Sandy shouted with delight.

"After all, people like that are awfully refreshing," he said at last.

"At times," admitted Nan. "All the same," she went on dispiritedly, "one must be in the right atmosphere to do anything worth while."

"Well, I'm exuding as much as I can," said Sandy. "Atmosphere, I mean. Look here, what about that concerto for pianoforte and orchestra which you had in mind? Have you done anything to it yet?"

She shook her head.

"Then get on to it quick—and stick at it. Don't waste your time writing the usual type of sentimental ballad-song—a degree or two below par."

Nan was silent for a few minutes. Then:

"Sandy," she said, "you're rather like a dose of physic—wholesome but unpalatable. I'll get to work to-morrow. Now let's go and forage for some food. You've made me fearfully hungry—like a long sermon in church."

Christmas came, bringing with it, at Roger's suggestion, a visit from Lord St. John, and his presence at the house worked wonders in the way of transforming the general atmosphere. Even Lady Gertrude thawed beneath the charm of his kindly, whimsical personality, and to Nan the few days he spent at the Hall were of more value than a dozen tonics. She was no longer shut in alone with her own thoughts—with him she could talk freely and naturally. Even the under-current of hostile criticism of which she was almost hourly conscious ceased to fret her nerves.

Insensibly Lord St. John's evident affection for his niece and quiet appreciation of her musicianship influenced Lady Gertrude for the time being, softening her attitude towards her future daughter-in-law, even though it brought her no nearer understanding her. Isobel, alertly capable of adapting herself to the prevailing atmosphere, reflected in her manner the same change. She had long since learned to keep the private workings of her mind locked up—when it seemed advisable.

"I'm glad to see you in what will one day be your own home, Nan," said Lord St. John. They were sitting alone together in the West Parlour, chatting in the cosy intimacy of the firelight.

"I'd rather you saw it when it is my own home," she returned with a rueful smile. "It will look very different then, I hope."

"Yet I'm glad to see it now," he repeated.

There was a slight emphasis on the word "now," and Nan glanced up in surprise.

"Why now particularly?" she asked, smiling. "Are you going to cold-shoulder me after I'm married?"

Lord St. John shook his head.

"That's very likely, isn't it?" he said, smiling. "No, my dear, that's not the reason." He paused as though searching for words, then went on quietly: "The silver chord is getting a bit frayed, you know, Nan. I'm an old man, and I'm just beginning to know it."

She caught her breath quickly and her face whitened. Then she forced a laugh.

"Nonsense, Uncle David! Kitty always declares you're the youngest of us all."

His eyes smiled back at her.

"Unfortunately, my dear, Time takes no account of a juvenile spirit. His job is with this body of ours. But the spirit," he added dreamingly, "and its youthfulness—that's for eternity."

"But you look quite well—quite well," she insisted. And her manner was the more positive because in her inmost mind she thought she could detect a slight increase of that frail appearance she had first noticed on Penelope's wedding-day.

"I've had hints, Nan—Nature's wireless. So I saw Jermyn Carter a few weeks back—"

"What did he say?" She interrupted swiftly.

"That at my age a man mustn't expect his heart to be the same as in his twenties."

A silence fell between them. Then Nan's hand stole out and clasped his. She had never imagined a world without this good comrade in it. The bare thought of it brought a choking lump into her throat, robbing her of words. Presently St. John spoke again.

"I've nothing to grizzle about. I've known love and I've known friendship—the two biggest things in life. And, after all, since . . . since she went, I've only been waiting. The world, without her, has never been quite the same."

"I know," she whispered.

"You Davenant women," he went on more lightly, "are never loved and forgotten."

"And we don't love—and forget," said Nan in a low voice.

St. John looked at her with eyes that held a very tender comprehension.

"Tell me, Nan, was it—Peter Mallory?"

She met his glance bravely for a moment.

"Yes," she answered at last, very quietly. "It was Peter." With a sudden shudder she bent forward and covered her face with her hands. "And I can't forget," she said hoarsely.

A long, heavy silence fell between them.

"Then why—" began Lord St. John.

Nan lifted her head.

"Why did I promise Roger?" she broke in. "Because it seemed the only way. I—I was afraid! And then there was Penelope—and Ralph. . . . Oh, it was a ghastly mistake. I know now. But—but there's Roger . . . he cares . . ."

"Yes. There's Roger," he said gravely. "And you've given him your word. You can't draw back now." There was a note of sternness in the old man's voice—the sternness of a man who has a high creed of honour and who has always lived up to it, no matter what it cost.

"Remember, Nan, no Davenant was ever a coward in the face of difficulties. They always pulled through somehow."

"Or ran away—like Angele de Varincourt."

"She only ran from one difficulty into the arms of a hundred others. No wrong can be righted by another wrong."

"Can any wrong ever be really righted?" she demanded bitterly.

"We have to pay for our mistakes—each in our turn." He himself had paid to the uttermost farthing. "Is it a very heavy price, Nan?"

She turned her face away a little.

"It will be . . . higher than I expected," she acknowledged slowly.

"Well, then, pay up. Don't make—Roger—pay for your blunder. You have other things—your music, for instance. Many people have to go through life with only their work for company. . . . Whereas you are Roger's whole world."

With the New Year Lord St. John returned to town. Nan missed him every minute of the day, but she had drawn new strength and steadfastness from his kindly counsels. He understood both the big tragedies of life—which often hold some brief, perfect memory to make them bearable—and those incessant, gnat-like irritations which uncongenial fellowship involves.

Somehow he had the faculty of relegating small personal vexations to their proper place in the scheme of things—thrusting them far into the background. It was as though someone drew you to the window and, ignoring the small, man-made flower-beds of the garden with their insistent crop of weeds, the circumscribed lawns, and the foolish, twisting paths that led to nowhere, pointed you to the distant landscape where the big breadths of light and shadow, the broad draughtmanship of God, stretched right away to the dim blue line of the horizon.



CHAPTER XX

THE CAGE DOOR

For the first few days succeeding Lord St. John's departure from Trenby Hall, matters progressed comparatively smoothly. Then, as his influence waned with absence, the usual difficulties reappeared, the old hostilities—hostilities of outlook and generation—arising once more betwixt Nan and Lady Gertrude. Mutual understanding is impossible between two people whose sense of values is fundamentally opposed, and music, the one thing that had counted all through Nan's life, was a matter of supreme unimportance to the older woman. She regarded it—or, indeed, any other form of art, for that matter—as amongst the immaterial fripperies of life, something to be put aside at any moment in favour of social or domestic duties. It signified even less to her than it did to Eliza McBain, to whom it at least represented one of the lures of Satan—and for this reason could not be entirely discounted.

Since Sandy's stimulating visit Nan had devoted considerable time to the composition of her concerto, working at it with a recrudescence of her old enthusiasm, and the work had been good for her. It had carried her out of herself, preventing her from dwelling continually upon the past. Unfortunately, however, the hours she spent in the seclusion of the West Parlour were not allowed to pass without comment.

"It seems to take you a long time to compose a new piece," remarked Isobel at dinner one day, the trite expression "new piece" very evidently culled from her school-day memories.

Nan smiled across at her.

"A concerto's a pretty big undertaking, you see," she explained.

"Rather an unnecessary one, I should have thought, as you are so soon to be married." Lady Gertrude spoke with her usual acid brevity. "It certainly prevents our enjoying as much of your society as we should wish."

Nan flushed scarlet at the implied slur on her behaviour as a guest in the house, even though she recognised the injustice of it. An awkward pause ensued. Isobel, having started the ball rolling, seemed content to let things take their course without interference, while Roger's shaggy brows drew together in a heavy frown—though whether he were displeased by his mother's comment, or by Nan's having given her cause for it, it was impossible to say.

"This afternoon, for instance," pursued Lady Gertrude, "Isobel and I paid several calls in the neighbourhood, and in each case your absence was a disappointment to our friends—very naturally."

"I—I'm sorry," stammered Nan. She found it utterly incomprehensible that anyone should expect her to break off in the middle of an afternoon's inspiration in order to pay a duty call upon some absolute strangers—whose disappointment was probably solely due to baulked curiosity concerning Roger's future wife.

Isobel laughed lightly and let fly one of her little two-edged shafts.

"I expect you think we're a lot of very commonplace people, Nan," she commented. "Own up, now!" challengingly.

Lady Gertrude's eyes flashed like steel.

"Hardly that, I hope," she said coldly.

"Well, we're none of us in the least artistic," persisted her niece, perfectly aware that her small thrusts were as irritating to Lady Gertrude and Roger as the picador's darts to the bull in the arena. "So of course we must appear rather Philistine compared with Nan's set in London."

Roger levelled a keen glance at Nan. There was suppressed anger and a searching, almost fierce enquiry in his eyes beneath which she shrank. That imperious temper of his was not difficult to rouse, as she had discovered on more than one occasion since she had come to Trenby Hall, and she felt intensely annoyed with Isobel, who was apparently unable to see that her ill-timed observations were goading the pride of both Roger and his mother.

"Silence evidently gives consent," laughed Isobel, as Nan, absorbed in her own reflections for the moment, vouchsafed no contradiction to her last remark.

Nan met the other's mocking glance defiantly. With a sudden wilfulness, born of the incessant opposition she encountered, she determined to let Miss Carson's second challenge go unanswered. She had tried—tried desperately—to win the affection, or even the bare liking, of Roger's women-kind, and she had failed. It was all just so much useless effort. Henceforward they might think of her what they chose.

