The tremulous sweetness of her, the humble submissiveness of her appeal, could not but win their way. Michael's lingering disbelief wavered and broke. She had been foolish, spoilt and thoughtless, but she had never done any real harm. Men had loved her—but how could it be otherwise? And perhaps, after all, they were none the worse for having loved her.

Deliberately Michael flung the past behind him and with it his last doubt of her. He drew her back into his arms, against his heart, and their lips met in a kiss that held not only love but utter faith and confidence—a pledge for all time.

"Beloved!" he whispered. "My beloved!"



CHAPTER XX

NIGHT

Michael and Magda stood together on the deck of the crippled yacht which now rocked idly on a quite placid sea. Dusk was falling. That first glorious, irrecoverable hour when love had come into its own was past, and the consideration of things mundane was forcing itself on their notice—more especially consideration of their particular plight.

"It looks rather as though we may have to spend the night here," observed Quarrington, his eyes scanning the channel void of any welcome sight of sail or funnel.

Magda's brows drew together in a little troubled frown.

"Marraine and Gillian will be frightfully worried and anxious," she said uneasily. It was significant of the gradual alteration in her outlook that this solicitude for others should have rushed first of anything to her lips.

"Yes." He spoke with a curious abruptness. "Besides, that's not the only point. There's—Mrs. Grundy."

Magda shrugged her shoulders and laughed.

"Well, if it's to come to a choice between Mrs. Grundy and Davy Jones, I think I should decide to face Mrs. Grundy! Anyway, people can't say much more—or much worse—things about me than they've said already."

Quarrington frowned moodily.

"I'd like to kick myself for bringing you out to-day and landing you into this mess. I can't stand the idea of people gossiping about you."

"They've left me very little reputation at any time. A little less can't hurt me."

His eyes grew stormy.

"Don't!" he said sharply. "I hate to hear you talk like that."

"But it's true! No public woman gets a fair chance."

"You will—when you're my wife," he said between his teeth. "I'll see to that."

Magda glanced at him swiftly.

"Then you don't want me to—to give up dancing after we're married?"

"Certainly I don't. I shall want you to do just as you like. I've no place for the man who asks his wife to 'give up' things in order to marry him. I've no more right to ask you to give up dancing than you have to ask me to stop painting."

Magda smiled at him radiantly.

"Saint Michel, you're really rather nice," she observed impertinently. "So few men are as sensible as that. I shall call you the 'Wise Man,' I think."

"In spite of to-day?" he queried whimsically, with a rueful glance at the debris of mast and canvas huddled on the deck.

"Because of to-day," she amended softly. "It's—it's very wise to be in love, Michael."

He drew her into his arms and his lips found hers.

"I think it is," he agreed.

Another hour went by, and still there came no sign of any passing vessel.

"Why the devil isn't there a single tug passing up and down just when we happen to want one?" demanded Quarrington irately of the unresponsive universe. He swung round on Magda. "I suppose you're starving?" he went on, in his voice a species of savage discontent—that unreasonable fury to which masculine temperament is prone when confronted with an obstacle which declines to yield either to force or persuasion.

Magda laughed outright.

"I'll admit to being hungry. Aren't you? . . . It's horribly unromantic of us, Michael," she added regretfully.

Quarrington grinned.

"It is," he assented. "All the same, I believe I could consume a tin of bully beef and feel humbly grateful for it at the present moment!"

Magda had a sudden inspiration.

"Michael! Let's forage in the locker! There's almost sure to be some biscuits or chocolate there. Marraine nearly always has things like that put on board. And there may be something left from the last supply."

A brief search brought to light a half-tin of biscuits and some plain chocolate, and off these, with the addition of a bottle of soda-water, also discovered, they proceeded to make an impromptu meal. It was a somewhat thin substitute for the perfectly appointed little dinner of which they would have partaken in the ordinary course of events at the Hermitage, but when you have been a good many hours without food of any description, and spent the greater part of the time in "saving your own life at sea," as Michael put it, even biscuits and chocolate have their uses.

When the improvised feast was over, Quarrington explored the recesses of the tiny hold and unearthed a lantern, which he proceeded to light and attach to the broken mast. It burned with a flickering, uncertain light, momentarily threatening to go out altogether.

"We're not precisely well-equipped with lights," he remarked grimly. "But at least that's a precaution—as long as it lasts! It may—or may not—save us from being run down."

Twilight deepened slowly into dark. The lights of Yarmouth sprang into being, a cluster of lambent orange points studding the dim coast of the Island. One by one the stars twinkled out in the dusky sky, and a waning moon, thin and frail like a worn sickle, flung a quivering ribbon of silver across the sea.

It was strangely still and quiet. Now and again the idle rudder creaked as the boat swung to the current. Once there came the long-drawn hoot of a distant siren. Beyond these fitful sounds only the gurgle of water lapping the sides of the boat broke the silence.

"We're here till morning," said Quarrington at last. "You may as well go to bed."

"To bed?"

"Well, there's a cabin, isn't there?"—smiling. "And a more or less uncomfortable bunk. Come down and see what you can make of it as an abiding-place for the night."

"And—and you? Can't we rig up anything for you?" Magda looked round her vaguely.

"I shan't sleep. I'll do sentry-go on deck"—laughing. "It wouldn't do for us both to go comfortably asleep and get run down without even having a shot at making our presence known!"

"Then I'll keep watch with you," said Magda.

"You'll do nothing of the sort. You'll go down to the cabin and sleep."

"Let me stay, Michael. I couldn't bear to think of your watching all through the night while I slept comfortably below."

"You won't sleep comfortably—if my estimate of the look of that bunk is correct. But you'll be out of the cold. Come, be sensible, Magda. You're not suitably attired for a night watch. You'd be perished with cold before morning."

"Well, let us take it in turns, then," she suggested. "I'll sleep four hours and then I'll keep a look-out while you have a rest."

"No," he said quietly.

"Then we'll both watch," she asserted. Through the starlit dark he could just discern her small head turned defiantly away from him.

"Has it occurred to you," he asked incisively, "what a night spent in the open might mean to you? Rheumatism is not precisely the kind of thing a dancer wants to cultivate."

"Well, I'm not going below, anyway."

She sat down firmly and Quarrington regarded her a moment in silence.

"You baby!" he said at last in an amused voice.

And the next moment she felt herself picked up as easily as though she were in very truth the baby he had called her and carried swiftly down the few steps into the cabin. The recollection of that day of her accident in the fog, when he had carried her from the wrenched and twisted car into his own house, rushed over her. Now, as then, she could feel the strength of his arms clasped about her, the masterful purpose of the man that bore her whither he wished regardless of whether she wanted to go or not.

He laid her down on the bunk and, bending over her, kept his hands on her shoulders.

"Now," he demanded, "are you going to stay there?"

A faint rebellion still stirred within her.

"Supposing I say 'no'!"—irresolutely.

"I'm not supposing anything so unlikely," he assured her. "I'm merely waiting to hear you say 'yes.'"

She recognised the utter futility of trying to pit her will against the indomitable will of the man beside her.

"Michael, you are a bully!" she protested indignantly, half angry with him.

"Then you'll stay there?" he persisted.

"You don't give me much choice"—twisting her shoulders restlessly beneath his hands.

He laughed a little.

"You haven't answered me."

"Well, then—yes!"

She almost flung the word at him, and instantly she felt him lift his hands from her shoulders and heard his footsteps as he tramped out of the cabin and up on to the deck. Presently he returned, carrying the blankets which he had wrapped round her earlier in the course of their vigil. Magda accepted them with becoming docility.

"Thank you, Wise Man," she said meekly.

He stood looking down at her in the faint moonlight that slanted in through the open door of the cabin, and all at once something in the intentness of his gaze awakened her to a sudden vivid consciousness of the situation—of the hour and of her absolute aloneness with him. Their solitude was as complete as though they had been cast on a desert island.

Magda felt her pulses throb unevenly. The whole atmosphere seemed sentient and athrill with the surge of some deep-lying emotion. She could feel it beating up against her—the clamorous demand of something hardly curbed and straining for release.

"Michael——" The word stammered past her lips.

The sound of her voice snapped the iron control he had been forcing on himself. With a hoarse, half-strangled exclamation he caught her up from where she lay, crushing her slim, soft body in a grip that almost stifled her, kissing her fiercely on eyes and lips and throat. Then abruptly he released her and, without a word, without a backward look, strode out of the cabin and up on to the deck.

Magda sank down weakly on the edge of the narrow bunk. The storm of his passion had swept through her as the wind sweeps through a tree, leaving her spent and trembling. Sleep was an impossibility. Ten minutes, twenty passed—she could not have told how long it was. Then she heard him coming back, and as he gained the threshold she sprang to her feet and faced him, nervously on the defensive. In the pale, elusive moonlight, and with that startled poise of figure, she might well have been the hamadryad at bay of one of her most famous dances.

Michael looked rather white and there was a grim repression about the set of his lips. As he caught sight of her face with its mute apprehension and dilated eyes, he spoke quickly.

"You should be resting," he said. "Let me tuck you up and then try to go to sleep."

There was something infinitely reassuring in the steady tones of his voice. It held nothing but kindness—just comradeship and kindness. He was master of himself once more. For her sake he had fought back the rising tide of passion. It had no place while they two were here alone on the wide waters.

