"I must say Aguilar was vehy reasonable," said Miss Ingate. "Vehy reasonable. And he's got a great spite against my dear Inspector Keeble. He suggested everything. He never asked any questions, so I told him. You do, you know. He suggested Miss Foley should have a bed in the tank-room, so that if there was any trouble all the bedrooms should look innocent."

"Did he tell you I'd come here to see him not long since?" Audrey demanded.

"And why didn't you pop in to see me? I was hurt when I got your note."

"Did he tell you?"

"Of course he didn't. He never tells anybody anything. That sort of thing's very useful at times, especially when it's combined with a total lack of curiosity. He fixed every, thing up. And he keeps the gates locked, so that people can't wander in."

"He didn't lock the gate at the bottom of the garden, because it won't lock," said Audrey. "And so he didn't keep me from wandering in." She felt rather disappointed that Aguilar should once more have escaped her reproof and that the dream of his double life should have vanished away, but she was determined to prove that he was not perfect.

"Well, I don't know about that," said Miss Ingate. "It wouldn't startle me to hear that he knew you were intending to come. All I know is that Miss Foley's been here for several days. Not a soul knows except me and Aguilar. And it seems to get safer every day. She does venture about the house now, though she never goes into the garden while it's light. It was Aguilar had the idea of putting this room straight for her."

"And it was he who cut the bread-and-butter," added Jane Foley.

"And this was to be our first tea-party!" Miss Ingate half shrieked. "I'd come—I do come, you know, to keep an eye on things as you asked me—I'd come, and we were just having a cosy little chat in the tank-room. Aguilar's gone to Colchester to get a duplicate key of the front gates. He left me his, so I could get in and lock up after myself, and he put the water on to boil before leaving. I said to Miss Foley, I said, up in the tank-room: 'Was that a ring at the door?' But she said it wasn't."

"I've been a little deaf since I was in prison," said Jane Foley.

"And now we come down and find you here! I—I hope I've done right." This, falteringly, from Miss Ingate.

"Of course you have, you silly old thing," Audrey reassured her. "It's splendid!"

"Whenever I think of the police I laugh," said Miss Ingate in an unsettled voice. "I can't help it. They can't possibly suspect. And they're looking everywhere, everywhere! I can't help laughing." And suddenly she burst into tears.

"Oh! Now! Winnie, dear. Don't spoil it all!" Audrey protested, jumping up.

Madame Piriac, who had hitherto maintained the most complete passivity, restrained her.

"Leave her tranquil!" murmured Madame Piriac in French. "She is not spoiling it. On the contrary! One is content to see that she is a woman!"

And then Miss Ingate laughed, and blushed, and called herself names.

"And so you haven't had my letter," said she. "I wish you had had it. But what is this yachting business? I never heard of such goings-on. Is it your yacht? This world is getting a bit too wonderful for me."

The answer to these questions was cut short by rather heavy masculine footsteps approaching the door of the drawing-room. Miss Ingate grew instantly serious. Audrey and Jane looked at each other, and Jane Foley went quickly but calmly to the door and opened it.

"Oh! It's Mr. Aguilar—returned!" she said, quietly. "Is anything the matter, Mr. Aguilar?"

Aguilar, hat in hand, entered the room.

"Good afternoon, Aguilar," Audrey greeted him.

"'Noon, madam," he responded, exactly as though he had been expecting to find the mistress there. "It's like this. I've just seen Inspector Keeble and that there detective as was here afore—you know, madam" (nodding to Audrey) "and I fancy they're a-coming this way, so I thought I'd better cut back and warn ye. I don't think they saw me. I was too quick for 'em. Was the bread-and-butter all right, Miss Ingate? Thank ye."

Miss Ingate had risen.

"I ought to go home," she said. "I feel sure it would be wiser for me to go home. I never could talk to detectives."

Jane Foley snatched at one of the four cups and saucers on the table, and put it back, all unwashed, into the china cupboard.

"Three cups will be enough for them to see, if they come," she said, with a bright, happy smile to Audrey. "Yes, Miss Ingate, you go home. I'm ever so much obliged to you. Now, I'll go upstairs and Aguilar shall lock me in the tank-room and push the key under the door. We are causing you a lot of trouble, Mrs. Moncreiff, but you won't mind. It might have been so much worse." She laughed as she went.

"And suppose I meet those police on the way out, what am I to say to them?" asked Miss Ingate when Jane Foley and Aguilar had departed.

"If they're very curious, tell them you've been here to have tea with me and that Aguilar cut the bread-and-butter," Audrey replied. "The detective will be interested to see me. He chased me all the way to London not long since. Au revoir, Winnie."

"Dear friend," said Madame Piriac, with admirable though false calm. "Would it not be more prudent to fly back at once to the yacht—if in truth this is the same police agent of whom you recounted to me with such drollness the exploits? It is not that I am afraid——"

"Nor I," said Audrey. "There is no danger except to Jane Foley."

"Ah! You cannot abandon her. That is true. Nevertheless I regret ..."

"Well, darling," Audrey exclaimed. "You would insist on my coming!"

The continuing presence of Miss Ingate, who had lost one glove and her purse, rendered this brief conversation somewhat artificial. And no sooner had Miss Ingate got away—by the window, for the sake of dispatch—than a bell made itself heard, and Aguilar came back to the drawing-room in the role of butler.

"Inspector Keeble and a gentleman to see you, madam."

"Bring them in," said Audrey.

Aguilar's secret glance at Inspector Keeble as he brought in the visitors showed that his lifelong and harmless enemy had very little to hope from his goodwill.

"Wait a moment, you!" called the detective as Aguilar, like a perfect butler, was vanishing. "Good afternoon, ladies. Excuse me, I wish to question this man." He indicated Aguilar with a gesture of apologising for Aguilar.

Inspector Keeble, an overgrown mass of rectitude and kindliness, greeted Audrey with that constraint which always afflicted him when he was beneath any roof more splendid than that of his own police-station.

"Now, Aguilar," said the detective, "it's you that'll be telling me. Ye've got a woman concealed in the house. Where is she?"

He knew, then, this ferreting and divinatory Irishman! Of course Miss Ingate must have committed some indiscretion, or was it that Aguilar was less astute than he gave the impression of being? Audrey considered that all was lost, and she was aware of a most unpleasant feeling of helplessness and inefficiency. Then she seemed to receive inspiration and optimism from somewhere. She knew not exactly from where, but perhaps it was from the shy stiffness of the demeanour of her old acquaintance, Inspector Keeble. Moreover, the Irishman's twinkling eyes were a challenge to her.

"Oh! Aguilar!" she exclaimed. "I'm very sorry to hear this. I knew women were always your danger, but I never dreamt you would start carrying on in my absence."

Aguilar fronted her, and their eyes met. Audrey gazed at him steadily. There was no smile in Audrey's eyes, but there was a smile glimmering mysteriously behind them, and after a couple of seconds this phenomenon aroused a similar phenomenon behind the eyes of Aguilar. Audrey had the terrible and god-like sensation of lifting a hired servant to equality with herself. She imagined that she would never again be able to treat him as Aguilar, and she even feared that she would soon begin to cease to hate him. At the same time she observed slight signs of incertitude in the demeanour of the detective.

Aguilar replied coldly, not to Audrey, but to the police:

"If Inspector Keeble or anybody else has been mixing my name up with any scandal about females, I'll have him up for slander and libel and damages as sure as I stand here."

Inspector Keeble looked away, and then looked at the detective—as if for support in peril.

"Do you mean to say, Aguilar, that you haven't got a woman hidden in the house at this very moment?" the detective demanded.

"I'll thank ye to keep a civil tongue in your head," said Aguilar. "Or I'll take ye outside and knock yer face sideways. Pardon me, madam. Of course I ain't got no woman concealed on the premises. And mark ye, if I lose my place through this ye'll hear of it. And I shall put a letter in the Gardeners' Chronicle, too."

"Well, ye can go," the detective responded.

"Yes," sneered Aguilar. "I can go. Yes, and I shall go. But not so far but what I can protect my interests. And I'll make this village too hot for Keeble before I've done, police or no police."

And with a look at Audrey like the look of a knight at his lady after a joust, Aguilar turned to leave the room.

"Aguilar," Audrey rewarded him. "You needn't be afraid about your place."

"Thank ye, m'm."

"May I ask what your name is?" Audrey inquired of the detective as soon as Aguilar had shut the door.

"Hurley," replied the detective.

"I thought it might be," said Audrey, sitting down, but not offering seats. "Well, Mr. Hurley, after all your running after Miss Susan Foley, don't you think it's rather unfair to say horrid things about a respectable man like Aguilar? You were funny about that stout wife of yours last time I saw you, but you must remember that Aguilar can't be funny about his wife, because he hasn't got one."

"I really don't know what you're driving at, miss," said Mr. Hurley simply.

"Well, what were you driving at when you followed me all the way to London the other day?"

"Madam," said Mr. Hurley, "I didn't follow you to London. I only happened to arrive at Charing Cross about twenty seconds after you, that was all. As a matter of fact, nearly half of the way you were following me."

"Well, I hope you were satisfied."

"I only want to know one thing," the detective retorted. "Am I speaking to Mrs. Olivia Moncreiff?"

Audrey hesitated, glancing at Madame Piriac, who, in company with the vast Inspector Keeble, was carefully inspecting the floor. She invoked wisdom and sagacity from heaven, and came to a decision.

"Not that I know of," she answered.

"Then, if you please, who are you?"

"What!" exclaimed Audrey. "You're in the village of Moze itself and you ask who I am. Everybody knows me. My name is Audrey Moze, of Flank Hall, Moze, Essex. Any child in Moze Street will tell you that. Inspector Keeble knows as well as anybody."

Madame Piriac proceeded steadily with the inquiry into the carpet. Audrey felt her heart beating.

"Unmarried?" pursued the detective.

"Most decidedly," said Audrey with conviction.

"Then what's the meaning of that ring on your finger, if you don't mind my asking?" the detective continued.

Certainly Audrey was flustered, but only for a moment.

"Mr. Hurley," said she; "I wear it as a protection from men of all ages who are too enterprising."

