Mr Pilkington, dimly realizing that the financial aspect of the affair had been more or less satisfactorily adjusted was nevertheless conscious of a feeling that he was being thwarted. He had much more to say about Uncle Chris and his methods of doing business, and it irked him to be cut short like this.

"Yes, but I do think. . . . That's all very well, but I have by no means finished . . ."

"Yes, you have," said Wally.

"There's nothing more to talk about," repeated Jill. "I'm sorry this should have happened, but you've nothing to complain about now, have you? Good night."

And she turned quickly away, and walked towards the door.

"But I hadn't finished!" wailed Mr Pilkington, clutching at Wally. He was feeling profoundly aggrieved. If it is bad to be all dressed up and no place to go, it is almost worse to be full of talk and to have no one to talk it to. Otis Pilkington had at least another twenty minutes of speech inside him on the topic of Uncle Chris, and Wally was the nearest human being with a pair of ears.

Wally was in no mood to play the part of confidant. He pushed Mr Pilkington earnestly in the chest and raced after Jill. Mr Pilkington, with the feeling that the world was against him, tottered back into the arms of Mr Goble, who had now recovered his breath and was ready to talk business.

"Have a good cigar," said Mr Goble, producing one. "Now, see here, let's get right down to it. If you'd care to sell out for twenty thousand . . ."

"I would not care to sell out for twenty thousand!" yelled the overwrought Mr Pilkington. "I wouldn't sell out for a million! You're a swindler! You want to rob me! You're a crook!"

"Yes, yes," assented Mr Goble gently. "But, all joking aside, suppose I was to go up to twenty-five thousand . . . ?" He twined his fingers lovingly in the slack of Mr Pilkington's coat. "Come now! You're a good kid! Shall we say twenty-five thousand?"

"We will not say twenty-five thousand! Let me go!"

"Now, now, now!" pleaded Mr Goble. "Be sensible! don't get all worked up! Say, do have a good cigar!"

"I won't have a good cigar!" shouted Mr Pilkington.

He detached himself with a jerk, and stalked with long strides up the stage. Mr Goble watched him go with a lowering gaze. A heavy sense of the unkindness of fate was oppressing Mr Goble. If you couldn't gyp a bone-headed amateur out of a piece of property, whom could you gyp? Mr Goble sighed. It hardly seemed to him worth while going on.

4.

Out in the street Wally had overtaken Jill, and they faced one another in the light of a street lamp. Forty-first Street at midnight is a quiet oasis. They had it to themselves.

Jill was pale, and she was breathing quickly, but she forced a smile.

"Well, Wally," she said. "My career as a manager didn't last long, did it?"

"What are you going to do?"

Jill looked down the street.

"I don't know," she said. "I suppose I shall have to start trying to find something."

"But . . ."

Jill drew him suddenly into the dark alley-way leading to the stage-door of the Gotham Theatre's nearest neighbor: and, as she did so, a long, thin form, swathed in an overcoat and surmounted by an opera-hat, flashed past.

"I don't think I could have gone through another meeting with Mr Pilkington," said Jill. "It wasn't his fault, and he was quite justified, but what he said about Uncle Chris rather hurt."

Wally, who had ideas of his own similar to those of Mr Pilkington on the subject of Uncle Chris and had intended to express them, prudently kept them unspoken.

"I suppose," he said, "there is no doubt . . . ?"

"There can't be. Poor Uncle Chris! He is like Freddie. He means well!"

There was a pause. They left the alley and walked down the street.

"Where are you going now?" asked Wally.

"I'm going home."

"Where's home?"

"Forty-ninth Street. I live in a boarding-house there." A sudden recollection of the boarding-house at which she had lived in Atlantic City smote Wally, and it turned the scale. He had not intended to speak, but he could not help himself.

"Jill!" he cried. "It's no good. I must say it! I want to get you out of all this. I want to take care of you. Why should you go on living this sort of life, when. . . . Why won't you let me . . . ?"

He stopped. Even as he spoke, he realized the futility of what he was saying. Jill was not a girl to be won with words.

They walked on in silence for a moment. They crossed Broadway, noisy with night traffic, and passed into the stillness on the other side.

"Wally," said Jill at last.

She was looking straight in front of her. Her voice was troubled.

"Yes?"

Jill hesitated.

"Wally, you wouldn't want me to marry you if you knew you weren't the only man in the world that mattered to me, would you?"

They had reached Sixth Avenue before Wally replied.

"No!" he said.

For an instant, Jill could not have said whether the feeling that shot through her like the abrupt touching of a nerve was relief or disappointment. Then suddenly she realized that it was disappointment. It was absurd to her to feel disappointed, but at that moment she would have welcomed a different attitude in him. If only this problem of hers could be taken forcefully out of her hands, what a relief it would be. If only Wally, masterfully insistent, would batter down her hesitations and grab her, knock her on the head and carry her off like a caveman, care less about her happiness and concentrate on his own, what a solution it would be. . . . But then he wouldn't be Wally. . . . Nevertheless, Jill gave a little sigh. Her new life had changed her already. It had blunted the sharp edge of her independence. Tonight she was feeling the need of some one to lean on—some one strong and cosy and sympathetic who would treat her like a little girl and shield her from all the roughness of life. The fighting spirit had gone out of her, and she was no longer the little warrior facing the world with a brave eye and a tilted chin. She wanted to cry and be petted.

"No!" said Wally again. There had been the faintest suggestion of a doubt when he had spoken the word before, but now it shot out like a bullet. "And I'll tell you why. I want you—and, if you married me feeling like that, it wouldn't be you. I want Jill, the whole Jill, and nothing but Jill, and, if I can't have that, I'd rather not have anything. Marriage isn't a motion-picture close-up with slow fade-out on the embrace. It's a partnership, and what's the good of a partnership if your heart's not in it? It's like collaborating with a man you dislike. . . . I believe you wish sometimes—not often, perhaps, but when you're feeling lonely and miserable—that I would pester and bludgeon you into marrying me. . . . What's the matter?"

Jill had started. It was disquieting to have her thoughts read with such accuracy.

"Nothing," she said.

"It wouldn't be any good," Wally went on "because it wouldn't be me. I couldn't keep that attitude up, and I know I should hate myself for ever having tried it. There's nothing in the world I wouldn't do to help you, though I know it's no use offering to do anything. You're a fighter, and you mean to fight your own battle. It might happen that, if I kept after you and badgered you and nagged you, one of these days, when you were feeling particularly all alone in the world and tired of fighting for yourself, you might consent to marry me. But it wouldn't do. Even if you reconciled yourself to it, it wouldn't do. I suppose, the cave-woman sometimes felt rather relieved when everything was settled for her with a club, but I'm sure the caveman must have had a hard time ridding himself of the thought that he had behaved like a cad and taken a mean advantage. I don't want to feel like that. I couldn't make you happy if I felt like that. Much better to have you go on regarding me as a friend . . . knowing that, if ever your feelings do change, that I am right there, waiting."

"But by that time your feelings will have changed."

Wally laughed.

"Never!"

"You'll meet some other girl . . ."

"I've met every girl in the world! None of them will do!" The lightness came back into Wally's voice. "I'm sorry for the poor things, but they won't do! Take 'em away! There's only one girl in the world for me—oh, confound it! why is it that one always thinks in song-titles! Well, there it is. I'm not going to bother you. We're pals. And, as a pal, may I offer you my bank-roll?"

"No!" said Jill. She smiled up at him. "I believe you would give me your coat if I asked you for it!"

Wally stopped.

"Do you want it? Here you are!"

"Wally, behave! There's a policeman looking at you!"

"Oh, well, if you won't! It's a good coat, all the same."

They turned the corner, and stopped before a brown-stone house, with a long ladder of untidy steps running up to the front door.

"Is this where you live?" Wally asked. He looked at the gloomy place disapprovingly. "You do choose the most awful places!"

"I don't choose them. They're thrust on me. Yes, this is where I live. If you want to know the exact room, it's the third window up there over the front door. Well, good night."

"Good night," said Wally. He paused. "Jill."

"Yes?"

"I know it's not worth mentioning, and it's breaking our agreement to mention it, but you do understand, don't you?"

"Yes, Wally dear, I understand."

"I'm round the corner, you know, waiting! And, if you ever do change, all you've got to do is just to come to me and say 'It's all right!' . . ."

Jill laughed a little shakily.

"That doesn't sound very romantic!"

"Not sound romantic! If you can think of any three words in the language that sound more romantic, let me have them! Well, never mind how they sound, just say them, and watch the result! But you must get to bed. Good night."

"Good night, Wally."

She passed in through the dingy door. It closed behind her, and Wally stood for some moments staring at it with a gloomy repulsion. He thought he had never seen a dingier door.

Then he started to walk back to his apartment. He walked very quickly, with clenched hands. He was wondering if after all there was not something to be said for the methods of the caveman when he went a-wooing. Twinges of conscience the caveman may have had when all was over, but at least he had established his right to look after the woman he loved.



CHAPTER NINETEEN

1.

"They tell me . . . I am told . . . I am informed . . . No, one moment, Miss Frisby."