He stooped and picked up the blankets, laying them over her with a tenderness that seemed in some subtle way to be part of his very strength. Her taut nerves relaxed. She smiled up at him.

"Good-night, Saint Michel," she said simply. "Take care of me."

He stooped and kissed the slim hand lying outside the blanket.

"Now and always," he answered gravely.



When Magda awoke, seven hours later, the sunlight was streaming into the cabin. She could hear Michael moving about the deck, and she sprang up and proceeded to make such toilette as was possible in the circumstances, taking down her hair and dressing it afresh at the tiny looking-glass hung on the wall. She had barely completed the operation when she heard Michael give a shout.

"Ahoy! Ahoy there!"

She ran up on deck. Approaching them was a small steam-tug, and once again Quarrington sent his voice ringing lustily across the water, while he flourished a large white handkerchief in the endeavour to attract the attention of those on board.

Suddenly the tug saw them and, altering her course, came fussing up alongside. Quarrington briefly explained their predicament—in the face of the Bella Donna's battered appearance a lengthy explanation was hardly necessary—and a few minutes later the tug was steaming for Netherway harbour, towing the crippled yacht behind her.



CHAPTER XXI

THE OTHER MAN

"Please, Marraine, will you give us your blessing?"

The joyous excitement and relief incidental to the safe return of the voyagers had spent itself at last, and now, refreshed and invigorated by a hot bath and by a meal of more varied constituents than biscuit and plain chocolate, Magda propounded her question, a gleam of mirth glancing in her eyes.

Lady Arabella glanced doubtfully from one to the other. Then a look of undisguised satisfaction dawned in her face.

"Do you mean——" she began eagerly.

"We've been and gone and got engaged," explained Quarrington.

"My dears!" Lady Arabella jumped up with the agility of twenty rather than seventy and proceeded to pour out her felicitations. Incidentally she kissed everybody all round, including Quarrington, and her keen old hawk's eyes grew all soft and luminous like a girl's.

Coppertop was hugely excited.

"Will the wedding be to-morrow?" he asked hopefully. "And shall I be a page and carry the Fairy Lady's train?"

Magda smiled at him.

"Of course you shall be a page, Topkins. But the wedding won't be quite as soon as to-morrow," she told him.

"Why not?" insinuated Quarrington calmly. "There are such things as special licences, you know."

"Don't be silly," replied Magda scathingly. "I've only just been saved from drowning, and I don't propose to take on such a risk as matrimony till I've had time to recover my nerve."

Lady Arabella surveyed them both with a species of irritated approval.

"And to think," she burst out at last, indignantly, "of all the hours I've spent having my silly portrait painted and getting cramp in my stiff old joints, and that even then it needed Providence to threaten you both with a watery grave to bring you up to the scratch!"

"Well, we're engaged now," submitted Magda meekly.

Lady Arabella chuckled sardonically.

"If you weren't, you'd have to be—after last night!" she commented drily.

"No one need know about last night," retorted Magda.

"Huh!" Lady Arabella snorted. "Half Netherway will know the tale by midday. And you may be sure your best enemy will hear of it. They always do."

"Never mind. It will make an excellent advertisement," observed Magda philosophically. "Can't you see it in all the papers?—'NARROW ESCAPE OF THE WIELITZSKA.' In big capitals."

They all laughed, realising the great amount of probability contained in her forecast. And, thanks to an enterprising young journalist who chanced to be prowling about Netherway on that particular day, the London newspapers flared out into large headlines, accompanied by vivid and picturesque details of the narrow escape while yachting of the famous dancer and of the well-known artist, Michael Quarrington—who, in some of the cheaper papers, was credited with having saved the Wielitzska's life by swimming ashore with her.

The immediate result was an augmented post-bag for the Hermitage, and Gillian had to waste the better part of a couple of sunshiny days in writing round to Magda's friends assuring them of her continued existence and wellbeing, and thanking them for their kind inquiries.

It was decided to keep the engagement private for the present, and life at the Hermitage resumed the even tenor of its way, Magda continuing to sit daily for the picture of Circe which Michael was anxious to complete before she returned to London for the autumn season.

"It's our picture now, Saint Michel," she told him, with a happy, possessive pride in his work.

In this new atmosphere of tranquil happiness Magda bloomed like a flower in the sun. To the nameless natural charm which was always hers there was added a fresh sweetness and appeal, and the full revelation of her love for him startled even Michael. He had not realised the deep capacity for love which had lain hidden beneath her nonchalance.

It seemed as though her whole nature had undergone a change. Alone with him she was no longer the assured woman of the world, the spoilt and feted dancer, but just a simple, unaffected girl, sometimes a little shy, almost diffident, at others frank and spontaneous with the splendid candour and simplicity of a woman who knows no fear of love, but goes courageously to meet it and all that it demands of her.

She was fugitively sweet and tender with Coppertop, and now and then her eyes would shine with a quiet, dreaming light as though she visioned a future wherein someone like Coppertop, only littler, might lie in the crook of her arm.

Often during these tranquil summer days the two were to be found together, Magda recounting the most gorgeous stories of knights and dragons such as Coppertop's small soul delighted in. On one such occasion, at the end of a particularly thrilling narrative, he sat back on his heels and regarded her with a certain wistful anxiety.

"I suppose," he asked rather forlornly, "when you're married they'll give you a little boy like me, Fairy Lady, won't they?"

The clear, warm colour ran up swiftly beneath her skin.

"Perhaps so, Topkins," she answered very low.

He heaved a big sigh. "He'll be a very lucky little boy," he said plaintively. "If Mummie couldn't have been my mummie, I'd have choosed you."

And so, in this tender atmosphere of peace and contentment, the summer slipped by until it was time for Magda to think of going back to London. The utter content and happiness of these weeks almost frightened her sometimes.

"It can't last, Gilly," she confided to Gillian one day, caught by an access of superstitious fear. "It simply can't last! No one was meant to be as happy as I am!"

"I think we were all meant to be happy," replied Gillian simply. "Happy and good!" she added, laughing.

"Yes. But I haven't been particularly good. I've just done whatever it occurred to me to do without considering the consequences. I expect I shall be made to take my consequences all in a heap together one day."

Gillian smiled.

"Then I suppose we shall all of us have to rally round and get you out of them," she said cheerfully.

"Perhaps—perhaps you wouldn't be able to."

There was a strange note of foreboding in Magda's voice—an accent of fatality, and despite herself Gillian experienced a reflex sense of uneasiness.

"Nonsense!" she said brusquely. "What on earth has put all these ridiculous notions into your head?"

Magda smiled at her. "I think it was four lines I read in a book yesterday. They set me thinking."

"More's the pity then!" grumbled Gillian. "What were they?"

Magda was silent a moment, looking out over the sea with abstracted eyes. It was so blue to-day—all blue and gold in the dancing sunlight. But she knew that self-same sea could be grey—grey and chill as death.

Her glance came slowly back to Gillian's face as she quoted the fragment of verse which had persisted in her thoughts:

"To-day and all the still unborn To-morrows Have sprung from Yesterday. For Woe or Weal The Soul is weighted by the Burden of Dead Days— Bound to the unremitting Past with Ropes of Steel."

After a moment she added:

"Even you couldn't cut through 'ropes of steel,' my Gillyflower."

Gillian tried to shrug away this fanciful depression of the moment.

"Well, by way of a counterblast to your dejection of spirit, I propose to send an announcement of your engagement to the Morning Post. You're not meaning to keep it private after we get back to town, are you?"

"Oh, no. It was only that I didn't want to be pestered with congratulations while we were down here. I suppose they'll have to come some day"—with a small grimace of disgust.

"You'll be snowed under with them," Gillian assured her encouragingly.

The public announcement of the engagement preceded Magda's return from Netherway by a few days, so that by the time the Hermitage house-party actually broke up, its various members returning to town, all London was fairly humming with the news. The papers were full of it. Portraits of the fiances appeared side by side, together with brief histories of their respective careers up to date, and accompanied by refreshing details concerning their personal tastes.

"Dear me, I never knew Michael had a passion for raw meat before," remarked Magda, after reading various extracts from the different accounts aloud for Gillian's edification.

"Has he?" Gillian was arranging flowers and spoke somewhat indistinctly, owing to the fact that she had the stem of a chrysanthemum between her lips.

"Yes, he must have. Listen to this, 'Mr. Quarrington's wonderful creations are evidently not entirely the fruit of the spirit, since we understand that his staple breakfast dish consists of a couple of underdone cutlets—so lightly cooked, in fact, as to be almost raw.' I'm glad I've learned that," pursued Magda earnestly. "It seems to me an important thing for a wife to know. Don't you think so, Gillian?"

Gillian shouted with delight.

"Of course I do! Do let's ask Michael to lunch and offer him a couple of raw cutlets on a charger."

"No," insisted Magda firmly. "I shall keep a splendid treat like that for him till after we're married. Even at a strictly conservative estimate it should be worth a new hat to me."

"Or a dose of arsenic in your next cup of tea," suggested Gillian, giggling.

The following evening was the occasion of Magda's first appearance at the Imperial after the publication of her engagement, and the theatre was packed from floor to ceiling. "House Full" boards were exhibited outside at quite an early hour, and when Magda appeared on the stage she was received with such enthusiasm that for a time it was impossible to proceed with the ballet. When finally the curtain fell on what the critics characterised next day as "the most appealing performance of The Swan-Maiden which Mademoiselle Wielitzska has yet given us," she received an absolute ovation. The audience went half-crazy with excitement, applauding deliriously, while the front of the stage speedily became converted into a veritable bank of flowers, from amidst which Magda bowed and smiled her thanks.