She spoke archly, with humour; but now there was no answering humour in the features of Mr. Hurley, who seemed to be a changed man, to be indeed no longer even an Irishman. And Audrey grew afraid. Did he, after all, know of her share in the Blue City enterprise? She had long since persuaded herself that the police had absolutely failed to connect her with that affair, but now uncertainty was born in her mind.

"I must search the house," said the detective.

"What for?"

"I have to arrest a woman named Jane Foley," answered Mr. Hurley, adding somewhat grimly: "The name will be known to ye, I'm thinking.... And I have reason to believe that she is now concealed on these premises."

The directness of the blow was terrific. It was almost worse than the blow itself. And Audrey now believed everything that she had ever heard or read about the miraculous ingenuity of detectives. Still, she did not regard herself as beaten, and the thought of the yacht lying close by gave her a dim feeling of security. If she could only procure delay!...

"I'm not going to let you search my house," she said angrily. "I never heard of such a thing! You've got no right to search my house."

"Oh yes, I have!" Mr. Hurley insisted.

"Well, let me see your paper—I don't know what you call it. But I know you can't do anything-without a paper. Otherwise any bright young-man might walk into my house and tell me he meant to search it. Keeble, I'm really surprised at you."

Inspector Keeble blushed.

"I'm very sorry, miss," said he contritely. "But the law's the law. Show the lady your search-warrant, Mr. Hurley." His voice resembled himself.

Mr. Hurley coughed. "I haven't got a search-warrant yet," he remarked. "I didn't expect——"

"You'd better go and get one, then," said Audrey, calculating how long it would take three women to transport themselves from the house to the yacht, and perpending upon the probable behaviour of Mr. Gilman under a given set of circumstances.

"I will," said Mr. Hurley. "And I shan't be long. Keeble, where is the nearest justice of the peace?... You'd better stay here or hereabouts."

"I got to go to the station to sign on my three constables," Inspector Keeble protested awkwardly, looking at his watch, which also resembled himself.

"You'd better stay here or hereabouts," repeated Mr. Hurley, and he moved towards the door. Inspector Keeble, too, moved towards the door.

Audrey let them get into the passage, and then she was vouchsafed a new access of inspiration.

"Mr. Hurley," she called, in a bright, unoffended tone. "After all, I see no reason why you shouldn't search the house. I don't really want to put you to any unnecessary trouble. It is annoying, but I'm not going to be annoyed." The ingenuous young creature expected Mr. Hurley to be at once disarmed and ashamed by this kind offer. She was wrong. He was evidently surprised, but he gave no evidence of shame or of the sudden death in his brain of all suspicions.

"That's better," he said calmly. "And I'm much obliged."

"I'll come with you," said Audrey. "Madame Piriac," she addressed Hortense with averted eyes. "Will you excuse me for a minute or two while I show these gentlemen the house?" The fact was that she did not care just then to be left alone with Madame Piriac.

"Oh! I beg you, darling! "Madame Piriac granted the permission with overpowering sweetness.

The procedure of Mr. Hurley was astonishing to Audrey; nay, it was unnerving. First he locked the front door and the garden door and pocketed the keys. Then he locked the drawing-room on the passage side and pocketed that key. He instructed Inspector Keeble to remain in the hall at the foot of the stairs. He next went into the kitchen and the sculleries and locked the outer doors in that quarter. Then he descended to the cellars, with Audrey always in his wake. Having searched the cellars and the ground floor, he went upstairs, and examined in turn all the bedrooms with a thoroughness and particularity which caused Audrey to blush. He left nothing whatever to chance, and no dust sheet was undisturbed. Audrey said no word. The detective said no word. But Audrey kept thinking: "He is getting nearer to the tank-room." A small staircase led to the attic floor, upon which were only servants' bedrooms and the tank-room. After he had mounted this staircase and gone a little way along the passage he swiftly and without warning dashed back and down the staircase. But nothing seemed to happen, and he returned. The three doors of the three servants' bedrooms were all ajar. Mr. Hurley passed each of them with a careless glance within. At the end of the corridor, in obscurity, was the door of the tank-room.

"What's this?" he asked abruptly. And he knocked nonchalantly on the door of the tank-room.

Audrey was acutely alarmed lest Jane Foley should respond, thinking the knock was that of a friend. She saw how idiotic she had been not to warn Jane by means of loud conversation with the detective.

"That's the tank-room," she said loudly. "I'm afraid it's locked."

"Oh!" murmured Mr. Hurley negligently, and he turned the searchlight of his gaze upon the three bedrooms, which he examined as carefully as he had examined anything in the house. The failure to discover in any cupboard or corner even the shadow of a human being did not appear to discourage him in the slightest degree. In the third bedroom—that is to say, the one nearest the head of the stairs and farthest from the tank-room—he suddenly beckoned to Audrey, who was standing in the doorway. She went within the room and he pushed the door to, without, however, quite shutting it.

"Now about the tank-room, Miss Moze," he began quietly. "You say it's locked?"

"Yes," said the quaking Audrey.

"As a matter of form I'd better just look in. Will you kindly let me have the key?"

"I can't," said Audrey.

"Why not?"

Audrey acquired tranquillity as she went on: "It's at Frinton. Friends of mine there keep a punt on Mozewater, and I let them store the sail and things in the tank-room. There's plenty of room. I give them the key because that's more satisfactory. The tank-room isn't wanted at all, you see, while I'm away from home."

"Who are these friends?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Spatt," said Audrey at a venture.

"I see," said the detective.

They came downstairs, and the detective made it known that he would re-visit the drawing-room. Inspector Keeble followed them. In that room Audrey remarked:

"And now I hope you're satisfied."

Mr. Hurley merely said:

"Will you please ring for Aguilar?"

Audrey complied. But she had to ring three times before the gardener's footsteps were heard on the uncarpeted stone floor of the hall.

"Aguilar," Mr. Hurley demanded. "Where is the key of the tank-room?"

Audrey sank into a chair, knowing profoundly that all was lost.

"It's at Mrs. Spatt's at Frinton," replied Aguilar glibly. "Mistress lets her have that room to store some boat-gear in. I expected she'd ha' been over before this to get it out. But the yachting season seems to start later and later every year these times."

Audrey gazed at the man as at a miracle-worker.

"Well, I think that's all," said Mr. Hurley.

"No, it isn't," Audrey corrected him. "You've got all my keys in your pocket—except one."

When the police had gone Audrey said to Aguilar in the hall:

"Aguilar, how on earth did you——"

But she was in such a state of emotion at the realisation of dangers affronted and past that she could not finish.

"I'm sorry I was so long answering the bell, m'm," replied Aguilar strangely. "But I'd put my list slippers on—them as your father made me wear when I come into the house, mornings, to change the plants, and I thought it better to put my boots on again before I come.... Shall I put the keys back in the doors, madam?"

So saying he touched his front hair, after his manner, and took the keys and retired. Audrey was as full of fear as of gratitude. Aguilar daunted her.



CHAPTER XXXV

THE THIRD SORT OF WOMAN

"It was quite true what I told the detective. So I suppose you've finished with me for evermore!" Audrey burst out recklessly, as soon as she and Madame Piriac were alone together. The supreme moment had come, and she tried to grasp it like a nettle. Her adventurous rashness was, she admitted, undeniable. She had spoken the truth to the police officer about her identity and her spinsterhood because with unusual wisdom she judged that fibs or even prevarication on such a subject to such an audience might entangle her in far more serious difficulties later on. Moreover, with Inspector Keeble present, she could not successfully have gone very far from the truth. It was a pity that Madame Piriac had witnessed the scene, for really, when Audrey came to face it, the deception which she had practised upon Madame Piriac was of a monstrous and inexcusable kind. And now that Madame Piriac knew the facts, many other people would have to know the facts—including probably Mr. Gilman. The prospect of explanations was terrible. In vain Audrey said to herself that the thing was naught, that she had acted within her rights, and that anyhow she had long ago ceased to be diffident and shy!... She was intimidated by her own enormities. And she also thought: "How could I have been silly enough to tell that silly tale about the Spatts? More complications. And poor dear Inspector Keeble will be so shocked."

After a short pause Madame Piriac replied, in a grave but kind tone:

"Why would you that I should have finished with you for ever? You had the right to call yourself by any name you wished, and to wear any ring-that pleased your caprice. It is the affair of nobody but yourself."

"Oh! I'm so glad you take it like that," said Audrey with eager relief. "That's just what I thought all along!"

"But it is your affair!" Madame Piriac finished, with a peculiar inflection of her well-controlled voice. "I mean," she added, "you cannot afford to neglect it."

"No—of course not," Audrey agreed, rather dashed, and with a vague new apprehension. "Naturally I shall tell you everything, darling. I had my reasons. I——"

"The principal question is, darling," Madame Piriac stopped her. "What are you going to do now? Ought we not to return to the yacht?"

"But I must look after Jane Foley!" cried Audrey. "I can't leave her here."

"And why not? She has Miss Ingate."

"Yes, worse luck for her! Winnie would make the most dreadful mess of things if she wasn't stopped. If Winnie was right out of it, and Jane Foley had only herself and Aguilar to count on, there might be a chance. But not else."

"It is by pure hazard that you are here. Nobody expected you. What would this young girl Mees Foley have done if you had not been here?"

"It's no good wasting time about that, darling, because I am here, don't you see?" Audrey straightened her shoulders and put her hands behind her back.

"My little one," said Madame Piriac with a certain solemnity. "You remember our conversation in my boudoir. I then told you that you would find yourself in a riot within a month, if you continued your course. Was I right? Happily you have escaped from that horrible complication. Go no farther. Listen to me. You were not created for these adventures. It is impossible that you should be happy in them."

"But look at Jane Foley," said Audrey eagerly. "Is she not happy? Did you ever see anybody as happy as Jane? I never did."

"That is not happiness," replied Madame Piriac. "That is exaltation. It is morbid. I do not say that it is not right for her. I do not say that she is not justified, and that that which she represents is not justified. But I say that a role such as hers is not your role. To commence, she does not interest herself in men. For her there are no men in the world—there are only political enemies. Do you think I do not know the type? We have it, chez nous. It is full of admirable qualities—but it is not your type. For you, darling, the world is inhabited principally by men, and the time will come—perhaps soon—when for you it will be inhabited principally by one man. If you remain obdurate, there must inevitably arrive a quarrel between that man and these—these riotous adventures."