Mrs Peagrim wrinkled her fair forehead. It has been truly said that there is no agony like the agony of literary composition, and Mrs. Peagrim was having rather a bad time getting the requisite snap and ginger into her latest communication to the press. She bit her lip, and would have passed her twitching fingers restlessly through her hair but for the thought of the damage which such an action must do to her coiffure. Miss Frisby, her secretary, an anaemic and negative young woman, waited patiently, pad on knee, and tapped her teeth with her pencil.

"Please do not make that tapping noise, Miss Frisby," said the sufferer querulously. "I cannot think. Otie, dear, can't you suggest a good phrase? You ought to be able to, being an author."

Mr Pilkington, who was strewn over an arm-chair by the window, awoke from his meditations, which, to judge from the furrow just above the bridge of his tortoiseshell spectacles and the droop of his weak chin, were not pleasant. It was the morning after the production of "The Rose of America," and he had passed a sleepless night, thinking of the harsh words he had said to Jill. Could she ever forgive him? Would she have the generosity to realize that a man ought not to be held accountable for what he says in the moment when he discovers that he has been cheated, deceived, robbed,—in a word, hornswoggled? He had been brooding on this all night, and he wanted to go on brooding now. His aunt's question interrupted his train of thought.

"Eh?" he said vaguely, gaping.

"Oh, don't be so absent-minded!" snapped Mrs Peagrim, not unjustifiably annoyed. "I am trying to compose a paragraph for the papers about our party tonight, and I can't get the right phrase . . . Read what you've written, Miss Frisby."

Miss Frisby, having turned a pale eye on the pothooks and twiddleys in her note-book, translated them in a pale voice.

"'Surely of all the leading hostesses in New York Society there can be few more versatile than Mrs Waddlesleigh Peagrim. I am amazed every time I go to her delightful home on West End Avenue to see the scope and variety of her circle of intimates. Here you will see an ambassador with a fever . . .'"

"With a what?" demanded Mrs Peagrim sharply.

"'Fever,' I thought you said," replied Miss Frisby stolidly. "I wrote 'fever'."

"'Diva.' Do use your intelligence, my good girl. Go on."

"'Here you will see an ambassador with a diva from the opera, exchanging the latest gossip from the chancelleries for intimate news of the world behind the scenes. There, the author of the latest novel talking literature to the newest debutante. Truly one may say that Mrs Peagrim has revived the saloon.'"

Mrs Peagrim bit her lip.

"'Salon'."

"'Salon'," said Miss Frisby unemotionally. "'They tell me, I am told, I am informed . . .'" She paused. "That's all I have."

"Scratch out those last words," said Mrs Peagrim irritably. "You really are hopeless, Miss Frisby! Couldn't you see that I had stopped dictating and was searching for a phrase? Otie, what is a good phrase for 'I am told'?"

Mr Pilkington forced his wandering attention to grapple with the problem.

"'I hear'," he suggested at length.

"Tchah!" ejaculated his aunt. Then her face brightened. "I have it. Take dictation, please, Miss Frisby. 'A little bird whispers to me that there were great doings last night on the stage of the Gotham Theatre after the curtain had fallen on "The Rose of America" which, as everybody knows, is the work of Mrs Peagrim's clever young nephew, Otis Pilkington.'" Mrs Peagrim shot a glance at her clever young nephew, to see how he appreciated the boost, but Otis' thoughts were far away once more. He was lying on his spine, brooding, brooding. Mrs Peagrim resumed her dictation. "'In honor of the extraordinary success of the piece, Mrs Peagrim, who certainly does nothing by halves, entertained the entire company to a supper-dance after the performance. A number of prominent people were among the guests, and Mrs Peagrim was a radiant and vivacious hostess. She has never looked more charming. The high jinks were kept up to an advanced hour, and every one agreed that they had never spent a more delightful evening.' There! Type as many copies as are necessary, Miss Frisby, and send them out this afternoon with photographs."

Miss Frisby having vanished in her pallid way, the radiant and vivacious hostess turned on her nephew again.

"I must say, Otie," she began complainingly, "that, for a man who has had a success like yours, you are not very cheerful. I should have thought the notices of the piece would have made you the happiest man in New York."

There was once a melodrama where the child of the persecuted heroine used to dissolve the gallery in tears by saying "Happiness? What is happiness, moth-aw?" Mr Pilkington did not use these actual words, but he reproduced the stricken infant's tone with great fidelity.

"Notices! What are notices to me?"

"Oh, don't be so affected!" cried Mrs Peagrim. "Don't pretend that you don't know every word of them by heart!"

"I have not seen the notices, Aunt Olive," said Mr Pilkington dully.

Mrs Peagrim looked at him with positive alarm. She had never been overwhelmingly attached to her long nephew, but since his rise to fame something resembling affection had sprung up in her, and his attitude now disturbed her.

"You can't be well, Otie!" she said solicitously. "Are you ill?"

"I have a severe headache," replied the martyr. "I passed a wakeful night."

"Let me go and mix you a dose of the most wonderful mixture," said Mrs. Peagrim maternally. "Poor boy! I don't wonder, after all the nervousness and excitement . . . You sit quite still and rest. I will be back in a moment."

She bustled out of the room, and Mr Pilkington sagged back into his chair. He had hardly got his meditations going once more, when the door opened and the maid announced "Major Selby."

"Good morning," said Uncle Chris breezily, sailing down the fairway with outstretched hand. "How are—oh!"

He stopped abruptly, perceiving that Mrs Peagrim was not present and—a more disturbing discovery—that Otis Pilkington was. It would be exaggeration to say that Uncle Chris was embarrassed. That master-mind was never actually embarrassed. But his jauntiness certainly ebbed a little, and he had to pull his mustache twice before he could face the situation with his customary aplomb. He had not expected to find Otis Pilkington here, and Otis was the last man he wished to meet. He had just parted from Jill, who had been rather plain-spoken with regard to the recent financial operations: and, though possessed only of a rudimentary conscience, Uncle Chris was aware that his next interview with young Mr Pilkington might have certain aspects bordering on awkwardness and he would have liked time to prepare a statement for the defence. However, here the man was, and the situation must be faced.

"Pilkington!" he cried. "My dear fellow! Just the man I wanted to see! I'm afraid there has been a little misunderstanding. Of course, it has all been cleared up now, but still I must insist on making a personal explanation, really I must insist. The whole matter was a most absurd misunderstanding. It was like this . . ."

Here Uncle Chris paused in order to devote a couple of seconds to thought. He had said it was "like this," and he gave his mustache another pull as though he were trying to drag inspiration out of it. His blue eyes were as frank and honest as ever, and showed no trace of the perplexity in his mind, but he had to admit to himself that, if he managed to satisfy his hearer that all was for the best and that he had acted uprightly and without blame, he would be doing well.

Fortunately, the commercial side of Mr Pilkington was entirely dormant this morning. The matter of the ten thousand dollars seemed trivial to him in comparison with the weightier problems which occupied his mind.

"Have you seen Miss Mariner?" he asked eagerly.

"Yes. I have just parted from her. She was upset, poor girl, of course, exceedingly upset."

Mr Pilkington moaned hollowly.

"Is she very angry with me?"

For a moment the utter inexplicability of the remark silenced Uncle Chris. Why Jill should be angry with Mr Pilkington for being robbed of ten thousand dollars, he could not understand, for Jill had told him nothing of the scene that had taken place on the previous night. But evidently this point was to Mr Pilkington the nub of the matter, and Uncle Chris, like the strategist he was, rearranged his forces to meet the new development.

"Angry?" he said slowly. "Well, of course . . ."

He did not know what it was all about, but no doubt if he confined himself to broken sentences which meant nothing light would shortly be vouchsafed to him.

"In the heat of the moment," confessed Mr Pilkington, "I'm afraid I said things to Miss Mariner which I now regret."

Uncle Chris began to feel on solid ground again.

"Dear, dear!" he murmured regretfully.

"I spoke hastily."

"Always think before you speak, my boy."

"I considered that I had been cheated . . ."

"My dear boy!" Uncle Chris' blue eyes opened wide. "Please! Haven't I said that I could explain all that? It was a pure misunderstanding . . ."

"Oh, I don't care about that part of it . . ."

"Quite right," said Uncle Chris cordially. "Let bygones be bygones. Start with a clean slate. You have your money back, and there's no need to say another word about it. Let us forget it," he concluded generously. "And, if I have any influence with Jill, you may count on me to use it to dissipate any little unfortunate rift which may have occurred between you."

"You think there's a chance that she might overlook what I said?"

"As I say, I will use any influence I may possess to heal the breach. I like you, my boy. And I am sure that Jill likes you. She will make allowances for any ill-judged remarks you may have uttered in a moment of heat."

Mr Pilkington brightened, and Mrs Peagrim, returning with a medicine-glass, was pleased to see him looking so much better.

"You are a positive wizard, Major Selby," she said archly. "What have you been saying to the poor boy to cheer him up so? He has a bad headache this morning."