She enjoyed every moment of it, every handclap. She was radiantly happy, and this spontaneous sharing in her happiness by the big public which idolised her served but to intensify it. She was almost crying as she returned to her dressing-room after taking a dozen or more calls, and when, as usual, Virginie met her on the threshold, she dropped the great sheaf of lilies she was carrying and flung her arms round the old woman's neck.

"Oh, the dears!" she exclaimed. "The blessed dears! Virginie, I believe I'm the happiest woman alive!"

"And who should be, mon petite chou, if not thou?" returned the old woman with conviction. "Of course they love thee! Mais bien sur! Doest thou not dance for them as none else can dance and give them angel visions that they could not imagine for themselves?" She paused. Then thrusting her hand suddenly into the pocket of her apron and producing a card: "Tiens! I forgot! Monsieur Davilof waits. Will mademoiselle receive him?"

Magda nodded. She had not seen Antoine since her return from Netherway. He had been away in Poland, visiting his mother whom, by the way, he adored. But as her engagement to Michael was now public she was anxious to get her first meeting with the musician over. He would probably rave a little, despairing in the picturesque and dramatic fashion characteristic of him, and the sooner he "got it out of his system," as Gillian had observed on one occasion, the better for everyone concerned. So Magda braced herself for the interview, and prepared to receive a tragical and despondent Davilof.

But she was not in the least prepared for the man as he appeared when Virginie ushered him into the dressing-room and retired, discreetly closing the door behind her. Magda, her hand outstretched to greet him, paused in sheer dismay, her arm falling slowly to her side.

She had never seen so great a change in any man. His face was grey—grey and lined like the face of a man who has had no sleep for days. His shoulders stooped a little as though he were too weary to hold himself upright, and there was a curiously rigid look about his features, particularly the usually mobile mouth. The only live thing about him seemed to be his eyes. They blazed with a burning brightness that made her think of flame. With it all, he was as immaculately groomed, his small golden beard as perfectly trimmed, as ever.

"Antoine!" His name faltered from Magda's lips. The man's face, its beauty all marred by some terrible turmoil of the soul, shocked her.

He vouchsafed no greeting, but came swiftly to her side.

"Is it true?" he demanded imperiously.

She shrank back from him. There was a dynamic force about him that startled her.

"Is what true?"

"Is it true that you're engaged to Quarrington?"

"Of course it is. It was in all the papers. Didn't you see it?"

"Yes, I saw it. I didn't believe it. I was in Poland when I heard and I started for England at once. But I was taken ill on the journey. Since then I've been travelling night and day." He paused, adding in a tone of finality: "You must break it off."

"Break it off? Are you crazy, Antoine?"

"No, I'm not crazy. But you're mine. You're meant for me. And no other man shall have you."

Magda's first impulse was to order him out of the room. But the man's haggard face was so pitifully eloquent of the agony he had been enduring that she had not the heart. Instead, she temporised persuasively.

"Don't talk like that, Antoine." She spoke very gently. "You don't mean it, you know. If—if you do care for me as you say, you'd like me to be happy, wouldn't you?"

"I'd make you happy," he said hoarsely.

She shook her head.

"No," she answered. "You couldn't make me happy. Only Michael can do that. So you must let me go to him. . . . Antoine, I'd rather go with your good wishes. Won't you give them to me? We've been friends so long—"

"Friends?" he broke in fiercely. "No! We've never been 'friends.' I've been your lover from the first moment I saw you, and shall be your lover till I die!"

Magda retreated before his vehemence. She was still wearing her costume of the Swan-Maiden, and there was something frailly virginal and elusive about her as she drew away from him that set the hot, foreign blood in him on fire. In two strides he was at her side, his hands gripping her bare arms with a savage clasp that hurt her.

"Mon adoree!"

His voice was harsh with the tensity of passion, and the cry that struggled from her throat for utterance was smothered by his lips on hers. The burning kisses seemed to scorch her—consuming, overwhelming her. When at last he took his mouth from hers she tried unavailingly to free herself. But his clasp of her only tightened.

"Now you know how I love you," he said grimly. He was breathing rather fast, but in some curious way he seemed to have regained his self-control. It was as though he had only slipped the leash of passion so that she might, as he said, comprehend his love for her. "Do you think I'll give you up? I tell you I'd rather kill you than see you Quarrington's wife."

Once more she made an effort to release herself.

"Oh, you're mad, you're mad!" she cried. "Let me go, Davilof! At once!"

"No," he said in a measured voice. "Don't struggle. I'm not going to let you go. Not yet. I've reached my limit. You shall go when you promise to marry me. Me, not Quarrington."

She had not been frightened by the storm of passion which had carried him headlong. That had merely roused her to anger. But this quiet, purposeful composure which had succeeded it filled her with an odd kind of misgiving.

"It's absurd to talk like that," she said, holding on desperately to her self-possession. "It's silly—and melodramatic, and only makes me realise how glad I am I shall be Michael's wife and not yours."

"You will never be Quarrington's wife."

He spoke with conviction. Magda called up all her courage to defy him.

"And do you propose to prevent it?" she asked contemptuously.

"Yes." Then, suddenly: "Adoree, don't force me to do it! I don't want to. Because it will hurt you horribly. And it will all be saved if you'll promise to marry me."

He spoke appealingly, with an earnestness that was unmistakable. But Magda's nerve was gradually returning.

"You don't seem to understand that you can't prevent my marrying Michael—or anyone else," she said coolly. "You haven't the power."

"I can prevent your marrying Michael"—doggedly.

She was silent a moment.

"I suppose," she said at last, "you think that because he once thought badly of me you can make him think the same again. Well, you can't. Michael and I trust each other—absolutely!"

Her face was transfigured. Michael trusted her now! Nothing could really hurt her while he believed in her. She could afford to laugh at Antoine's threat.

"And now," she said quietly, "will you please release me?"

Slowly, reluctantly Davilof's hands dropped from her arms, revealing red weals where the grip of his fingers had crushed the soft, white flesh. He uttered a stifled exclamation as his eyes fell on the angry-looking marks.

"Mon dieu! I've hurt you—"

"No!" Magda faced him with a defiance that was rather splendid. "No! You can't hurt me, Davilof. Only the man I love can do that."

He flinched at the proud significance of the words—denying him even the power to hurt her. It was almost as though she had struck him, contemptuously disdainful of his toy weapons—the weapons of the man who didn't count.

There was a long silence. At last he spoke.

"You'll be sorry for that," he said in a voice of concentrated anger. "Damned sorry. Because it isn't true. I can hurt you. And by God, if you won't marry me, I will! . . . Magda——" With one of the swift changes so characteristic of the man he softened suddenly into passionate supplication. "Have a little mercy! God! If you knew how I love you, you couldn't turn me away. Wait! Think again—"

"That will do." She checked him imperiously. "I don't want your love. And for the future please understand that you won't even be a friend. I don't wish to see or speak to you again!"



CHAPTER XXII

THE ROPES OF STEEL

Magda sat gazing idly into the fire, watching with abstracted eyes the flames leap up and curl gleefully round the fresh logs with which she had just fed it. She was thinking about nothing in particular—merely revelling in the pleasant warmth and comfort of the room and in the prospect of a lazy evening spent at home, since to-night she was not due to appear in any of the ballets to be given at the Imperial Theatre.

Outside, the snow was falling steadily in feathery flakes, hiding the grime of London beneath a garment of shimmering white and transforming the commonplace houses built of brick and mortar, each capped with its ugly chimneystack, into glittering fairy palaces, crowned with silver towers and minarets.

The bitter weather served to emphasise the easy comfort of the room, and Magda curled up into her chair luxuriously. She was expecting Michael to dinner at Friars' Holm this evening. They had not seen each other for three whole days, so that there was an added edge to her enjoyment of the prospect. She would have so much to tell him! About the triumphant reception she had had the other night down at the theatre—he had been prevented from being present—and about the unwarrantable attitude Davilof had adopted, which had been worrying her not a little. He would sympathise with her over that—the effortless sympathy of the man in possession!

Then the unwelcome thought obtruded itself that if the snow continued falling Michael might be weather-bound and unable to get out to Hampstead. She uncurled herself from her chair and ran to the window. The sky stretched sombrely away in every direction. No sign of a break in the lowering, snow-filled clouds! She drummed on the window with impatient fingers; and then, drowning the little tapping noise they made, came the sound of an opening door and Melrose's placid voice announcing:

"Mr. Quarrington."

Magda whirled round from the window.

"Michael!" she exclaimed joyfully. "I was just wondering if you would be able to get over this evening. I suppose you came while you could!"—laughing. "I shouldn't be in the least surprised if you were snowed up here. Shall you mind—dreadfully—if you are?"

But Michael made no response to the tenderly mocking question, nor did her smile draw from him any answering smile. She looked at him waveringly. He had been in the room quite long enough to take her in his arms and kiss her. And he hadn't done it.

"Michael——" She faltered a little. "How queer you are! Have you—brought bad news?" A sudden dread rushed through her. "It's not—Marraine?"