"No man that I could possibly care for," Audrey retorted, "would ever object to me having an active interest in—er—politics."

"I agree, darling," said Madame Piriac. "He would not object. It is you who would object. The quarrel would occur within your own heart. There are two sorts of women—individualists and fanatics. It was always so. I am a woman, and I know what I'm saying. So do you. Well, you belong to the first sort of woman."

"I don't," Audrey protested. Nevertheless she recollected her thoughts on the previous night, near the binnacle and Mr. Gilman, about the indispensability of a man and about the futility of the state of not owning and possessing a man. The memory of these thoughts only rendered her more obstinate.

"But you will not have the courage to tell me that you are a fanatic?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"There is a third sort of woman."

"Darling, believe me, there is not."

"There's going to be, anyhow!" said Audrey with decision, and in English. "And I won't leave Jane Foley in the lurch, either!... Now I'll just run up and have a talk with her, if you don't mind waiting a minute or two."

"But what are you going to do?" Madame Piriac demanded.

"Well," said Audrey. "It is obvious that there is only one safe thing to do. I shall take Jane on board the yacht. We shall sail off, and she'll be safe."

"On the yacht!" repeated Madame Piriac, truly astounded. "But my poor oncle will never agree. You do not know him. You do not know how peculiar he is. Never will he agree! Besides——"

"Darling," said Audrey quietly and confidently. "If he does not agree, I undertake to go into a convent for the rest of my days."

Madame Piriac was silent.

Just as she was opening the door to go upstairs, Audrey suddenly turned back into the room.

"Darling," she said, kissing Madame Piriac. "How calmly you've taken it!"

"Taken what?"

"About me not being Mrs. Moncreiff nor a widow nor anything of that kind."

"But, darling," answered Madame Piriac with exquisite tranquillity. "Of course I knew it before."

"You knew it before!"

"Certainly. I knew it the first time I saw you, in the studio of Mademoiselle Nickall. You were the image of your father! The image, I repeat—except perhaps the nose. Recollect that as a child I saw your father. I was left with my mother's relatives, until matters should be arranged; but he came to Paris. Then before matters could be arranged my mother died, and I never saw him again. But I could never forget him.... Then also, in my boudoir that night, you blushed—it was very amusing—when I mentioned Essex and Audrey Moze. And there were other things."

"For instance?"

"Darling, you were never quite convincing as a widow—at any rate to a Frenchwoman. You may have deceived American and English women. But not myself. You did not say the convincing things when the conversation took certain turns. That is all."

"You knew who I was, and you never told me!" Audrey pouted.

"Had I the right, darling? You had decided upon your identity. It would have been inexcusable on my part to inform you that you were mistaken in so essential a detail."

Madame Piriac gently returned Audrey's kiss.

"So that was why you insisted on me coming with you to-day!" murmured Audrey, crestfallen. "You are a marvellous actress, darling."

"I have several times been told so," Madame Piriac admitted simply.

"What on earth did you expect would happen?"

"Not that which has happened," said Madame Piriac.

"Well, if you ask me," said Audrey with gaiety and a renewal of self-confidence. "I think it's all happened splendidly."



CHAPTER XXXVI

IN THE DINGHY

When the pair got back to the sea-wall the tide had considerably ebbed, and where the dinghy had floated there was nothing more liquid than exquisitely coloured mud. Nevertheless water still lapped the yacht, whereas on the shore side of the yacht was now no crowd. The vans and carts had all departed, and the quidnuncs and observers of human nature, having gazed steadily at the yacht for some ten hours, had thought fit to depart also. The two women looked about rather anxiously, as though Mr. Gilman had basely marooned them.

"But what must we do?" demanded Madame Piriac.

"Oh! We can walk round on the dyke," said Audrey superiorly. "Unless the stiles frighten you."

"It is about to rain," said Madame Piriac, glancing at the high curved heels of her shoes.

The sky, which was very wide and variegated over Mozewater, did indeed seem to threaten.

At that moment the dinghy appeared round the forefoot of the Ariadne. Mr. Gilman and Miss Thompkins were in it, and Mr. Gilman was rowing with gentleness and dignity. They had, even afar off, a tremendous air of intimacy; each leaned towards the other, face to face, and Tommy had her chin in her hands and her elbows on her knees. And in addition to an air of intimacy they had an air of mystery. It was surprising, and perhaps a little annoying, to Audrey that those two should have gone on living to themselves, in their own self-absorbed way, while such singular events had been happening to herself in Flank Hall. She put several fingers in her mouth and produced a piercing long-distance whistle which effectively reached the dinghy.

"My poor little one!" exclaimed Madame Piriac, shocked in spite of her broadmindedness by both the sound and the manner of its production.

"Oh! I learnt that when I was twelve," said Audrey. "It took me four months, but I did it. And nobody except Miss Ingate knows that I can do it."

The occupants of the dinghy were signalling their intention to rescue, and Mr. Gilman used his back nobly.

"But we cannot embark here!" Madame Piriac complained.

"Oh, yes!" said Audrey. "You see those white stones? ... It's quite easy."

When the dinghy had done about half the journey Madame Piriac murmured:

"By the way, who are you, precisely, for the present? It would be prudent to decide, darling."

Audrey hesitated an instant.

"Who am I? ... Oh! I see. Well, I'd better keep on being Mrs. Moncreiff for a bit, hadn't I?"

"It is as you please, darling."

The fact was that Audrey recoiled from a general confession, though admitting it to be ultimately inevitable. Moreover, she had a slight fear that each of her friends in turn might make a confession ridiculous by saying: "We knew all along, of course."

The dinghy was close in.

"My!" cried Tommy. "Who did that whistle? It was enough to beat the cars."

"Wouldn't you like to know!" Audrey retorted.

The embarkation, under Audrey's direction, was accomplished in safety, and, save for one tiny French scream, in silence. The silence, which persisted, was peculiar. Each pair should have had something to tell the other, yet nothing was told, or even asked. Mr. Gilman rowed with careful science, and brought the dinghy alongside the yacht in an unexceptionable manner. Musa stood on deck apart, acting indifference. Madame Piriac, having climbed into the Ariadne, went below at once. Miss Thompkins, seeing her friend Mr. Price half-way down the saloon companion, moved to speak to him, and they vanished together. Mr. Gilman was respectfully informed by the engineer that the skipper and Dr. Cromarty were ashore.

"How nice it is on the water!" said Audrey to Mr. Gilman in a low, gentle voice. "There is a channel round there with three feet of water in it at low tide." She sketched a curve in the air with her finger. "Of course you know this part," said Mr. Gilman cautiously and even apprehensively. His glance seemed to be saying: "And it was you who gave that fearful whistle, too! Are you, can you be, all that I dreamed?"

"I do," Audrey answered. "Would you like me to show it you."

"I should be more than delighted," said Mr. Gilman.

With a gesture he summoned a man to untie the dinghy again and hold it, and the man slid down into the dinghy like a monkey.

"I'll pull," said Audrey, in the boat.

The man sprang out of the dinghy.

"One instant!" Mr. Gilman begged her, standing up in the sternsheets, and popping his head through a porthole of the saloon. "Mr. Price!"

"Sir?" From the interior.

"Will you be good enough to play that air with thirty-six variations, of Beethoven's? We shall hear splendidly from the dinghy."

"Certainly, sir."

And Audrey said to herself: "You don't want him to flirt with Tommy while you're away, so you've given him something to keep him busy."

Mr. Gilman remarked under his breath to Audrey: "I think there is nothing finer than to hear Beethoven on the water."

"Oh! There isn't!" she eagerly concurred.

Ignoring the thirty-six variations of Beethoven, Audrey rowed slowly away, and after about a hundred yards the boat had rounded a little knoll which marked the beginning of a narrow channel known as the Lander Creek. The thirty-six variations, however, would not be denied; they softly impregnated the whole beautiful watery scene.

"Perhaps," said Mr. Gilman suddenly, "perhaps your ladyship was not quite pleased at me rowing-about with Miss Thompkins—especially after I had taken her for a walk." He smiled, but his voice was rather wistful. Audrey liked him prodigiously in that moment.

"Foolish man!" she replied, with a smile far surpassing his, and she rested on her oars, taking care to keep the boat in the middle of the channel. "Do you know why I asked you to come out? I wanted to talk to you quite privately. It is easier here."

"I'm so glad!" he said simply and sincerely. And Audrey thought: "Is it possible to give so much pleasure to an important and wealthy man with so little trouble?"

"Yes," she said. "Of course you know who I really am, don't you, Mr. Gilman?"

"I only know you're Mrs. Moncreiff," he answered.

"But I'm not! Surely you've heard something? Surely it's been hinted in front of you?"

"Never!" said he.

"But haven't you asked—about my marriage, for instance?"

"To ask might have been to endanger your secret," he said.

"I see!" she murmured. "How frightfully loyal you are, Mr. Gilman! I do admire loyalty. Well, I dare say very, very few people do know. So I'll tell you. That's my home over there." And she pointed to Flank Hall, whose chimneys could just be seen over the bank.

"I admit that I had thought so," said Mr. Gilman.

"But naturally that was your home as a girl, before your marriage."

"I've never been married, Mr. Gilman," she said. "I'm only what the French call a jeune fille."

His face changed; he seemed to be withdrawing alarmed into himself.

"Never—been married?"

"Oh! You must understand me!" she went on, with an appealing vivacity. "I was all alone. I was in mourning for my father and mother. I wanted to see the world. I just had to see it! I expect I was very foolish, but it was so easy to put a ring on my finger and call myself Mrs. And it gave me such advantages. And Miss Ingate agreed. She was my mother's oldest friend.... You're vexed with me."

"You always seemed so wise," Mr. Gilman faltered.

"Ah! That's only the effect of my forehead!"

"And yet, you know, I always thought there was something very innocent about you, too."

