrounding streets, seemed as airless as any back court or alley, and Coppertop, who had been romping ever more and more flaggingly with a fox-terrier puppy he had recently acquired, finally gave up the effort and flung himself down, red-faced and panting, on the lawn where his mother and Magda were sitting.

"Isn't it nearly time for us to go to the seaside, mummie?" he inquired plaintively.

Magda smiled down at the small wistful face.

"How would you like to go to the country instead, Topkins?" she asked. "To a farm where they have pigs and horses and cows, and heaps of cream—"

"And strawberries?" interpolated Coppertop pertinently.

"Oh, of course. Or, no—they'll be over by the time we get there. But there'll be raspberries. That's just as good, isn't it?"

Gillian looked up, smiling a little.

"It's settled we're going 'there,' then—wherever it is?" she said.

"Do you think you'd like it, Gillyflower?" asked Magda. "It's a farm I've heard of in Devonshire, where they want to take paying-guests for the summer."

Gillian, guessing from Magda's manner that the whole matter was practically arranged, nodded acquiescence.

"I'm sure I should. But will you?"—whimsically. She glanced at the sophisticated simplicity of Magda's white gown, at the narrow suede shoes and filmy stockings—every detail of her dress and person breathing the expensiveness and luxury and highly specialised civilisation of the city. "Somehow I can't imagine you—on a farm in the depths of the country! I believe you'll hate it."

"I shall like it." Magda got up restlessly. "I'm sick of society and the theatre and the eternal gossip that goes on in London. I—I want to get away from it all!"

Gillian's thoughts turned back to the happenings of the last few months. She thought she understood what lay behind Magda's sudden decision to bury herself in the country.

"Have you taken rooms at this farm?" she asked.

"Yes, I have"—shortly. Then, with one of those sudden flashes of affectionate insight which were part of her essential lovableness, she went on: "Gilly, are you sure you don't mind? I ought to have asked you first"—remorsefully. "I expect you'll be bored to death. Perhaps you'd rather not come?"

Gillian's quiet brown eyes smiled at her reassuringly.

"'Where thou goest—'" she quoted. "Of course I want to come. I've never been to Devonshire. And I know Coppertop will adore the pigs and cows—"

"And cream," put in Coppertop ruminatively.

"Tell me about the place," said Gillian. "How did you hear of it?"

"Through the prosaic columns of the Daily Post," replied Magda. "I didn't want a place recommended by anyone I knew. That doesn't cut the connecting line one bit. Probably the people who've recommended it to you decide to look you up in their car, just when you think you're safely buried, and disinter you. I don't want to be disinterred. I propose to get right away into the country, out of reach of everybody we know, for two months. I shan't give our address to anyone except Melrose, and he can forward on all letters." A small amused smile crossed her lips. "Then we can answer them or not, exactly as we feel disposed. It will be heavenly."

"Still I don't know where this particular paradise is which you've selected," returned Gillian patiently.

"It's at the back of beyond—a tiny village in Devonshire called Ashencombe. I just managed to find it on the Ordnance map with a magnifying glass! The farm itself is called Stockleigh and is owned and farmed by some people named Storran. The answer to my letter was signed Dan Storran. Hasn't it a nice sound—Storran of Stockleigh?"

"And did you engage the rooms on those grounds, may I ask? Because the proprietor's name 'had a nice sound'?"

Magda regarded her seriously.

"Do you know, I really believe that had a lot to do with it," she acknowledged.

Gillian went off into a little gale of laughter.

"How like you!" she exclaimed.



The train steamed fussily out of Ashencombe station, leaving Magda, Gillian, and Coppertop, together with sundry trunks and suitcases, in undisputed possession of the extremely amateurish-looking platform. Magda glanced about her with amusement.

"What a ridiculous little wayside place!" she exclaimed. "It has a kind of 'home-made' appearance, hasn't it? You'd hardly expect a real bona fide train to stop here!"

"This your luggage, miss?"

A porter—or, to be accurate, the porter, since Ashencombe boasted but one—addressed her abruptly. From a certain inimical gleam in his eye Magda surmised that he had overheard her criticism.

"Yes." She nodded smilingly. "Is there a trap of any kind to meet us?"

Being a man as well as a porter he melted at once under Magda's disarming smile, and replied with a sudden accession of amiability.

"Be you going to Stockleigh?" he asked. The soft sing-song intonation common to all Devon voices fell very pleasantly on ears accustomed to the Cockney twang of London streets.

"Yes, to Storran of Stockleigh," announced Coppertop importantly.

The porter's mouth widened into an appreciative grin.

"That's right, young master, and there's the wagonette from the Crown and Bells waiting to take you there."

A few minutes later, the luggage precariously piled up on the box-seat beside the driver, they were ambling through the leafy Devon lanes at an unhurried pace apparently dictated by the somewhat ancient quadruped between the shafts. The driver swished his whip negligently above the animal's broad back, but presumably more with the idea of keeping off the flies than with any hope of accelerating his speed. There would be no other train to meet at Ashencombe until the down mail, due four hours later, so why hurry? No one ever appears to be in a hurry in the leisurely West Country—a refreshing characteristic in a world elsewhere so perforated by tubes and shaken by the ubiquitous motor-bus.

Magda leaned back in the wagonette with a sigh of pleasure. The drowsy, sunshiny peace of the July afternoon seemed very far removed from the torrid rush and roar of the previous day in London.

It was almost like entering another world. Instead of the crowded, wood-paved streets, redolent of petrol, this winding ribbon of a lane where the brambles and tufted grass leaned down from close-set hedges to brush the wheels of the carriage as it passed. Overhead, a restful sky of misty blue flecked with wisps of white cloud, while each inconsequent turn of the narrow twisting road revealed a sudden glimpse of distant purple hills, or a small friendly cottage built of cob and crowned with yellow thatch, or high-hedged fields of standing corn, deepening to gold and quiveringly still as the sea on a windless afternoon.