"No, no." He spoke hastily, answering the startled apprehension in her eyes. "It's not that."

Her mind, alertly prescient, divined significance in the mere wording of the phrase.

"Then there is—something?"

"Yes, there is something."

His voice sounded forced, and Magda waited with a strange feeling of tension for him to continue.

"I want to ask you a question," he went on in the same carefully measured accents. "Did you ever stay at a place called Stockleigh—Stockleigh Farm at Ashencombe?"

Stockleigh! At the sound of the word it seemed to Magda as though a hand closed suddenly round her heart, squeezing it so tightly that she could not breathe.

"I—yes, I stayed there," she managed to say at last.

"Ah-h!" It was no more than a suddenly checked breath. "When were you there?" The question came swiftly, like the thrust of a sword. With it, it seemed to Magda that she could feel the first almost imperceptible pull of the "ropes of steel."

"I was there—the summer before last," she said slowly.

Michael made no answer. Only in the silence that followed she saw his face change. Something that had been hope—a fighting hope—died out of his eyes and his jaw seemed to set itself with a curious inflexibility.

She waited for him to speak—waited with a keyed-up intensity of longing that was almost physically painful. At last, unable to bear the continued silence, she spoke again. Her voice cracked a little.

"Why—why do you ask, Michael?"

He looked at her and a sudden cynical amusement gleamed in his eyes—an amusement so bitterly unmirthful that there seemed something almost brutal about it. Her hand went up to her face as though to screen out the sight of it.

"You can't guess, I suppose?" he said with dry, harsh irony. Then, after a moment: "Why did you never tell me you were there? You never spoke of it. . . . Wasn't it curious you should never speak of it?"

She made a step towards him. She could not endure this torturing suspense another instant. It was racking her. She must know what Stockleigh signified to him.

"What do you mean? Tell me what you mean!" she asked desperately.

"Do you remember the story I told you down at Netherway—of a man and his wife and another woman?"

"Yes, I remember"—almost whispering.

"That was the story of my sister, June, and her husband, Dan Storran. You—were the other woman."

She felt his eyes—those eyes out of which all hope had died—fixed on her.

"June—your sister? Your sister? Are you sure?" she stammered stupidly.

It couldn't be true! Not even God could have thought of a punishment so cruel, so awful as this. That June—the woman who had died just because she "had no heart to go on living"—should be Michael's sister! Oh, it was a crazy tangling of the threads—mad! Like some macabre invention sprung from a disordered brain. She wanted to laugh, and she knew if she began to laugh she should never stop. She felt she was losing her hold over herself. With a violent effort she clutched at her self-control.

"Will you say it all over again, please?" she said in a flat voice. "I don't think I understand."

"Nor did I till to-day," he replied shortly. "Davilof made me understand—this morning."

"Davilof?" The word seemed to drag itself from her throat. . . . Davilof—who had been at Stockleigh that summer! Then it was all going to be true, after all.

"Yes, Davilof. He had chanced on the fact that June was my sister. Very few people knew it, because, when she married, it was against our father's wishes, and she had cut herself adrift from the family. I wanted to help her, but she would never let me." He paused, then went on tonelessly: "It's all quite clear, isn't it? You know everything that happened while you were at Stockleigh. I've told you what happened afterwards. Storran cleared out of the country at once, and June had nothing left to live for. The only thing I didn't know was the name of the woman who had smashed up both their lives. I saw Dan in Paris . . . He came to me at my studio. But he was a white man. He never gave away the name of the woman who had ruined him. I only knew she had spent that particular summer at Stockleigh. It was Davilof who told me who the woman was."

"I can prevent your marrying Quarrington!" Magda could hear again the quiet conviction of Antoine's utterance. So he had known, then, when he threatened her, that June was Michael's sister! She wondered dully how long he had been aware of the fact—how he had first stumbled across it and realised its value as a hammer with which to crush her happiness. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered any more. The main fact was that he had known.

June was dead! Amid the confused welter of emotions which seemed to have utterly submerged her during the last few minutes, Magda had almost lost sight of this as a fact by itself—as distinct from its identity with the fact that Michael's sister was dead. She felt vaguely sorry for June.

Since the day she and Gillian had left Ashencombe she had heard nothing of Storran or his wife. No least scrap of news relating to them had come her way. In the ordinary course of events it was hardly likely that it would. The circles of their respective lives did not overlap each other. And Magda had made no effort to discover what had happened at Stockleigh after she had left there. She had been glad to shut the door on that episode in her life. She was not proud of it.

There were other incidents, too, which she could have wished were blotted out—the Raynham incident amongst them. With the new insight which love had brought her she was beginning to rate these things at their true value, to realise how little she had understood of all love's exquisite significance when she played with it as lightly as a child might play with a trinket. She had learned better now—learned that love was of the spirit as well as of the body, and that in playing at love she had played with men's souls.

She believed she had put that part of her life behind her—all those unrecognising days before love came to her. And now, without warning, sudden as an Eastern night, the past had risen up and confronted her. The implacable ropes of steel held her in bondage.

"Michael . . . can't you—forgive me?"

Her voice wavered and broke as she realised the utter futility of her question. Between them, now and always, there must lie the young, dead body of June Storran.

"Forgive you?" Michael's voice was harsh with an immeasurable bitterness. "Good God! What are you made of that you can even ask me? It's women like you who turn this world into plain hell! . . . Look back! Have you ever looked back, I wonder?" He paused, and she knew his eyes were searching her—those keen, steady eyes, hard, now, like flint—searching the innermost recesses of her being. She felt as though he were dragging the soul out of her body, stripping it naked to the merciless lash of truth.

"June—my little sister, the happiest of mortals—dead, through you. And Storran—he was a big man, white all through—down and out. And God knows who else has had their sun put out by you. . . . You're like a blight—spreading disease and corruption wherever you go."

A little moan broke from her lips. For a moment it was a physical impossibility for her to speak. She could only shrink, mute and quivering, beneath the flail of his scorn.

At last: "Is—is that what you think of me?" she almost whispered.

"Yes."

She winced at the harsh monosyllable. There was a finality about it—definite, unalterable. She looked at him dry-eyed, her face tragically beautiful in its agony. But he seemed impervious to either its beauty or its suffering. There was no hint of softening in him. Without another word he swung round on his heel and turned to leave her.

"Michael . . . don't go!" The lovely voice was a mere thread of sound—hoarse and strangulated. "Don't go! . . . Oh, be a little merciful!"

She laid an imploring hand on his arm, and at the touch of her his iron composure shook a little. For a moment the hardness in his eyes was wiped out by a look of intolerable pain. Then, with a quiet, inexorable movement he released himself from her straining clasp.

"There's no question of mercy," he said inflexibly. "I'm not judging you, or punishing you. It's simply that I can't marry you. . . . You must see that June's death—my sister's death—lies at your door."

"No," she said. "No. I suppose you can't marry me—now."

Her breath came in short, painful gasps. Her face seemed to have grown smaller—shrunk. There was a pinched look about the nostrils and every drop of blood had drained away, leaving even her lips a curious greyish-white. She leaned forward, swaying a little.

"I suppose," she said in a clear, dry voice, "you don't even love me any more?"

His hands clenched and he took a sudden impetuous step towards her.

"Not love you?" he said. And at last the man's own agony broke through his enforced calm, shaking his voice so that it was hoarse and terrible. "Not love you? I love you now as I loved you the day I first saw you. God in heaven! Did you think love could be killed so easily? Does it die—just because it's forbidden by every decent instinct that a man possesses? If so, nine-tenths of us would find the world an easier place to live in!"

"And there is—no forgiveness, Michael?" The lovely grief-wrung face was uplifted to his beseechingly.

"Don't ask me!" he said hoarsely. "You know there can be none."

He turned and strode to the door. He did not look back even when his name tore itself like a cry between her lips. The next moment the sound of a door's closing came dully to her ears.

She looked vaguely round the room. The fire was dying, the charred logs sinking down on to a bed of smouldering cinders. A touch would scatter them from their semblance of logs into a heap of grey, formless ash. Outside the window the snow still fell monotonously, wrapping the world in a passionless, chill winding-sheet.

With a little broken cry she stumbled forward on to her knees, her arms outflung across the table.



CHAPTER XXIII

ACCOUNT RENDERED

The long, interminable night was over at last. Never afterwards, all the days of her life, could Magda look back on the black horror of those hours without a shudder. She felt as though she had been through hell and come out on the other side, to find stretching before her only the blank grey desolation of chaos.

She was stripped of everything—of love, of happiness, even of hope. There was nothing in the whole world to look forward to. There never would be again. And when she looked back it was with eyes that had been vouchsafed a terrible enlightenment.

Phrases which had fallen from Michael's lips scourged her anew throughout the long hours of the night. "Women like you make this world into plain hell," he had said. "You're like a blight—spreading disease and corruption wherever you go." And the essential truth which each sentence held left her writhing.

It was all true—horribly, hideously true. The magical, mysterious power of beauty which had been given her, which might have helped to lighten the burden of the sad old world wherever she passed, she had used to destroy and deface and mutilate. The debt against her—the debt of all the pain and grief which she had brought to others—had been mounting up, higher and higher through the years. And now the time had come when payment was to be exacted.