The remainder of the meal passed in a strained and uncomfortable manner. Lady Gertrude and Isobel discussed various matters pertaining to the village Welfare Club, while Roger preserved an impenetrable silence, and though Nan made a valiant pretence at eating, lest Lady Gertrude's gimlet eyes should observe her lack of appetite and her thin, disdainful voice comment on the fact, she felt all the time as though the next mouthful must inevitably choke her.

The long, formal meal came to an end at last, and she rose from the table with a sigh of relief and accompanied the other two women out of the room, leaving Roger to smoke his pipe alone as usual. An instant later, to her surprise, she heard his footstep and found that he had followed them into the hall and was standing on the threshold of the library.

"Come in here, Nan," he said briefly.

Somewhat reluctantly she followed him into the room. He closed the door behind her, then swung round on his heel so that they stood fronting one another.

At the sight of his face she recoiled a step in sheer nervous astonishment. It was a curious ashen-white, and from beneath drawn brows his hawk's eyes seemed positively to blaze at her.

"Roger," she stammered, "what—what is it?"

"Is it true?" he demanded, ignoring her halting question, and fixing her with a glance that seemed to penetrate right through her.

"Is—is what true?" she faltered.

"Is it true—what Isobel said—that you look down on us because we're countrified, that you're still hankering after that precious artistic crew of yours in London?"

He spoke violently—so violently that it roused Nan's spirit. She turned away from him.

"Don't be so absurd, Roger," she said contemptuously. "Isobel was only joking. It was very silly of her, but it's sillier still for you to take any notice of what she said."

"She was not joking. You've shown it clearly enough—ever since you came here—that you're dissatisfied—bored! Do you suppose I haven't seen it? I'm not blind! And I won't stand it! If your music is going to come between us, I'll smash the piano—"

"Roger! You ridiculous person!"

She was smiling now. Something in his anger reminded her of an enraged small boy. It woke in her the eternal motherhood which lies in every woman and she felt that she wanted to comfort him. She could forgive him his violence. In his furious antagonism towards the art which meant so much to her, she traced the combined influence of Lady Gertrude and Isobel. Not merely the latter's pin-pricks at dinner this particular evening, but the constant pressure of criticism of which she was the subject.

"You ridiculous person! If you did smash the piano, it wouldn't make me any less a musician. And"—lightly—"I really can't have you being jealous of an inanimate thing like a grand piano!"

Roger's frown relaxed a little. His threat to smash the piano sounded foolish even in his own ears. But he hated the instrument none the less, although without precisely knowing why. Subconsciously he was aware that the real Nan still eluded him. She was his in the eyes of the world—pledged to be his wife—yet he knew that although he might possess her body it would bring him no nearer the possession of her soul and spirit. That other man—the one for whom she had told him she once cared—held those! Trenby was not given to psychological analysis, but in a blind, bewildered fashion he felt that that thing of wood and ivory and stretched strings represented in concrete form everything that stood betwixt himself and Nan.

"Have I nothing else—no one else"—significantly—-"to be jealous of?" he demanded. "Answer me!"

With a swift movement he gripped her by the shoulder, forcing her to face him again, his eyes still stormy. She winced involuntarily under the pressure of his fingers, but forced herself to answer him.

"You know," she said quietly. "I told you when you asked me to be your wife that—that there was—someone—for whom I cared. But, if you believed all I told you then—you know, too, that you have no reason to be jealous."

"You mean because you can't marry him?"—moodily.

"Yes."

The brief reply acted like a spark to tinder. With a stifled exclamation he caught her up in his arms, crushing his mouth down on hers till her lips felt bruised beneath his kisses.

"It's not enough!" he said, his voice hoarse and shaken. "It's not enough! I want you—the whole of you, Nan—Nan!"

For an instant she struggled against him—almost instinctively. Then, remembering she had given him the right to kiss her if he chose, she yielded, surrendering passively to the fierce tide of his passion.

"Kiss me!" he insisted hotly.

She kissed him obediently. But there was no warmth in her kiss, no answering thrill, and the man knew it. He held her away from him, his sudden passion chilled.

"Is that the best you can do?" he demanded, looking down at her with something grimly ironic in his eyes. She steadied herself to meet his glance.

"It is—really, Roger," she replied earnestly. "Oh!"—flushing swiftly—"you must know it!"

"Yes"—with a shrug. "I suppose I ought to have known it. I'm only a second string, after all."

There was so much bitterness in his voice that Nan's heart was touched to a compassionate understanding.

"Ah! Don't speak like that!" she cried tremulously. "You know I'm giving you all I can, Roger. I've been quite fair with you—quite honest. I told you I had no love to give you, that I could never care for anyone again,—like that. And you said you would be content," she added with reproach.

"I know I did," he answered sullenly. "But I'm not. No man who loved you would be content! . . . And I'm never sure of you. . . . You hate it here—"

"But it will be different when we are married," she said gently. Surely it would be different when they were alone together in their own home without the perpetual irritation of Isobel's malicious little thrusts and Lady Gertrude's implacability?

"My God, yes! It'll he different then. I shall have you to myself!"

"Your mother?" she questioned, a thought timidly.

"She—and Isobel—will go to the dower house. No"—reading her thoughts—"they won't like it. They don't want to go. That's natural enough. Once I thought—" He checked himself abruptly, wondering how he could ever have conceived it possible that his mother might remain on at the Hall after his marriage. "But not now! I'll have my wife to myself"—savagely. "Nan, how long am I to wait?"

A thrill of dismay ran through her. So far, he had not raised the question as to the actual date of their marriage, and she had been thankful to leave it for settlement at some vaguely distant period.

"Why—why, I couldn't he married till Kitty comes home," she faltered.

"I suppose not. When do you expect her back?"

"About the end of the month, I think, or the beginning of February."

"Then you'll marry me in April."

He made the statement with a certain grim arrogance that forbade all contradiction. He was in a curiously uncertain mood, and Nan, anxious not to provoke another storm, assented reluctantly.

"You mean that? You won't fail me?" His keen eyes searched her face as though he doubted her and sought to wring the truth from her lips.

"Yes," she said very low. "I mean it."

He left her then, and a few minutes later, when she had recovered her poise, she rejoined Lady Gertrude and Isobel in the drawing-room.

"You and Roger have been having a very long confab," remarked Isobel, looking up from the jumper she was knitting. "What does it portend?"

Her sallow, nimble fingers never paused in their work. The soft, even click of the needles went on unbrokenly.

"Nothing immediate," answered Nan. "He wants me to settle the date of our wedding, that's all."

The clicking ceased abruptly.

"And when is it to be?" Isobel's attention seemed entirely concentrated upon a dropped stitch.

"Some time in April. It will have to depend a little on Mrs. Seymour's plans. She wants me to be married from her house, just as Penelope was."

Lady Gertrude was busily engaged upon the making of a utilitarian flannel petticoat for one of her protegees in the village. She anchored her needle carefully in the material before she laid it aside.

"Do you mean from her house in town?" she asked.

"Why, yes, I suppose so." Nan looked faintly puzzled.

"Then I hope you will re-arrange matters."

Although Lady Gertrude's manner was colder and infinitely more precise, yet the short speech held the same arrogance as Roger's "Then you'll marry me in April"—the kind of arrogance which calmly assumes that any opposition is out of the question.

"It would be the greatest disappointment to the tenantry," she continued, "if they were unable to witness the marriage of my son—as they would have done, of course, if he'd married someone of the district. So I hope"—conclusively—"that Mrs. Seymour will arrange for your wedding to take place from Mallow Court."

She picked up the flannel petticoat and recommenced work upon it again as though the matter were settled, supremely oblivious of the fact that she had succeeded, as usual, in rousing every rebellious feeling her future daughter-in-law possessed.

Nan lay long awake that night. Roger's sudden gust of passion had taken her by surprise, filling her with a kind of terror of him. Never before had he shown her that side of himself, and she had somehow taken it for granted that he would not prove a demanding lover. He had been so diffident, so generous at the beginning, that she had been almost ashamed of the poor return which was all that she could make. But now she was suddenly face to face with the fact that he was going to demand far more of her than she was able to give.

She had not realised how much propinquity adds fuel to love's fire. Unknown, even to himself, Roger's passion had been gradually rising towards flood-tide. Man being by nature a contradictory animal, the attitude assumed by his mother and cousin towards the woman who was to be his wife had seemed to fan rather than smother the flame.

All at once the curb had snapped. He wanted Nan, the same Nan with whom he had fallen in love—the inconsequent feminine thing of elusive frocks and absurd, delicious faults and weaknesses—rather than a Nan moulded into shape by Lady Gertrude's iron hand. An intense resentment of his mother's interference had been gradually growing up within him. He would do all the moulding that was required, after matrimony!

Not that he put all this to himself in so many words. But a sense of revolt, an overwhelming jealousy of everyone who made any claim at all on Nan—jealousy even of that merry Bohemian life of hers in which he had had no share—had been slowly gathering within him until it was almost more than he could endure. Isobel's taunts at dinner had half maddened him. Whether he were Philistine or not, Nan had promised to marry him, and he would know neither rest nor peace of mind until that promise were fulfilled.

And Nan, as she lay in bed with wide eyes staring into the darkness, felt as though the door of the cage were slowly closing upon her.



CHAPTER XXI

LADY GERTRUDE'S POINT OF VIEW

It was a cheerless morning. Gusts of fine, sprinkling rain drove hither and thither on a blustering wind, while overhead hung a leaden sky with patches of black cloud scudding raggedly across it.