At last the wagonette swung round an incredibly sharp turn and rumbled between two granite posts—long since denuded of the gate which had once swung between them—pulling up in front of a low, two-storied house, which seemed to convey a pleasant sense of welcome, as some houses do.

The casement windows stood wide open and through them you caught glimpses of white curtains looped back with lavender ribbons. Roses, pink and white and red, nodded their heads to you from the walls, even peering out impertinently to catch the sun from beneath the eaves of the roof, whose thatch had mellowed to a somber brown with wind and weather. Above the doorway trails of budding honeysuckle challenged the supremacy of more roses in their summer prime, and just within, in the cool shadow of the porch, stood a woman's slender figure.

Gillian never forgot that first glimpse of June Storran. She looked very simple and girlish as she stood there, framed in the rose-covered trellis of the porch, waiting with a slight stir of nervousness to receive the travellers. The sunlight, filtering between the leaves of the honeysuckle, dappled her ash-blond hair with hovering flecks of gold, and a faint, shy smile curved her lips as she came forward, a little hesitatingly, to greet them.

"I am so glad to see you," she said. "Dan—my husband had to go to Exeter to-day. He was sorry he could not meet you himself at the station."

As she and Magda stood side by side the contrast between them was curiously marked—the one in her obviously homemade cotton frock, with her total absence of poise and her look of extreme youth hardly seeming the married woman that she was, the other gowned with the simplicity of line and detailed finish achieved only by a great dressmaker, her quiet assurance and distinctive little air of savoir vivre setting her worlds apart from Dan Storran's young wife.

"Will you come in? The man will see to your luggage."

June was speaking again, still shyly but with her shyness tempered by a sensitive instinct of hospitality. She led the way into the house and they followed her through a big, low-raftered living-room and up a flight of slippery oak stairs.

"These are your rooms," said June, pausing at last at the end of a rambling passage-way. "I hope"—she flushed a little anxiously—"I do hope you will like them. I've made them as nice as I could. But, of course"—she glanced at Magda deprecatingly—"you will find them very different from London rooms."

Magda flashed her a charming smile.

"I'm sure we shall love them," she answered, glancing about her with genuine appreciation.

The rooms were very simply furnished, but sweet and fresh with chintz and flowers, and the whitewashed ceilings, sloping at odd, unexpected angles, gave them a quaint attractiveness. The somewhat coarse but spotless bed-linen exhaled a faint fragrance of lavender.

"You ought to charge extra for the view alone," observed Gillian, going to one of the open lattice windows and looking across the rise and fall of hill and valley to where the distant slopes of Dartmoor, its craggy tors veiled in a grey-blue haze, rimmed the horizon.

"I hope you didn't think the terms too high?" said June. "You see, I—we never had paying-guests before, and I really didn't know what would be considered fair. I do hope you'll be happy and comfortable here," she added timidly.

There was something very appealing in her ingenuousness and wistful desire to please, and Magda reassured her quickly.

"I haven't any doubt about it," she said, smiling. "This is such a charming house"—glancing about her—"so dear and old-fashioned. I think it's very good of you to let us share your home for a little while. It will be a lovely holiday for us."

June Storran had no possibility of knowing that this dark, slender woman to whom she had let her rooms was the famous dancer, Magda Wielitzska, since the rooms had been engaged in the name of Miss Vallincourt, but she responded to Magda's unfailing charm as a flower to the sun.

"It will be lovely for us, too," she replied. "Do you know, we were so frightened about putting in that advertisement you answered! Dan was terribly against it." A troubled little frown knitted her level brows. "But we've had such bad luck on the farm since we were married—the rain spoilt all our crops last year and we lost several valuable animals—so I thought it would help a bit if we took paying-guests this summer. But Dan didn't really approve."

"I can quite understand," said Gillian. "Naturally he wanted to keep his home to himself—an Englishman's home is his castle, you know! And I expect"—smilingly—"you haven't been married very long."

Mrs. Storran flushed rosily. She was evidently a sensitive little person, and the blood came and went quickly under her clear skin at the least provocation.

"Not very long," she acknowledged. "But we've been very happy—in spite of our bad luck on the farm! After all, that's what matters, isn't it?"

"It's the only thing that really matters at all," said Gillian. Her eyes had grown suddenly soft with some tender recollection of the past. "But you mustn't let us give you a lot of trouble while we're here. You don't look over-strong." Her glance rested kindly on her hostess's young face. In spite of its dewy blue eyes and clear skin with the tinge of wild-rose pink in the cheeks, it conveyed a certain impression of fragility. She looked almost as though a vigorous puff of wind might blow her away.

"Oh, I'm quite well. Of course I found looking after a farmhouse rather heavy work—just at first. I hadn't been used to it, and we can't afford to keep a servant. You see, I married Dan against the wishes of my people, so of course we couldn't accept any help from them, though they have offered it."

"I don't see why not," objected Magda. "They can't feel very badly about it if they are willing to help you."

"Oh, no—they would, gladly. But Dan would hate it in the circumstances. You can understand that, can't you?"—appealingly. "He wants to justify himself—to prove that he can keep his own wife. He'd be too proud to let me take anything from them."

"Storran of Stockleigh appears to be considerably less attractive than his name," summed up Gillian, as, half an hour later, she and Magda and Coppertop were seated round a rustic wooden table in the garden partaking of a typical Devonshire tea with its concomitants of jam and clotted cream.

"Apparently," she continued, "he has married 'above him.' Little Mrs. Storran obviously comes of good stock, while I expect he himself is just an ordinary sort of farmer and doesn't half appreciate her. Anyway, he doesn't seem to consider her much."

Magda made no answer. Characteristically her interest in June Storran had evaporated, pushed aside by something of more personal concern.

"This is the most restful, peaceful spot I've ever struck," she said, leaning back with a sigh of pleasure. "Isn't it lovely, Gilly? There's something homelike and friendly about the whole landscape—a sort of intimate feeling. I feel as if I'd known it all for years—and should like to know it for years more! Don't they say Devon folk always want to come home to die? I'm not surprised."