"Headache?" said Uncle Chris, starting like a war-horse that has heard the bugle. "I don't know if I have ever mentioned it, but I used to suffer from headaches at one time. Extraordinarily severe headaches. I tried everything, until one day a man I knew recommended a thing called—don't know if you have ever heard of it . . ."

Mrs Peagrim, in her role of ministering angel, was engrossed with her errand of mercy. She was holding the medicine-glass to Mr Pilkington's lips, and the seed fell on stony ground.

"Drink this, dear," urged Mrs Peagrim.

"Nervino," said Uncle Chris.

"There!" said Mrs Peagrim. "That will make you feel much better. How well you always look, Major Selby!"

"And yet at one time," said Uncle Chris perseveringly, "I was a martyr . . ."

"I can't remember if I told you last night about the party. We are giving a little supper-dance to the company of Otie's play after the performance this evening. Of course you will come?"

Uncle Chris philosophically accepted his failure to secure the ear of his audience. Other opportunities would occur.

"Delighted," he said. "Delighted."

"Quite a simple, bohemian little affair," proceeded Mrs Peagrim. "I thought it was only right to give the poor things a little treat after they have all worked so hard."

"Certainly, certainly. A capital idea."

"We shall be quite a small party. If I once started asking anybody outside our real friends, I should have to ask everybody."

The door opened.

"Mr Rooke," announced the maid.

Freddie, like Mr Pilkington, was a prey to gloom this morning. He had read one or two of the papers, and they had been disgustingly lavish in their praise of The McWhustle of McWhustle. It made Freddie despair of the New York press. In addition to this, he had been woken up at seven o'clock, after going to sleep at three, by the ringing of the telephone and the announcement that a gentleman wished to see him: and he was weighed down with that heavy-eyed languor which comes to those whose night's rest is broken.

"Why, how do you do, Mr Rooke!" said Mrs Peagrim.

"How-de-do," replied Freddie, blinking in the strong light from the window. "Hope I'm not barging in and all that sort of thing? I came round about this party tonight, you know."

"Oh, yes?"

"Was wondering," said Freddie, "if you would mind if I brought a friend of mine along? Popped in on me from England this morning. At seven o'clock," said Freddie plaintively. "Ghastly hour, what! Didn't do a thing to the good old beauty sleep! Well, what I mean to say is, I'd be awfully obliged if you'd let me bring him along."

"Why, of course," said Mrs Peagrim. "Any friend of yours, Mr Rooke . . ."

"Thanks awfully. Special reason why I'd like him to come, and all that. He's a fellow named Underhill. Sir Derek Underhill. Been a pal of mine for years and years."

Uncle Chris started.

"Underhill! Is Derek Underhill in America?"

"Landed this morning. Routed me out of bed at seven o'clock."

"Oh, do you know him, too, Major Selby?" said Mrs Peagrim. "Then I'm sure he must be charming!"

"Charming," began Uncle Chris in measured tones, "is an adjective which I cannot . . ."

"Well, thanks most awfully," interrupted Freddie. "It's fearfully good of you to let me bring him along. I must be staggering off now. Lot of things to do."

"Oh, must you go already?"

"Absolutely must. Lot of things to do."

Uncle Chris extended a hand to his hostess.

"I think I will be going along, too, Mrs Peagrim. I'll walk a few yards with you, Freddie my boy. There are one or two things I would like to talk over. Till tonight, Mrs Peagrim."

"Till tonight, Major Selby." She turned to Mr Pilkington as the door closed. "What charming manners Major Selby has, So polished. A sort of old-world courtesy. So smooth!"

"Smooth," said Mr Pilkington dourly, "is right!"

2.

Uncle Chris confronted Freddie sternly outside the front door.

"What does this mean? Good God, Freddie, have you no delicacy?"

"Eh?" said Freddie blankly.

"Why are you bringing Underhill to this party? Don't you realize that poor Jill will be there? How do you suppose she will feel when she sees that blackguard again? The cad who threw her over and nearly broke her heart!"

Freddie's jaw fell. He groped for his fallen eyeglass.

"Oh, my aunt! Do you think she will be pipped?"

"A sensitive girl like Jill!"

"But, listen. Derek wants to marry her."

"What!"

"Oh, absolutely. That's why he's come over."

Uncle Chris shook his head.

"I don't understand this. I saw the letter myself which he wrote to her, breaking off the engagement."

"Yes, but he's dashed sorry about all that now. Wishes he had never been such a mug, and all that sort of thing. As a matter of fact, that's why I shot over here in the first place. As an ambassador, don't you know. I told Jill all about it directly I saw her, but she seemed inclined to give it a miss rather, so I cabled old Derek to pop here in person. Seemed to me, don't you know, that Jill might be more likely to make it up and all that if she saw old Derek."

Uncle Chris nodded, his composure restored.

"Very true. Yes, certainly, my boy, you acted most sensibly. Badly as Underhill behaved, she undoubtedly loved him. It would be the best possible thing that could happen if they could be brought together. It is my dearest wish to see Jill comfortably settled. I was half hoping that she might marry young Pilkington."

"Good God! The Pilker!"

"He is quite a nice young fellow," argued Uncle Chris. "None too many brains, perhaps, but Jill would supply that deficiency. Still, of course, Underhill would be much better."

"She ought to marry someone," said Freddie earnestly. "I mean, all rot a girl like Jill having to knock about and rough it like this."

"You're perfectly right."

"Of course," said Freddie thoughtfully, "the catch in the whole dashed business is that she's such a bally independent sort of girl. I mean to say, it's quite possible she may hand Derek the mitten, you know."

"In that case, let us hope that she will look more favorably on young Pilkington."

"Yes," said Freddie. "Well, yes. But—well, I wouldn't call the Pilker a very ripe sporting proposition. About sixty to one against is the way I should figure it, if I were making a book. It may be just because I'm feeling a bit pipped this morning—got turfed out of bed at seven o'clock and all that—but I have an idea that she may give both of them the old razz. May be wrong, of course."

"Let us hope that you are, my boy," said Uncle Chris gravely. "For in that case I should be forced into a course of action from which I confess that I shrink."

"I don't follow."

"Freddie, my boy, you are a very old friend of Jill's and I am her uncle. I feel that I can speak plainly to you. Jill is the dearest thing to me in the world. She trusted me, and I failed her. I was responsible for the loss of her money, and my one object in life is to see her by some means or other in a position equal to the one of which I deprived her. If she marries a rich man, well and good. That, provided she marries him because she is fond of him, will be the very best thing that can happen. But if she does not there is another way. It may be possible for me to marry a rich woman."

Freddie stopped, appalled.

"Good God! You don't mean . . . you aren't thinking of marrying Mrs Peagrim!"

"I wouldn't have mentioned names, but, as you have guessed . . . Yes, if the worst comes to the worst, I shall make the supreme sacrifice. Tonight will decide. Goodbye, my boy. I want to look in at my club for a few minutes. Tell Underhill that he has my best wishes."

"I'll bet he has!" gasped Freddie.



CHAPTER TWENTY

1.

It is safest for the historian, if he values accuracy, to wait till a thing has happened before writing about it. Otherwise he may commit himself to statements which are not borne out by the actual facts. Mrs Peagrim, recording in advance the success of her party at the Gotham Theatre, had done this. It is true that she was a "radiant and vivacious hostess," and it is possible, her standard not being very high, that she had "never looked more charming." But, when, she went on to say that all present were in agreement that they had never spent a more delightful evening, she deceived the public. Uncle Chris, for one; Otis Pilkington, for another, and Freddie Rooke, for a third, were so far from spending a delightful evening that they found it hard to mask their true emotions and keep a smiling face to the world.

Otis Pilkington, indeed, found it impossible, and, ceasing to try, left early. Just twenty minutes after the proceedings had begun, he seized his coat and hat, shot out into the night, made off blindly up Broadway, and walked twice round Central Park before his feet gave out and he allowed himself to be taken back to his apartment in a taxi. He tried to tell himself that this was only what he had expected, but was able to draw no consolation from the fact. He tried to tell himself that Jill might change her mind, but hope refused to stir. Jill had been very kind and very sweet and very regretful, but it was only too manifest that on the question of becoming Mrs Otis Pilkington her mind was made up. She was willing to like him, to be a sister to him, to watch his future progress with considerable interest, but she would not marry him.

One feels sorry for Otis Pilkington in his hour of travail. This was the fifth or sixth time that this sort of thing had happened to him, and he was getting tired of it. If he could have looked into the future—five years almost to a day from that evening—and seen himself walking blushfully down the aisle of St. Thomas' with Roland Trevis' sister Angela on his arm, his gloom might have been lightened. More probably, however, it would have been increased. At the moment, Roland Trevis' sister Angela was fifteen, frivolous, and freckled and, except that he rather disliked her and suspected her—correctly—of laughing at him, amounted to just nil in Mr Pilkington's life. The idea of linking his lot with hers would have appalled him, enthusiastically though he was in favor of it five years later.