Nan, coming slowly downstairs to breakfast, regarded the state of the weather as merely in keeping with everything else. The constant friction of her visit to Trenby had been taking its daily toll of her natural buoyancy, and last night's interview with Roger had tried her frayed nerves to the uttermost. This morning, after an almost sleepless night, she felt that to remain there any longer would be more than she could endure. She must get away—secure at least a few days' respite from the dreadful atmosphere of disapprobation and dislike which Lady Gertrude managed to convey.

The consciousness of it was never absent from her. Pride had upheld her so far, but underneath the pride lay a very sore heart. To anyone as sensitive as Nan, whose own lovableness had always hitherto evoked both love and friendship as naturally as flowers open to the sun, it was a new and bewildering experience to be disliked. She did not know how to meet it. It hurt inexpressibly, and she was tired of being hurt.

She hesitated nervously outside the morning-room door, whence issued the soft clink of china and a murmur of voices. The clock in the hall had struck the hour five minutes ago. She was late, and she knew that the instant she entered the room she would feel that unfriendly atmosphere rushing to meet her like a great black wave. Finally, with an effort, she turned the door-handle and went in.

For once Lady Gertrude refrained from comment upon her lack of punctuality. She seemed preoccupied and, to judge from the pinched closing of her lips, her thoughts were anything but pleasing, while Roger was in the sullen, rather impenetrable mood which Nan had learned to recognise as a sign of storm. He hardly spoke at all, and then only to fling out one or two curt remarks in connection with estate matters. Immediately breakfast was at an end he rose from the table, remarking that he should not be in for lunch, and left the room.

Lady Gertrude looked up from her morning's letters.

"I suppose he's riding over to Berry Farm—the tenant wants some repairs done. He ought to take a few sandwiches with him if he won't be here for lunch."

Isobel jumped up from her seat.

"I'll see that he does," she said quickly, and went out of the room in search of him. Any need of Roger's must be instantly supplied.

Lady Gertrude waited until the servants had cleared away the breakfast, then she turned to Nan with a very definite air of having something to say.

"Have you and Roger quarrelled?" she asked abruptly.

The girl started nervously. She had not expected this as a consequence of Roger's taciturnity.

"No," she said, stumbling a little. "No, we haven't—quarrelled."

Lady Gertrude scrutinised her with keen, light-grey eyes that had the same penetrating glance as Roger's own, and Nan felt herself colouring under it.

"You've displeased him in some way or other," insisted Lady Gertrude, and waited for a reply.

Nan flared up at the older woman's arbitrary manner.

"That's rather a funny way to put it, isn't it?" she said quickly. "I'm—I'm not a child, you know."

"You behave very much like one at times," retorted Lady Gertrude. "I've done my utmost since you came here to fit you to be Roger's wife, and without any appreciable result. You seem to be exactly as irresponsible and thoughtless as when you arrived."

The cold, contemptuous criticism flicked the girl's raw nerves like the point of a lash. She sprang to her feet, her eyes very bright, as though tears were not far distant, her young breast rising and falling unevenly with her hurrying breath.

"Is that what you think of me?" she said unsteadily. "Because then I'd better go away. It's what I want—to go away! I—I can't bear it here any longer." Her fingers gripped the edge of the table tensely. She was struggling to keep down the rising sobs which threatened to choke her speech. "I know you don't want me to be Roger's wife—you don't think I'm fit for it! You've just said so! And—and you've let me see it every day. I'll go—I'll go!"

Lady Gertrude's face remained quite unchanged. Only the steely gleam in her eyes hardened.

"When this hysterical outburst is quite over," she said scathingly, "I shall be better able to talk to you."

Nan made no answer. It was all she could do to prevent herself from bursting into tears.

"Sit down again." Lady Gertrude pointed to a chair, and Nan, who felt her legs trembling under her, sat down obediently. "You're quite mistaken in thinking I don't wish you to be Roger's wife," continued Lady Gertrude quietly. "I do wish it."

Nan glanced across at her in astonishment. This was the last thing she had expected her to say—irreconcilable with her whole attitude throughout the last two months. Lady Gertrude returned the glance with one of faint amusement. She could make a good guess at what the girl was thinking.

"I wish it," she pursued, "because Roger wishes it. I should like my son to have everything he wants. To be perfectly frank, I don't consider he has made a very suitable choice, but since he wants you—why, he must have you. No, don't interrupt me, please"—for Nan, quivering with indignation, was about to protest. "When—if ever you are a mother you will understand my point of view. Roger has made his choice—and of course he hasn't the least idea how unsuitable a one it is. Men rarely get beyond a pretty face. So it devolves upon me to make you better fitted to be his wife than you are at present."

The cold, dispassionate speech roused Nan to a fury of exasperation and revolt. Evidently, in Lady Gertrude's mind, Roger was the only person who mattered. She herself was of the utmost unimportance except for the fact that he wanted her for his wife! She felt as though she were a slave who had been bartered away to a new owner.

"You understand, now?"

Lady Gertrude's clear, unmoved accents dropped like ice into the midst of her burning resentment.

"Yes, I do understand!" she exclaimed, in a voice that she hardly recognised as her own. "And I think everything you've said is horrible! If I thought Roger looked at things like that, I'd break our engagement to-morrow! But he doesn't—I know he doesn't. It's only you who think such hateful things. And—and I won't stay here! I—I can't!"

"It's foolish to talk of breaking off your engagement," returned Lady Gertrude composedly. "Roger is not a man to be picked up and put down at any woman's whim—as you would find out if you tried to do it."

Inwardly Nan felt bitterly conscious that this was true. She didn't believe for a moment that Roger would release her, however much she might implore him to. And unless he himself released her, her pledge to him must stand.

"As to going away"—Lady Gertrude was speaking again. "Where would you go?"

"To the flat, of course."

"Do you mean to the flat you used to share with Mrs. Fenton?"—on a glacial note of incredulity.

"Yes."

"Who is living there?"

Nan looked puzzled. What did it matter to Lady Gertrude who lived there?

"No one, just now. The Fentons are going to stay there, when they come back, while they look for a house."

"But they are not there now?" persisted Lady Gertrude.

Nan shook her head, wondering what was the drift of so much questioning. She was soon to know.

"Then, my dear child," said Lady Gertrude decidedly, "of course it would be quite impossible for you to go there."

"Why impossible?"

Lady Gertrude's brows lifted, superciliously.

"I should have thought it was obvious," she replied curtly. "Hasn't it occurred to you that it would be hardly the thing for a young unmarried girl to be staying alone in a flat in London?"

"No, it hasn't," returned Nan bluntly. "Penelope and I have each stayed there alone—heaps of times—when the other was away."

"Very possibly." There was an edge to Lady Gertrude's voice which it was impossible to misinterpret. "Professional musicians are very lax—I suppose you would call it Bohemian—in their ideas. That I can quite believe. But you have someone else to consider now. Roger would hardly wish his future wife to be stopping alone at a flat in London."

Nan was silent. Ridiculous as it seemed, she had to admit that Lady Gertrude was speaking no more than the bare truth concerning Roger's point of view. She felt perfectly sure that he would object—very strenuously!

Lady Gertrude rose.

"I think there is no more to be said. You can put any idea of rushing off to London out of your head. Even if Roger were agreeable, I should not allow it while you are in my charge. Neither is it exactly complimentary to us that you should even suggest such a thing."

With this parting comment she quitted the room, leaving Nan staring stonily out of the window.

She felt helpless—helpless to withstand the thin, steel-eyed woman who was Roger's mother. Nominally free, she was to all intents and purposes a prisoner at Trenby Hall till Kitty or Penelope came home. Of course she could write to Lord St. John if she chose. But even if she did, he most certainly could not ask her to stay with him at his chambers in London. Besides, she didn't want to appeal to him. She knew he would think she was running away—playing the coward, and that it would be a bitter disappointment to him to find her falling short of the high standard which he had always set before her.

"No Davenant was ever a coward in the face of difficulties," he had told her. And she loved him far too much to hurt him as grievously as she knew it would hurt him if she ran away from them.

She stood there for a long time, staring dumbly out at the falling rain and dripping trees. She was thinking along the lines which St. John had laid down for her. "Don't make Roger pay for your own blunder." Was she doing that? Remembering all that had passed between them last night she began to realise that this was just what she had been doing.

She had no love to give him, but she had been keeping him out of everything else as well. She had not even tried to make a comrade of him, to let him into her interests and to try and share his own. Instead, she had shut herself away in the West Parlour with her music and her memories, and in his own blundering fashion Roger had realised it. Probably he had even guessed that that other man who had loved her had been able to go with her into the temple of music, comprehending it all and loving it even as she did.

She understood Roger's strange and sudden jealousy now. Although she was to be his wife, he was jealous of those invisible bonds of mutual understanding which had linked her to Peter Mallory—bonds which, had they two been free to marry, would have made of their marriage a perfect thing—the beautiful mating of spirit, soul, and body.

The doors of her soul—that innermost sanctuary of all—would never be opened for any other to enter in. But surely there was something more that she might give Roger than she had yet done. She could stretch out a friendly hand and try to link their interests together, however slight the link must be.

All at once, a plan to accomplish this formulated itself in her mind. He had wanted to "smash the piano." Well, he should never want that again. She would show him that her music was not going to stand between them—that she was willing to share it with him. She would talk to him about it, get him to understand something of what it meant to her, and when the concerto was quite finished, she would invite him into the West Parlour to listen to it. It was nearing completion—another week's work and what Sandy laughingly termed her "magnum opus" would be finished. Of course Roger wouldn't be able to give her a musician's understanding of it, but he would certainly appreciate the fact that she had played it to him first of anyone.