"Yes, it's very beautiful," agreed Gillian, her gaze resting contentedly on the gracious curves of green and golden fields, broken here and there by stretches of ploughed land glowing warmly red between the ripening corn and short-cropped pasture.

"I believe I could be quite good here, Gillyflower," pursued Magda reflectively. "Just live happily from one day to the next, breathing this glorious air, and eating plain, simple food, and feeding those adorable fluffy yellow balls Mrs. Storran calls chickens, and churning butter and—"

Gillian's ringing, whole-hearted laughter checked this enthusiastic epitome of the simple life.

"Never, Magda!" she asserted, shaking her head. "I'm quite expecting you to get bored in about a week and to rush me off to Deauville or somewhere of that ilk. And as to being 'good'—why, it isn't in you!"

"I'm not so sure." Magda rose and together they strolled over the grass towards the house, Coppertop skirmishing happily behind them. "I really think I might be good here—if only for the sole reason that there's no temptation to be anything else"—drily.

As she spoke a gate clicked close at hand. Followed the sound of quick, striding steps, and the next moment a man's figure rounded the tall yew hedge which skirted the foot of the garden and came towards them.

He was a big giant of a man—at least six foot two in his socks, and proportionately broad and muscular in build. There was something free and bold in his swinging gait that seemed to challenge the whole world. It suggested an almost fierce independence of spirit that would give or take as it chose, but would never brook dictation from any man—or woman either.

Instinctively Magda and Gillian paused, and Magda held out a slim hand, smiling, as he overtook them.

"I'm sure you must be Mr. Storran," she said.

He halted abruptly and snatched off his cap, revealing a crop of crinkly dark-brown hair thatching a lean sunburnt face, out of which gleamed a pair of eyes as vividly blue as periwinkles.

"Yes, I'm Dan Storran," he said simply. "Is it Miss Vallincourt?"

Magda nodded and proceeded to introduce Gillian. But Storran's glance only rested cursorily on Gillian's soft, pretty face, returning at once to Magda's as though drawn thither by a magnet.

"I'm sorry I couldn't meet your train myself to-day," he said, a note of eager apology in his voice.

Magda smiled at him.

"So am I," she answered.



CHAPTER X

FOREBODINGS

Gillian was sitting alone in the yew-hedged garden, her slim fingers busy repairing the holes which appeared with unfailing regularity in the heels of Coppertop's stockings. From the moment he had come to Stockleigh the number and size of the said holes had increased appreciably, for, although five weeks had elapsed since the day of arrival, Coppertop was still revelling whole-heartedly in the incredible daily delights which, from the viewpoint of six years old, attach to a farm.

Day after day found him trotting contentedly in the wake of the stockman, one Ned Honeycott, whom he had adopted as guide, philosopher, and friend, and whom he regarded as a veritable fount of knowledge and the provider of unlimited adventure and entertainment.

It was Honeycott who lifted Coppertop on to the broad back of the steadiest cart-horse; who had taught him how to feed calves by dipping his chubby little hand into a pail of milk and then letting them suck the milk from off his fingers; who beneficently contrived that hardly a load of hay was driven to the great rick without Coppertop's small person perched proudly aloft thereon, his slim legs dangling and his shrill voice joining with that of the carter in an encouraging "Come-up, Blossom," to the bay mare as she plodded forward between the shafts.

Gillian experienced no anxiety with regard to Coppertop's safety while he was in Ned Honeycott's charge, but she missed the childish companionship, the more so as she found herself frequently alone these days. June Storran was naturally occupied about her house and dairy, while Magda, under Dan Storran's tutelage, appeared smitten with an extraordinary interest in farm management.

It seemed to Gillian that Magda and Dan were in each other's company the greater part of the time. Every day Dan had some suggestion or other to make for Miss Vallincourt's amusement. Either it was: "Would you care to see the hay-loader at work?" Or: "I've just bought a couple of pedigree Devon cows I'd like to show you, Miss Vallincourt." Or, as yesterday: "There's a pony fair to be held to-morrow at Pennaway Bridge. Would you care to drive in it?" And to each and all of Storran's suggestions Magda had yielded a ready assent.

So this morning had seen the two of them setting out for Pennaway in Dan's high dog-cart, while Gillian and June stood together in the rose-covered porch and watched them depart.

"Wouldn't you like to have gone?" Gillian asked on a sudden impulse.

She regretted the question the instant it had passed her lips, for in the wide-apart blue eyes June turned upon her there was something of the mute, puzzled misery of a dog that has received an unexpected blow.

"I couldn't spare the time," she answered hastily. "You see"—the sensitive colour as usual coming and going quickly in her face—"Miss Vallincourt is on a holiday."

She turned and went quickly into the house, leaving Gillian conscious of a sudden uneasiness—that queer "trouble ahead" feeling which descends upon us sometimes, without warning and without our being able to assign any very definite cause for it.

She was thinking over the little incident now, as she sat sewing in the evening light, and meditating whether she should give Magda a hint that it might be kinder of her not to monopolise so much of Dan's society. And then the crisp sound of a horse trotting on the hard, dry road came to her ears, and almost immediately the high dog-cart swung between the granite gateposts and clattered into the yard.

Dan tossed the reins on to the horse's neck and, springing to the ground, came round to help Magda down from the cart.

"It's rather a steep step. Let me lift you down," he said.

"Very well."

Magda stood up in the trap and looked down at him with smiling eyes, unconsciously delighting in his sheer physical good looks. He was a magnificent specimen of manhood, and the good yeoman blood in him, which had come down through the generations of the same sturdy stock, proclaimed itself in his fine physique and splendid virility.

A moment later he had swung her down as easily as though she were a child, and she was standing beside him.

She laughed up at him.

"Oh, 'girt Jan Ridd'!" she exclaimed softly.

He laughed back, well pleased. (Was there ever a man who failed to be ridiculously flattered by a feminine tribute to his physical strength?) Nor did his hands release her quite at once.