"I don't know what that was," said Audrey. "But honestly I acted for the best. You see I'm rather rich. Supposing I'd only gone about as a young marriageable girl—what frightful risks I should have run, shouldn't I? Somebody would be bound to have married me for my money. And look at all I should have missed—without this ring! I should never have met you in Paris, for instance, and we should never have had those talks.... And—and there's a lot more reasons—I shall tell you another time—about Madame Piriac and so on. Now do say you aren't vexed!"

"I think you've been splendid," he said, with enthusiasm. "I think the girls of to-day are splendid! I've been a regular old fogey, that's what it is."

"Now there's one thing I want you not to do," Audrey proceeded. "I want you not to alter the way you talk to me. Because I'm really just the same girl I was last night. And I couldn't bear you to change."

"I won't! I won't! But of course——"

"No, no! No buts. I won't have it. Do you know why I told you just this afternoon? Well, partly because you were so perfectly sweet last night. And partly because I've got a favour to ask you, and I wouldn't ask it until I'd told you."

"You can't ask me a favour," he replied, "because it wouldn't be a favour. It would be my privilege."

"But if you put it like that I can't ask you."

"You must!" he said firmly.

Then she told him something of the predicament of Jane Foley. He listened with an expression of trouble. Audrey finished bluntly: "She's my friend. And I want you to take her on the yacht to-night after it's dark. Nobody but you can save her. There! I've asked you!"

"Jane Foley!" he murmured.

She could see that he was aghast. The syllables of that name were notorious throughout Britain. They stood for revolt, damage to property, defiance of law, injured policemen, forcible feeding, and all sorts of phenomena that horrified respectable pillars of society.

"She's the dearest thing!" said Audrey. "You've no idea. You'd love her. And she's done as much for Women's Suffrage as anybody in the world. She's a real heroine, if you like. You couldn't help the cause better than by helping her. And I know how keen you are to help." And Audrey said to herself: "He's as timid as a girl about it. How queer men are, after all!"

"But what are we to do with her afterwards?" asked Mr. Gilman. There was perspiration on his brow.

"Sail straight to France, of course. They couldn't touch her there, you see, because it's political. It is political, you know," Audrey insisted proudly.

"And give up all our cruise?"

Audrey bent forward, as she had seen Tommy do. She smiled enchantingly. "I quite understand," she said, with a sort of tenderness. "You don't want to do it. And it was a shame of me even to suggest it."

"But I do want to do it," he protested with splendid despairful resolve. "I was only thinking of you—and the cruise. I do want to do it. I'm absolutely at your disposal. When you ask me to do a thing, I'm only too proud. To do it is the greatest happiness I could have."

Audrey replied softly:

"You deserve the Victoria Cross."

"Whatever do you mean?" he demanded nervously.

"I don't know exactly what I mean," she said. "But you're the nicest man I ever knew."

He blushed.

"You mustn't say that to me," he deprecated.

"I shall, and I shall."

The sound of the thirty-six variations still came very faintly over the water. The sun sent cataracts of warm light across all the estuary. The water lapped against the boat, and Audrey was overwhelmed by the inexplicable marvel of being alive in the gorgeous universe.

"I shall have to back water," she said, low. "There's no room to turn round here."

"I suppose we'd better say as little about it as possible," he ventured.

"Oh! Not a word! Not a word till it's done."

"Yes, of course." He was drenched in an agitating satisfaction.

Five bells rang clear from the yacht, overmastering the thirty-six variations.

Audrey thought:

"So he'd never agree, wouldn't he, Madame Piriac!"



CHAPTER XXXVII

AFLOAT

That night, which was an unusually dark night for the time of year, Audrey left the yacht, alone, to fetch Jane Foley. She had made a provisional plan with Jane and Aguilar, and the arrangement with Mr. Gilman had been of the simplest, necessitating nothing save a brief order from the owner to the woman whom Audrey could always amuse Mr. Gilman by calling the "parlourmaid," but who was more commonly known as the stewardess. This young married creature had prepared a cabin. For the rest little had been said. The understanding between Mr. Gilman and Audrey was that Mrs. Moncreiff should continue to exist, and that not a word as to the arrival of Jane Foley should escape either of them until the deed was accomplished. It is true that Madame Piriac knew of the probable imminence of the affair, but Madame Piriac was discretion elegantly attired, and from the moment they had left Flank Hall together she had been wise enough not even to mention Jane Foley to Audrey. Madame Piriac appreciated the value of ignorance in a questionable crisis. Mr. Gilman had been less guarded. Indeed he had shown a tendency to discuss the coming adventure with Audrey in remote corners—a tendency which had to be discouraged because it gave to both of them a too obvious air of being tremendous conspirators, Also Audrey had had to dissuade him from accompanying her to the Hall. He had rather conventional ideas about women being abroad alone after dark, and he abandoned them with difficulty even now.

As there were no street lamps alight in summer in the village of Moze, Audrey had no fear of being recognised; moreover, recognition by her former fellow-citizens could now have no sinister importance; she did not much care who recognised her. The principal gates of Flank Hall were slightly ajar, as arranged with Aguilar, and she passed with a suddenly aroused heart up the drive towards the front entrance of the house. In spite of herself she could not get rid of an absurd fear that either Mr. Hurley or Inspector Keeble or both would jump out of the dark bushes and slip handcuffs upon her wrists. And the baffling invisibility of the sky further affected her nerves. There ought to have been a lamp in the front hall, but no ray showed through the eighteenth century fanlight over the door. She rang the bell cautiously. She heard the distant ting. Aguilar, according to the plan, ought to have opened; but he did not open; nobody opened. She was instantly sure that she knew what had happened. Mr. Hurley had been to Frinton and ascertained that the Spatt story as to the tank-room was an invention, and had returned with a search warrant and some tools. But in another ten seconds she was equally sure that nothing of the sort could have happened, for it was an axiom with her that Aguilar's masterly lying, based on masterly listening at an attic door, had convinced Mr. Hurley of the truth of the story about the tank-room.

Accidentally pushing against the front door with an elbow in the deep obscurity, she discovered that it was not latched. This was quite contrary to the plan. She stepped into the house. The unforeseeing simpleton had actually come on the excursion without a box of matches! She felt her way, aided by the swift returning memories of childhood, to the foot of the stairs, and past the stairs into the kitchen, for in ancient days a candlestick with a box of matches in it had always been kept on the ledge of the small square window that gave light to the passage between the hall and the kitchen. Her father had been most severely particular about that candlestick (with matches) being-always ready on that ledge in case of his need. Ridiculous, of course, to expect a candlestick to be still there! Times change so. But she felt for it, and there it was, and the matches too! She lit the candle. The dim scene thus revealed seemed strange enough to her after the electricity of the Hotel du Danube and of the yacht. It made her want to cry....

She was one of those people who have room in their minds for all sorts of things at once. And thus she could simultaneously be worried to an extreme about Jane Foley, foolish and sad about her immensely distant childhood, and even regretful that she had admitted the fraudulence of the wedding-ring on her hand. On the last point she had a very strong sense of failure and disillusion. When she had first donned a widow's bonnet she had meant to have wondrous adventures and to hear marvellous conversations as a widow. And what had she done with her widowhood after all? Nothing. She could not but think that she ought to have kept it a little longer, on the chance....

Aguilar made a practice of sleeping in the kitchen; he considered that a house could only be well guarded at night from the ground floor. There was his bed, in the corner against the brush and besom cupboard, all made up. Its creaselessness, so characteristic of Aguilar, had not been disturbed. The sight of the narrow bed made Audrey think what a strange existence was the existence of Aguilar. ... Then, with a boldness that was half bluster, she went upstairs, and the creaking of the woodwork was affrighting.

"Jane! Jane, dear!" she called out, as she arrived at the second-storey landing. The sound of her voice was uncanny in the haunted stillness. All Audrey's infancy floated up the well of the stairs and wrapped itself round her and tightened her throat. She went along the passage to the door of the tank-room.

"Jane, Jane!"

No answer! The door was locked. She listened. She put her ear against the door in order to catch the faintest sound of life within. But she could only hear the crude, sharp ticking of the cheap clock which, as she knew, Aguilar had supplied to Jane Foley. The vision of Jane lying unconscious or dead obsessed her. Then she thrust it away and laughed at it. Assuredly Aguilar and Jane must have received some alarm as to a reappearance of the police; they must have fled while there had yet been time. Where could they have gone? Of course, through the garden and plantation and down to the sea-wall, whence Jane might steal to the yacht. Audrey turned back towards the stairs, and the vast intimidating emptiness of the gloomy house, lit by a single flickering candle, assaulted her. She had to fight it before she could descend. The garden door was latched, but not locked. Extinguishing the candle, she went forth. The gusty breeze from the estuary was now damp on her cheek with the presage of rain. She hurried, fumbling as it were, through the garden. When she achieved the hedge the spectacle of the yacht, gleaming from stem to stern with electricity, burst upon her; it shone like something desired and unattainable. Carefully she issued from the grounds by the little gate and crossed the intervening space to the dyke. A dark figure moved in front of her, and her heart violently jumped.

"Is that you, madam?"

It was the cold, imperturbable voice of Aguilar. At once she felt reassured.

"Where is Miss Foley?" she demanded in a whisper.

"I've got her down here, ma'am," said Aguilar. "I presume as you've been to the house. We had to leave it."

"But the door of the tank-room was locked!"

"Yes, ma'am. I locked it a-purpose.... I thought as it would keep the police employed a bit when they come. I seen my cousin Sarah when I went to tell Miss Ingate as you instructed me. My cousin Sarah seen Keeble. They been to Frinton to Mrs. Spatt's, and they found out about that. And now the 'tec's back, or nearly. I reckon it was the warrant as was delaying him. So I out with Miss Foley. I thought I could take her across to the yacht from here. It wouldn't hardly be safe for her to walk round by the dyke. Hurley may have several of his chaps about by this time."

"But there's not water enough, Aguilar."

"Yes, madam. I dragged the old punt down. She don't draw three inches. She's afloat now, and Miss Foley's in her. I was just a-going off. If you don't mind wetting your feet——"

In one minute Audrey had splashed into the punt. Jane Foley took her hand in silence, and she heard Jane's low, happy laugh.

"Isn't it funny?" Jane whispered.