Quite simply and directly, without seeking in any way to exculpate herself, she had told Gillian the bare facts of what had happened—that her engagement was broken off and the reason why. But she had checked all comment and the swift, understanding sympathy which Gillian would have given. Criticism or sympathy would equally have been more than she could bear.

"There is nothing to be said or done about it," she maintained. "I've sinned, and now I'm to be punished for my sins. That's all."

The child of Hugh Vallincourt spoke in that impassive summing up of the situation and Lady Arabella, with her intimate knowledge of both Hugh and his sister Catherine, would have ascribed it instantly to the Vallincourt strain in her god-daughter. To Gillian, however, to whom the Vallincourts were nothing more than a name, the strange submissiveness of it was incomprehensible. As the days passed, she tried to rouse Magda from the apathy into which she seemed to have fallen, but without success.

"It's no use, Gillyflower," she would reply with a weary little smile. "There is no way out. Do you remember I once said I was too happy for it to last? It was quite true. . . . Have you told Marraine?" she asked suddenly.

"Yes. And she wants to see you."

"I don't think I want to see her—or anyone just at present. I've got to think—to think things out."

"What do you mean? What are you going to do?"

"I—don't know—yet."

Gillian regarded her with some anxiety. That Magda, usually so unreserved and spontaneous, should shut her out of her confidence thoroughly disquieted her. She felt afraid. It seemed to her as though the girl were more or less stunned by the enormity of the blow which had befallen her. She went about with a curious absence of interest in anything—composed, quiet, absorbed in her own thoughts, only rousing herself to appear at the Imperial as usual. Probably her work at the theatre was the one thing that saved her from utter collapse.

As far as Gillian knew she had not shed a single tear. Only her face seemed to grow daily more strained-looking, and her eyes held a curious expression that was difficult to interpret.

There were days which she spent entirely in the seclusion of her own room, and then Virginie alone was allowed entrance. The old Frenchwoman would come in with some special little dish she had cooked with her own hands, hoping to tempt her beloved mistress's appetite—which in these days had dwindled to such insignificant proportions that Virginie was in despair.

"Thou must eat," she would say.

"I don't want anything—really, Virginie," Magda would insist.

"And wherefore not?" demanded Virginie indignantly one day. "Thou art not one of the Sisters of Penitence that thou must needs deny thyself the good things of life."

Magda looked up with a sudden flash of interest.

"The Sisters of Penitence, Virginie? Who are they? Tell me about them."

Virginie set a plate containing an epicurean omelet triumphantly in front of her.

"Eat that, then, cherie, while I tell thee of them," she replied with masterly diplomacy. "It is good, the omelet. Virginie made it for thee with her own hands."

Magda laughed faintly in spite of herself and began upon the omelet obediently.

"Very well, then. Tell me about the Sisters of Penitence. Are they always being sorry for what they've done?"

"It is a sisterhood, mademoiselle cherie, for those who would withdraw themselves from the world. They are very strict, I believe, the sisters, and mortify the flesh exceedingly. Me, I cannot see why we should leave the beautiful world the bon dieu has put us into. For certain, He would not have put us in if He had not meant us to stay there!"

"Perhaps—they are happier—out of the world, Virginia," suggested Magda slowly.

"But my niece, who was in the sisterhood a year, was glad to come out again. Though, of course, she left her sins behind her, and that was good. It is always good to get rid of one's sins, n'est-ce pas?"

"Get rid of your sins? But how can you?"

"If one does penance day and night, day and night, for a whole long year, one surely expiates them! And then"—with calm certainty—"of course one has got rid of them. They are wiped off the slate and one begins again. At least, it was so with my niece. For when she came out of the sisterhood, the man who had betrayed her married her, and they have three—no, four bebes now. So that it is evident le bon dieu was pleased with her penance and rewarded her accordingly."

Magda repressed an inclination to smile at the naive simplicity of Virginie's creed. Life would indeed be an easy affair if one could "get rid of one's sins" on such an ingenuous principal of quid pro quo!

But Virginie came of French peasant stock, and to her untutored mind such a process of wiping the slate clean seemed extremely reasonable. She continued with enthusiasm:

"She but took the Vow of Penitence for a year. It is a rule of the sisterhood. If one has sinned greatly, one can take a vow of penitence for a year and expiate the sin. Some remain altogether and take the final vows. But my niece—no! She sinned and she paid. And then she came back into the world again. She is a good girl, my niece Suzette. Mademoiselle has enjoyed her omelet? Yes?"

Magda nodded.

"Yes, Virginie, I've enjoyed it. And I think your niece was certainly a brave fille. I'm glad she's happy now."

For long after Virginie had left her, Magda sat quietly thinking. The story of the old Frenchwoman's niece had caught hold of her imagination. Like herself she had sinned, though differently. Within her own mind Magda wondered whether she or Suzette were in reality the greater sinner of the two. Suzette had at least given all, without thought of self, whereas she had only taken—taken with both hands, giving nothing in return.

Probably Suzette had been an attractive little person—of the same type of brown-eyed, vivacious youth which must have been Virginie's five-and-thirty years ago—and her prettiness had caused her downfall. Magda glanced towards the mirror. It was through her beauty she herself had sinned. It had given her so much power, that exquisite, perfect body of hers, and she had pitifully misused the power it had bestowed. The real difference between herself and Suzette lay in the fact that the little French girl had paid the uttermost farthing of the price demanded—had submitted herself to discipline till she had surely expiated all the evil she had done. What if she, likewise, were to seek some such discipline?

The idea had presented itself to her at precisely the moment when she was in the grip of an agony of recoil from her former way of life. Like her father, she had been suddenly brought up short and forced to survey her actions through the eyes of someone else, to look at all that she had done from another's angle of vision. And coincidentally, just as in the case of her father, the abrupt downfall of her hopes, the sudden shattering of her happiness, seemed as though it were due to the intervention of an angry God.

The fanatical Vallincourt blood which ran in Magda's veins caused her to respond instinctively to this aspect of the matter. But the strain of her passionate, joy-loving mother which crossed with it tempered the tendency toward quite such drastic self-immolation as had appealed to Hugh Vallincourt.

To Magda, Michael had come to mean the beginning and end of everything—the pivot upon which her whole existence hung. So that if Michael shut her out of his life for ever, that existence would no longer hold either value or significance. From her point of view, then, the primary object of any kind of self-discipline would be that it might make her more fit to be the wife of "Saint Michel."

He despised her now. The evil she had done stood between them like a high wall. But if she were to make atonement—as Suzette had atoned—surely, when the wickedness had been purged out of her by pain and discipline, Michael would relent!

The idea lodged in her mind. It went with her by day and coloured her thoughts by night, and it was still working within her like yeast when she at last nerved herself to go and see her godmother.

Lady Arabella, as might have been anticipated, concealed her own sore-heartedness under a manner that was rather more militant than usual, if that were possible.

"Why you hadn't more sense than to spend your time fooling with a sort of cave-man from the backwoods, I can't conceive," she scolded. "You must have known how it would end."

"I didn't. I never thought about it. I was just sick with Michael because he had gone abroad, and then, when I heard that he was married, it was the last straw. I don't think—that night—I should have much cared what happened."

Lady Arabella nodded.

"Women like you make it heaven or hell for the men who love you."

"And hell, without the choice of heaven, for ourselves," returned Magda.

The bitterness in her voice wrung the old woman's heart. She sighed, then straightened her back defiantly.

"We have to bear the burden of our blunders, my dear."

There was a reminiscent look in the keen old eyes. Lady Arabella had had her own battles to fight. "And, after all, who should pay the price if not we ourselves?"

"But if the price is outrageous, Marraine? What then?"

"Still you've got to pay."

Magda returned home with those words ringing in her ears. They fitted into the thoughts which had been obsessing her with a curious precision. It was true, then. You had to pay, one way or another. Lady Arabella knew it. Little Suzette had somehow found it out.

That night a note left Friars' Holm addressed to the Mother Superior of the Sisters of Penitence.



CHAPTER XXIV

GILLIAN INTERCEDES

It was a bald, austere-looking room. Magda glanced about her curiously—at the plain, straight-backed chairs, at the meticulously tidy desk and bare, polished floor. Everything was scrupulously clean, but the total absence of anything remotely resembling luxury struck poignantly on eyes accustomed to all the ease and beauty of surroundings which unlimited money can procure.

By contrast with the severity of the room Magda felt uncomfortably conscious of her own attire. The exquisite gown she was wearing, the big velvet hat with its drooping plume, the French shoes with their buckles and curved Louis heels—all seemed acutely out of place in this austere, formal-looking chamber.

Her glance came back to the woman sitting opposite her, the Mother Superior of the Sisters of Penitence—tall, thin, undeniably impressive, with a stern, colourless face as clean-cut as a piece of ivory, out of which gleamed cold blue eyes that seemed to regard the dancer with a strange mixture of fervour and hostility.

Magda could imagine no reason for the antagonism which she sensed in the steady scrutiny of those light-blue eyes. As far as she was concerned, the Mother Superior was an entire stranger, without incentive either to like or dislike her.

But to the woman who, while she had been in the world, had been known as Catherine Vallincourt, the name of Magda Wielitzska was as familiar as her own. In the dark, slender girl before her, whose pale, beautiful face called to mind some rare and delicate flower, she recognised the living embodiment of her brother's transgression—that brother who had made Diane Wielitzska his wife and the mother of his child.