It would go far to heal that resentful jealousy if she "shared" the concerto with him. He would never again feel that she was keeping him outside the real interests of her life. Probably, later on, when it was performed by a big London orchestra, under the auspices of one of the best-known conductors of the day—who happened to be a particular friend of Nan's and a staunch believer in her capacity to do good work—Roger would even begin to take a quaint kind of pride in her musical achievements.

What she purposed would involve a good deal of pluck and sacrifice. For it takes both of these to reveal yourself, as any true musician must, to an audience of one with whom you are not utterly in sympathy. But if by this road she and Roger took one step towards a better understanding, towards that comradeship which was all that she could ever give him, then it would have been worth the sacrifice.

Gradually the stony look of despair lifted from her face, and a new spirit of resolution took possession of her. She was not the only person in the world who had to suffer. There were others, Peter amongst them, who were debarred by circumstances from finding happiness, and who went on doing their duty unflinchingly. It was only she who had failed—letting Roger bear the cost of her mistake. She had promised to marry him when it seemed the only way out of the difficulties which beset her, and now she was not honouring that promise. While Peter Mallory was still waiting quietly for the wife he no longer loved to come back to him—keeping the door of his house open to her whenever she should choose to claim fulfilment of the pledges he had given the day he married her.

Nan leaned her head against the window-pane, realising that, whatever Roger's faults might he, she, too, had fallen short.

"Our troth, Nan. Hang on to it—hard, when life seems a bit more uphill than usual."

She could hear Peter's voice, steady and clear and reassuring, almost as she had heard it that night on the headland at Tintagel. She felt her throat contract and a burning mist of tears blurred her vision. For a moment she fought desperately against her weakness. Then, with a little strangled cry, she buried her face against her arm and broke into a passion of tears.



CHAPTER XXII

THE OFFERING OF FIRST-FRUITS

The concerto was finished! Finished, at least, as far as it was possible without rehearsing the effect with orchestra, and as Nan turned over the sheets of manuscript, thickly dotted with their medley of notes and rests and slurs, she was conscious of that glorious thrill of accomplishment which is the creative artist's recompense for long hours of work and sacrifice,—and for those black moments of discouragement and self-distrust which no true artist can escape.

She sat very quietly in the West Parlour, thinking of the concerto and of what she meant to do with it. She was longing to show it to Sandy McBain, who would have a musician's comprehension of every bar, and she knew he would rejoice with her whole-heartedly over it. But that would have to wait until after Roger had heard it. The first-fruits, as it were, were to be offered to him.

She had it all planned out in her mind. Roger was out hunting to-day, so that she had been able to add certain final touches to the concerto uninterrupted, and after dinner she proposed to carry him off to the West Parlour and play it to him. There would be only their two selves, alone together—for she had no intention of inviting Lady Gertrude and Isobel to attend this first performance.

She was nervously excited at the prospect, and when she heard the distant sound of a horseman trotting up the drive she jumped up and ran to the window, peering out into the dusk. It was Roger, and as horse and rider swung past the window she drew back suddenly into the fire-lit shadows of the room, letting the short window-curtains fall together.

Five minutes later she heard his footsteps as he came striding along the corridor on to which the West Parlour opened. Then the door-handle was turned with imperious eagerness, someone switched on the light, and he came in—splashed with mud, his face red from the lash of the wind, his hair beaded with moisture from the misty air. He looked just what he was—a typical big sporting Englishman—as he tramped into the room and made his way to the warmth of the blazing log fire.

Nan looked up and threw him a little smile of greeting.

"Hullo, darling, there you are!" He stooped and kissed her, and she forced herself to sit quiet and unshrinking while his lips sought and found her own.

"Have you had a good day?" she asked.

"Topping. Best run of the season. We found at once and went right away." And he launched out into an enthusiastic description of the day's sport.

Nan listened patiently. She wasn't in the least interested, really, but she had been trying very hard latterly not to let Roger pay for what had been her own blunder—not to let him pay even in the small things of daily life. So she feigned an interest she was far from feeling and discussed the day's hunting with snatches of melody from the concerto running through her mind all the time.

The man and woman offered a curious contrast as they talked; he, big, virile, muddied with his day in the saddle, an aroma of mingled damp and leather exuding from his clothes as they steamed in front of the fire—she, slim, silken-clad, delicately wrought by nature and over-finely strung by reason of the high-pitched artist's life she had led.

Roger himself seemed suddenly struck by the contrast.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, surveying her rather ruefully. "We're a pretty fair example of beauty and the beast, aren't we?"

Nan looked back at him composedly—at the strong, ugly face and far-visioned eyes.

"Not in the least," she replied judicially. "We're—different, that's all. And"—smiling faintly—"you're rather grubby just at present."

"I suppose I am." He glanced ruefully down at his mud-bespattered coat. "I oughtn't to have come in here like this," he added with an awkward attempt at apology. "Only I couldn't wait to see you."

"Well, go and have your tub and a change," she said, with a small, indulgent laugh. "And by dinner time you'll have a better opinion of your outward man."

It was not until after dinner that she mentioned the concerto to him, snatching an opportunity when they chanced to find themselves alone for a few minutes. Some distracted young married woman from the village had called to ask Lady Gertrude's advice as to how she should deal with a husband who seemed to find his chief entertainment in life in beating her with a broomstick and in threatening to "do her in" altogether if the application of the broomstick proved barren of wifely improvement. Accordingly, Lady Gertrude, accompanied by her aide-de-camp, Isobel, were interviewing the poor, terrified creature with a view to ameliorating her lot.

"It's good, Roger," said Nan, when she had told him that the concerto was finished. "It's really good. And I want you to hear it first of anyone."

Roger smiled down at her. He was obviously pleased.

"Of course I must hear it first," he answered. "I'm your lawful lord and master, remember."

"Not yet?" she objected hastily.

He threw his arm round her and pulled her into his embrace.

"No. But very soon," he said.

"You won't beat me, I suppose—like Mrs. Pike's husband?" she suggested teasingly, with a gesture towards the room where Lady Gertrude and Isobel were closeted with the woman from the village.

His arm tightened round her possessively.

"I don't know," he said slowly. "I might—if I couldn't manage you any other way."

"Roger!"

There was almost a note of fear in her quick, astonished exclamation. With his arm gripped round her she recognised how utterly powerless she would be against his immense strength, and something flint-like and merciless in the expression of those piercing eyes which were blazing down at her made her feel, with a sudden catch at her heart, as though he might actually do the thing he said.

"I hope it won't come to beating you," he resumed in a lighter tone of voice. "But"—grimly—"not even you, when you're my wife, shall defy me with impunity."

Nan drew herself out of his arms.

"Well, I'm not your wife yet," she said, trying to laugh away the queer, unexpected tensity of the moment. "Only a very hard-working young woman, who has a concerto to play to you."

He frowned a little.

"There's no need for you to work hard. I'd rather you didn't. I want you just to enjoy life—have a good time—and keep your music as a relaxation."

Her face clouded over.

"Oh, Roger, you don't understand! I must do it. I couldn't live without it. It fills my life."

His expression softened. He reached out his arm again and drew her back to his side, but this time with a strange, unwonted tenderness.

"I suppose it does," he conceded. "But some day, darling, after we're married, I hope there'll be something—someone—else to fill your life. And when that time comes,—why, the music will take second place."

Nan flushed scarlet and wriggled irritably in his embrace.

"Oh, Roger, do try to understand! As if . . . having a child . . . would make any difference. A baby's a baby, and music's music—the one can't take the place of the other."

Roger looked a trifle taken aback. He held old-fashioned views and rather thought that all women regarded motherhood as a duty and privilege of existence. And, inside himself, he had never doubted that if this great happiness were ever granted to Nan, she would lose all those funny, unaccountable ways of hers—which alternately bewildered and annoyed him—and turn into a nice, normal woman like ninety-nine per cent. of the other women of his somewhat limited acquaintance.

Man has an odd trick of falling in love with the last kind of woman you would expect him to, the very antithesis of the ideal he has previously formulated to himself, and then of expecting her, after matrimony, suddenly to change her whole individuality—the very individuality which attracted him in the first instance—and conform to his preconceived notions of what a wife ought to he.

It is illogical, of course, with that gloriously pig-headed illogicalness not infrequently to be found in the supposedly logical sex, and it would be laughable were it not that it so often ends in tragedy.

So that Roger was quite genuinely dumbfounded at Nan's heterodox pronouncement on the relative values of music and babies.

A baby was not in the least an object of absorbing interest to her. It cried out of tune and made ear-piercing noises that were not included in even the most modern of compositions. Moreover, she was not by nature of the maternal type of woman, to whom marriage is but the beautiful path which leads to motherhood. She was essentially one of the lovers of the world. Had she married her mate, she would have demanded nothing more of life, though, if a child had been born of such mating, it would have seemed to her so beautiful and sure a link, so blent with love itself, that her arms would have opened to receive it.

But of all these intricacies of the feminine heart and mind Roger was sublimely ignorant. So he chided her, still with that same unwonted gentleness which the thought of fatherhood sometimes brings to men of strong and violent temper.

"That's all nonsense, you know, sweetheart. And some day . . . when there's a small son to be thought about and planned for and loved, you'll find that what I say is true."

"It might chance to be a small daughter," suggested Nan snubbily, and Roger's face fell a little. "So, meanwhile, as I haven't a baby and I have a concerto, come along and listen to it."