However, Mr Pilkington was unable to look into the future, so his reflections on this night of sorrow were not diverted from Jill. He thought sadly of Jill till two-thirty, when he fell asleep in his chair and dreamed of her. At seven o'clock his Japanese valet, who had been given the night off, returned home, found him, and gave him breakfast. After which, Mr Pilkington went to bed, played three games of solitaire, and slept till dinner-time, when he awoke to take up the burden of life again. He still brooded on the tragedy which had shattered him. Indeed, it was only two weeks later, when at a dance he was introduced to a red-haired girl from Detroit, that he really got over it.

* * *

The news was conveyed to Freddie Rooke by Uncle Chris. Uncle Chris, with something of the emotions of a condemned man on the scaffold waiting for a reprieve, had watched Jill and Mr Pilkington go off together into the dim solitude at the back of the orchestra chairs, and, after an all too brief interval, had observed the latter whizzing back, his every little movement having a meaning of its own—and that meaning one which convinced Uncle Chris that Freddie, in estimating Mr Pilkington as a sixty to one chance, had not erred in his judgment of form.

Uncle Chris found Freddie in one of the upper boxes, talking to Nelly Bryant. Dancing was going on down on the stage, but Freddie, though normally a young man who shook a skilful shoe, was in no mood for dancing tonight. The return to the scenes of his former triumphs and the meeting with the companions of happier days, severed from him by a two-weeks' notice, had affected Freddie powerfully. Eyeing the happy throng below, he experienced the emotions of that Peri who, in the poem, "at the gate of Eden stood disconsolate."

Excusing himself from Nelly and following Uncle Chris into the passage-way outside the box, he heard the other's news listlessly. It came as no shock to Freddie. He had never thought Mr Pilkington anything to write home about, and had never supposed that Jill would accept him. He said as much. Sorry for the chap in a way, and all that, but had never imagined for an instant that he would click.

"Where is Underhill?" asked Uncle Chris, agitated.

"Derek? Oh, he isn't here yet."

"But why isn't he here? I understood that you were bringing him with you."

"That was the scheme, but it seems he had promised some people he met on the boat to go to a theatre and have a bit of supper with them afterwards. I only heard about it when I got back this morning."

"Good God, boy! Didn't you tell him that Jill would be here tonight?"

"Oh, rather. And he's coming on directly he can get away from these people. Forget their name, but they're influential coves who can do him a bit of good and all that sort of thing. The man—the head of the gang, you know—is something connected with the Cabinet or the Prime Minister or something. You'd know his name in a minute if I told you—always seeing it in the papers—they have pictures of him in Punch a lot—but I'm rotten at names. Derek did tell me, but it's slipped the old bean. Well, he had to leg it with these people, but he's coming on later. Ought to be here any moment now."

Uncle Chris plucked at his mustache gloomily. Freddie's detachment depressed him. He had looked for more animation and a greater sense of the importance of the issue.

"Well, pip-pip for the present," said Freddie, moving toward the box. "Have to be getting back. See you later."

He disappeared, and Uncle Chris turned slowly to descend the stairs. As he reached the floor below, the door of the stage-box opened, and Mrs Peagrim came out.

"Oh, Major Selby!" cried the radiant and vivacious hostess. "I couldn't think where you had got to. I have been looking for you everywhere."

Uncle Chris quivered slightly, but braced himself to do his duty.

"May I have the pleasure . . . ?" he began, then broke off as he saw the man who had come out of the box behind his hostess. "Underhill!" He grasped his hand and shook it warmly. "My dear fellow! I had no notion that you had arrived!"

"Sir Derek came just a moment ago," said Mrs Peagrim.

"How are you, Major Selby?" said Derek. He was a little surprised at the warmth of his reception. He had not anticipated this geniality.

"My dear fellow, I'm delighted to see you," cried Uncle Chris. "But, as I was saying, Mrs Peagrim, may I have the pleasure of this dance?"

"I don't think I will dance this one," said Mrs Peagrim surprisingly. "I'm sure you two must have ever so much to talk about. Why don't you take Sir Derek and give him a cup of coffee?"

"Capital idea!" said Uncle Chris. "Come this way, my dear fellow. As Mrs Peagrim says, I have ever so much to talk about. Along this passage, my boy. Be careful. There's a step. Weil, well, well! It's delightful to see you again!" He massaged Derek's arm affectionately. Every time he had met Mrs Peagrim that evening he had quailed inwardly at what lay before him, should some hitch occur to prevent the re-union of Derek and Jill: and, now that the other was actually here, handsomer than ever and more than ever the sort of man no girl could resist, he declined to admit the possibility of a hitch. His spirits soared. "You haven't seen Jill yet, of course?"

"No." Derek hesitated. "Is Jill . . . Does she . . . I mean . . ."

Uncle Chris resumed his osteopathy. He kneaded his companion's coat-sleeve with a jovial hand.

"My dear fellow, of course! I am sure that a word or two from you will put everything right. We all make mistakes. I have made them myself. I am convinced that everything will be perfectly all right . . . Ah, there she is. Jill, my dear, here is an old friend to see you!"

2.

Since the hurried departure of Mr Pilkington, Jill had been sitting in the auditorium, lazily listening to the music and watching the couples dancing on the stage. She did not feel like dancing herself, but it was pleasant to be there and too much exertion to get up and go home. She found herself drifting into a mood of gentle contentment, and was at a loss to account for this. She was happy,—quietly and peacefully happy, when she was aware that she ought to have been both agitated and apprehensive. When she had anticipated the recent interview with Otis Pilkington, which she had known was bound to come sooner or later, it had been shrinkingly and with foreboding. She hated hurting people's feelings, and, though she read Mr Pilkington's character accurately enough to know that time would heal any anguish which she might cause him, she had had no doubt that the temperamental surface of that long young man, when he succeeded in getting her alone, was going to be badly bruised. And it had fallen out just as she had expected. Mr Pilkington had said his say and departed, a pitiful figure, a spectacle which should have wrung her heart. It had not wrung her heart. Except for one fleeting instant when she was actually saying the fatal words, it had not interfered with her happiness at all; and already she was beginning to forget that the incident had ever happened.

And, if the past should have depressed her, the future might have been expected to depress her even more. There was nothing in it, either immediate or distant, which could account for her feeling gently contented. The future was a fog, into which she had to grope her way blindly. She could not see a step ahead. And yet, as she leaned back in her seat, her heart was dancing in time to the dance-music of Mrs Peagrim's hired orchestra. It puzzled Jill.

And then, quite suddenly yet with no abruptness or sense of discovery, just as if it were something which she had known all along, the truth came upon her. It was Wally, the thought of Wally, the knowledge that Wally existed, that made her happy. He was a solid, comforting, reassuring fact in a world of doubts and perplexities. She did not need to be with him to be fortified, it was enough just to think of him. Present or absent, his personality heartened her like fine weather or music or a sea-breeze,—or like that friendly, soothing night-light which they used to leave in her nursery when she was little, to scare away the goblins and see her safely over the road that led to the gates of the city of dreams.

Suppose there were no Wally . . .

Jill gave a sudden gasp, and sat up, tingling. She felt as she had sometimes felt as a child, when, on the edge of sleep, she had dreamed that she was stepping of a precipice and had woken, tense and alert, to find that there was no danger after all. But there was a difference between that feeling and this. She had woken, but to find that there was danger. It was as though some inner voice was calling to her to be careful, to take thought. Suppose there were no Wally? . . . And why should there always be Wally? He had said confidently enough that there would never be another girl . . . But there were thousands of other girls, millions of other girls, and could she suppose that one of them would not have the sense to snap up a treasure like Wally? A sense of blank desolation swept over Jill. Her quick imagination, leaping ahead, had made the vague possibility of a distant future an accomplished fact. She felt, absurdly, a sense of overwhelming loss.

Into her mind, never far distant from it, came the thought of Derek. And, suddenly, Jill made another discovery. She was thinking of Derek, and it was not hurting. She was thinking of him quite coolly and clearly and her heart was not aching.

She sat back and screwed her eyes tight, as she had always done when puzzled. Something had happened to her, but how it had happened and when it had happened and why it had happened she could not understand. She only knew that now for the first time she had been granted a moment of clear vision and was seeing things truly.

She wanted Wally. She wanted him in the sense that she could not do without him. She felt nothing of the fiery tumult which had come upon her when she first met Derek. She and Wally would come together with a smile and build their life on an enduring foundation of laughter and happiness and good-fellowship. Wally had never shaken and never would shake her senses as Derek had done. If that was love, then she did not love Wally. But her clear vision told her that it was not love. It might be the blazing and crackling of thorns, but it was not the fire. She wanted Wally. She needed him as she needed the air and the sunlight.

She opened her eyes, and saw Uncle Chris coming down the aisle towards her. There was a man with him, and, as they moved closer in the dim light, Jill saw that it was Derek.

"Jill, my dear," said Uncle Chris, "here is an old friend to see you!"

And, having achieved their bringing together, he proceeded to withdraw delicately whence he had come. It is pleasant to be able to record that he was immediately seized upon by Mrs Peagrim, who had changed her mind about not dancing, and led off to be her partner in a fox-trot, in the course of which she trod on his feet three times.

