"Oh!" said Flamby, her eyes alight with excitement; but the one word was sufficient.

"Right!" cried Don. "Now for Liberty's."

They entered the cab, and as it moved off, "What is Liberty's?" asked Flamby.

"The place for rummy furniture," explained Don. "Nobody else could possibly provide the things for your den. The Aunt once had a cottage in Devon furnished by Liberty and it was the most perfect gem of a cottage one could imagine."

"Was she very well off once?"

"The Aunt? Why the dear old lady ought to be worth thousands. Her husband left her no end of money and property. She has travelled nearly all over the civilised world, Flamby, and now is tied to that one tiny room at The Hostel."

"But how is it? Did she lose her money?"

"She gave it away and let everybody rob her. The world unfortunately is full of Dick Turpins and Jack Sheppards, not to mention their lady friends."

"Ah," said Flamby and sat silent for some time studying the panorama of the busy London streets. "Is Liberty's dear?" she inquired presently.

"Not at all; most reasonable."

"I'm glad," replied Flamby. "I have got seven pounds ten saved. Will that be enough?"

Don held his breath. Flamby's extraordinary erudition and inherent cleverness had not prepared him for this childish ignorance of the value of money. But he realised immediately that it was no more than natural after all and that he might have anticipated it; and secretly he was delighted because of the opportunity which it offered him of repaying in part, or of trying to repay, the debt which he owed to Michael Duveen. Moreover he had found that to give pleasure to Flamby was a gracious task.

"It may not cover everything," he said casually, "but the sum held by Mr. Nevin will more than do so. Think no more about it. I will see that your expenditures do not exceed your means."

* * * * *

They alighted near that window of Messrs. Liberty's which is devoted to the display of velvet robes—of those simple, unadorned creations which Golders Green may view unmoved but which stir the aesthetic soul of Chelsea. In the centre of the window, cunningly draped before an oak-pannelled background, hung a dress of grey velvet which was the apogee and culmination of Flamby's dreams. For not all the precepts of the Painted Portico can quench in the female bosom woman's innate love of adornment. Assuredly Eve wore flowers in her hair.

"Oh," whispered Flamby, "do you think it is very dear?"

Don having paid the cabman, had joined her where she stood. "Which one?" he inquired with masculine innocence.

"The grey one. There is nothing on it at all. I have seen dresses in Dale's at home with yards of embroidery that were only four pounds."

"I don't suppose so," said Don cheerfully. "Let us go in and try it on. You try it on, I mean."

"Oh, I daren't! I didn't dream of buying it," cried Flamby, flushing hotly. "I was only admiring it."

"And because you admire it you don't dream of buying it? That is odd. And surely grey is what is known as 'half-mourning' too, is it not? Absolutely correct form."

"But it may be frightfully dear. I will ask the price when Mrs. Chumley is with me." Flamby was weakening.

Don grasped her firmly by the arm and led her vastly perturbed into the shop, where a smiling saleswoman accosted them. "This lady wishes to see the grey gown you have in the window," he said. He drew the woman aside and added, "Don't tell her the price! You understand? If she insists upon knowing take your cue from me." He could say no more as Flamby had drawn near.

"How much is it?" she inquired naively.

"I don't know yet," replied Don. "Won't you look at it first?"

"The dress is a model, madam," said the puzzled modiste. "Probably we should have to alter it to fit you."

"Would that be extra?" asked Flamby.

"Only a trifle," Don assured her, "if you really like it."

"How much is it please?" Flamby asked.

Don, standing just behind her became troubled with a tickling in the throat, and the woman, hesitating, looked up and detected his urgent glance. He raised three fingers furtively. She could scarcely conceal her amazement, but an emphatic nod from Don left her in no doubt respecting his meaning.

"I believe it is—three guineas, madam," she replied in a forced and unnatural voice. She was wondering what would become of her if this very eccentric officer played her false.

Flamby turned thoughtfully to Don. "That's expensive isn't it?" she said.

The saleswoman's amazement increased; words failed her entirely, and to cover her embarrassment she opened the screen at the back of the window and took out the grey gown. Flamby's eyes sparkled.

"But isn't it sweet," she whispered. "Where do I go to try it on?"

"This way, madam," said the woman, darting an imploring glance at Don to which he was unable to respond as Flamby was looking in his direction.

Flamby disappeared into a fitting-room and Don sat down to consider the question of how far he could hope to pursue his plot without being unmasked.

He lighted a cigarette and gave himself up to reflection on the point. When presently Flamby came out, radiant, followed by the troubled attendant carrying the grey gown, he was prepared for her.

"I'm going to have it!" she said. "Am I frightfully extravagant?"