He nodded and followed her into the West Parlour. A cheerful fire was blazing on the hearth, a big lounge chair drawn up invitingly beside it, while close at hand stood a small table with pipe, tobacco pouch, and matches lying on it in readiness.

Roger smiled at the careful arrangement.

"What a thoughtful child it's becoming!" he commented, taking up his pipe.

"Well, you can listen to music much better if you're really comfy," said Nan. "Sit down and light your pipe—there, I'll light it for you when you've finished squashing the 'baccy down into it."

Roger dropped leisurely into the big chair, filled and lit his pipe, and when it was drawing well, stretched out his legs to the logs' warm glow with a sigh of contentment.

"Now, fire away, sweetheart," he said. "I'm all attention."

She looked across at him, feeling for the first time a little anxious and uncertain of the success of her plan.

"Of course, it'll sound very bald—just played on the piano," she explained carefully. "You'll have to try and imagine the difference the orchestral part makes."

Switching off the lights, so that nothing but the flickering glow of the fire illumined the room, she began to play.

For half an hour she played on, lost to all thoughts of the world around her, wrapped in the melody and meaning of the music. Then, as the finale rushed in a torrent of golden chords to its climax and the last note was struck, her hands fell away from the piano and she sank back on her seat with a little sigh of exhaustion and happiness.

A pause followed. How well she remembered listening for that pause when she played, in public!—The brief, pulsating silence which falls while the thought of the audience steal back from the fairyland whither they have wandered and readjust themselves reluctantly to the things of daily life. And then, the outburst of applause.

In silence she awaited Roger's approval, her lips just parted, her face still alight with the joy of the creator who knows that his work is good.

But the words for which she was listening did not come. . . . Instead—utter silence! . . . Wondering, half apprehensive of she knew not what, Nan twisted round on the music-seat and looked across to where Roger was sitting. The sharp, quick intake of her breath broke the silence as might a cry. Weary after his long day in the saddle, soothed by the warmth of the fire and the rhythm of the music, Roger was sleeping peacefully, his head thrown back against a cushion!

Nan rose slowly and, coming forward into the circle of the firelight, stared down at him incredulously. It was unbelievable! She had been giving him all the best that was in her—the work of her brain, the interpretation of her hands—baring her very heart to him during the last half-hour. And he had slept through it all!

In any other circumstances, probably, the humorous side of the matter would have struck her, and the sting and smart of it been washed away in laughter.

But just now it was impossible for her to feel anything but bitterness and hopeless disappointment. For weeks she had been working hard, without the fillip of congenial atmosphere, doggedly sticking to it in spite of depression and discouragement, and now that the results of her labour were ready to be given to the world, she was strung up to a high pitch and ill-prepared to receive a sudden check.

She had counted so intensely on winning Roger's sympathy and understanding—on putting an end to that blundering, terrible jealousy of his by playing the game to the limit of her ability. It had been like making a burnt-offering for her to share the thing she loved best with Roger—to let him into some of the secret places where dwelt her inmost dreams and emotions. And she had nerved herself to do it, made her sacrifice—in vain! Roger was even unconscious that it was a sacrifice!

She looked down at him as he lay with the firelight flickering across his strong-featured face, and a storm of fury and indignation swept over her. She could have struck him!

Presently he stirred uneasily. Perhaps he felt the cessation of the music, the sense of someone moving in the room. A moment later he opened his eyes and saw her standing beside him.

"You, darling?" he murmured drowsily. He stretched his arms. "I think . . . I've been to sleep." Then, recollection returning to him: "By Jove! And you were playing to me—"

"Yes," she answered slowly. Her lips felt dry. "And I'll never play to you again as long as I live!"

He smiled indulgently.

"That's putting it rather strong, isn't it?" he said, making a long arm and pulling her down on to his knee.

She sprang up again instantly and stood a little away from him, her hands clenched, her breast heaving tumultuously.

"Come back, small firebrand!" he commanded laughingly.

A fresh gust of indignation, swept over her. Even now he didn't comprehend, didn't realise in the very least how he had wounded her. Her nails dug into the flesh of her palms as she took a fresh grip of herself and answered him—very slowly and distinctly so that he might not miss her meaning.

"It's not putting it one bit too strong. It's what I feel—that I can't ever play to you again." She paused, then burst out impetuously: "You've always disliked my love of music! You were jealous of it. And to-night I wanted to show you—to—to share it with you. You hated the piano—you wanted to smash it, because you thought it came between us. And so I tried to make you understand!" Her words came rushing out headlong now, bitter, sobbing words, holding all the agony of mind which she had been enduring for so long.

"You've no idea what music means to me—and you've not tried to find out. Instead, you've laughed indulgently about it, been impatient over it, and behaved as though it were some child's toy of which you didn't quite approve." Her voice shook. "And it isn't! It's part of me—part of the woman you want to marry . . ."

She broke off, a little breathlessly.

Roger was on his feet now and there was a deep, smouldering anger in his eyes as he regarded her.

"And is all this outburst because I fell asleep while you were playing?" he asked curtly.

She was silent, battling with the emotion that was shaking her.

"Because"—he went on with a tinge of contempt in his voice—"if so, it's a ridiculous storm in a tea-cup."

"'Ridiculous'! . . . Yes, that's all it would be to you," she answered bitterly. "But to me it's just like a light flashed on our future life together. We're miles apart—miles! We haven't a thought, an idea, in common. And when it comes to music—to the one big thing in my life—you brush it aside as if it could be taken up or put down like a child's musical box!"

Roger looked at her. Something of her passionate pain and resentment was becoming clear to him.

"I didn't know it meant as much to you as that," he said slowly.

"It's everything to me now!" she burst out wildly. "The only thing I have left—left of my world as I knew it."

His face whitened, and a curious, strained brilliance came into his eyes. She had touched him an the raw, roused his mad jealousy of all that had been in her life of which, he had had no share.

"The only thing you have left?" he repeated, with a slow, dangerous inflection in his voice. "Do you mean that?"

"Yes!"—smiting her hands together. "Can't you see it? There's . . . nothing . . . here for me. Are we companions, you and I? We're absolute strangers! We don't think, or feel, or move in the same world."

"No?"

Just the brief monosyllable, spoken as coolly as though she had remarked that she didn't like the colour of his tie. She looked up, bewildered, and met his gaze. His eyes frightened her. They were ablaze, remorseless as the eyes of a bird of prey. A sudden terror of him overwhelmed her.

"Roger!" she cried. "We can't marry! Let me go—release me from my promise! Oh!"—breaking down all at once—"I can't bear it! I can't marry you! Let me go—oh, please let me go!"

There was a pause—a pause during which Nan could feel her heart leaping in her body like some terrified captive thing. Then, Roger made a movement. Instinctively she knew it was towards her and flung out her arms to ward him off. But she might as well have opposed him with two straws. He caught both wrists in one of his big hands and bent her arms downwards, drawing her close to him till she lay unwillingly against his breast, held there in a grasp like iron.

"Will I release you?" he said savagely. "No, I will not! Neither now, nor at any future time. You're mine! Do you understand what that means? It means if you'd one day left to live, it would be my day—one night, mine! And I swear to you if any man takes you from me I'll kill him first and you after. Now do you understand?"

She tried to speak, but her voice failed her. It was as though he had pronounced sentence on her—a life sentence! She could never get away from him—never, never! A shudder ran through her whole body. He felt it, and it stung him to fresh anger. Her head was pressed into his shoulder as though for shelter.

"Look up!" he demanded imperiously. "Don't hide your face. It's mine. And I want to see it!"

Reluctantly, compelled by his voice, she lifted a white, tortured face to his. Then, meeting his eyes, savagely alight with the fire of conquest, she turned her head quickly aside. But it was useless. She was powerless in the vice-like grip of his arms, and the next moment he was kissing her, eyes and mouth and pulsing throat, with terrible, burning kisses that seemed to sear their way through her whole body, branding her indelibly his.

It was useless to struggle. She hung nervelessly in his straining arms, mute and helpless to withstand him, while his passion swept over her like a tidal wave, submerging her utterly.

When at last he set her free she swayed unsteadily, catching at the table for support. Her knees seemed to be giving way under her. She was voiceless, breathless from his violence. The tide had receded, leaving her utterly spent and exhausted.

He regarded her in silence for a moment.

"I don't think you'll ask me to release you from your engagement again," he said slowly.

"No," she whispered tonelessly. "No."

She tottered almost as though she were going to fall. With a sort of rough kindliness he put out his hand to steady her, but she shrank from him like a beaten child.

"Don't do that!" he exclaimed unevenly. Adding: "I've frightened you, I suppose?"

She bent her head.

"Well"—sulkily—"it was your own fault. You roused the wild beast in me." Then, with a queer, half-shamed laugh, he added: "There's Spanish blood in the Trenbys, you know—as there is in many of the Cornish folk."

Nan supposed this avowal was intended as an apology, or at least as an explanation of sorts. It was rather appealing in its boyish clumsiness, but she felt too numb, too utterly weary, to respond to it.

"You're tired," he said abruptly. "You'd better go to bed." He put a hand beneath her arm, but she shrank away from him with a fresh spasm of terror.

"Don't be afraid. I'm not going to kiss you again." He spoke reassuringly. "Come, let me help you. You can hardly stand."

Once more he took her arm, and, too stunned to offer any resistance, she allowed him to lead her from the room.

"Will you be all right, now?" he asked anxiously, as they paused at the foot of the staircase.

She gripped the banister.

"Yes," she answered mechanically. "I shall be all right."