"Why, Derek!" said Jill cheerfully. She got up and moved down the line of seats. Except for a mild wonder how he came to be there, she found herself wholly unaffected by the sight of him. "Whatever are you doing here?"

Derek sat down beside her. The cordiality of her tone had relieved yet at the same time disconcerted him. Man seldom attains to perfect contentment in this world, and Derek, while pleased that Jill apparently bore him no ill-will, seemed to miss something in her manner which he would have been glad to find there.

"Jill!" he said huskily.

It deemed to Derek only decent to speak huskily. To his orderly mind this situation could be handled only in one way. It was a plain, straight issue of the strong man humbling himself—not too much, of course, but sufficiently: and it called, in his opinion, for the low voice, the clenched hand, and the broken whisper. Speaking as he had spoken, he had given the scene the right key from the start,—or would have done if she had not got in ahead of him and opened it on a note of absurd cheeriness. Derek found himself resenting her cheeriness. Often as he had attempted during the voyage from England to visualize to himself this first meeting, he had never pictured Jill smiling brightly at him. It was a jolly smile, and made her look extremely pretty, but it jarred upon him. A moment before he had been half relieved, half disconcerted: now he was definitely disconcerted. He searched in his mind for a criticism of her attitude, and came to the conclusion that what was wrong with it was that it was too friendly. Friendliness is well enough in its way, but in what should have been a tense clashing of strong emotions it did not seem to Derek fitting.

"Did you have a pleasant trip?" asked Jill. "Have you come over on business?"

A feeling of bewilderment came upon Derek. It was wrong, it was all wrong. Of course, she might be speaking like this to cloak intense feeling, but, if so, she had certainly succeeded. From her manner, he and she might be casual acquaintances. A pleasant trip! In another minute she would be asking him how he had come out on the sweepstake on the ship's run. With a sense of putting his shoulder to some heavy weight and heaving at it, he sought to lift the conversation to a higher plane.

"I came to find you!" he said; still huskily but not so huskily as before. There are degrees of huskiness, and Derek's was sharpened a little by a touch of irritation.

"Yes?" said Jill.

Derek was now fermenting. What she ought to have said, he did not know, but he knew that it was not "Yes?" "Yes?" in the circumstances was almost as bad as "Really?"

There was a pause. Jill was looking at him with a frank and unembarrassed gaze which somehow deepened his sense of annoyance. Had she looked at him coldly, he could have understood and even appreciated it. He had been expecting coldness, and had braced himself to combat it. He was still not quite sure in his mind whether he was playing the role of a penitent or a King Cophetua, but in either character he might have anticipated a little temporary coldness, which it would have been his easy task to melt. But he had never expected to be looked at as if he were a specimen in a museum, and that was how he was feeling now. Jill was not looking at him—she was inspecting him, examining him, and he chafed under the process.

Jill, unconscious of the discomfort she was causing, continued to gaze. She was trying to discover in just what respect he had changed from the god he had been. Certainly not in looks. He was as handsome as ever,—handsomer, indeed, for the sunshine and clean breezes of the Atlantic had given him an exceedingly becoming coat of tan. And yet he must have changed, for now she could look upon him quite dispassionately and criticize him without a tremor. It was like seeing a copy of a great painting. Everything was there, except the one thing that mattered, the magic and the glamour. It was like . . . She suddenly remembered a scene in the dressing-room when the company had been in Baltimore. Lois Denham, duly the recipient of the sunburst which her friend Izzy had promised her, had unfortunately, in a spirit of girlish curiosity, taken it to a jeweller to be priced, and the jeweller had blasted her young life by declaring it a paste imitation. Jill recalled how the stricken girl—previous to calling Izzy on the long distance and telling him a number of things which, while probably not news to him, must have been painful hearing—had passed the vile object round the dressing-room for inspection. The imitation was perfect. It had been impossible for the girls to tell that the stones were not real diamonds. Yet the jeweller, with his sixth sense, had seen through them in a trifle under ten seconds. Jill come to the conclusion that her newly-discovered love for Wally Mason had equipped her with a sixth sense, and that by its aid she was really for the first time seeing Derek as he was.

Derek had not the privilege of being able to read Jill's thoughts. All he could see was the outer Jill, and the outer Jill, as she had always done, was stirring his emotions. Her daintiness afflicted him. Not for the first, the second, or the third time since they had come into each other's lives, he was astounded at the strength of the appeal which Jill had for him when they were together, as contrasted with its weakness when they were apart. He made another attempt to establish the scene on a loftier plane.

"What a fool I was!" he sighed. "Jill! Can you ever forgive me?"

He tried to take her hand. Jill skilfully eluded him.

"Why, of course I've forgiven you, Derek, if there was anything to forgive."

"Anything to forgive!" Derek began to get into his stride. These were the lines on which he had desired the interview to develop. "I was a brute! A cad!"

"Oh, no!"

"I was. Oh, I have been through hell!"

Jill turned her head away. She did not want to hurt him, but nothing could have kept her from smiling. She had been so sure that he would say that sooner or later.

"Jill!" Derek had misinterpreted the cause of her movement, and had attributed it to emotion. "Tell me that everything is as it was before."

Jill turned.

"I'm afraid I can't say that, Derek."

"Of course not!" agreed Derek in a comfortable glow of manly remorse. He liked himself in the character of the strong man abased. "It would be too much, to expect, I know. But, when we are married . . ."

"Do you really want to marry me?"

"Jill!"

"I wonder!"

"How can you doubt it?"

Jill looked at him.

"Have you thought what it would mean?"

"What it would mean?"

"Well, your mother . . ."

"Oh!" Derek dismissed Lady Underhill with a grand gesture.

"Yes," persisted Jill, "but, if she disapproved of your marrying me before, wouldn't she disapprove a good deal more now, when I haven't a penny in the world and am just in the chorus . . ."

A sort of strangled sound proceeded from Derek's throat.

"In the chorus!"

"Didn't you know? I thought Freddie must have told you."

"In the chorus!" Derek stammered. "I thought you were here as a guest of Mrs Peagrim's."

"So I am,—like all the rest of the company."

"But . . . But . . ."

"You see, it would be bound to make everything a little difficult," said Jill. Her face was grave, but her lips were twitching. "I mean, you are rather a prominent man, aren't you, and if you married a chorus-girl . . ."

"Nobody would know," said Derek limply.

Jill opened her eyes.

"Nobody would know!" She laughed. "But, of course, you've never met our press-agent. If you think that nobody would know that a girl in the company had married a baronet who was a member of parliament and expected to be in the Cabinet in a few years, you're wronging him! The news would be on the front page of all the papers the very next day—columns of it, with photographs. There would be articles about it in the Sunday papers. Illustrated! And then it would be cabled to England and would appear in the papers there . . . You see, you're a very important person, Derek."

Derek sat clutching the arms of his chair. His face was chalky. Though he had never been inclined to underestimate his importance as a figure in the public eye, he had overlooked the disadvantages connected with such an eminence. He gurgled wordlessly. He had been prepared to brave Lady Underhill's wrath and assert his right to marry whom he pleased, but this was different.

Jill watched him curiously and with a certain pity. It was so easy to read what was passing in his mind. She wondered what he would say, how he would flounder out of his unfortunate position. She had no illusions about him now. She did not even contemplate the possibility of chivalry winning the battle which was going on within him.

"It would be very awkward, wouldn't it?" she said.

And then pity had its way with Jill. He had treated her badly; for a time she had thought that he had crushed all the heart out of her: but he was suffering, and she hated to see anybody suffer.

"Besides," she said, "I'm engaged to somebody else."

As a suffocating man, his lips to the tube of oxygen, gradually comes back to life, Derek revived,—slowly as the meaning of her words sank into his mind, then with a sudden abruptness.

"What!" he cried.

"I'm going to marry somebody else. A man named Wally Mason."

Derek swallowed. The chalky look died out of his face, and he flushed hotly. His eyes, half relieved, half indignant, glowed under their pent-house of eyebrow. He sat for a moment in silence.

"I think you might have told me before!" he said huffily.

Jill laughed.

"Yes, I suppose I ought to have told you before."

"Leading me on . . . !"

Jill patted him on the arm.

"Never mind, Derek! It's all over now. And it was great fun, wasn't it!"

"Fun!"

"Shall we go and dance? The music is just starting."

"I won't dance!"

Jill got up.

"I must," she said. "I'm so happy I can't keep still. Well, good-bye, Derek, in case I don't see you again. It was nice meeting after all this time. You haven't altered a bit!"

Derek watched her flit down the aisle, saw her jump up the little ladder onto the stage, watched her vanish into the swirl of the dance. He reached for a cigarette, opened his case, and found it empty. He uttered a mirthless, Byronic laugh. The thing seemed to him symbolic.

3.

Not having a cigarette of his own, Derek got up and went to look for the only man he knew who could give him one: and after a search of a few minutes came upon Freddie all alone in a dark corner, apart from the throng. It was a very different Freddie from the moody youth who had returned to the box after his conversation with Uncle Chris. He was leaning against a piece of scenery with his head tilted back and a beam of startled happiness on his face. So rapt was he in his reflections that he did not become aware of Derek's approach until the latter spoke.