"You're as light as a feather! I could carry you all day and—"

"Not know it!" concluded Magda gaily.

His hands fell away from her slim body abruptly.

"Oh, I should know it right enough!" he said jerkily.

His eyes kindled, and Magda, conscious of something suddenly disturbing and electric in the atmosphere, turned quickly and, leaving Storran to unharness the horse, made her way to where she espied Gillian sitting.

The latter looked up from her sewing.

"So you've got back? Did you have a good time?"

"Yes. It was quite amusing. There were heaps and heaps of ponies—some of them wild, unbroken colts which had been brought straight off the Moor. They were rearing and plunging all over the place. I loved them! By the way, I'm gong to learn riding, Gillyflower. Mr. Storran has offered to teach me. He says he has a nice quiet mare I could start on."

A small frown puckered Gillian's brows.

"Do you think Mrs. Storran will like it?"

Magda started.

"Why on earth shouldn't she?"

"Well,"—Gillian spoke with a vague discomfort. "He's her husband!"

"I don't see what that has to do with it," replied Magda. "We're staying here and, of course, the Storrans want to make it as nice as they can for us. Anyway, I'm going to take such goods as the gods provide."

She got up abruptly and went in the direction of the house, leaving Gillian to digest as best she might the hint that her interference was not likely to be either welcomed or effective.

Left to herself, Gillian sighed unhappily. Almost she wished they had never come to Stockleigh, only that it was pure joy to her to see Coppertop's rather thin little cheeks filling out and growing sunburnt and rosy. He had not picked up strength very readily after his attack of croup, and subsequently the intense heat in London had tried him a good deal.

But she was gradually becoming apprehensive that disturbing consequences might accrue from Magda's stay at Stockleigh Farm. A woman of her elusive charm, equipped with all the subtle lore that her environment had taught her, must almost inevitably hold for a man of Storran's primitive way of life the fascination of something new and rather wonderful. To contrast his wife with her was to contrast a field-flower with some rare, exotic bloom, and Gillian was conscious of a sudden rush of sympathy for June's unarmoured youth and inexperience.

Magda's curiously uncertain moods of late, too, had worried her not a little. She was unlike herself—at times brooding and introspective, at other times strung up to a species of forced gaiety—a gaiety which had the cold sparkle of frost or diamonds. With all her faults Magda had ever been lovably devoid of bitterness, but now it seemed as though she were developing a certain new quality of hardness.

It puzzled Gillian, ignorant of that sudden discovery and immediate loss of the Garden of Eden. It might have been less of an enigma to old Lady Arabella, to whom the jigsaw puzzle of human motives and impulses was always a matter of absorbing interest, and who, as more or less an onlooker at life during the last thirty years, had become an adept in the art of fitting the pieces of the puzzle together.

Magda herself was only conscious of an intense restlessness and dissatisfaction with existence in general. She reflected bitterly that she had been a fool to let slip her hold of herself—as she had done the night of Lady Arabella's reception—even for a moment.

It had been thoroughly drilled into her both by precept and example—her mother's precept and her father's example—that to let a man count for anything much in her life was the biggest mistake a woman could make, and Michael's treatment of her had driven home the truth of all the warnings Diane had instilled.

He had hurt her as she had never been hurt before, and all that she craved now was change. Change and amusement to drug her mind so that she need not think. Whether anyone else got hurt in the process was a question that never presented itself to her.

She had not expected to find amusement at Stockleigh. She had been driven there by an overmastering desire to escape from London—for a few weeks, at least, to get right away from her accustomed life and from everyone who knew her. And at Stockleigh she had found Dan Storran.

The homage that had leaped into his eyes the first moment they had rested on her, and which had slowly deepened as the days slipped by, had somehow soothed her, restoring her feminine poise which Michael's sudden defection had shaken.

She knew—as every woman always does know when a man is attracted by her—that she had the power to stir this big, primitive countryman, whose way of life had never before brought him into contact with her type of woman, just as she had stirred other men. And she carelessly accepted the fact, without a thought that in playing with Dan Storran's emotions she was dealing with a man who knew none of the moves of the game, to whom the art of love-making as a pastime was an unknown quantity, and whose fierce, elemental passions, once aroused, might prove difficult to curb. He amused her and kept her thoughts off recent happenings, and for the moment that was all that mattered.



CHAPTER XI

STORRAN OF STOCKLEIGH

It was a glorious morning. The sun blazed like a great golden shield out of a cloudless sky, and hardly a breath of air stirred the foliage of the trees.

Magda, to content an insatiable Coppertop, had good-naturally suffered herself to be dragged over the farm. They had visited the pigs—a new and numerous litter of fascinating black ones having recently made their debut into this world of sin—and had watched the cows being milked, and been chased by the irascible gander, and finally, laughing and breathless, they had made good their escape into the garden where Gillian sat sewing, and had flung themselves down exhaustedly on the grass at her feet.

"I'm in a state of mental and moral collapse, Gilly," declared Magda, fanning herself vigorously with a cabbage leaf. "Whew! It is hot! As soon as I can generate enough energy, I propose to bathe. Will you come?"

Gillian shook her head lazily.

"I think not to-day. I want to finish this overall for Coppertop. And it's such a long trudge from here down to the river."

"Yes, I know." Magda nodded. "It's three interminable fields away—and the thistles and things prick one's ankles abominably. Still, it's lovely when you do get there! I think I'll go now"—springing up from the velvet turf—"before I get too lazy to move."

Gillian's eyes followed her thoughtfully as she made her way into the house. She had never seen Magda so restless—she seemed unable to keep still a moment.

Half an hour later Magda emerged from the house wrapped in a cloak, a little scarlet bathing-cap turbanning her dark hair, and a pair of sandals on the slim supple feet that had danced their way into the hearts of half of Europe.

"Good-bye!" she called gaily, waving her hand. And went out by the wicket gate leading into the fields.

There was not a soul in sight. Only the cows, their red, burnished coats gleaming like the skin of a horse-chestnut in the hot sun, cast ruminative glances at her white-cloaked figure as it passed, and occasionally a peacefully grazing sheep emitted an astonished bleat at the unusual vision and skedaddled away in a hurry.