All she had anticipated of evil consequence at the time of the marriage had crystallised into hard fact. The child of the "foreign dancing-woman"—the being for whose existence Hugh's mad passion for Diane had been responsible—had on her own confession worked precisely such harm in the world as she, Catherine, had foreseen. And now, the years which had raised Catherine to the position of Mother Superior of the community she had entered had brought that child to her doors as a penitent waveringly willing to make expiation.

Catherine was conscious of a strange elevation of spirit. She felt ecstatically uplifted at the thought that it might be given to her to purge from Hugh's daughter, by severity of discipline and penance, the evil born within her. In some measure she would thus be instrumental in neutralising her brother's sin.

She was supremely conscious that to a certain extent—though by no means altogether—her zealous ardour had its origin in her rooted antipathy to Hugh's wife and hence to the child of the marriage. But, since beneath her sable habit there beat the heart of just an ordinary, natural woman, with many faults and failings still unconquered in spite of the austerities of her chosen life, a certain very human element of satisfaction mingled itself with her fervour for Magda's regeneration.

With a curious impassivity that masked the intensity of her desire she had told Magda that, by the rules of the community, penitents who desired to make expiation were admitted there, but that if once the step were taken, and the year's vow of penitence voluntarily assumed, there could be no return to the world until the expiration of the time appointed.

Somehow the irrevocability of such a vow, undertaken voluntarily, had not struck her in its full significance until Catherine had quietly, almost tonelessly, in the flat, level voice not infrequently acquired by the religious, affirmed it.

"Supposing"—Magda looked round the rigidly bare room with a new sense of apprehension—"supposing I felt I simply couldn't stand it any longer? Do you mean to say, then, that I should not be allowed to leave here?"

"No, you would not be permitted to. Vows are not toys to be broken at will."

"A year is a long time," murmured Magda.

The eyes beneath the coifed brow with its fine network of wrinkles were adamant.

"The body must be crucified that the soul may live," returned the cold voice unflinchingly.

Magda's thoughts drew her this way and that. A year! It was an eternity! And yet, if only she could emerge purified, a woman worthy to be Michael's wife, she felt she would be willing to go through with it.

It was as though the white-faced, passionless woman beside her read her thoughts.

"If you would be purified," said Catherine, "if you would cast out the devil that is within you, you will have to abide meekly by such penance as is ordained. You must submit yourself to pain."

At the words a memory of long ago stirred in Magda's mind. She remembered that when her father had beaten her as a child he had said: "If you hurt people enough you can stop them from committing sin."

Groping dimly for some light that might elucidate the problems which bewildered her, Magda clutched at the words as though they were a revelation. They seemed to point to the only way by which she might repair the past.

Catherine, watching closely the changes on the pale, sensitive face, spoke again.

"Of course, if you feel you have not the strength of will to keep your vow, you must not take it."

The words acted like a spur. Instantly, Magda's decision was taken.

"If I take the vow, I shall have strength of mind to keep it," she said.

The following evening Magda composedly informed Gillian that she proposed to take a vow of expiation and retire into the community of the Sisters of Penitence for a year. Gillian was frankly aghast; she had never dreamed of any such upshot to the whole miserable business of Magda's broken engagement.

"But it is madness!" she protested. "You would hate it!"

Magda nodded.

"That's just it. I've done what I liked all my life. And you know what the result has been! Now I propose to do what I don't like for a year."

Neither persuasion nor exhortation availed to shake her resolution, and in despair Gillian referred the matter to Lady Arabella, hoping she might induce Magda to change her mind.

Lady Arabella accepted the news with unexpected composure.

"It is just what one might expect from the child of Hugh Vallincourt," she said thoughtfully. "It's the swing of the pendulum. There's always been that tendency in the Vallincourts—the tendency towards atonement by some sort of violent self-immolation. They are invariably excessive—either excessively bad like the present man, Rupert, or excessively devout like Hugh and Catherine! By the way, the Sisters of Penitence is the community Catherine first joined. I wonder if she is there still? Probably she's dead by now, though. I remember hearing some years ago that she was seriously ill—somewhere about the time of Hugh's death. That's the last I ever heard of her. I've been out of touch with the whole Vallincourt family for so many years now that I don't know what has become of them."

"You don't mean to say that you're going to let Magda do what she proposes?" exclaimed Gillian, in dismayed astonishment.

"There's never much question of 'letting' Magda do things, is there?" retorted Lady Arabella. "If she's made up her mind to be penitential—penitential she'll be! I dare say it won't do her any harm."

"I don't see how it can do her any good," protested Gillian. "Magda isn't cut out for a sisterhood."

"That's just why it may be good for her."

"I don't believe in mortification of the flesh and all that sort of thing, either," continued Gillian obstinately.

"My dear, we must all work out our own salvation—each in his own way. Prayer and fasting would never be my method. But for some people it's the only way. I believe it is for the Vallincourts. In any case, it's only for a year. And a year is very little time out of life."

Nevertheless, at Gillian's urgent request, Lady Arabella made an effort to dissuade Magda from her intention.

"If you live long enough, my dear," she told her crispy, "providence will see to it that you get your deserts. You needn't be so anxious to make sure of them. Retribution is a very sure-footed traveller."

"It isn't only retribution, punishment, I'm looking for," returned Magda. "It is—I can't quite explain it, Marraine, but even though Michael never sees me or speaks to me again, I'd like to feel I'd made myself into the sort of woman he would speak to."

From that standpoint she refused to move, declining even to discuss the matter further, but proceeded quietly and unswervingly with her arrangements. The failure to complete her contract at the Imperial Theatre involved her in a large sum of money by way of forfeit, but this she paid ungrudgingly, feeling as though it were the first step along the new road of renunciation she designed to tread.

To the manager she offered no further explanation than that she proposed to give up dancing, "at any rate for a year or so," and although he was nearly distracted over the idea, he found his arguments and persuasions were no more effective than those King Canute optimistically addressed to the encroaching waves. The utmost concession he could extract from Magda was her assent to giving a farewell appearance—for which occasion the astute manager privately decided to quadruple the price of the seats. He only wished it were possible to quadruple the seating capacity of the theatre as well!

Meanwhile Gillian, whose normal, healthy young mind recoiled from the idea of Magda's self-imposed year of discipline, had secretly resolved upon making a final desperate venture in the hope of straightening out the tangle of her friend's life. She would go herself and see Michael and plead with him. Surely, if he loved Magda as he had once seemed to do, he would not remain obdurate when he realised how bitterly she had repented—and how much she loved him!

It was not easy for Gillian to come to this decision. She held very strong opinions on the subject of the rights of the individual to manage his own affairs without interference, and as she passed out of the busy main street into the quiet little old-world court where Michael had his rooms and studio she felt as guilty as a small boy caught trespassing in an orchard.

The landlady who opened the door in response to her somewhat timid ring regarded her with a curiously surprised expression when she inquired if Mr. Quarrington were in.

"I'll see, miss," she answered non-committally, "if you'll step inside."

The unusual appearance of the big double studio where she was left to wait puzzled Gillian. All the familiar tapestries and cushions and rare knick-knacks which wontedly converted the further end of it into a charming reception room were gone. The chairs were covered in plain holland, the piano sheeted. But the big easel, standing like a tall cross in the cold north light, was swathed in a dust-sheet. Gillian's heart misgave her. Was she too late? Had Michael—gone away?

A moment later a quick, resolute footstep reassured her. The door opened and Michael himself came in. He paused on the threshold as he perceived who his visitor was, then came forward and shook hands with his usual grave courtesy. After that, he seemed to wait as though for some explanation of her visit.

Gillian found herself nervously unready. All the little opening speeches she had prepared for the interview deserted her suddenly, driven away by her shocked realisation of the transformation which the few days since she had last seen him had wrought in the man beside her.

His face was lined and worn. The grey eyes were sunken and burned with a strange, bitter brilliance. Only the dogged, out-thrust jaw remained the same as ever—obstinate and unconquerable. Twice she essayed to speak and twice failed. The third time the words came stumblingly.

"Michael, what—what does it mean—all this?" She indicated the holland-sheeted studio with a gesture.

"It means that I'm going away," he replied. "I'm packing now. I leave England to-morrow."

"You mustn't go!"

The words broke from her imperatively, like a mandate.

He glanced at her quickly and into his eyes came a look of comprehension.

"You're a good friend," he said quietly. "But I must go."

"No, no, you mustn't! Listen—"

"Nothing can alter my decision," he interrupted in a tone of absolute finality. "Nothing you could say, Gillian—so don't say it."

"But I must!" she insisted. "Oh, Michael, I'm not going to pretend that Magda hasn't been to blame—that it isn't all terrible! But if you saw her—now—you'd have to forgive her and love her again." She spoke with a simple sincerity that was infinitely appealing.

"I've never ceased to love her," he replied, still in that quiet voice of repressed determination.

"Then if you love, her, can't you forgive her? She's had everything against her from the beginning, both temperament and upbringing, and on top of that there's been the wild success she's had as a dancer. You can't judge her by ordinary standards of conduct. You can't! It isn't fair."

"I don't presume to judge her"—icily. "I simply say I can't marry her."

"If you could see her now, Michael——" Her voice shook a little. "It hurts me to see Magda—like that. She's broken——"

"And my sister, June, is dead," he said in level, unemotional tones.