He remained at the bottom of the stairs, watching until her slight figure had disappeared round the bend of the stairway.



CHAPTER XXIII

A QUESTION OF HONOUR

"Your Great-aunt Rachel is dead, Roger."

Lady Gertrude made this announcement the following morning at breakfast. In her hand she held the letter which contained the news—written in an old-fashioned, sloping style of penmanship on thin, heavily black-bordered note-paper. No one made any reply unless a sympathetic murmur from Isobel could be construed as such.

"Cousin Emily writes that the funeral is to take place next Thursday," pursued Lady Gertrude, referring to the letter she held. "We shall have to attend it, of course."

"Must we?" asked Roger, with obvious lack of enthusiasm. "I haven't seen her for at least five years."

"I know." The reply came so sharply that it was evident he had touched upon a sore subject. "It is very much to be regretted that you haven't. After all, she must have left at least a hundred thousand to divide."

"Even the prospect of a share of the spoil wouldn't have compensated for the infliction of visiting an old termagant like Great-aunt Rachel," averred Roger unrepentantly.

"I shall be interested to hear the will read, nevertheless," rejoined Lady Gertrude. "After all, you were her only great-nephew and, in spite of your inattentiveness, I don't suppose she has overlooked you. She may even have remembered Isobel to the extent of a piece of jewellery."

Isobel's brown eyes gleamed—like the alert eyes of a robin who suddenly perceives the crumbs some kindly hand has scattered on the lawn.

"I'm afraid we shall have to leave you alone for a night, Nan," pursued Lady Gertrude with a stiff air of apology.

Nan, engrossed in a long epistle from Penelope, failed to hear and made no answer. The tremendous fact of great-aunt's death, and the possible disposition of her property, had completely passed her by. It was little wonder that she was so much absorbed. Penelope's letter had been written on board ship and posted from Liverpool, and it contained the joyful tidings that she and her husband had returned to England and proposed going straight to the Edenhall flat. "You must come up and see us as soon as your visit to Trenby comes to an end," wrote Penelope, and Nan devoutly wished it could end that very moment.

"I don't think you heard me, Nan." Lady Gertrude's incisive voice cut sharply across the pulsing excitement of the girl's thoughts.

"I—I—no. Did you speak to me?" she faltered. Her usual dainty assurance was fast disappearing beneath the nervous strain of living with Lady Gertrude.

The facts concerning great-aunt's death were recapitulated for her benefit, together with the explanation that, since Lady Gertrude, Roger, and Isobel would be obliged to stay the night with "Cousin Emily" in order to attend the funeral, Nan would be reluctantly left to her own devices.

"I can't very well take you with us—on such an occasion," meditated Lady Gertrude aloud. "To Cousin Emily you would be a complete stranger, you see. Besides, she will no doubt have other relatives besides ourselves to put up at the house. Would you care for me to ask someone over to keep you company while we're away?"

"Oh, no, thank you," replied Nan hastily. "Please don't worry about me at all, Lady Gertrude. I don't in the least mind being left alone—really."

A sudden ecstatic thought had come into her mind which could only be put into execution if she were left alone at Trenby, and the bare possibility of any other arrangement now being made filled her with alarm.

"Well, I regret the necessity of leaving you," said Lady Gertrude, meticulous as ever in matters of social observance. "But the servants will look after you well, I hope. And in any case, we shall be home again on Thursday night. We shall be able to catch the last train back."

During the day or two which intervened before the family exodus, Nan could hardly contain her impatience. Their absence would give her the opportunity she longed for—the opportunity to get away from Trenby! The idea had flashed into her mind the instant Lady Gertrude had informed her she would be left alone there, and now each hour that must elapse before she could carry out her plan seemed an eternity.

Following upon the prolonged strain of the preceding three months, that last terrible scene with Roger had snapped her endurance. She could not look back upon it without shuddering. Since the day of its occurrence she had hardly spoken to him, except at meal times when, as if by mutual consent, they both conversed as though nothing had happened—for Lady Gertrude's benefit. Apart from this, Nan avoided him as much as possible, treating him with a cool, indifferent reserve he found difficult to break down. At least, he made no very determined effort to do so. Perhaps he was even a little ashamed of himself. But it was not in his nature to own himself wrong.

Like many men, he had a curiously implicit faith in the principle of "letting things blow over." On occasion this may prove the wisest course to adopt, but very rarely in regard to a quarrel between a man and woman. Things don't "blow over" with a woman. They lie hidden in her heart, gradually permeating her thoughts until her whole attitude towards the man in question has hardened and the old footing between them become irrecoverable.

Nan felt that she had made her effort—and failed. Roger had missed the whole meaning of her attempt to bring about a mutual feeling of good comradeship, brushed it aside as of no importance. And instead, he had substituted his own imperious demands, rousing her, once the stress of the actual interview itself was past, to fierce and bitter revolt. No matter what happened in the future, she must get away now—snatch a brief respite from the daily strain of her life at the Hall.

But with an oddly persistent determination she put away from her all thought of breaking off her engagement. To most women similarly situated this would have been the obvious and simplest solution of the problem. But it seemed to Nan that her compact with Roger demanded a finer, more closely-knit interpretation of the word honour than would have been necessary in the case of an engagement entered into under different circumstances. The personal emergency which had driven her into giving Roger her promise weighed heavily upon her, and she felt that nothing less than his own consent would entitle her to break her pledge to him. When she gave it she had thought she was buying safety for herself and happiness for Penelope—cutting the tangled threads in which she found herself so inextricably involved—and now, as Lord St. John had reminded her, she could not honourably refuse to pay the price. She could not plead that she had mistaken her feelings towards him. She had pledged her word to him, open-eyed, and she was not free, as other women might be, to retract the promise she had given.

Added to this, Roger's sheer, dominant virility had imbued her with a fatalistic sense of her total inability to escape him. She had had a glimpse of the primitive man in him—of the man with the club. Even were she to violate her conscience sufficiently to end the engagement between them, she knew perfectly well that he would refuse to accept or acknowledge any such termination. Wherever she hid herself he would find out her hiding-place and come in search of her, and insist upon the fulfilment of her promise. And supposing that, in desperation, she married someone else, what was it he had said? "I swear to you if any man takes you from me I'll kill him first and you after!"

So, there was no escape for her. Roger would dog her footsteps round the world and back again sooner than let her go free of him. In a vaguely aloof and apathetic manner she felt as though it was her destiny to marry him. And no one can escape from destiny. Life had shown her many beautiful things—even that rarest thing of all, a beautiful and unselfish love. But it had shown them only to snatch them away again once she had learned to value them.

If only she had never met Peter, never known the secret wonder and glory, the swift, sudden strength, the exquisite mingling of passion and selflessness which go to the making of the highest in love, she might have been content to become Roger's wife and bear his children.

His big strength and virile, primitive possessiveness would appeal to many women, and Nan reflected that had she cared for him it would have been easy enough to tame him—with his tempestuous love, his savage temper, and his shamefaced "little boy" repentances! A woman who loved him in return might have led him by a thread of gossamer! It was the very fact that Nan did not love him, and that he knew it, which drove the brute in him uppermost in his dealings with her. He wanted to make her care, to bend her to his will, to force from her some response to his own over-mastering passion.

Wearily she faced the situation for the hundredth time and knew that in the long run she must abide by it. She had learned not to cry for the moon any longer. She wanted nothing now either in this world or the next except the love that was denied her.

Her thoughts went back to the day when she and Peter had first met and driven together through the twilit countryside to Abbencombe. She remembered the sudden sadness which had fallen upon him and how she had tried to cheer him by repeating the verses of a little song. It all seemed very long ago:

"But sometimes God on His great white Throne Looks down from the Heaven above, And lays in the hands that are empty The tremulous Star of Love."

The words seemed to speak themselves in her brain just as she herself had spoken them that day, with the car slipping swiftly through the winter dusk. She could feel again the throb of the engine—see Peter's whimsical grey-blue eyes darken suddenly to a stern and tragic gravity.

For him and for her there could be no star. To the end of life they two must go empty-handed.



CHAPTER XXIV

FLIGHT!

The big limousine was already at the door when Lady Gertrude and Isobel, clothed from head to foot in sombre black, descended from their respective rooms. Roger, also clad in the same funereal hue and wearing a black tie—and looking as though his garments afforded him the acme of mental discomfort—stood waiting for them, together with Nan, in the hall.

Lady Gertrude bestowed one of her chilly kisses upon her son's fiancee and stepped into the car, Isobel followed, and Roger, with a muttered: "Confound Great-aunt Rachel's fortune!" brought up the rear. A minute later the car and its black-garbed occupants disappeared down the drive.

Nan turned back into the house. There was a curiously lightened feeling in the atmosphere, she thought—as though someone had lifted the roof of a dungeon and let in the sunlight and fresh air. She stretched her arms luxuriously above her head and exhaled a long sigh of relief. Then, running like a child let out of school, she fled down the long hall to the telephone stand. Lifting the receiver, her fingers fairly danced upon the forked clip which had held it.

Her imperative summons was answered with a most unusual promptness by the exchange—it was going to be a lucky day altogether, she told herself. Demanding, "Trunks, please!" she gave the number of the Edenhall flat and prepared to possess her soul in patience till her call came through.

At lunch she was almost too excited to eat, and when finally Morton, entering quietly, announced: "You are wanted on the telephone, miss," she hardly waited to hear the end of the sentence but flew past him to the telephone stand and snatched up the instrument.