Magda emulated Agag in her progress across the field which intervened between the house and the river, now and then giving vent to a little cry of protest as a particularly prickly thistle or hidden trail of bramble whipped against her bare ankles.

At last from somewhere near at hand came the cool gurgle of running water and, bending her steps in the direction of the sound, two minutes' further walking brought her to the brink of the river. Further up it came tumbling through the valley, leaping the rocks in a churning torrent of foam, a cloud of delicate up-flung spray feathering the air above it; but here there were long stretches of deep, smooth water where no boulder broke the surface into spume, and quiet pools where fat little trout heedlessly squandered the joyous moments of a precarious existence.

Magda threw off her wrapper and, picking her way across the moss-grown rocks, paused for an instant on the bank, her slender figure, clad in its close-fitting scarlet bathing-suit, vividly outlined against the surrounding green of the landscape. Then she plunged in and struck out downstream, swimming with long, even strokes, the soft moorland water laving her throat like the touch of a satin-smooth hand.

She was heading for a spot she knew of, a quarter of a mile below, where a wooden bridge spanned the river and the sun's heat poured down unchecked by sheltering trees. Here she proposed to scramble out and bask in the golden warmth.

She had just established herself on a big, sun-warmed boulder when a familiar step sounded on the bridge and Dan Storran's tall figure emerged into view. He pulled up sharply as he caught sight of her, his face taking on a schoolboy look of embarrassment. Deauville plage, where people bathed in companionable parties and strolled in and out of the water as seemed good to them, was something altogether outside Dan's ken.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he began, flushing uncomfortably.

Magda waved to him airily.

"You needn't be. I'm having a sun-bath. You can stay and talk to me if you like. Or are you too busy farming this morning?"

"No, I'm not too busy," he said slowly.

There was a curious dazzled look in his eyes as they rested on her. Sheathed in the stockingette bathing-suit she wore, every line and curve of her supple body was revealed. Her wet, white limbs gleamed pearl-like in the quivering sunlight. The beauty of her ran through his veins like wine.

"Then come and amuse me!" Magda patted the warm surface of the rock beside her invitingly. "You can give me a cigarette to begin with."

Storran sat down and pulled out his case. As he held a match for her to light up from, his hand brushed hers and he drew it away sharply. It was trembling absurdly.

He sat silent for a moment or two; then he said with an odd abruptness:

"I suppose you find it frightfully dull down here?"

Magda laughed a little.

"Is that because I told you to come and amuse me? . . . No, I don't find it dull. Change is never really dull."

"Well, you must find it change enough here from the sort of life you've been accustomed to lead."

"How do you know what sort of life I lead?"—teasingly.

"I can guess. One has only to look at you. You're different—different from everyone about here. The way you move—you're like a thoroughbred amongst cart-horses." He spoke with a kind of sullen bitterness.

Magda drew her feet up on to the rock and clasped her hands round her knees.

"Now you're talking nonsense, you know," she said amusedly. "Frankly, I like it down here immensely. I happened to be—rather worried when I came away from London, and there's something very soothing and comforting about the country—particularly your lovely Devon country."

"Worried?" Storran's face darkened. "Who'd been worrying you?"

"Oh"—vaguely. "All sorts of things. Men—and women. But don't let's talk about worries to-day. This glorious sunshine makes me feel as though there weren't any such things in the world."

She leaned back, stretching her arms luxuriously above her head with the lithe, sensuous grace of movement which her training had made second nature. Storran's eyes dwelt on her with a queer tensity of expression. Every gesture, every tone of her curiously attractive voice, held for him a disturbing allure which he could not analyse and against which he was fighting blindly.

He had never doubted his love for his wife. Quite honestly he had believed her the one woman in the world when he married her. Yet now he was beginning to find every hour a blank that did not bring him sight or sound of this other woman—this woman with her slender limbs and skin like a stephanotis petal, and her long Eastern eyes with the subtle lure which seemed to lie in their depths. Beside her June's young peach-bloom prettiness faded into something colourless and insignificant.

"It must be nice to be you"—Magda nodded at him. "With no vague, indefinable sort of things to worry you."

He smiled reluctantly.

"How do you know I haven't?"

"Oh, because I do."

"A woman's reason!"

"Quite. But women's reasons are generally very sound—we were endowed with a sixth sense, you know! Besides—it's obvious, isn't it? Here you are—you and June—living a simple, primitive kind of existence, all to yourselves, like Adam and Eve. And if you do have a worry it's a real definite one—as when a cow inconveniently goes and dies or your root crop fails. Nothing intangible and uncertain about that!"

"Have you forgotten that the serpent intruded even upon Adam and Eve?" he asked quietly.

She laughed.

"Is that a hit at Gillian and me? I know—June told us—that you were horribly opposed to anyone's coming here for the summer. I thought that you had got over that by now?"

"So I have"—bluntly.

"Then we're not—not unwelcome visitors any longer?" the soft, tantalising voice went on. The low cadence of it seemed to tug at his very heartstrings.

He leaned nearer to her and, catching both her hands in his, twisted her round so that she faced him.

"Why do you ask?" he demanded, his voice suddenly roughened and uneven.

"Because I wanted to know—of course!"—lightly.

"Then—you're not an unwelcome visitor. You never have been! From the moment you came the place was different somehow. When you go——"

He stopped as though startled by the sound of his own words—struck by the full significance of them.

"When you go!" he repeated blankly. His grip of her slight hands tightened till it was almost painful. "But you won't go! I can't let you go now! Magda—"

The situation was threatening to get out of hand. Magda drew quickly away from him, springing to her feet.

"Don't talk like that," she said hastily. "You don't mean it, you know."

With a sudden, unexpected movement she slipped from his side and ran down to the river's edge. He caught a flashing glimpse of scarlet, heard the splash as her slim body cleaved the water, and a moment later all he could see was the red of her turban cap, bobbing like a scarlet poppy on the surface of the river, and the glimmer of a moon-white arm and shoulder as a smooth overhand stroke bore her swiftly away from him.