"Got a cigarette, Freddie?"

Freddie withdrew his gaze from the roof.

"Hullo, old son! Cigarette? Certainly and by all means. Cigarettes? Where are the cigarettes? Mr. Rooke, forward! Show cigarettes." He extended his case to Derek, who helped himself in sombre silence, finding his boyhood's friend's exuberance hard to bear. "I say, Derek, old scream, the most extraordinary thing has happened! You'll never guess. To cut a long story short and come to the blow-out of the scenario, I'm engaged! Engaged, old crumpet! You know what I mean—engaged to be married!"

"Uh?" said Derek gruffly, frowning over his cigarette.

"Don't wonder you're surprised," said Freddie, looking at him a little wistfully, for his friend had scarcely been gushing, and he would have welcomed a bit of enthusiasm. "Can hardly believe it myself."

Derek awoke to a sense of the conventions.

"Congratulate you," he said. "Do I know her?"

"Not yet, but you soon will. She's a girl in the company,—in the chorus, as a matter of fact. Girl named Nelly Bryant. An absolute corker. I'll go further—a topper. You'll like her, old man."

Derek was looking at him, amazed.

"Good Heavens!" he said.

"Extraordinary how these things happen," proceeded Freddie. "Looking back, I can see, of course, that I always thought her a topper, but the idea of getting engaged—I don't know—sort of thing that doesn't occur to a chappie, if you know what I mean. What I mean to say is, we had always been the greatest of pals and all that, but it never struck me that she would think it much of a wheeze getting hooked up for life with a chap like me. We just sort of drifted along and so forth. All very jolly and what not. And then this evening—I don't know. I had a bit of a hump, what with one thing and another, and she was most dashed sweet and patient and soothing and—and—well, and what not, don't you know, and suddenly—deuced rummy sensation—the jolly old scales seemed to fall, if you follow me, from my good old eyes; I don't know if you get the idea. I suddenly seemed to look myself squarely in the eyeball and say to myself, 'Freddie, old top, how do we go? Are we not missing a good thing?' And, by Jove, thinking it over, I found that I was absolutely correct-o! You've no notion how dashed sympathetic she is, old man! I mean to say, I had this hump, you know, owing to one thing and another, and was feeling that life was more or less of a jolly old snare and delusion, and she bucked me up and all that, and suddenly I found myself kissing her and all that sort of rot, and she was kissing me and so on and so forth, and she's got the most ripping eyes, and there was nobody about, and the long and the short of it was, old boy, that I said, 'Let's get married!' and she said, 'When?' and that was that, if you see what I mean. The scheme now is to pop down to the City Hall and get a license, which it appears you have to have if you want to bring this sort of binge off with any success and vim, and then what ho for the padre! Looking at it from every angle, a bit of a good egg, what! Happiest man in the world, and all that sort of thing."

At this point in his somewhat incoherent epic Freddie paused. It had occurred to him that he had perhaps laid himself open to a charge of monopolizing the conversation.

"I say! You'll forgive my dwelling a bit on this thing, won't you? Never found a girl who would look twice at me before, and it's rather unsettled the old bean. Just occurred to me that I may have been talking about my own affairs a bit. Your turn now, old thing. Sit down, as the blighters in the novels used to say, and tell me the story of your life. You've seen Jill, of course?"

"Yes," said Derek shortly.

"And it's all right, eh? Fine! We'll make a double wedding of it, what? Not a bad idea, that! I mean to say, the man of God might make a reduction for quantity and shade his fee a bit. Do the job half price!"

Derek threw down the end of his cigarette, and crushed it with his heel. A closer observer than Freddie would have detected long ere this the fact that his demeanor was not that of a happy and successful wooer.

"Jill and I are not going to be married," he said.

A look of blank astonishment came into Freddie's cheerful face. He could hardly believe that he had heard correctly. It is true that, in gloomier mood, he had hazarded the theory to Uncle Chris that Jill's independence might lead her to refuse Derek, but he had not really believed in the possibility of such a thing even at the time, and now, in the full flood of optimism consequent on his own engagement, it seemed even more incredible.

"Great Scott!" he cried. "Did she give you the raspberry?"

It is to be doubted whether the pride of the Underhills would have permitted Derek to reply in the affirmative, even if Freddie had phrased his question differently: but the brutal directness of the query made such a course impossible for him. Nothing was dearer to Derek than his self-esteem, and, even at the expense of the truth, he was resolved to shield it from injury. To face Freddie and confess that any girl in the world had given him, Derek Underhill, what he coarsely termed the raspberry was a task so revolting as to be utterly beyond his powers.

"Nothing of the kind!" he snapped. "It was because we both saw that the thing would be impossible. Why didn't you tell me that Jill was in the chorus of this damned piece?"

Freddie's mouth slowly opened. He was trying not to realize the meaning of what his friend was saying. His was a faithful soul, and for years—to all intents and purposes for practically the whole of his life—he had looked up to Derek and reverenced him. He absolutely refused to believe that Derek was intending to convey what he seemed to be trying to convey: for, if he was, well . . . by Jove . . . it was too rotten and Algy Martyn had been right after all and the fellow was simply . . .

"You don't mean, old man," said Freddie with an almost pleading note in his voice, "that you're going to back out of marrying Jill because she's in the chorus?"

Derek looked away, and scowled. He was finding Freddie, in the capacity of inquisitor, as trying as he had found him in the role of exuberant fianc. It offended his pride to have to make explanations to one whom he had always regarded with a patronizing tolerance as not a bad fellow in his way but in every essential respect negligible.

"I have to be sensible," he said, chafing as the indignity of his position intruded itself more and more. "You know what it would mean . . . Paragraphs in all the papers . . . photographs . . . the news cabled to England . . . everybody reading it and misunderstanding . . . I've got my career to think of . . . It would cripple me . . ."

His voice trailed off, and there was silence for a moment. Then Freddie burst into speech. His good-natured face was hard with unwonted scorn. Its cheerful vacuity had changed to stony contempt. For the second time in the evening the jolly old scales had fallen from Freddie's good old eyes, and, as Jill had done, he saw Derek as he was.

"My sainted aunt!" he said slowly. "So that's it, what! Well, I've always thought a dashed lot of you, as you know. I've always looked up to you as a bit of a nib and wished I was like you. But, great Scott! if that's the sort of a chap you are, I'm deuced glad I'm not! I'm going to wake up in the middle of the night and think how unlike you I am and pat myself on the back! Ronny Devereux was perfectly right. A tick's a tick, and that's all there is to say about it. Good old Ronny told me what you were, and, like a silly ass, I wasted a lot of time trying to make him believe you weren't that sort of chap at all. It's no good standing there looking like your mother," said Freddie firmly. "This is where we jolly well part brass-rags! If we ever meet again, I'll trouble you not to speak to me, because I've a reputation to keep up! So there you have it in a bally nutshell!"

Scarcely had Freddie ceased to administer it to his former friend in a bally nutshell, when Uncle Chris, warm and dishevelled from the dance as interpreted by Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim, came bustling up, saving Derek the necessity of replying to the harangue.

"Well, Underhill, my dear fellow," began Uncle Chris affably, attaching himself to the other's arm, "what . . . ?"

He broke off, for Derek, freeing his arm with a wrench, turned and walked rapidly away. Derek had no desire to go over the whole thing again with Uncle Chris. He wanted to be alone, to build up, painfully and laboriously, the ruins of his self-esteem. The pride of the Underhills had had a bad evening.

Uncle Chris turned to Freddie.

"What is the matter?" he asked blankly.

"I'll tell you what's the jolly old matter!" cried Freddie. "The blighter isn't going to marry poor Jill after all! He's changed his rotten mind! It's off!"

"Off?"

"Absolutely off!"

"Absolutely off?"

"Napoo!" said Freddie. "He's afraid of what will happen to his blasted career if he marries a girl who's been in the chorus."

"But, my dear boy!" Uncle Chris blinked. "But, my dear boy! This is ridiculous . . . Surely, if I were to speak a word . . ."

"You can if you like. I wouldn't speak to the cootie again if you paid me! But it won't do any good, so what's the use?"

Slowly Uncle Chris adjusted his mind to the disaster.

"Then you mean . . . ?"

"It's off!" said Freddie.

For a moment Uncle Chris stood motionless. Then, with a sudden jerk, he seemed to stiffen his backbone. His face was bleak, but he pulled at his mustache jauntily.

"Morituri te salutant!" he said. "Good-bye, Freddie, my boy."

He turned away, gallant and upright, the old soldier.

"Where are you going?" asked Freddie.

"Over the top!" said Uncle Chris.

"What do you mean?"

"I am going," said Uncle Chris steadily, "to find Mrs Peagrim!"

"Good God!" cried Freddie. He followed him, protesting weakly, but the other gave no sign that he had heard. Freddie saw him disappear into the stage-box, and, turning, found Jill at his elbow.

"Where did Uncle Chris go?" asked Jill. "I want to speak to him."