"Hello! Hello! That you, Penny? . . . Yes, of course it's Nan! Oh, my dear, I'm so glad you're back! Listen. I want to run up to town for a few days. . . . Yes. Roger's away. They're all away. . . . You can put me up? To-morrow? Thanks awfully, Penny. . . . Yes, Waterloo. At 4.16. Good-bye. Give my love to Ralph. . . . Good-bye."

She hung up the receiver and, returning to the dining-room, made a pretence of finishing her lunch. Afterwards, with as much composure as she could muster up—seeing that she wanted to dance and sing out of pure happiness—she informed Morton that she had been called away suddenly to London and would require the car early the next morning to take her to the station. Whatever curiosity Morton may have felt concerning this unexpected announcement, he concealed it admirably, merely replying with his usual imperturbability: "Very good, miss."

"I'm leaving a letter for Mr. Trenby—to explain. See that he has it as soon as he gets back to-morrow."

And once again Morton answered respectfully:

"Very good, miss."

The writing of the letter did not occupy much time. She reflected that she must take one of two courses. Either she must write him at length, explaining everything—and somehow she felt it would be impossible to explain to Roger her desperate need for flight, for a respite from things as they were—or she must leave a brief note merely stating that she had gone away. She decided on the latter and after several abortive attempts, which found their ultimate fate in the fire, she achieved the following telegraphic epistle:

"DEAR ROGER,—Have gone to town. Stopping with Penelope.—NAN."

Afterwards she packed with gleeful hands. It seemed too good to be true that in twenty-four hours she would actually find herself back in London—away from this gloomy, tree-girdled house with its depressing atmosphere both outside and in, away from Lady Gertrude's scathing tongue and Isobel's two-edged speeches, and, above all, secure for a time from Roger's tumultuous love-making and his unuttered demand for so much more than she could ever give him.

She craved for the rush and bustle of London, for the play that might keep her from thinking, the music which should minister to her soul, and, more than all, she longed to see the beloved familiar faces—to see Penelope and Ralph and Lord St. John. She felt as though for the last three months she had been dwelling in some dreadful unknown world, with only boy Sandy to cling to out of the whole unnerving chaos.

* * * * * *

"You blessed child! I am glad to see you!"

Penelope, looking the happiest and most blooming of youthful matrons, was on the platform when the Cornish express steamed into Waterloo station and Nan alighted from it. The two girls embraced warmly.

"You can't—you can't possibly be as glad as I am, Penny mine," returned Nan. "Hmf!"—wrinkling up her nose. "How nice London smells!"

Penelope burst out laughing. Nan nodded at her seriously.

"I mean it. You've no idea how good that smoky, petrolly smell is after the innocuous breezes of the country. It's full of gorgeous suggestions of cars and people and theatres and—and life!"

They hurried to the other end of the platform where the porters were disinterring the luggage from the van and dumping it down on the platform with a splendid disregard for the longevity of the various trunks and suit-cases they handled. Nan's attendant porter quickly extricated her baggage from the motley pile, and very soon she and Penelope were speeding away from the station as fast as their chauffeur—whose apparent recklessness was fortunately counter-balanced by consummate skill—could take them.

"How nice and familiar it all looks," said Nan, as the car granted up the Haymarket. "And it's heavenly to be going back to the dear old flat. Whereabouts are you looking for a house, by the way?"

"Somewhere in Hampstead, we think, where the air—and the rents!—are more salubrious than nearer in."

"Of course." Nan nodded. "All singers live at Hampstead. You'd be quite unfashionable if you didn't. I suppose you and Ralph are frightfully busy?"

"Yes. But we're free to-night, luckily. So we can yarn to our hearts' content. To-morrow evening we're both singing at the Albert Hall. And, oh, in the afternoon we're going to tea at Maryon's studio. His new picture's on view—private, of course."

"What new picture?"

"His portrait of the famous American beauty, Mrs. T. Van Decken. I believe she paid a fabulous sum for it; Maryon's all the rage now, you know. So he asked us to come down and see it before it's shipped off to New York. By the way, he enquired after you in his letter—I've got it with me somewhere. Oh, yes, here it is! He says: 'What news have you of Nan? I've lost sight of her since her engagement. But now it seems likely I shall be seeing her again before any of you.' I can't think what he means by that."

"Nor I," said Nan, somewhat mystified. "But anyway," she added, smiling, "he will be seeing me even sooner than he anticipates. How has his marriage turned out?"

Penelope laughed.

"Very much as one might have expected. They live most amicably—apart!"

"They've surely not quarrelled already?"

"Oh, no, they've not quarrelled. But of course they didn't fit into each other's scheme of life one bit, and they've re-arranged matters to suit their own convenience. She's in the south of France just now, and when she comes to town they'll meet quite happily and visit at each other's houses. She has a palatial sort of place in Mayfair, you know, while Maryon has a duck of a house in Westminster."

"How very modern!" commented Nan, smiling. "And—how like Maryon!"

"Just like him, isn't it? And"—drily—"it was just like him, too, to see that the marriage settlement arrangements were all quite water-tight. However, on the whole, it's a fair bargain between them. She rejoices in the honour and glory of being a well-known artist's wife, while he has rather more money than is good for him."

Ralph, broadened out a bit since his successful trip to America, was on the steps of the Mansions to welcome them, and the lift conveyed them all three up to the flat—the dear, home-like flat of which Nan felt she loved every inch.

"You're in your old room," Penelope told her, and Nan gave vent to a crow of delight.

Dinner was a delightful meal, full of the familiar gossip of the artistes' room, and the news of old friends, and fervent discussions on matters musical and artistic, with running through it all a ripple of humour and the cheery atmosphere of camaraderie and good-fellowship. When it was over, the three drew cosily together round the fire in Ralph's den. Nan sank into her chair with a blissful sigh.

"That's not a sigh of repletion, Penny," she explained. "Though really your cook might have earned it? . . . But oh! isn't this nice?" Inwardly she was reflecting that at just about this time Roger, together with Lady Gertrude and Isobel, would be returning from Great-aunt Rachel's funeral, only to learn of her own flight from Trenby Hall.

"Yes," agreed Penelope. "It really was angelic of Roger to spare you at a moment's notice."

Nan gave a grim little smile.

"You dear innocent! Roger—didn't know—I was coming."

"What!"

"No, I just thought I'd come . . . and he—they were all away . . . and I came! I left a note behind, telling him I was going to stay with you. So he won't be anxious!"

"Roger didn't know you were coming!" repeated Penelope. "Nan"—a sudden light illuminating the dark places—"have you had a quarrel?"

"Yes"—shortly. "A sort of quarrel."

"And you came straight off here? . . . Oh, Nan, what a fool's trick! He will be furious!"

Once or twice Penelope had caught a glimpse of that hot-headed temper which lay hidden beneath Roger's somewhat blunt exterior.

"Lady Gertrude will be furious!" murmured Nan reminiscently.

"I think she'll have the right to be," answered Penelope, with quiet rebuke in her tones. "It really was abominable of you to run away like that."

Nan shrugged her shoulders, and Ralph looked across at her, smiling broadly.

"You're a very exasperating young person, Nan," he said. "If you were going to be my wife, I believe I should beat you."

"Well, that would at least break the monotony of things," she retorted. But her lips set themselves in a straight, hard, line at the remembrance of Roger's stormy threat: "I might even do that."

"Is it monotony you're suffering from?" asked Ralph quickly.

She nodded.

"I'm fed up with the country and its green fields—never anything but green fields! They're so eternally, damnably green!"

"Oh, Nan! And the scenery in Cornwall is perfectly lovely!" protested Penelope feebly.

"Man cannot live by bread alone, Penny—nor scenery either. I just yearned for London. So I came."

The next morning, much to Nan's surprise, brought neither letter nor telegram from Roger.

"I quite expected a wire: 'Return at once. All will be forgiven,'" she said frivolously, as lunch time came and still no message.

"Perhaps he isn't prepared to forgive you," suggested Ralph.

Nan stared at him without answering, her eyes dilating curiously. She had never even dreamed of such a possibility, and a sudden wild hope flamed up within her.

"It's rather a knock to a man's pride, you know, if the girl he's engaged to does a bolt the moment his back's turned," pursued Ralph.

"It was madness!" said Penelope with the calmness of despair.

Nan remained silent. Neither their praise nor blame would have affected her one iota at the moment. All that mattered was whether, without in the least intending to do it, she had cut the cords which bound her so irrevocably. Was it conceivable that Roger's pride would be so stung by her action in running away from Trenby Hall during his absence that he would never wish to see her again—far less make her his wife?

She had never contemplated the matter from that angle. But now, as Ralph put it before her, she realised that the attitude he indicated might reasonably be that of most men in similar circumstances.

Her heart beat deliriously at the very thought. If release came this way—by Roger's own decision—she would be free to take it! The price of the blunder she had made when she pledged herself to him—a price which was so much heavier than she could possibly have imagined—would be remitted.

And from the depths of her soul a fervent, disjointed prayer went up to heaven:

"God, God, please don't let him forgive me—don't let him ever forgive me!"



CHAPTER XXV

AN UNEXPECTED MEETING

Nan was rather silent as the Fentons' big car purred its way through the crowded streets towards Westminster. For the moment the possible consequences of her flight from Trenby Hall had been thrust aside into a corner of her mind and her thoughts had slipped back to that last meeting with Maryon, when she had shown him so unmistakably that she, at least, had ceased to care.

She had hated him at the moment, rejoicing to be free from the strange, perverse attraction he held for her. But, viewed through the softening mists of memory, a certain romance and charm seemed to cling about those days when she had hovered on the border-line of love for him, and her heart beat a little faster at the thought of meeting him again.