He stood staring after her, conscious of a sudden bewildered sense of check and thwarting. The blood seemed leaping in his veins. His heart thudded against his ribs. He stepped forward impetuously as though to plunge in after the receding gleam of scarlet still flickering betwixt the branches which overhung the river.

Then, with a stifled exclamation, he drew back, brushing his hand across his eyes as though to clear their vision. What mad impulse was this urging him on to say and do such things as he had never before conceived himself saying or doing?

Magda had checked him on the brink of telling her—what? The sweat broke out on his forehead as the realisation surged over him.

"God!" he muttered. "God!"



CHAPTER XII

THE LATEST NEWS

Magda hardly knew what impulse had bidden her save Dan Storran from himself—check the hot utterance to which he had so nearly given voice and which to a certain extent she had herself provoked. Driven by the bitterness of spirit which Michael's treatment of her had engendered, she knew that she had flirted outrageously with Dan ever since she had come to Stockleigh. She had bestowed no thought on June—pretty, helpless June, watching with distressed, bewildered eyes while Dan unaccountably changed towards her, his moods alternating from sullen unresponsiveness to a kind of forced and contrite tenderness which she had found almost more difficult to meet and understand.

It was indeed something altogether apart from any sympathy for June which had prompted Magda to leave Storran before he uttered words that he might regret, but which no power on earth could ever recall. Still beneath the resentment and wounded pride which Michael's going had caused her flickered the spark of an ideal utterly at variance with the whole tenor of the teaching of poor Diane's last embittered days—the ideal of womanhood which had been Michael's. And the impulse which had bade her leave Storran so abruptly was born of the one-time resolution she had made to become the sort of woman Michael would wish his wife to be.

She felt oddly perturbed when at last she reached the seclusion of her chintzy bedroom underneath the sloping roof. A vague sense of shame assailed her. The game, as between herself and Dan, was hardly a fair one, after all, and she could well picture the cold contempt in Michael's eyes had he been looking on at it.

Though he had no right to disapprove of her now! He had forfeited that right—if he had ever had it—when he went away without a word of farewell—without giving her even the chance to appeal against the judgment which, by his very going, he had silently pronounced against her.

For months, now, she had been a prey to a conflicting jumble of emotions—the pain and hurt pride which Michael's departure had occasioned her, the craving for anything that might serve to distract her thoughts and keep them from straying back to those few vibrant meetings with him, and deep down within her an aching, restless wonder as to whether she would ever see him again.

With an effort she dismissed the fresh tangle of thought provoked by the morning's brief scene with Dan Storran, and, dressing quickly, went downstairs to the mid-day dinner which was the order of things at Stockleigh.

At first the solid repast, with its plentitude of good farmhouse fare partaken of during the hottest hour of the day, had somewhat appalled Magda. But now she had grown quite accustomed to the appearance of a roast joint or of a smoking, home-cured ham, attended by a variety of country vegetables and followed by fruit tart and clotted cream.

Although she herself, as befitted a woman whose "figure was her fortune" according to Lady Arabella, partook extremely sparingly of this hospitable meal, it somehow pleased her to see big Dan Storran come in from his work in the fields and do full justice to the substantial fare. To Magda, ultra-modern and over-civilised as she was, there was something refreshing in the simple and primitive usages of Stockleigh Farm and its master—this man who toiled, and satisfied his hunger, and rested from toil, just as his fathers had done before him, literally fulfilling the law: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.

And perhaps if Magda had never crossed his path Dan Storran might have gone his way contentedly, toiling from sun-up to sun-down till all his days were finished.

Even although she had crossed it, she might still have left him pretty much as she found him—unawakened to the deeps of his own nature—if she had remained in her present ambiguous mood, half-remorseful, half indifferent. But it was precisely at this particular juncture that it pleased Fate to give a fresh twist to her swiftly turning wheel.

Storran did not come in until dinner was half over, and when finally he appeared he was somewhat taciturn and avoided meeting Magda's eyes. June got up from the table and went dutifully into the kitchen to fetch the joint of meat and vegetables which she had been keeping hot for him there. Abruptly Dan followed her.

"Sorry I'm late, June," he said awkwardly. "Here, give the tray to me; I'll carry it in."

June paused in the middle of the kitchen, flushing right up to the soft tendrils of hair that curled about her forehead. It was weeks since Dan had offered to relieve her of any of her housewifely tasks, although at one time he had been wont to hurry home, if he could manage to do so, on purpose to help her. Dozens of times they had laid the table together, punctuating the process with jokes and gay little bursts of laughter and an odd kiss or two thrown in to sweeten the work. But not lately—not since the visitors from London had come to Stockleigh Farm.

So June blushed and looked at her husband with eyes that were suddenly sweet and questioning. She knew, though she had not told him yet, that there was a reason now why he should try to save her when his greater strength could do so, and for a moment she wondered shyly if he had guessed.

"Why, Dan, Dan——" she stammered.

His face darkened. Her obvious surprise irritated him, pricking his conscience.

"It's not very complimentary of you to look so taken aback when I offer to carry something for you," he said. "Anyone might think I never did wait on my wife."

The blood drained away from June's face as suddenly as it had rushed there.

"Well, you don't often, do you?" she returned shortly.

They re-entered the sitting-room together and Magda glanced up, smiling approval. She, too, was feeling somewhat conscience-stricken, and to see Dan helping his wife in this everyday, intimate sort of fashion seemed to minimise the significance of that little incident which had occurred by the river's edge.

"What a nice, polite husband!" she commented gaily. "Mr. Storran, you really out to come up to London and give classes—'Manners for Men,' you know. Very few of them wait on their wives these days."

June upset the salt and busied herself spooning it up again from the cloth. There was no answering smile on her face. She was not quite clear why Dan had followed her out into the kitchen so unexpectedly, but she sensed that it was not the old, quick impulse to wait upon her which had actuated him.