Gillian wrung her hands.

"But even so——! Magda didn't kill her, Michael. She couldn't tell—she didn't know that June——" She halted, faltering into silence.

"That June was soon to have a child?" Michael finished her sentence for her. "No. But she knew she loved her husband. And she stole him from her. When I think of it all, of June . . . little June! . . . And Storran—gone under! Oh, what's the use of talking?"—savagely. "You know—and I know—that there's nothing left. Nothing!"

"If you loved her, Michael—"

"If I loved her!" he broke out stormily. "You're not a man, and you don't know what it means to want the woman you love night and day, to ache for her with every fibre of your body—and to know that you can't have her and keep your self-respect!"

"Oh—self-respect!" There was a note of contempt in Gillian's voice. "If you set your 'self-respect' above your love—"

"You don't understand!" he interrupted violently. "You're a woman and you can't understand! I must honour the woman I love—it's the kernel of the whole thing. I must look up to her—not down!"

Gillian clasped her hands.

"Oh!" she said in a low, vehement voice. "I don't think we women want to be 'looked up to.' It sets us so far away. We're not goddesses. We're only women, Michael, with all our little weaknesses just the same as men. And we want the men who love us to be comrades—not worshippers. Good pals, who'll forgive us and help us up when we tumble down, just as we'd be ready to forgive them and help them up. Can't you—can't you do that for Magda?"

"No," he said shortly. "I can't."

Gillian was at the end of her resources. She would not tell him that Magda proposed joining the Sisters of Penitence for a year. Somehow she felt she would not wish him to know this or to be influenced by it.

She had made her appeal to Michael himself, to his sheer love for the woman he had intended to make his wife. And she had failed because the man was too bitter, too sore, to see clearly through the pain that blinded him.

His voice, curt and clipped, broke the silence which had fallen.

"Have you said all you came to say?" he asked with frigid politeness.

"All," she returned sadly.

He moved slowly towards the door.

"Good-bye," she said, holding out her hand.

He took it and held it in his. For a moment the hard eyes softened a little.

"I'm sorry I can't do what you ask," he said abruptly.

Gillian opened her lips to speak, but no words came. Instead, a sudden lump rose in her throat, choking her into silence, at the sight of the man's wrung face, with its bitter, pain-ridden eyes and the jaw that was squared implacably against love and forgiveness, and against his own overwhelming desire.



CHAPTER XXV

"CHILDREN STUMBLING IN THE DARK"

As Gillian mingled once more with the throng on the pavements she felt curiously unwilling to return home. She had set out from Friars' Holm so full of hope in her errand! It had seemed impossible that she could fail, and she had been almost unconsciously looking forward to seeing Magda's wan, strained face relax into half-incredulous delight as she confided in her the news that Michael was as eager and longing for a reconciliation as she herself.

And instead—this! This utter, hopeless failure to move him one jot. Only the memory of the man's stern, desperately unhappy eyes curbed the hot tide of her anger against him for his iron refusal.

He still loved Magda, so he said. And, indeed, Gillian believed it. But—love! It was not love as she and Tony Grey had understood it—simple, forgiving, and wholly trustful. It seemed to her as though Michael and Magda were both wandering in a dim twilight of misunderstanding, neither of them able to see that there was only one thing for them to do if they were ever to find happiness again. They must thrust the past behind them—with all its bitterness and failures and mistakes, and go forward, hand in hand, in search of the light. Love would surely lead them to it eventually.

Yet this was the last thing either of them seemed able to think of doing. Magda was determined to spend the sweetness of her youth in making reparation for the past, while Michael was torn by bitterly conflicting feelings—his passionate love for Magda warring with his innate recoil from all that she had done and with his loyalty to his dead sister.

Gillian sighed as she threaded her way slowly along the crowded street. The lights of a well-known tea-shop beckoned invitingly and, only too willing to postpone the moment of her return home, she turned in between its plate-glass doors.

They swung together behind her, dulling the rumble of the traffic, while all around uprose the gay hum of conversation and the chink of cups and saucers mingling with the rhythmic melodies that issued from a cleverly concealed orchestra.

The place was very crowded. For a moment it seemed to Gillian as though there were no vacant seat. Then she espied an empty table for two in a distant corner and hastily made her way thither. She had barely given her order to the waitress when the swing doors parted again to admit someone else—a man this time.

The new arrival paused, as Gillian herself had done, to search out a seat. Then, noting the empty place at her table, he came quickly towards it.

Gillian was idly scanning the list of marvellous little cakes furnished by the menu, and her first cognisance of the new-comer's approach was the vision of a strong, masculine hand gripping the back of the chair opposite her preparatory to pulling it out from under the table.

"I'm afraid there's no other vacant seat," he was beginning apologetically. But at the sound of his voice Gillian's eyes flew up from that virile-looking hand to the face of its owner, and a low cry of surprise broke from her lips.

"Dan Storran!"

Simultaneously the man gave utterance to her own name.

Gillian stared at him stupidly. Could this really be Dan Storran—Storran of Stockleigh?

The alteration in him was immense. He looked ten years older. An habitual stoop had lessened his apparent height and the dark, kinky hair was streaked with grey. The golden-tan bestowed by an English sun had been exchanged for the sallow skin of a man who has lived hard in a hot country, and the face was thin and heavily lined. Only the eyes of periwinkle-blue remained to remind Gillian of the splendid young giant she had known at Ashencombe—and even they were changed and held the cynical weariness of a man who has eaten of Dead Sea fruit and found it bitter to the taste.

There were other changes, too. Storran of Stockleigh was as civilised, his clothes and general appearance as essentially "right," as those of the men around him. All suggestion of the "cave-man from the backwoods," as Lady Arabella had termed him, was gone.

"I didn't know you were in England," said Gillian at last.

"I landed yesterday."

"You've been in South America, haven't you?"

She spoke mechanically. There seemed something forced and artificial about this exchange of platitudes between herself and the man who had figured so disastrously in Magda's life. Without warning he brought the conversation suddenly back to the realities.

"Yes. I was in 'Frisco when my wife died. Since then I've been half over the world."

Behind the harshly uttered statement Gillian could sense the unspeakable bitterness of the man's soul. It hurt her, calling forth her quick sympathy just as the sight of some maimed and wounded animal would have done.

"Oh!" she said, a sensitive quiver in her voice. "I was so sorry—so terribly sorry—to hear about June. We hadn't heard—we only knew quite recently." Her face clouded as she reflected on the tragic happenings with which the news had been accompanied.

At this moment a waitress paused at Storran's side and he gave his order. Then, looking curiously at Gillian, he said:

"What did you hear? Just that she died when our child was born, I suppose?"

Gillian's absolute honesty of soul could not acquiesce, though it would have been infinitely the easier course.

"No," she said, flushing a little and speaking very low. "We heard that she might have lived if—if she had only been—happier."

He nodded silently, rather as though this was the answer he had anticipated. Presently he spoke abruptly:

"Does Miss Vallincourt know that?"

Gillian hesitated. Then, taking her courage in both hands she told him quickly and composedly the whole story of the engagement and its rupture, and let him understand just precisely what June's death, owing to the special circumstances in which it had occurred, had meant for Magda of retribution and of heartbreak.

Storran listened without comment, in his eyes an odd look of concentration. The waitress dexterously slid a tray in front of him and he poured himself out a cup of tea mechanically, but he made no attempt to drink it. When Gillian ceased, his face showed no sign of softening. It looked hard and very weary. His strong fingers moved restlessly, crumbling one of the small cakes on the plate in front of him.

"'Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small,'" he quoted at last, quietly.

Gillian met his harshly cynical glance with one of brave defiance.

"I don't think God's mills have anything to do with it," she said swiftly. "He'd understand all the excuses and allowances that should be made for her better even than I do. And I shouldn't want to punish Magda. I'd make her—happy. She's never known what it means to be really happy. Success and gaiety aren't happiness."

"And you?" he asked quickly.

There was a soft and wonderful shining in the brown eyes that were lifted to his.

"I had one year of utter happiness," she answered gently. "And I've got Coppertop—so I can't ever be quite unhappy."

"If there were more women like you——" he began abruptly.

She shook her head.

"No, no," she said, smiling a little. "If there were more men like Tony! You men are so hard—so cruelly hard."

He looked at her very directly.

"Haven't I the right to be?" he demanded bitterly.

"Ah! Forgive me!" Gillian spoke with an accent of self-reproach. "I'd forgotten you still—care."

"For Magda?" He laughed shortly. "No. That's dead, thank God! I killed it. Worked it out of my system in 'Frisco"—with exceeding bitterness. "Then I got the news of June's death. Her sister wrote me. Told me she died because she'd no longer any wish to live. That sobered me-brought me back to my sense. There was a good deal more to the letter—my sister-in-law didn't let me down lightly. I've had to pay for that summer at Stockleigh. And now Magda's paying. . . . Well, that seems to square things somehow."

"Oh, you are brutal!" broke out Gillian.

His eyes, hard as steel and as unyielding, met hers.

"Am I?"—indifferently. "Perhaps I am."

This was a very different Dan from the impetuous, hot-headed Dan of former times. Gillian found his calm ruthlessness difficult to understand, and yet, realising all that he had suffered, she could not but condone it to a certain extent.

When at last she rose to go, he detained her a moment.

"I am remaining in England now. I should like to see you sometimes. May I?"