Audrey squeezed her hand.

Aguilar pushed off with an oar, and he continued to use the oar as a punt-pole, so that no sound of their movement should reach the bank. Water was pouring into the old sieve, and they touched ground once. But Aguilar knew precisely what he was about and got her off again. They approached the yacht with the slow, sure inexorability of Aguilar's character. A beam from the portholes of the saloon caught Aguilar's erect figure. He sat down, poling as well as he could from the new position. When they were a little nearer he stopped dead, holding the punt firm by means of the pole fixed in the mud.

"He's there afore us!" he murmured, pointing.

Under the Maltese cross of electric lights at the inner end of the gangway could clearly be seen the form of Mr. Hurley, engaged in conversation with Mr. Gilman. Mr. Hurley was fairly on board.



CHAPTER XXXVIII

IN THE UNIVERSE

When Audrey, having been put ashore in execution of a plan arranged with those naturally endowed strategists, Aguilar and Jane Foley, arrived at the Hard by way of the sea-wall, Mr. Hurley was still in parley with Mr. Gilman under the Maltese cross of electric lights. From the distance Mr. Gilman had an air of being somewhat intimidated by the Irishman, but as soon as he distinguished the figure of Audrey at the shore end of the gangway his muscles became mysteriously taut, and his voice charged with defiance.

"I have already told you, sir," Audrey heard him say, "there is no such person aboard the yacht. And I most certainly will not allow you to search. You have no right whatever to search, and you know it. You have my word. My name is Gilman. You may have heard of me. I'm chairman of the Board of Foodstuffs, Limited. Gilman, sir. And I shall feel obliged if you will leave my decks."

"Are you sailing to-night?" asked Mr. Hurley placidly.

"What the devil has that got to do with you, sir?" replied Mr. Gilman gloriously.

Audrey, standing behind the detective and unseen by him, observed the gloriousness of Mr. Gilman's demeanour and also Mr. Gilman's desire that she should note the same and appreciate it. She nodded violently several times to Mr. Gilman, to urge him to answer the detective in the affirmative.

"Ye-es, sir. Since you are so confoundedly inquisitive, I am sailing to-night. I shall sail as soon as the tide serves," said Mr. Gilman hurriedly and fiercely, and then glanced again at Audrey for further approval.

"Where for?" Mr. Hurley demanded.

"Where I please, sir," Mr. Gilman snorted. By this time he evidently imagined that he was furious, and was taking pleasure in his fury.

Mr. Hurley, having given a little ironic bow, turned to leave and found himself fronting Audrey, who stiffly ignored his salute. The detective gone, Mr. Gilman walked to and fro, breathing more loudly than ever, and unsuccessfully pretending to a scattered audience, which consisted of the skipper, Mr. Price, Dr. Cromarty, and sundry deck-hands, that he had done nothing in particular and was not a hero. As Audrey approached him he seemed to lay all his glory with humble pride at her feet.

"Well, he brought that on himself!" said Audrey, smiling.

"He did," Mr. Gilman concurred, gazing at the Hard with inimical scorn.

"She can't come—now," said Audrey. "It wouldn't be safe. He means to stay on the Hard till we're gone. He's a very suspicious man."

Mr. Hurley was indeed lingering just beyond the immediate range of the Ariadne's lamps.

"Can't come! What a pity! What a pity!" murmured Mr. Gilman, with an accent that was not a bit sincere. The news was the best he had heard for hours. "But I suppose," he added, "we'd better sail just the same, as I've said we should?" He did not want to run the risk of getting Jane Foley after all.

"Oh! Do!" Audrey exclaimed. "It will be lovely! If it doesn't rain—and even if it does rain! We all like sailing at night.... Are the others in the saloon? I'll run down."

"Mr. Wyatt," the owner sternly accosted the captain. "When can we get off?"

"Oh! About midnight," Audrey answered quickly, before Mr. Wyatt could compose his lips.

The men gazed at each other surprised by this show of technical knowledge in a young widow. By the time Mr. Wyatt had replied, Audrey was descending into the saloon. It was Aguilar who, having ascertained the Ariadne's draught, had made the calculation as to the earliest possible hour of departure.

And in the saloon Musa was, as it were, being enveloped and kept comfortable in the admiring sympathy of Madame Piriac and Miss Thompkins. Mr. Gilman's violin lay across his knees—perhaps he had been tuning it—and the women inclined towards him, one on either side. It was a sight that somewhat annoyed Audrey, who told herself that she considered it silly. Admitting that Musa had genius, she could not understand this soft flattery of genius. She never flattered genius herself, and she did not approve of others doing so. Certainly Musa was now being treated on the yacht as a celebrity of the first order, and Audrey could find no explanation of the steady growth in the height and splendour of his throne. Her arrival dissolved the spectacle. Within one minute, somehow, the saloon was empty and everybody on deck again.

And then, drawing her away, Musa murmured to Audrey in a disconcerting tone that he must speak to her on a matter of urgency, and that in order that he might do so, they must go ashore and walk seawards, far from interruption. She consented, for she was determined to prove to him at close quarters that she was a different creature from the other two. They moved to the gangway amid discreet manifestations from the doctor and the secretary—manifestations directed chiefly to Musa and indicative of his importance as a notability. Audrey was puzzled. For her, Musa was more than ever just Musa, and less than ever a personage.

"I shall not return to the yacht," he said, with an excited bitterness, after they had walked some distance along one of the paths leading past low bushes into the wilderness of the marsh land that bounded the estuary to the south. The sky was still invisible, but there was now a certain amount of diffused light, and the pale path could easily be distinguished amid the sombreness of green. The yacht was hidden behind one of the knolls. No sound could be heard. The breeze had died. That which was around them—on either hand, above, below—was the universe. They knew that they stood still in the universe, and this idea gave their youth the sensation of being very important.

"What is that which you say?" Audrey demanded sharply in French, as Musa had begun in French. She was aware, not for the first time with Musa, of the sudden possibilities of drama in a human being. She could scarcely make out his face, but she knew that he was in a mood for high follies; she knew that danger was gathering; she knew that the shape of the future was immediately to be moulded by her and him, and chiefly by herself. She liked it. The sensation of her importance was reinforced.

"I say I shall never return to the yacht," he repeated.

She thought compassionately:

"Poor foolish thing!"

She was incalculably older and wiser than this irrational boy. She was the essence of wisdom.

She said, with acid detachment:

"But your luggage, your belongings? What an idea to leave in this manner! It is so polite, so sensible!"

"I shall not return."

"Of course," she said, "I do not at all understand why you are going. But what does that matter? You are going." Her indifference was superb. It was so superb that it might have driven some men to destroy her on the spot.

"Yes, you understand! I told you last night," said Musa, overflowing with emotion.

"Oh! You told me? I forget."

"Naturally Monsieur Gilman is rich. I am not rich, though I shall be. But you can't wait," Musa sneered.

"I do not know what you mean," said Audrey.

"Ah!" said Musa. "Once I told you that Tommy and Nick lent me the money with which to live. For me, since then, you have never been the same being. How stupid I was to tell you! You could not comprehend such a thing. Your soul is too low to comprehend it. Permit me to say that I have already repaid Nick. And at the first moment I shall repay Tommy. My position is secure. I have only to wait. But you will not wait. You are a bourgeoise of the most terrible sort. Opulence fascinates you. Mr. Gilman has opulence. He has nothing else. But he has opulence, and for you that is all."

In an instant her indifference, self-control, wisdom vanished. It was a sad exhibition of frailty; but she enjoyed it, she revelled in it, giving play to everything in herself that was barbaric. The marsh around them was probably as it had been before the vikings had sailed into it, and Audrey rushed back with inconceivable speed into the past and became the primeval woman of twenty centuries earlier. Like almost all women she possessed this wondrous and affrighting faculty.

"You are telling a wicked untruth!" she exploded in English. "And what's more, you know you are. You disgust me. You know as well as I do I don't care anything for money—anything. Only you're a horrid, spoilt beast. You think you can upset me, but you can't. I won't have it, either from you or from anybody else. It's a shame, that's what it is. Now you've got to apologise to me. I absolutely insist on it. You aren't going to bully me, even if you think you are. I'll soon show you the sort of girl I am, and you make no mistake! Are you going to apologise or aren't you?"

The indecorous creature was breathing as loudly as Mr. Gilman himself.

"I admit it," said Musa yielding.

"Ah!"

"I demand your pardon. I knew that what I said was not true. I am outside myself. But what would you? It is stronger than I. This existence is terrible, on the yacht. I cannot support it. I shall become mad. I am ruined. My jealousy is intolerable."

"It is!" said Audrey, using French again, more calmly, having returned to the twentieth century.

"It is intolerable to me." Then Musa's voice changed and grew persuasive, rather like a child's. "I cannot live without you. That is the truth. I am an artist, and you are necessary to me and to my career." He lifted his head. "And I can offer you everything that is most brilliant."

"And what about my career?" Audrey questioned inimically.

"Your career?" He seemed at a loss.

"Yes. My career. It has possibly not occurred to you that I also may have a career."

Musa became appealing.

"You understand me," he said. "I told you you do not comprehend, but you comprehend everything. It is that which enrages me. You have had experience. You know what men are. You could teach me so much. I hate young girls. I have always hated them. They are so tasteless, so insufferably innocent. I could not talk to a young girl as I talk to you. It would be absurd. Now as to my career—what I said——"

"Musa," she interrupted him, with a sinister quietude, "I want to tell you something. But you must promise to keep it secret. Will you?"

He assented, impatient.

"It is not possible!" he exclaimed, when she had told him that she belonged to precisely the category of human beings whom he hated and despised.

"Isn't it?" said she. "Now I hope you see how little you know, really, about women." She laughed.

"It is not possible!" he repeated. And then he said with deliberate ingenuousness: "I am so content. I am so happy. I could not have hoped for it. It is overwhelming. I am everything you like of the most idiotic, blind, stupid. But now I am happy. Could I ever have borne that you had loved before I knew you? I doubt if I could have borne it. Your innocence is exquisite. It is intoxicating to me."