Ralph Fenton had only a vague knowledge of the affair, but he dimly recollected that there had been something—a passing flirtation, he fancied—between Maryon and Nan in bygone days, and he proceeded to chaff her gently on the subject as they drove to the studio.

"Poor old Rooke will get a shock, Nan, when we dump you on to him this afternoon," he said. "He won't be anticipating the arrival of an old flame."

She flushed a little, and Ralph continued teasingly:

"You'll really have to be rather nice to him! He's paid pretty dearly for his foolishness in bartering love for filthy lucre."

Penelope frowned at her husband, much as one endeavours to frown down the observations of an enfant terrible.

"Don't be such an idiot, Ralph," she said severely.

He grinned delightedly.

"Old fires die hard, Penny. Do you think it is quite right of us to introduce Nan on the scene again? She's forbidden fruit now, remember."

"And doubtless Maryon will remember it," retorted Penelope tartly.

"I think," pursued Fenton, "it's not unlike inserting a match into a powder barrel. Rooke"—reflectively—"always reminds me somewhat of a powder barrel. And Nan is by no means a safety match—warranted to produce a light from the legitimate box and none other!"

"I wish," observed Nan plaintively, "that you wouldn't discuss me just as if I weren't here."

They all laughed, and then, as the car slowed down to a standstill at Maryon's door, the conversation came to an end.

Rooke had established himself in one of the big and comparatively inexpensive houses in Westminster, in that pleasant, quiet backwater which lies within the shadow of the beautiful old Abbey, away from the noisy stream of general traffic. The house had formerly been the property of another artist who had built on to it a large and well-equipped studio, so that Rooke had been singularly fortunate in his purchase.

Nan looked about her with interest as the door swung open, admitting them into a fair-sized hall. The thick Eastern carpet, the dim, blue-grey hangings on the walls, the quaint brazen lamps—hushing the modern note of electric light behind their thick glass panes—spoke eloquently of Maryon. A faint fragrance of cedar tinged the atmosphere.

The parlourmaid—unmistakably a twentieth-century product—conducted them into a beautiful Old English room, its walls panelled in dark oak, while heavy oaken beams traversed the ceiling. Logs burned merrily on the big open hearth, throwing up showers of golden sparks. Above the chimneypiece there was a wonderful old plaster coat-of-arms, dating back to the seventeenth century, and the watery gleams of sunshine, filtering in through the diamond panes of latticed windows, fell lingeringly on the waxen surface of an ancient dresser. On the dresser shelves were lodged some willow-pattern plates, their clear, tender blue bearing witness to an early period.

"How like Maryon it all is!" whispered Nan.

And just then Rooke himself came into the room. He had altered very little. It was the same supple, loose-limbed figure that approached. The pointed Van Dyck beard was as carefully trimmed, the hazel eyes, with their misleading softness of appeal, as arresting as of old. Perhaps he bore himself with a little more assurance. There might have been a shade less of the Bohemian and a shade more of the successful artist about him.

But Rooke would never suffer from the inordinate complacency which spoils so many successful men. Always it would be tempered by that odd, cynical humour of his. Beautiful ladies who gushed at him merely amused him, and received in return some charming compliment or other that rang as hollow as a kettle-drum. Politicians who came to him for their portraits were gently made to feel that their favourite oratorical attitude—which they inevitably assumed when asked to pose themselves quite naturally—was not really overwhelmingly effective, while royalties who perforce condescended to attend his studio—since he flatly declined to paint them in their palaces—found that he was inclined to overlook the matter of their royal blood and to portray them as though they were merely men and women.

There was an amusing little story going the rounds in connection with a certain peeress—one of the "new rich" fraternity—who had recently sat to Rooke for her portrait. Her husband's title had presumably been conferred in recognition of the arduous services—of an industrial and financial nature—which he had rendered during the war. The lady was inclined to be refulgent on the slightest provocation, and when Rooke had discussed with her his ideas for her portrait she had indignantly repudiated his suggestion that only a simple evening gown and furs should be worn.

"But it will look like the picture of a mere nobody," she had protested. "Of—of just anyone!"

"Of anyone—or someone," came Rooke's answer. "The portrait of a great lady should be able to indicate . . . which."

The newly-fledged peeress proceeded to explain that her own idea had been that she should be painted wearing her state robes and coronet—plus any additional jewels which could find place on her person.

Maryon bowed affably.

"But, by all means," he agreed. "Only, if it is of them you require a portrait, you must go to Gregoire Marni. He paints still-life."

Rooke came into the room and greeted his visitors with outstretched hands.

"My dear Penelope and Ralph," he began cordially. "This is good of busy people like yourselves—"

He caught sight of the third figure standing a little behind the Fentons and stopped abruptly. His eyes seemed to flinch for a moment. Then he made a quick step forward.

"Why, Nan!" he exclaimed. "This is a most charming surprise."

His voice and manner were perfectly composed; only his intense paleness and the compression of his fine-cut nostrils betrayed any agitation. Nan had seen that "white" look on his face before.

Then Penelope rushed in with some commonplace remark and the brief tension was over.

"Come and see my Mrs. T. Van Decken," said Rooke presently. "The light's pretty fair now, but it will be gone after tea."

They trooped out of the room and into the studio, where several other people, who had already examined the great portrait, were still strolling about looking at various paintings and sketches.

It was a big bare barn of a place with its cold north light, for Rooke, sybarite as he was in other respects, treated his work from a Spartan standpoint which permitted necessities only in his studio.

"Empty great barrack, isn't it?" he said to Nan. "But I can't bear to be crowded up with extraneous hangings and draperies like some fellows. It stifles me."

She nodded sympathetically.

"I know. I like an empty music-room."

"You still work? Ah, that's good. You shall tell me about it—afterwards—when this crowd has gone. Oh, Nan, there'll be such a lot to say!"

His glance held her a moment, and she flushed under it. Those queer eyes of his had lost none of their old magnetic power. He turned away with a short, amused laugh, and the next moment was listening courteously to an elderly duchess's gushing eulogy of his work.

Nan remained quietly where she was, gazing at the big picture of the famous American beauty. It was a fine piece of work; the lights and shadows had been handled magnificently, and it was small wonder that the man who could produce such work had leaped into the foremost rank of portrait-painters. She felt very glad of his success, remembering how bitter he had been in former days over his failure to obtain recognition. She turned and, finding him beside her again, spoke her thought quite simply.

"You've made good at last, Maryon. You've no grudge against the world now."

He looked down at her oddly.

"Haven't I? . . . Well, you should know," he replied.

She gave a little impatient twist of her shoulders. He hadn't altered at all, it seemed; he still possessed his old faculty for implying so much more than was contained in the actual words he spoke.

"Most people would be content with the success you've gained," she answered steadily.

"Most people—yes. But to gain the gold and miss . . . the rainbow!—A quoi bon?"

His voice vibrated. This sudden meeting with Nan was trying him hard.

There had been two genuine things in the man's life—his love for Nan and his love of his art. He had thrust the first deliberately aside so that he might not be handicapped in the second, and now that the race was won and success assured he was face to face with the realisation of the price that must be paid. Nan was out of his reach for ever. Standing here at his side with all her old elusive charm—out of his reach!

"What did you mean"—she was speaking to him again—"by telling Penny that you expected to see me soon—before she would?"

"Ah, that's my news. Of course, when I wrote, I thought you were still down in Cornwall, with the Trenbys. I'd no idea you were coming up to town just now."

"I'm up unexpectedly," murmured Nan. "Well? What then?"

He smiled, as though enjoying his secret.

"Isn't Burnham Court somewhere in your direction?"

"Yes. It's about midway between the Hall and Mallow Court. It belonged to a Sir Robert Burnham who's just died. Why do you ask?"

"Because Burnham was my godfather. The old chap disapproved of me strongly at one time—thought painting pictures a fool's job. But since luck came my way, his opinion apparently altered, and when he died he left me all his property—Burnham Court included."

"Burnham Court!" exclaimed Nan in astonishment.

"Yes. Droll, isn't it? So I thought of coming down some time this spring and seeing how it feels to be a land-owner. My wife is taking a trip to the States then—to visit some friends."

"How nice!" Nan's exclamation was quite spontaneous. It would be nice to have another of her own kind—one of her mental kith and kin—near at hand after she was married.

"I shan't be down there all the time, of course, but for week-ends and so on—in the intervals between transferring commonplace faces, and still more frequently commonplace souls, to canvas." He paused, then asked suddenly: "So you're glad, Nan?"

"Of course I am," she answered heartily. "It will be like old times."

"Unfortunately, old times never—come back," he said shortly.

And then a quaint, drumming noise like the sound of a distant tom-tom summoned them to tea.

Most of the visitors took their departure soon afterwards, but Nan and the Fentons lingered on, returning to the studio to enjoy the multitude of sketches and studies stored away there, many of them carelessly stacked up with their faces to the wall. Rooke made a delightful host, pulling out one canvas after another and pouring out a stream of amusing little tales concerning the oddities of various sitters.

Presently the door opened and the maid ushered in yet another visitor.

Nan, standing rather apart by one of the bay windows at the far end of the room, was examining a rough sketch, in black and white. She caught her breath suddenly at the sound of the newcomer's voice.

"I couldn't get here earlier, as I promised, Rooke, and I'm afraid the daylight's gone. However, I've no doubt Mrs. Van Decken will look equally charming by artificial light. In fact, I should have said it was her natural element."