"He's in the stage-box, with Mrs Peagrim."

"With Mrs Peagrim?"

"Proposing to her," said Freddie solemnly.

Jill stared.

"Proposing to Mrs Peagrim? What do you mean?"

Freddie drew her aside, and began to explain.

4.

In the dimness of the stage-box, his eyes a little glassy and a dull despair in his soul, Uncle Chris was wondering how to begin. In his hot youth he had been rather a devil of a fellow in between dances, a coo-er of soft phrases and a stealer of never very stoutly withheld kisses. He remembered one time in Bangalore . . . but that had nothing to do with the case. The point was, how to begin with Mrs Peagrim. The fact that twenty-five years ago he had crushed in his arms beneath the shadows of the deodars a girl whose name he had forgotten, though he remembered that she had worn a dress of some pink stuff, was immaterial and irrelevant. Was he to crush Mrs Peagrim in his arms? Not, thought Uncle Chris to himself, on a bet. He contented himself for the moment with bending an intense gaze upon her and asking if she was tired.

"A little," panted Mrs Peagrim, who, though she danced often and vigorously, was never in the best of condition, owing to her habit of neutralizing the beneficient effects of exercise by surreptitious candy-eating. "I'm a little out of breath."

Uncle Chris had observed this for himself, and it had not helped him to face his task. Lovely woman loses something of her queenly dignity when she puffs. Inwardly, he was thinking how exactly his hostess resembled the third from the left of a troupe of performing sea-lions which he had seen some years ago on one of his rare visits to a vaudeville house.

"You ought not to tire yourself," he said with a difficult tenderness.

"I am so fond of dancing," pleaded Mrs Peagrim. Recovering some of her breath, she gazed at her companion with a sort of short-winded archness. "You are always so sympathetic, Major Selby."

"Am I?" said Uncle Chris. "Am I?"

"You know you are!"

Uncle Chris swallowed quickly.

"I wonder if you have ever wondered," he began, and stopped. He felt that he was not putting it as well as he might. "I wonder if it has ever struck you that there's a reason." He stopped again. He seemed to remember reading something like that in an advertisement in a magazine, and he did not want to talk like an advertisement. "I wonder if it has ever struck you, Mrs. Peagrim," he began again, "that any sympathy on my part might be due to some deeper emotion which . . . Have you never suspected that you have never suspected . . ." Uncle Chris began to feel that he must brace himself up. Usually a man of fluent speech, he was not at his best tonight. He was just about to try again, when he caught his hostess' eye, and the soft gleam in it sent him cowering back into the silence as if he wore taking cover from an enemy's shrapnel.

Mrs Peagrim touched him on the arm.

"You were saying . . . ?" she murmured encouragingly.

Uncle Chris shut his eyes. His fingers pressed desperately into the velvet curtain beside him. He felt as he had felt when a raw lieutenant in India, during his first hill-campaign, when the etiquette of the service had compelled him to rise and walk up and down in front of his men under a desultory shower of jezail-bullets. He seemed to hear the damned things whop-whopping now . . . and almost wished that he could really hear them. One or two good bullets just now would be a welcome diversion.

"Yes?" said Mrs Peagrim.

"Have you never felt," babbled Uncle Chris, "that, feeling as I feel, I might have felt . . . that is to say, might be feeling a feeling . . . ?"

There was a tap at the door of the box. Uncle Chris started violently. Jill came in.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," she said. "I wanted to speak . . ."

"You wanted to speak to me?" said Uncle Chris, bounding up. "Certainly, certainly, certainly, of course. If you will excuse me for a moment?"

Mrs Peagrim bowed coldly. The interruption had annoyed her. She had no notion who Jill was, and she resented the intrusion at this particular juncture intensely. Not so Uncle Chris, who skipped out into the passage like a young lamb.

"Am I in time?" asked Jill in a whisper.

"In time?"

"You know what I mean. Uncle Chris, listen to me! You are not to propose to that awful woman. Do you understand?"

Uncle Chris shook his head.

"The die is cast!"

"The die isn't anything of the sort," said Jill. "Unless . . . ." She stopped, aghast. "You don't mean that you have done it already?"

"Well, no. To be perfectly accurate, no. But . . ."

"Then that's all right. I know why you were doing it, and it was very sweet of you, but you mustn't."

"But, Jill, you don't understand."

"I do understand."

"I have a motive . . ."

"I know your motive. Freddie told me. Don't you worry yourself about me, dear, because I am all right. I am going to be married."

A look of ecstatic relief came into Uncle Chris' face.

"Then Underhill . . . ?"

"I am not marrying Derek. Somebody else. I don't think you know him, but I love him, and so will you." She pulled his face down and kissed him. "Now you can go back."

Uncle Chris was almost too overcome to speak. He gulped a little.

"Jill," he said shakily, "this is a . . . this is a great relief."

"I knew it would be."

"If you are really going to marry a rich man . . ."

"I didn't say he was rich."

The joy ebbed from Uncle Chris' face.

"If he is not rich, if he cannot give you everything of which I . . ."

"Oh, don't be absurd! Wally has all the money anybody needs. What's money?"

"What's money?" Uncle Chris stared. "Money, my dear child, is . . . is . . . well, you mustn't talk of it in that light way. But, if you think you will really have enough . . . ?"

"Of course we shall. Now you can go back. Mrs Peagrim will be wondering what has become of you."

"Must I?" said Uncle Chris doubtfully.

"Of course. You must be polite."

"Very well," said Uncle Chris. "But it will be a little difficult to continue the conversation on what you might call general lines. However!"

* * *

Back in the box, Mrs Peagrim was fanning herself with manifest impatience.

"What did that girl want?" she demanded.

Uncle Chris seated himself with composure. The weakness had passed, and he was himself again.

"Oh, nothing, nothing. Some trivial difficulty, which I was able to dispose of in a few words."

Mrs Peagrim would have liked to continue her researches, but a feeling that it was wiser not to stray too long from the main point restrained her. She bent towards him.

"You were going to say something when that girl interrupted us."

Uncle Chris shot his cuffs with a debonair gesture.

"Was I? Was I? To be sure, yes. I was saying that you ought not to let yourself get tired. Deuce of a thing, getting tired. Plays the dickens with the system."

Mrs Peagrim was disconcerted. The atmosphere seemed to have changed, and she did not like it. She endeavored to restore the tone of the conversation.

"You are so sympathetic," she sighed, feeling that she could not do better than to begin again at that point. The remark had produced good results before, and it might do so a second time.

"Yes," agreed Uncle Chris cheerily. "You see, I have seen something of all this sort of thing, and I realize the importance of it. I know what all this modern rush and strain of life is for a woman in your position. Parties every night . . . dancing . . . a thousand and one calls on the vitality . . . bound to have an effect sooner or later, unless—unless," said Uncle Chris solemnly, "one takes steps. Unless one acts in time. I had a friend—" His voice sank—"I had a very dear friend over in London, Lady Alice—but the name would convey nothing—the point is that she was in exactly the same position as you. On the rush all the time. Never stopped. The end was inevitable. She caught cold, hadn't sufficient vitality to throw it off, went to a dance in mid-winter, contracted pneumonia . . ." Uncle Chris sighed. "All over in three days," he said sadly. "Now at that time," he resumed, "I did not know what I know now. If I had heard of Nervino then . . ." He shook his head. "It might have saved her life. It would have saved her life. I tell you, Mrs Peagrim, that there is nothing, there is no lack of vitality which Nervino cannot set right. I am no physician myself, I speak as a layman, but it acts on the red corpuscles of the blood . . ."

Mrs Peagrim's face was stony. She had not spoken before, because he had given her no opportunity, but she spoke now in a hard voice.

"Major Selby!"

"Mrs Peagrim?"

"I am not interested in patent medicines!"

"One can hardly call Nervino that," said Uncle Chris reproachfully. "It is a sovereign specific. You can get it at any drug-store. It comes in two sizes, the dollar-fifty—or large—size, and the . . ."

Mrs Peagrim rose majestically.

"Major Selby, I am tired . . ."

"Precisely. And, as I say, Nervino . . ."

"Please," said Mrs. Peagrim coldly, "go to the stage-door and see if you can find my limousine. It should be waiting in the street."

"Certainly," said Uncle Chris. "Why, certainly, certainly, certainly."

He left the box and proceeded across the stage. He walked with a lissom jauntiness. His eye was bright. One or two of those whom he passed on his way had the idea that this fine-looking man was in pain. They fancied that he was moaning. But Uncle Chris was not moaning. He was humming a gay snatch from the lighter music of the 'nineties.



CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

1.

Up on the roof of his apartment, far above the bustle and clamor of the busy city, Wally Mason, at eleven o'clock on the morning after Mrs Peagrim's bohemian party, was greeting the new day, as was his custom, by going through his ante-breakfast exercises. Mankind is divided into two classes, those who do setting-up exercises before breakfast and those who know they ought to but don't. To the former and more praiseworthy class Wally had belonged since boyhood. Life might be vain and the world a void, but still he touched his toes the prescribed number of times and twisted his muscular body about according to the ritual. He did so this morning a little more vigorously than usual, partly because he had sat up too late the night before and thought too much and smoked too much, with the result that he had risen heavy-eyed, at the present disgraceful hour, and partly because he hoped by wearying the flesh to still the restlessness of the spirit. Spring generally made Wally restless, but never previously had it brought him this distracted feverishness. So he lay on his back and waved his legs in the air, and it was only when he had risen and was about to go still further into the matter that he perceived Jill standing beside him.