"Musa," she remarked dryly; "I wish you would remember that you are in England. People do not talk in that way in England. It simply is not done. And I will not listen to it." Her voice grew a little tender. "Why can we not just be friends?"

"It is folly," said he, with sudden disgust. "And it would kill me."

"Well, then," she replied, receding. "You're entitled to die."

He advanced towards her. She kept him away with a gesture.

"You want me to marry you?" she questioned.

"It is essential," he said, very seriously. "I adore you. I can't do anything because of you. I can't think of anything but you. You are more marvellous than anyone can be. You cannot appreciate what you are to me!"

"And suppose you are nothing to me?"

"But it is necessary that you should love me!"

"Why? I see no necessity. You want me—because you want me. That's all. I can't help it if you're mad. Your attitude is insulting. You have not given one thought to my feelings. And if I said 'yes' to you, you'd marry me whatever my feelings were. You think only of yourself. It is the old attitude. And when I offer you my friendship, you instantly decline it. That shows how horribly French you are. Frenchmen can't understand the idea of friendship between a man and a girl. They sneer at it. It shows what brutes you all are. Why should I marry you? I should have nothing to gain by it. You'll be famous. Well, what do I care? Do you think it would be very amusing for me to be the wife of a famous man that was run after by every silly creature in Paris or London or New York? Not quite! And I don't see myself. You don't like young girls. I don't like young men. They're rude and selfish and conceited. They're like babies."

"The fact is," Musa broke in, "you are in love with the old Gilman."

"He is not old!" cried Audrey. "In some ways he is much less worn out than you are. And supposing I am in love with Mr. Gilman? Does it regard you? Do not be rude. Mr. Gilman is at any rate polite. He is not capricious. He is reliable. You aren't reliable. You want someone upon whom you can rely. How nice for your wife! You play the violin. True. You are a genius. But you cannot always be on the platform. And when you are not on the platform...! Heavens! If I wish to hear you play I can buy a seat and come and hear you and go away again. But your wife, responsible for your career—she will never be free. Her life will be unbearable. What anxiety! Misery, I should say rather! You would have the lion's share of everything. Now for myself I intend to have the lion's share. And why shouldn't I? Isn't it about time some woman had it? You can't have the lion's share if you are not free. I mean to be free. If I marry I shall want a husband that is not a prison.... Thank goodness I've got money.... Without that——!"

"Then," said Musa, "you have no feeling for me."

"Love?" she laughed exasperatingly.

"Yes," he said.

"Not that much!" She snapped her fingers. "But"—in a changed tone—"I should like to like you. I shall be very disgusted if your concerts are not a tremendous success. And they will not be if you don't keep control over yourself and practise properly. And it will be your fault."

"Then, good-bye!" he said, coldly ignoring all her maternal suggestions. And turned away.

"Where are you going to?"

He stopped.

"I do not know. But if I do not deceive myself I have already informed you that in certain circumstances I should not return to the yacht."

"You are worse than a schoolboy."

"It is possible."

"Anyway, I shan't explain on the yacht. I shall tell them that I know nothing about it."

"But no one will believe you," he retorted maliciously over his shoulder. And then he was gone.

She at any rate was no longer surrounded by the largeness of the universe. He might still be, but she was not. She was in mind already on the yacht trying to act a surprise equal to the surprise of the others when Musa failed to reappear. She was very angry with him, not because he had been a rude schoolboy and was entirely impossible as a human being, but because she had allowed herself to leave the yacht with him and would therefore be compelled sooner or later to answer questions about him. She seriously feared that Mr. Gilman might refuse to sail unless she confessed to him her positive knowledge that Musa would not be seen again, and that thus she might have to choose between the failure of her plans for Jane Foley and her own personal discomfiture.

Instead of being in the mighty universe she was struggling amid the tiresome littleness of society on a yacht. She hated yachts for their very cosiness and their quality of keeping people close together who wanted to be far apart. And as she watched the figure of Musa growing fainter she was more than ever impressed by the queerness of men. Women seemed to be so logical, so realistic, so understandable, so calculable, whereas men were enigmas of waywardness and unreason. At just that moment her feet reminded her that they had been wetted by the adventure in the punt, and she said to herself sagely that she must take precautions against a chill.

And then she thought she detected some unusual phenomenon behind a clump of bushes to the right which hid a plank-bridge across a waterway. She would have been frightened if she had not been very excited. And in her excitement she marched straight up to the clump, and found Mr. Hurley in a crouching posture. She started, and recovered.

"I might have known!" she said disdainfully.

"We all make mistakes," said Mr. Hurley defensively. "We all make mistakes. I knew I'd made a mistake as soon as I got here, but I couldn't get away quietly enough. And you talked so loud. Ye'll admit I had just cause for suspicion. And being a very agreeable lady ye'll pardon me."

She blushed, and then ceased blushing because it was too dark for him to perceive the blush, and she passed on without a word. When, across the waste, she had come within sight of the yacht again, she heard footsteps behind her, and turned to withstand the detective. But the overtaker was Musa.

"It is necessary that I should return to the yacht," he said savagely. "The thought of you and Monsieur Gilman together, without me.... No! I did not know myself. ... I did not know myself.... It is impossible for me to leave."

She made no answer. They boarded the yacht as though they had been for a stroll. Few could have guessed that they had come back from the universe terribly scathed. Accepting deferential greetings as a right, Musa vanished rapidly to his cabin.

Several hours later Audrey and Mr. Gilman, alone among the passengers, were standing together, both tarpaulined, on the starboard bow, gazing seaward as the yacht cautiously felt her way down Mozewater. Captain Wyatt, and not Mr. Gilman, was at the binnacle. A little rain was falling and the night was rather thick but not impenetrable.

"There's the light!" said Audrey excitedly.

"What sharp eyes you have!" said Mr. Gilman. "I can see it, too." He spoke a word to the skipper, and the skipper spoke, and then the engine went still more slowly.

The yacht approached the Flank buoy dead slow, scarcely stemming the tide. The Moze punt was tied up to the buoy, and Aguilar held a lantern on a boathook, while Jane Foley, very wet, was doing a spell of baling. Aguilar dropped the boathook and, casting off, brought the punt alongside the yacht. The steps were lowered and Jane Foley, with laughing, rain-sprinkled face, climbed up. Aguilar handed her bag which contained nearly everything she possessed on earth. She and Audrey kissed calmly, and Audrey presented Mr. Gilman to a suddenly shy Jane. In the punt Miss Foley had been seen to take an affectionate leave of Aguilar. She now leaned over the rail.

"Good-bye!" she said, with warmth. "Thanks ever so much. It's been splendid. I do hope you won't be too wet. Can you row all the way home?" She shivered.

"I shall go back on the tide, Miss Foley," answered Aguilar.

He touched his cap to Audrey, mumbled gloomily a salutation, and loosed his hold on the yacht; and at once the punt felt the tide and began to glide away in the darkness towards Moze. The yacht's engine quickened. Flank buoy faded.

Mr. Gilman and the two girls made a group.

"You're wonderful! You really are!" said Mr. Gilman, addressing apparently the pair of them. He was enthusiastic. ... He added with grandeur, "And now for France!"

"I do hope Mr. Hurley is still hanging about Moze," said Audrey. "Mr. Gilman, shall I show Miss Foley her cabin? She's rather wet."

"Oh, do! Oh, do, please! But don't forget that we are to have supper together. I insist on supper."

And Audrey thought: "How agreeable he is! How kind-hearted! He hasn't got any 'career' to worry about, and I adore him, and he's as simple as knitting."



CHAPTER XXXIX

THE IMMINENT DRIVE

"Oh!" cried Miss Thompkins. "You can see it from here. It's funny how unreal it seems, isn't it?"

She pointed at one of the large white-curtained windows of the restaurant, through which was visible a round column covered with advertisements of theatres, music-halls, and concert-halls, printed in many colours and announcing superlative delights. Names famous wherever pleasure is understood gave to their variegated posters a pleasant air of distinguished familiarity—names of theatres such as "Varietes," "Vaudeville," "Chatelet," "Theatre Francais," "Folies-Bergere," and names of persons such as "Sarah Bernhardt," "Huegenet," "Le Bargy," "Litvinne," "Lavalliere." But the name in the largest type—dark crimson letters on rose paper—the name dominating all the rest, was the name of Musa. The ingenuous stranger to Paris was compelled to think that as an artist Musa was far more important than anybody else. Along the length of all the principal boulevards, and in many of the lesser streets, the ingenuous stranger encountered, at regular distances of a couple of hundred yards or so, one of these columns planted on the kerb; and all the scores of them bore exactly the same legend; they all spoke of nothing but blissful diversions, and they all put Musa ahead of anybody else in the world of the stage and the platform. Sarah Bernhardt herself, dark blue upon pale, was a trifle compared to Musa on the columns. And it had been so for days. Other posters were changed daily—changed by mysterious hands before even bread-girls were afoot with their yards of bread—but the space given to Musa repeated always the same tidings, namely that Musa ("the great violinist") was to give an orchestral concert at the Salle Xavier, assisted by the Xavier orchestra, on Thursday, September 24, at 9 P.M. Particulars of the programme followed.

Paris was being familiarised with Musa. His four letters looked down upon the fever of the thoroughfares; they were perused by tens of thousands of sitters in cafes and in front of cafes; they caught the eye of men and women fleeing from the wrath to come in taxicabs; they competed successfully with newspaper placards; and on that Thursday—for the Thursday in question had already run more than half its course—they had so entered into the sub-conscious brain of Paris that no habitue of the streets, whatever his ignorant indifference to the art of music, could have failed to reply with knowledge, on hearing Musa mentioned, "Oh, yes!" implying that he was fully acquainted with the existence of the said Musa.

Tommy was right: there did seem to be a certain unreality about the thing, yet it was utterly real.