She hesitated. Then something that appealed in the tired eyes impelled her answer.

"If you wish," she said gently.



Back once more in the street she made her way as quickly as possible to the nearest tube station, in order to reach it before the usual evening crowd of homeward-wending clerks and typists poured into the thoroughfares from a thousand open office doors. But as soon as she was safely seated in the train her thoughts reverted to the two strange interviews in which she had taken part that afternoon.

She felt very low-spirited. Since she had seen and talked with the two men in whose lives Magda had played so big a part, she was oppressed with a sense of the utter hopelessness of trying to put matters right. Things must take their course—drive on to whatever end, bitter or sweet, lay hidden in the womb of fate.

She had tried to stem the current of affairs, but she had proved as powerless to deflect it as a dried stick tossed on to a river in spate. And now, whether the end were ultimate happiness or hopeless, irretrievable disaster, Michael and Magda must still fight their way towards it, each alone, by the dim light of that "blind Understanding" which is all that Destiny vouchsafes.



CHAPTER XXVI

FAREWELL

The curtains swung together for the last time, the orchestra struck up the National Anthem, and the great audience which had come from all parts to witness the Wielitzska's farewell performance began to disperse.

A curious quietness attended its departure. It was as though a pall of gravity hung over the big assemblage. Public announcements of the performance had explained that the famous dancer proposed taking a long rest for reasons of health. "But," as everyone declared, "you know what that means! She's probably broken down—heart or something. We shall never see her dance again." And so, beneath the tremendous reception which they gave her, there throbbed an element of sadness, behind all the cheers and the clapping an insistent minor note which carried across the footlights to where Magda stood bowing her thanks, and smiling through the mist of tears which filled her eyes.

The dance which she had chosen for her last appearance was the Swan-Maiden. There had seemed a strange applicability in the choice, and to those who had eyes to see there was a new quality in the Wielitzska's dancing—a depth of significance and a spirituality of interpretation which was commented upon in the Press the next day.

It had been quite unmistakable. She had gripped her audience so that throughout the final scene of the ballet no word was spoken. The big crowd, drawn from all classes, sat tense and silent, sensitive to every movement, every exquisite, appealing gesture of the Swan-Maiden. And when at last she had lain, limp in death, in her lover's embrace, and the music had quivered into silence, there followed a vibrant pause—almost it seemed as though a sigh of mingled ecstasy and regret went up—before the thunderous applause roared through the auditorium.

The insatiable few were still clapping and stamping assiduously when Magda, after taking innumerable calls, at last came off the stage. It had been a wonderful night of triumph, and as she made her way towards her dressing-room she was conscious of a sudden breathless realisation of all that she was sacrificing. For a moment she felt as though she must rush back on to the stage and tell everybody that she couldn't do it, that it was all a mistake—that this was not a farewell! But she set her teeth and moved resolutely towards her dressing-room.

As her fingers closed round the handle of the door, someone stepped out from the shadows of the passage and spoke:

"Magda!"

The voice, wrung and urgent, was Antoine Davilof's.

Her first impulse was to hurry forward and put the dressing-room door betwixt herself and him. She had not seen him since that night when he had come down to the theatre and implored her to be his wife, warning her that he would prevent her marriage with Michael. He had carried out his threat with a completeness that had wrecked her life, and although, since the breaking-off of her engagement, he had both written and telephoned, begging her to see him, she had steadfastly refused. Once he had come to Friars' Holm, but had been met with an inexorable "Not at home!" from Melrose.

"Magda! For God's sake, give me a moment!"

Something in the strained tones moved her to an unexpected feeling of compassion. It was the voice of a man in the extremity of mental anguish.

Silently she opened the door of the dressing-room and signed to him to follow her.

"Well," she said, facing him, "what is it? Why have you come?"

The impulse of compassion died out suddenly. His was the hand that had destroyed her happiness. The sight of him roused her to a fierce anger and resentment.

"Well?" she repeated. "What do you want? To know the result of your handiwork?"—bitterly. "You've been quite as successful as even you could have wished."

"Don't," he said unevenly. "Magda, I can't bear it. You can't give up—all this. Your dancing—it's your life! I shall never forgive myself . . . I'll see Quarrington and tell him—"

"You can't see him. He's gone away."

"Then I'll find him."

"If you found him, nothing you could say would make any difference," she answered unemotionally. "It's the facts that matter. You can't alter—facts."

Davilof made a gesture of despair.

"Is it true you're going into some sisterhood?" he asked hoarsely.

"Yes."

"And it is I—I who have driven you to this! Dieu! I've been mad—mad!"

His hands were clenched, his face working painfully. The hazel eyes—those poet's eyes of his which she had seen sometimes soft with dreams and sometimes blazing with love's fire—were blurred by misery. They reminded her of the contrite, tortured eyes of a dog which, maddened by pain, has bitten the hand of a beloved master. Her anger died away in the face of that overwhelming remorse. She herself had learned to know the illimitable bitterness of self-reproach.

"Antoine——" Her voice had grown very gentle.

He swung round on her.

"And I can't undo it!" he exclaimed desperately. "I can't undo it! . . . Magda, will you believe me—will you try to believe that, if my life could undo the harm I've done, I'd give it gladly?"

"I believe you would, Antoine," she replied simply.

With a stifled exclamation he turned away and, dropping into a chair, leaned his arms on the table and hid his face. Once, twice she heard the sound of a man's hard-drawn sob, and the dry agony of it wrung her heart. All that was sweet and compassionate in her—the potential mother that lies in every woman—responded to his need. She ran to him and, kneeling at his side, laid a kind little hand on his shoulder.

"Don't Antoine!" she said pitifully. "Ah, don't, my dear!"

He caught the hand and held it against his cheek.

"It's unforgivable!" he muttered.

"No, no. I do forgive you."

"You can't forgive! . . . Impossible!"

"I think I can, Antoine. You see, I need forgiveness so badly myself. I wouldn't want to keep anyone else without it. Besides, Michael would have been bound to learn—what you told him—sooner or later." She rose to her feet, pushing back the hair from her forehead rather wearily. "It's better as it is—that he should know now. It—it would have been unbearable if it had come later—when I was his wife."

Antoine stumbled to his feet. His beautiful face was marred with grief.

"I wish I were dead!"

The words broke from him like an exceeding bitter cry. To Magda they seemed to hold some terrible import.

"Not that, Antoine!" she answered in a frightened voice. "You're not thinking—you're not meaning——"

He shook his head, smiling faintly.

"No," he said quietly. "The Davilofs have never been cowards. I shan't take that way out. You need have no fears, Magda." The sudden tension in her face relaxed. "But I shall not stay in England. England—without you—would be hell. A hell of memories."

"What shall you do, then, Antoine? You won't give up playing?"

He made a fierce gesture of distaste.

"I couldn't play in public! Not now. Not for a time. I think I shall go to my mother. She always wants me, and she sees me very little."

Magda nodded. Her eyes were wistful.

"Yes, go to her. I think mothers must understand—as other people can't ever understand. She will be glad to have you with her, Antoine."

He was silent for a moment, his eyes dwelling on her face as though he sought to learn each line of it, so that when she would be no more beside him he might carry the memory of it in his heart for ever.

"Then it is good-bye," he said at last.

Magda held out her hands and, taking them in his, he drew her close to him.

"I love you," he said, "and I have brought you only pain." There was a tragic simplicity in the statement.

"No," she answered steadily. "Never think that. I spoiled my own life. And—love is a big gift, Antoine."

She lifted her face to his and very tenderly, almost reverently, he kissed her. She knew that in that last kiss there was no disloyalty to Michael. It held renunciation. It accepted forgiveness.



"Did you know that Dan Storran was in front to-night?" asked Gillian, as half an hour later she and Magda were driving back to Hampstead together. She had already confided the fact of her former meeting with him in the tea-shop.

Magda's eyes widened a little.

"No," she said quietly. "I think I'm glad I didn't know."

She was very silent throughout the remainder of the drive home and Gillian made no effort to distract her. She herself felt disinclined to talk. She was oppressed by the knowledge that this was the last night she and Magda would have with each other. To-morrow Magda would be gone and one chapter of their lives together ended. The gates of the Sisters of Penitence would close upon her and Friars' Holm would be empty of her presence.

Everything had been said that could be said, every persuasion used. But to each and all Magda had only answered: "I know it's the only thing for me to do. It probably wouldn't be for you, or for anyone else. But it is for me. So you must let me go, Gillyflower."

Gillian dreaded the morrow with its inevitable moment of farewell. As for Virginie, she had done little else but weep for the last three days, and although Lady Arabella had said very little, she had kissed her god-daughter good-bye with a brusqueness that veiled an inexpressible grief and tenderness. Gillian foresaw that betwixt administering comfort to Lady Arabella and Virginie, and setting Magda's personal affairs in order after her departure, she would have little time for the indulgence of her own individual sorrow. Perhaps it was just as well that these tasks should devolve on her. They would serve to occupy her thoughts.



The morning sunlight, goldenly gay, was streaming in through the windows as Magda, wrapped in a soft silken peignoir, made her way into the bathroom. Virginie, her eyes reddened from a night's weeping, was kneeling beside the sunken bath of green-veined marble, stirring sweet-smelling salts in to the steaming water. Their fragrance permeated the atmosphere like incense.