"Good Lord!!" said Wally.

"Don't stop," said Jill. "I'm enjoying it."

"How long have you been here?"

"Oh, I only just arrived. I rang the bell, and the nice old lady who is cooking your lunch told me you were out here."

"Not lunch. Breakfast."

"Breakfast! At this hour?"

"Won't you join me?"

"I'll join you. But I had my breakfast long ago."

Wally found his despondency magically dispelled. It was extraordinary how the mere sight of Jill could make the world a different place. It was true the sun had been shining before her arrival, but in a flabby, weak-minded way, not with the brilliance it had acquired immediately he heard her voice.

"If you don't mind waiting for about three minutes while I have a shower and dress . . ."

"Oh, is the entertainment over?" asked Jill, disappointed. "I always arrive too late for everything."

"One of these days you shall see me go through the whole programme, including shadow-boxing and the goose-step. Bring your friends! But at the moment I think it would be more of a treat for you to watch me eat an egg. Go and look at the view. From over there you can see Hoboken."

"I've seen it. I don't think much of it."

"Well, then, on this side we have Brooklyn. There is no stint. Wander to and fro and enjoy yourself. The rendezvous is in the sitting-room in about four moments."

Wally vaulted through the passage-window, and disappeared. Then he returned and put his head out.

"I say!"

"Yes?"

"Just occurred to me. Your uncle won't be wanting this place for half an hour or so, will he? I mean, there will be time for me to have a bite of breakfast?"

"I don't suppose he will require your little home till some time in the evening."

"Fine!"

Wally disappeared again, and a few moments later Jill heard the faint splashing of water. She walked to the parapet and looked down. On the windows of the nearer buildings the sun cast glittering beams, but further away a faint, translucent mist hid the city. There was Spring humidity in the air. In the street she had found it oppressive: but on the breezy summit of this steel-and-granite cliff the air was cool and exhilarating. Peace stole into Jill's heart as she watched the boats dropping slowly down the East River, which gleamed like dull steel through the haze. She had come to Journey's End, and she was happy. Trouble and heart-ache seemed as distant as those hurrying black ants down on the streets. She felt far away from the world on an enduring mountain of rest. She gave a little sigh of contentment, and turned to go in as Wally called.

In the sitting-room her feeling of security deepened. Here, the world was farther away than ever. Even the faint noises which had risen to the roof were inaudible, and only the cosy tick-tock of the grandfather's clock punctuated the stillness.

She looked at Wally with a quickening sense of affection. He had the divine gift of silence at the right time. Yes, this was home. This was where she belonged.

"It didn't take me in, you know," said Jill at length, resting her arms on the table and regarding him severely.

Wally looked up.

"What didn't take you in?"

"That bath of yours. Yes, I know you turned on the cold shower, but you stood at a safe distance and watched it show!"

Wally waved his fork.

"As Heaven is my witness. . . . Look at my hair! Still damp! And I can show you the towel."

"Well, then, I'll bet it was the hot water. Why weren't you at Mrs Peagrim's party last night?"

"It would take too long to explain all my reasons, but one of them was that I wasn't invited. How did it go off?"

"Splendidly. Freddie's engaged!"

Wally lowered his coffee cup.

"Engaged! You don't mean what is sometimes slangily called bethrothed?"

"I do. He's engaged to Nelly Bryant. Nelly told me all about it when she got home last night. It seems that Freddie said to her 'What ho!' and she said 'You bet!' and Freddie said 'Pip pip!' and the thing was settled." Jill bubbled. "Freddie wants to go into vaudeville with her!"

"No! The Juggling Rookes? Or Rooke and Bryant, the cross-talk team, a thoroughly refined act, swell dressers on and off?"

"I don't know. But it doesn't matter. Nelly is domestic. She's going to have a little home in the country, where she can grow chickens and pigs."

"'Father's in the pigstye, you can tell him by his hat,' eh?"

"Yes. They will be very happy. Freddie will be a father to her parrot."

Wally's cheerfulness diminished a trifle. The contemplation of Freddie's enviable lot brought with it the inevitable contrast with his own. A little home in the country . . . Oh, well!

2.

There was a pause. Jill was looking a little grave.

"Wally!"

"Yes?"

She turned her face away, for there was a gleam of mischief in her eyes which she did not wish him to observe.

"Derek was at the party!"

Wally had been about to butter a piece of toast. The butter, jerked from the knife by the convulsive start which he gave, popped up in a semi-circle and plumped onto the tablecloth. He recovered himself quickly.

"Sorry!" he said. "You mustn't mind that. They want me to be second-string for the 'Boosting the Butter' event at the next Olympic Games, and I'm practising all the time. . . . Underhill was there, eh?"

"Yes."

"You met him?"

"Yes."

Derek fiddled with his knife.

"Did he come over . . . I mean . . . had he come specially to see you?"

"Yes."

"I see."

There was another pause.

"He wants to marry you?"

"He said he wanted to marry me."

Wally got up and went to the window. Jill could smile safely now, and she did, but her voice was still grave.

"What ought I to do, Wally? I thought I would ask you, as you are such a friend."

Wally spoke without turning.

"You ought to marry him, of course."

"You think so?"

"You ought to marry him, of course," said Wally doggedly. "You love him, and the fact that he came all the way to America must mean that he still loves you. Marry him!"

"But . . ." Jill hesitated. "You see, there's a difficulty."

"What difficulty?"

"Well . . . it was something I said to him just before he went away. I said something that made it a little difficult."

Wally continued to inspect the roofs below.

"What did you say?"

"Well . . . it was something . . . something that I don't believe he liked . . . something that may interfere with his marrying me."

"What did you say?"

"I told him I was going to marry you!"

Wally spun round. At the same time he leaped in the air. The effect of the combination of movements was to cause him to stagger across the room and, after two or three impromptu dance steps which would have interested Mrs Peagrim, to clutch at the mantelpiece to save himself from falling. Jill watched him with quiet approval.

"Why, that's wonderful, Wally! Is that another of your morning exercises? If Freddie does go into vaudeville, you ought to get him to let you join the troupe."

Wally was blinking at her from the mantelpiece.

"Jill!"

"Yes?"

"What—what—what . . . !"

"Now, don't talk like Freddie, even if you are going into vaudeville with him."

"You said you were going to marry me?"

"I said I was going to marry you!"

"But—do you mean . . . ?"

The mischief died out of Jill's eyes. She met his gaze frankly and seriously.

"The lumber's gone, Wally," she said. "But my heart isn't empty. It's quite, quite full, and it's going to be full for ever and ever and ever."

Wally left the mantelpiece, and came slowly towards her.

"Jill!" He choked. "Jill!"

Suddenly he pounced on her and swung her off her feet. She gave a little breathless cry.

"Wally! I thought you didn't approve of cavemen!"

"This," said Wally, "is just another new morning exercise I've thought of!"

Jill sat down, gasping.

"Are you going to do that often, Wally?"

"Every day for the rest of my life!"

"Goodness!"

"Oh, you'll get used to it. It'll grow on you."

"You don't think I am making a mistake marrying you?"

"No, no! I've given the matter a lot of thought, and . . . in fact, no, no!"

"No," said Jill thoughtfully. "I think you'll make a good husband. I mean, suppose we ever want the piano moved or something . . . Wally!" she broke off suddenly.

"You have our ear."

"Come out on the roof," said Jill. "I want to show you something funny."

Wally followed her out. They stood at the parapet together, looking down.

"There!" said Jill, pointing.

Wally looked puzzled.

"I see many things, but which is the funny one?"

"Why, all those people. Over there—and there—and there. Scuttering about and thinking they know everything there is to know, and not one of them has the least idea that I am the happiest girl on earth!"

"Or that I'm the happiest man! Their ignorance is—what is the word I want? Abysmal. They don't know what it's like to stand beside you and see that little dimple in your chin. . . . They don't know you've got a little dimple in your chin. . . . They don't know. . . . They don't know . . . Why, I don't suppose a single one of them even knows that I'm just going to kiss you!"

"Those girls in that window over there do," said Jill. "They are watching us like hawks."

"Let 'em!" said Wally briefly.

THE END



Transcriber's Note: While I left several variant spellings such as vodevil and bethrothed, I did correct the following:

Fixed: course/coarse in Yet somehow this course, rough person in front of him never seemed to allow him a word

Fixed: awfuly/awfully in: He's awfuly good to girls who've worked in shows for him before.

Fixed: Pullfan/Pullman Those Pullfan porters on parade!"

Fixed: a large typo in the print edition, which originally read: "Yes. I've got the most damned attack of indigestion." Derek should recline in the arm-chair which he had vacated; dinner!"

THE END