All the women turned to glance at the name through the window, and some of them murmured sympathetic and interested exclamations and bright hopes. There were five women: Miss Thompkins, Miss Nickall, Madame Piriac, Miss Ingate and Audrey. And there was one man—Mr. Gilman. And the six were seated at a round table in the historic Parisian restaurant. Mr. Gilman had the air triumphant, and he was entitled to it. The supreme moment of his triumph had come. Having given a luncheon to these ladies, he had just asked, with due high negligence, for the bill. If there was one matter in which Mr. Gilman was a truly great expert, it was the matter of giving a meal in a restaurant. He knew how to dress for such an affair—with strict conventionality but a touch of devil-may-care youthfulness in the necktie. He knew how to choose the restaurant; he had about half a dozen in his repertoire—all of the first order and for the most part combining the exclusive with the amusing—entirely different in kind from the pandemonium where Audrey had eaten on the night of her first arrival in Paris; he knew how to get the best out of head-waiters and waiters, who in these restaurants were not head-waiters and waiters but worldly priests and acolytes; his profound knowledge of cookery sprang from a genuine interest in his stomach, and he could compose a menu in a fashion to command the respect of head-waiters and to excite the envy of musicians composing a sonata; he had the wit to look in early and see to the flowers; above all he was aware what women liked in the way of wine, and since this was never what he liked in the way of wine, he would always command a half-bottle of the extra dry for himself, but would have it manipulated with such discretion that not a guest could notice it. He paid lavishly and willingly, convinced by hard experience that the best is inestimable, but he felt too that the best was really quite cheap, for he knew that there were imperfectly educated people in the world who thought nothing of paying the price of a good meal for a mere engraving or a bit of china. Withal, he never expected his guests truly to appreciate the marvels he offered them. They could not, or very rarely. Their twittering ecstatic praise, which was without understanding, sufficed for him, though sometimes he would give gentle diffident instruction. This trait in him was very attractive, proving the genuineness of his modesty.

The luncheon was partly to celebrate the return of various persons to Paris, but chiefly in honour of Musa's concert. Musa could not be present, for distinguished public performers do not show themselves on the day of an appearance. Mr. Gilman had learnt this from Madame Piriac, whom he had consulted as to the list of guests. It is to be said that he bore the absence of Musa from his table with stoicism. For the rest, Madame Piriac knew that he wanted no other men, and she had suggested none. She had assumed that he desired Audrey, and had pointed out that Audrey could not well be invited without Miss Ingate, who, sick of her old Moze, had rejoined Audrey in the splendour of the Hotel du Danube. Mr. Gilman had somehow mentioned Miss Thompkins, whereupon Madame Piriac had declared that Miss Thompkins involved Miss Nickall, who after a complete recovery from the broken arm had returned for a while to her studio. And then Mr. Gilman had closed the list, saying that six was enough, and exactly the right number.

"At what o'clock are you going for the drive?" asked Madame Piriac in her improved, precise English. She looked equally at her self-styled uncle and at Audrey.

"I ordered the car for three o'clock," answered Mr. Gilman. "It is not yet quite three."

The table with its litter of ash-trays, empty cups, empty small glasses, and ravaged sweets, and the half-deserted restaurant, and the polite expectant weariness of the priests and acolytes, all showed that the hour was in fact not quite three—an hour at which such interiors have invariably the aspect of roses overblown and about to tumble to pieces.

And immediately upon the reference to the drive everybody at the table displayed a little constraint, avoiding the gaze of everybody else, thus demonstrating that the imminent drive was a delicate, without being a disagreeable, topic. Which requires explanation.

Mr. Gilman had not been seen by any of his guests during the summer. He had landed them at Boulogne from the Ariadne—sound but for one casualty. That casualty was Jane Foley, suffering from pneumonia, which had presumably developed during the evening of exposure spent with Aguilar in the leaking punt and in rain showers. Madame Piriac and Audrey took her to Wimereux and there nursed her through a long and sometimes dangerous illness. Jane possessed no constitution, but she had obstinacy, which saved her. In her convalescence, part of which she spent alone with Audrey (Madame Piriac having to pay visits to Monsieur Piriac), she had proceeded with the writing of a book, and she had also received in conclave the rarely seen Rosamund, who like herself was still a fugitive from British justice. These two had been elaborating a new plan of campaign, which was to include an incursion by themselves into England, and which had in part been confided by Jane to Audrey, who, having other notions in her head, had been somewhat troubled thereby. Audrey's conscience had occasionally told her to throw herself heartily into the campaign, but her individualistic instincts had in the end kept her safely on a fence between the campaign and something else. The something else was connected with Mr. Gilman.

Mr. Gilman had written to her regularly; he had sent dazzling subscriptions to the Suffragette Union; and Audrey had replied regularly. His letters were very simple, very modest, and quite touching. They were dated from various coastal places. However, he never came near Wimereux, though it was a coastal place. Audrey had excusably deemed this odd; but Madame Piriac having once said with marked casualness, "I hinted to him that he might with advantage stay away," Audrey had concealed her thoughts on the point. And one of her thoughts was that Madame Piriac was keeping them apart so as to try them, so as to test their mutual feelings. The policy, if it was a policy, was very like Madame Piriac; it had the effect of investing Mr. Gilman in Audrey's mind with a peculiar romantic and wistful charm, as of a sighing and obedient victim. Then Jane Foley and Rosamund had gone off somewhere, and Madame Piriac and Audrey had returned to Paris, and had found that practically all Paris had returned to Paris too. And on the first meeting with Mr. Gilman it had been at once established that his feelings and those of Audrey had surmounted the Piriac test. Within forty-eight hours all persons interested had mysteriously assumed that Mr. Gilman and Audrey were coupled together by fate and that a delicious crisis was about to supervene in their earthly progress. And they had become objects of exquisite solicitude. They had also become perfect. A circle of friends and acquaintances waited in excited silence for a palpitating event, as a populace waits for the booming gunfire which is to inaugurate a national rejoicing. And when the news exuded that he was taking her for a drive to Meudon, which she had never seen, alone, all decided beyond any doubt that he would do it during the drive.

Hence the nice constraint at the table when the drive grew publicly and avowedly imminent.

Audrey, as the phrase is, "felt her position keenly," but not unpleasantly, nor with understanding. Not a word had passed of late between herself and Mr. Gilman that any acquaintance might not have listened to. Indeed, Mr. Gilman had become slightly more formal. She liked him for that, as she liked him for a large number of qualities. She did not know whether she loved him. And strange to say, the question did not passionately interest her. The only really interesting questions were: Would he propose to her? And would she accept him? She had no logical ground for assuming that he would propose to her. None of her friends had informed her of the general expectation that he would propose to her. Yet she knew that everybody expected him to propose to her quite soon—indeed within the next couple of hours. And she felt that everybody was right. The universe was full of mysteries for Audrey. As regards her answer to any proposal, she foresaw—another mystery—that it would not depend upon self-examination or upon reason, or upon anything that could be defined. It would depend upon an instinct over which her mind—nay, even her heart—had no control. She was quite certainly aware that this instinct would instruct her brain to instruct her lips to say "Yes." The idea of saying "No" simply could not be conceived. All the forces in the universe would combine to prevent her from saying "No."

The one thing that might have countered that enigmatic and powerful instinct was a consideration based upon the difference between her age and that of Mr. Gilman. It is true that she did not know what the difference was, because she did not know Mr. Gilman's age. And she could not ask him. No! Such is the structure of society that she could not say to Mr. Gilman, "By the way, Mr. Gilman, how old are you?" She could properly ascertain his tastes about all manner of fundamental points, such as the shape of chair-legs, the correct hour for dining, or the comparative merits of diamonds and emeralds; but this trifle of information about his age could not be asked for. And he did not make her a present of it. She might have questioned Madame Piriac, but she could not persuade herself to question Madame Piriac either. However, what did it matter? Even if she learnt his age to a day, he would still be precisely the same Mr. Gilman. And let him be as old or as young as he might, she was still his equal in age. She was far more than six months older than she had been six months ago.

The influence of Madame Piriac through the summer had indirectly matured her. For above all Madame Piriac had imperceptibly taught her the everlasting joy and duty of exciting the sympathy, admiration and gratitude of the other sex. Hence Audrey had aged at a miraculous rate because in order to please Mr. Gilman she wished—possibly without knowing it—to undo the disparity between herself and him. This may be strange, but it is assuredly more true than strange. To the same ends she had concealed her own age. Nobody except Miss Ingate knew how old she was. She only made it clear, when doubts seemed to exist, that she had passed her majority long before. Further, her wealth, magnified by legend, assisted her age. Not that she was so impressed by her wealth as she had been. She had met American women in Paris compared to whom she was at destitution's door. She knew one woman who had kept a 2,000-ton yacht lying all summer in the outer harbour at Boulogne, and had used it during that period for exactly eleven hours.

Few of these people had an establishment. They would rent floors in hotels, or chateaux in Touraine, or yachts, but they had no home, and yet they seemed very content and beyond doubt they were very free. And so Audrey did not trouble about having a home. She had Moze, which was more than many of her acquaintances had. She would not use it, but she had it. And she was content in the knowledge of the power to create a home when she felt inclined to create one. Not that it would not have been absurd to set about creating a home with Mr. Gilman hanging over her like a destiny. It would have been rude to him to do so; it would have been to transgress against the inter-sexual code as promulgated by Madame Piriac.... She wondered what sort of a place Meudon was, and whether he would propose to her while they were looking at the view together.... She trembled with the sense of adventure, which had little to do with happiness or unhappiness.... But would he propose to her? Not improbably the whole conception of the situation was false and she was being ridiculous!

Still the nice constraint persisted as the women began to put on their gloves, while Mr. Gilman had a word with the chief priest. And Audrey had the illusion of being a dedicated victim. As she self-consciously and yet proudly handled her gloves she could not help but notice the simple gold wedding-ring on a certain finger. She had never removed it. She had never formally renounced her claim to the status of a widow. That she was not a widow, that she had been guilty of a fraud on a gullible public, was somehow generally known; but the facts were not referred to, save perhaps in rare hints by Tommy, and she had continued to be known as Mrs. Moncreiff. Ignominious close to a daring enterprise! And in the circumstances nothing was more out of place than the ring, bought in cold, wilful, calculating naughtiness at Colchester.