Had she but known it, it was the same instinct, more primitively manifested, which induces a man whose conscience is not altogether clear respecting his loyalty towards his wife to bring her home an unexpected gift of jewellery.

The disturbing memory of a lithe, scarlet-sheathed figure had been with Dan all morning as he went about his work, and he was sullenly ashamed of the riot which the vision occasioned within him and of his own utter helplessness to master it. It—it was damnable! So he accompanied his wife to the kitchen and offered to carry in the joint.

Following upon this incident the atmosphere seemed to become all at once constrained and difficult. June sat very silent, her eyes holding that expression of pain and bewilderment which was growing habitual to them, while Storran hurried through his meal in the shortest possible time. As soon as he had finished he pushed back his chair abruptly and, with a muttered apology, quitted the room and went out again on to the farm. June rose and began clearing the table mechanically.

"Can't I help you?" Gillian paused as she was about to follow Magda out of the room. "You look so tired to-day."

June's lip quivered sensitively. She was in the state of nerves when a little unexpected sympathy is the most upsetting thing imaginable.

"Oh, I can't let you!" she answered hastily. "No—really!"—as Gillian calmly took the tray she was carrying out of her hands.

"Supposing you go and lie down for a little while," suggested Gillian practically. "And leave the washing-up to Coppertop and me!"

The tears suddenly brimmed up into the wide-open blue eyes.

"Oh, I couldn't!"

"Wouldn't you like a little rest?" urged Gillian persuasively. "I believe you'd be asleep in two minutes!"

"I believe I should," acknowledged June faintly. "I—I haven't been sleeping very well lately."

A little shudder ran through her as she recalled those long hours each night when she lay at Dan's side, staring wide-eyed into the darkness and wondering dully what it was that had come between herself and her husband—come just at the time when, with his unborn child beneath her heart, they two should have been drawn together in to the most wonderful and blessed comradeship and understanding. Only Dan didn't know this—didn't know that before the snowdrops lifted their white heads again from the green carpet of spring there would be a little son—June was sure it would be a son, to grow up tall and strong like Dan himself!—born of the love which had once been so sweet and untroubled by any creeping doubts.

"I assure you"—Gillian broke in on the miserable thoughts that were chasing each other through June's tired brain—"I assure you, Coppertop and I are very competent people. We won't break a single dish!"

"But you've never been used to that kind of thing—washing-up!" protested June, glancing significantly at Gillian's white hands and soft, pretty frock of hyacinth muslin.

"Haven't I?" Gillian laughed gaily. "I haven't always been as well off as I am not, and I expect I know quite as much about doing 'chores' as you! Come now!" She waited expectantly.

"Dan would be awfully angry if he knew—it's my duty, you see," objected June, visibly weakening.

"If he knew! But what a husband doesn't know his heart doesn't grieve over," replied Gillian sagely. "There, that's settled. Come along upstairs and let me tuck you up in your bed, and leave the rest to Coppertop and me."

And June, with her heart suddenly warmed and comforted in the way in which an unexpected kindness does warm and comfort, went very willingly and, tired out in body and mind, fell asleep in ten minutes.

Meanwhile Magda had established herself in the hammock slung from the boughs of one of the great elms which shaded the garden. She had brought a book with her, since her thoughts were none too pleasant company just at the moment, and was speedily absorbed in its contents.

It was very soothing and tranquil out there in the noonday heat. The gnats hovered in the sunlight, dancing and whirling in little transient clusters; now and again a ladybird flickered by or a swallow swooped so near that his darting shadow fell across her book; while all about her sounded the pleasant hum of a summer's day—the soft susurration of the pleasant hum of a thousand insect voices blending into an indefinite, murmurous vibration of the air.

Occasionally the whir of a motor-car sweeping along the adjacent road broke harshly across the peaceful quiet. Magda glanced up with some annoyance as the first one sped by, dragging her back to an unwilling sense of civilisation. Then she bent her head resolutely above her book and declined to be distracted any further, finally losing herself completely in the story she was reading.

So it came about that when a long, low, dust-powdered car curved in between the granite gateposts of Stockleigh Farm and came abruptly to a standstill, she remained entirely oblivious of its advent. Nor did she see the tall, slender-limbed man who had been driving, and whose questing hazel eyes had descried her almost immediately, slip from his seat behind the steering-wheel and come across the grass towards her.

"Antoine!"

The book fell from her hand and she sat up suddenly in the hammock.

"What on earth are you doing here?" she demanded. There was no welcome in her tone.

For a moment Davilof remained watching her, the sunshine, slanting between the leaves of the trees, throwing queer little flickering lights into the hazel eyes and glinting on his golden-brown hair and beard.

"What are you doing here?" she repeated.

"I came—to see you," he said simply.

There was something disarming in the very simplicity of his reply. It seemed to imply an almost child-like wonder that she should ask—that there could possibly be any other reason for his presence.

But it failed to propitiate Magda in the slightest degree. She felt intensely annoyed that anyone from the outside world—from her world of London—should have intruded upon her seclusion at Ashencombe, nor could she imagine how Davilof had discovered her retreat.

"How did you learn I was here?" she asked.

"From Melrose."

Magda's eyes darkened sombrely.

"Do you mean you bribed him?" she asked quickly. "Oh, but surely not!"—in dismayed tones. "Melrose would go to the stake sooner than accept a bribe!"

Davilof's mouth twisted in a rueful smile.

"I'm sure he would! I tried him, but he wouldn't look at a bribe of any sort. So I had to resort to strategy. It was one evening, when he was taking your letters to post, and I waited for him at the pillar-box. I came up very quietly behind him and just nipped one of the letters, readdressed to you, out of his hand. I read the address and then posted the letter for him. It was very simple."

He recounted the incident with a little swaggering air of bravado, boyishly delighted at the success of his small ruse. Vexed as she was Magda could hardly refrain from smiling; the whole thing was so eminently un-English—so exactly like Davilof!