Just when Miss Ingate was beginning to discuss her own plans for the afternoon, Mr. Price entered the restaurant, and as he did so Miss Thompkins, saying something about the small type on the poster outside, went to the window to examine it. Mr. Price, disguised as a discreet dandy-about-town, bore a parcel of music. He removed a most glossy hat; he bowed to the whole company of ladies, who responded with smiles in which was acknowledge that he was a dandy in addition to being a secretary; and lastly with deference he handed the parcel of music to Mr. Gilman.

"So you did get it! What did I tell you?" said Mr. Gilman with negligent condescension. "A minute later, and we should have been gone.... Has Mr. Price got this right?" he asked Audrey, putting the music respectfully in front of her.

It included the reduced score of the Beethoven violin concerto, and other items to be performed that night at the Salle Xavier.

"Oh! Thank you, Mr. Price!" said Audrey. The music was so fresh and glossy and luscious to the eye that it was like a gift of fruit.

"That'll do, then, Price," said Mr. Gilman. "Don't forget about those things for to-night, will you?"

"No, sir. I have a note of all of them."

Mr. Price bowed and turned away, assuming his perfect hat. As he approached the door Tommy intercepted him; and said something to him in a low voice, to which he uncomfortably mumbled a reply. As they had admittedly been friends in Mr. Price's artistic days, exception could not be taken to this colloquy. Nevertheless Audrey, being as suspicious as a real widow, regarded it ill, thinking all manner of things. And when Tommy, humming, came back to her seat on Mr. Gilman's left hand, Audrey thought: "And why, after all, should she be on his left hand? It is of course proper that I should be on his right, but why should Tommy be on his left? Why not Madame Piriac or Miss Ingate?"

"And what am I going to do this afternoon?" demanded Miss Ingate, lengthening the space between her nose and her upper lip, and turning down the corners of her lower lip.

"You have to try that new dress on, Winnie," said Audrey rather reprovingly.

"Alone? Me go alone there? I wouldn't do it. It's not respectable the way they look at you and add you up and question you in those trying-on rooms, when they've got you."

"Well, take Elise with you."

"Me take Elise? I won't do it, not unless I could keep her mouth full of pins all the time. Whenever we're alone, and her mouth isn't full of pins, she always talks to me as if I was an actress. And I'm not."

"Well, then," said Miss Nickall kindly, "come with me and Tommy. We haven't anything to do, and I'm taking Tommy to see Jane Foley. Jane would love to see you."

"She might," replied Miss Ingate. "Oh! She might. But I think I'll walk across to the hotel and just go to bed and sleep it off."

"Sleep what off?" asked Tommy, with necklace rattling and orchidaceous eyes glittering.

"Oh! Everything! Everything!" shrieked Miss Ingate.

There was one other customer left in the restaurant, a solitary fair, fat man, and as Mr. Gilman's party was leaving, Audrey last, this solitary fair, fat man caught her eye, bowed, and rose. It was Mr. Cowl, secretary of the National Reformation Society. He greeted her with the assurance of an old and valued friend, and he called her neither Miss nor Mrs.; he called her nothing at all. Audrey accepted his lead.

"And is your Society still alive?" she asked with casual polite disdain.

"Going strong!" said Mr. Cowl. "More flourishing than ever—in spite of our bad luck." He lifted his sandy-coloured eyebrows. "Of course I'm here on Society business. In fact, I often have to come to Paris on Society business." His glance deprecated the appearance of the table over which his rounded form was protruding.

"Well, I'm glad to have seen you again," said Audrey, holding out her hand.

"I wonder," said Mr. Cowl, drawing some tickets from his pocket. "I wonder whether you—and your friends—would care to go to a concert to-night at the Salle Xavier. The concierge at my hotel is giving tickets away, and I took some—rather to oblige him than anything else. For one never knows when a concierge may not be useful. I don't suppose it will be anything great, but it will pass the time, and—er—strangers in Paris——"

"Thank you, Mr. Cowl, but I'm not a stranger in Paris. I live here."

"Oh! I beg your pardon," said Mr. Cowl. "Excuse me. Then you won't take them? Pity! I hate to see anything wasted."

Audrey was both desolated and infuriated.

"Remember me respectfully to Miss Ingate, please," finished Mr. Cowl. "She didn't see me as she passed."

He returned the tickets to his pocket.

Outside, Madame Piriac, standing by her automobile, which had rolled up with the silence of an hallucination, took leave of Audrey.

"Eh bien! Au revoir!" said she shortly, with a peculiar challenging half-smile, which seemed to be saying, "Are you going to be worthy of my education? Let us hope so."

And Miss Nickall, with her grey hair growing fluffier under a somewhat rakish hat, said with a smile of sheer intense watchful benevolence:

"Well, good-bye!"

While Nick was ecstatically thanking Mr. Gilman for his hospitality, Tommy called Audrey aside. Madame Piriac's car had vanished.

"Have you heard about the rehearsal this morning?" she asked, in a confidential tone, anxious and yet quizzical.

"No! What about it?" Audrey demanded. Various apprehensions were competing for attention in her brain. The episode of Mr. Cowl had agitated her considerably. And now she was standing right against the column bearing Musa's name in those large letters, and other columns up and down the gay, busy street echoed clear the name. And how unreal it was!... Tickets being given away in half-dozens!... She ought to have been profoundly disturbed by such a revelation, and she was. But here was the drive with Mr. Gilman insisting on a monopoly of all her faculties. And on the top of everything—Tommy with her strange gaze and tone! Tommy carefully hesitated before replying.

"He lost his temper and left it in the middle—orchestra and conductor and Xavier and all! And he swore he wouldn't play to-night."

"Nonsense!"

"Yes, he did."

"Who told you?"

Already the two women were addressing each other as foes.

"A man I know in the orchestra."

"Why didn't you tell us at once—when you came?"

"Well, I didn't want to spoil the luncheon. But of course I ought to have done. You, at any rate, seeing your interest in the concert! I'm sorry."

"My interest in the concert?" Audrey objected.

"Well, my girl," said Tommy, half cajolingly and half threateningly, "you aren't going to stand there and tell me to my face that you haven't put up that concert for him?"

"Put up the concert! Put up the——" Audrey knew she was blushing.

"Paid for it! Paid for it!" said Tommy, with impatience.



CHAPTER XL

GENIUS AT BAY

Audrey got away from the group in front of the restaurant with stammering words and crimson confusion. She ran. She stopped a taxi and stumbled into it. There remained with her vividly the vision of the startled, entirely puzzled face of Mr. Gilman, who in an instant had been transformed from a happy, dignified and excusably self-satisfied human male into an outraged rebel whose grievance had overwhelmed his dignity. She had said hurriedly: "Please excuse me not coming with you. But Tommy says something's happened to Musa, and I must go and see. It's very important." And that was all she had said. Had she asked him to drive her to Musa's, Mr. Gilman would have been very pleased to do so; but she did not think of that till it was too late. Her precipitancy had been terrible, and had staggered even Tommy. She had no idea how the group would arrange itself. And she had no very clear idea as to what was wrong with Musa or how matters stood in regard to the concert. Tommy had asserted that she did not know whether the orchestra and its conductor meant to be at their desks in the evening just as though nothing whatever had occurred at the rehearsal. All was vague, and all was disturbing. She had asked Tommy the authority for her assertion that she, Audrey, was financing the concert. To which Tommy had replied that she had "guessed, of course." And seeing that Audrey had only interviewed a concert agent once—and he a London concert agent with relations in Paris—and that she had never uttered a word about the affair to anybody except Mr. Foulger, who had been keeping an eye on the expenditure, it was not improbable that Tommy had just guessed. But she had guessed right. She was an uncanny woman. "Have you ever spoken to Musa about—it?" Audrey had passionately demanded; and Tommy had answered also passionately: "Of course not. I'm a white woman all through. Haven't you learnt that yet?"

The taxi, although it was a horse-taxi and incapable of moving at more than five miles an hour, reached the Rue Cassette, which was on the other side of the river and quite a long way off, in no time. That is to say, Audrey was not aware that any time had passed. She had received the address from Tommy, for it was a new address, Musa having admittedly risen in the world. The house was an old one; it had a curious staircase, with china knobs on the principal banisters of the rail, and crimson-tasselled bell cords at all the doors of the flats. Musa lived at the summit of it. Audrey arrived there short of breath, took the crimson-tasselled cord in her hand to pull, and then hesitated in order to think.

Why had she come? The response was clear. She had come solely because she hated to see a job botched, and there was not a moment to lose if it was not to be botched. She had come, not because she had the slightest sympathetic interest in Musa—on the contrary, she was coldly angry with him—but because she had a horror of fiascos. She had found a genius who needed financing, and she, possessing some tons of money, had financed him, and she did not mean to see an ounce of her money wasted if she could help it. Her interest in the affair was artistic and impersonal, and none other. It was the duty of wealthy magnates to foster art, and she was fostering art, and she would have the thing done neatly and completely, or she would know the reason. Fancy a rational creature making a scene at a final rehearsal and swearing that he would not play, and then bolting! It was monstrous! People really did not do such things. Assuredly no artist had ever done such a thing before. Artists who had a concert all to themselves invariably appeared according to advertised promise. An artist who was only one among several in a programme might fall ill and fail to appear, for such artists are liable to the accidents of earthly existence. But an artist who shared the programme with nobody else was above the accidents of earthly existence and magically protected against colds, coughs, influenza, orange peel, automobiles, and all the other enemies of mankind. But, of course, Musa was peculiar, erratic and unpredictable beyond even the wide range granted by society to genius. And yet of late he had been behaving himself in a marvellous manner. He had never bothered her. On the voyage back to France he had not bothered her. They had separated with punctilious cordiality. Neither of them had written to the other, but she knew that he was working diligently and satisfactorily. He was apparently cured of her. It was perhaps due to the seeming completeness of his cure that her relations with Mr. Gilman had been what they were. ... And now, suddenly, this!

So with clear conscience she pulled the bell cord.

Musa himself opened the door. He was coatless and in a dressing-gown, under which showed glimpses of a new smartness. As soon as he saw her he went very pale.

"Bon jour," she said.

He repeated the phrase stiffly.

"Can I come in?" she asked.

He silently signified, with a certain annoying resignation, that she might. For one instant she was under a tremendous impulse to walk grandly and haughtily down the stairs. But she conquered the impulse. He was so pale.