"Well, now that you have seen me, will you please go away again?" she said coolly, reopening her book as though to end the conversation.

He regarded her with unqualified reproach.

"Won't you even ask me to tea?" he said plaintively.

"Certainly not," Magda was beginning. But precisely as she spoke June Storran, looking more herself again after her short sleep, came towards them from the house.

Her face brightened as she caught sight of Davilof. Even to June's inexperienced eyes it was quite obvious that he admired the woman with whom he was talking. The very way he looked at her told her that. Presumably he was one of her London friends who had motored to Devonshire to see her. No man—within the limited scope of June's knowledge of men—did that deliciously absurd, extravagant kind of thing unless he was tremendously in love. Nor would any nice woman let a man take such a journey on her behalf unless she reciprocated his feelings. Of this June—whose notions were old-fashioned—felt assured. So her spirits rose accordingly. Since, if these two were on the verge of becoming engaged, the mere fact would clear away the indefinable shadows which seemed to have been menacing her own happiness from the time Miss Vallincourt had come to Stockleigh.

"Tea is just ready," she announced, approaching. "Will you come in? And perhaps your friend will have tea with us?" she added shyly.

Davilof was presented and June repeated her invitation. He shot a glance of triumph at Magda.

"I shall be delighted, madame," he said, giving June one of his quaint little foreign bows. "But—the sun is shining so gloriously—might we not have it out here?"

June looked round her doubtfully. As is often the case with people born and bred in the country, it never occurred to the Storrans to have the family meals out-of-doors, and June felt considerable misgiving as to whether Dan would appreciate the innovation.

"Ah, please, madame!" pleaded Davilof persuasively. "Let us have it here—under this tree. Why, the tree grows here expressly for the purpose!"

Davilof had all the charm of his nationality, and June capitulated, retreating to make the necessary arrangements.

"I don't fancy Dan Storran will at all approve of the alteration from his usual customs which you've engineered," observed Magda when they were again alone.

"Dan Storran?" Davilof's glance flashed over her face, searching, questioning.

"The owner of the place. He's been teaching me to ride," she added inconsequently.

"Who is he?"—with swift jealousy. "The little fair-haired lady's brother?"

"No, her husband. I said Mrs. Storran."

Davilof's interest waned suddenly.

"Did you?"—indifferently. "I didn't notice. She's a pretty little person."

Magda agreed absently. A fresh difficulty had occurred to her; Davilof might chance to give away to the Storrans the secret of her identity.

"Oh, by the way," she said hurriedly. "They don't know me here as Magda Wielitzska. I'm plain Miss Vallincourt to them—enjoying the privileges of being a nobody! You'll be sure to remember, won't you?" He nodded, and she pursued more lightly: "And now, as you insist on having your tea here, you might begin to earn it by telling me the latest London gossip. We hear nothing at all down here. We don't even get a London newspaper.

"I don't think there is much news. There never is at this time of the year. Everybody's out of town."

He vouchsafed one or two items concerning mutual friends—an engagement here, a forthcoming divorce there. So-and-so was in Italy and Mrs. Somebody Else was said to have eloped with a well-known actor-manager to America—all the odds and ends of gossip that runs like wildfire over the social prairie.

"Oh, by the way," he went on, "your artist friend—"

"Which artist friend?" Magda interrupted almost rudely. She was moved by a perfectly irrational impulse to stop him, to delay what he had to say.

"Why, Quarrington—Michael Quarrington. It seems he has married a Spanish woman—a rather lovely person who had been sitting to him for one of his pictures. That's the latest bit of news."

For an instant it seemed to Magda as though the whole world stood still—gripped in a strange, soundless stillness like the catastrophic pause which for an infinitesimal space of time succeeds a bad accident. Then she heard herself saying:

"Really? Where did you hear that?"

"Oh, there've been several rumours of a beautiful Spaniard whom he has been using as a model. The Arlingtons were travelling in Spain and saw her. Mrs. A. said she was a glorious creature—a dancer. And the other day I saw in one of the papers—the Weekly Gossip I think it was—that he'd married her."

The carelessly spoken words drove at Magda with the force of utter certainty. It was true, then—quite true! The fact that the Spaniard had been a dancer gave an irrefutable reality to the tale; Michael so worshipped every form of dancing.

"Never give your heart to any man." Her mother's last cynical warning beat in Magda's brain with a dull iteration that almost maddened her. She put her hand up to her throat, feeling as if she were choking.

Then, dimly, as though from a great way off, she heard Antoine's voice again:

"I'm glad Quarrington's married. He was the man who saved you in the fog—you remember?—and I've always been afraid you might get to care for him."

Magda was conscious of one thing and one thing only—that somewhere, deep down inside her, everything had turned to ice. She knew she would never feel anything again—much. . . . She thought death must come like that sometimes—just one thrust of incredible, immeasurable agony, and then a dull, numbed sense of finality.

". . . afraid you might get to care for him." The meaning of Antoine's last words slowly penetrated her mind. She gave a hard little laugh.

"Why should I? Does one 'get to care' for a man just because he does the only obvious thing there is to do in an emergency?"

She was surprised to hear how perfectly natural her voice sounded. It was quite steady. Reassured, she went on, shrugging her shoulders:

"Besides—do I ever care?"

Antoine, sitting on the grass at her feet, suddenly raised himself a little and put his hand over hers as they lay very still and folded on her lap.

"You shall care—some time," he said in a low, tense voice. "I swear it!"



CHAPTER XIII

DAN STORRAN'S AWAKENING

"Fairy Lady, we're going to have a picnic tea!"

Coppertop's excited voice, shrilling across the garden as he came racing over the grass, put an abrupt end to a scene that was threatening to develop along the familiar tempestuous lines dictated by Antoine's temperament.

The child's advent was somewhat differently received—by Magda with unmixed relief, by Antoine with a baulked gesture of annoyance. However, he recovered himself almost immediately, and when, a moment later, June reappeared, laden with the paraphernalia for tea, he rushed forward with his usual charming manners to assist her.