"Not at all," Don assured her; and as she took out her purse. "No," he added, "you must not pay cash, Flamby. It would confuse Nevin's books. I will write a cheque and charge it to your account together with the other purchases."

He withdrew with the saleswoman, leaving Flamby seated looking at the velvet frock draped across a chair. Having proceeded to a discreet distance—"What is the price of the dress, please?" he asked.

"With the alterations which madam requires, eighteen guineas, sir."

"I will give you a draft on Uncle Cox," replied Don, taking out his cheque-book and fountain-pen. "You must feel rather bewildered, but the fact of the matter is that the lady chances to be the orphan of a very dear friend, and coming from a country place she has no idea of the cost of things. I would not disillusion her for the world, just yet. Will you please make a note to send the gown to Miss Duveen at this address." He laid one of his aunt's cards upon the table. "But—an important point—enclose no receipt; nothing that would afford a clue to the price. Will you remember?"

"I shall remember," said the saleswoman, greatly relieved and beginning to smile once more.

So the quaint comedy of deception began and so it proceeded right merrily; for passing on to the furniture department, Don took the man aside and succeeded, although not without difficulty in this case, in making him an accomplice. As a result of the conspiracy Flamby purchased an exquisite little dressing-table of silver-maple (for thirty-five shillings), a large Axminster carpet and a Persian rug (three pounds, fifteen shillings), a miniature Jacobean oak suite (six guineas), a quaint bureau and bookcase (fifty shillings), and a perfect stack of cushions (at prices varying from half-a-crown to three shillings and elevenpence-three-farthings, or, in technical terminology, "three-and-eleven-three.") The man became infected with the quixotic spirit of the affair and revealed himself in his true colours as a hierophant of the higher mysteries. Producing secret keys, he exhibited those arcana, of the inner rooms which apparently are not for sale but which are kept solely for the purpose of dazzling the imagination: jade Buddhas, contemplative and priceless, locked in wonderful Burmese cabinets, strange ornaments of brass and perfume-burners from India, mandarin robes of peacock-blue, and tiny caskets of that violet lacquering which is one of the lost arts of Japan.

With some few items of glassware, vases and pictures purchased elsewhere, Flamby's expenditure amounted to more than twenty-five pounds, at which staggering total she stared in dismay. "Shall I really be able to pay it?" she asked.

"My dear Flamby, you have only just begun. The really essential things you will be able to buy when the Aunt is with you. I am instructing all the shops with which you may have occasion to do business to send accounts to Nevin. He will let you know quickly enough if you overstep the margin."

"How much money, for goodness' sake, is the Government paying?"

"I don't know exactly, but in addition to the regular allowance and arrears there is a gratuity of something over a hundred pounds to your account."

They were crossing Regent Street, and Flamby narrowly escaped being run over;—but the pavement gained in safety, "—A hundred pounds!" she exclaimed—"I have a hundred pounds!"

"Roughly," said Don, smiling and taking her arm. "Then there are the weekly instalments, of course. Oh, you have nothing to worry about, Flamby. Furthermore it will not be very long before you find a market for your work and then you will be independent of State aid."

In truth, now that he was hopelessly enmeshed in his own net, Don experienced dire misgivings, wondering what Flamby would say, wondering what Flamby would do, when she learned of the conspiracy as she could not fail to learn of it sooner or later. But at the moment he was solely concerned with making her forget her sorrows, and in this he had succeeded. Flamby was radiantly happy and at last could think of the sweet countryside she had left behind without discovering a lump in her throat.

* * * * *

Luncheon in a popular Piccadilly grill-room provided an intensely thrilling experience. Flamby's acute sensibilities and inherent appreciation of the fitness of things rendered her ill at ease, but the gay music of the orchestra did much to restore her to harmony with herself, and Don's unaffected delight in her company did the rest. So in time she forgot the home-made black dress and became fascinated by her novel surroundings and lost in the study of these men and women who belonged to a new, a partly perceived world, but a world into which she had longed to enter. Her personal acquaintance with the ways of modern Babylon was limited to the crowded experiences of a day-visit with her father and mother, a visit eagerly anticipated and never forgotten. Michael Duveen had seemingly never regretted that place in the world which he had chosen to forfeit. He had lived and worked like a labouring man and had taken his pleasures like one. On that momentous day they had visited Westminster Abbey, the Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament and Nelson's Monument, had lunched at one of Messrs. Lockhart's establishments, had taken a ride in the Tube and performed a hasty tour of the Zoo, where they had consumed, variously, cups of tea, ginger beer, stale buns and ices. Hyde Park they had viewed from the top of a motor bus and descending from this chariot at London Bridge had caught the train home. In the train Flamby had fallen asleep, utterly exhausted with such a saturnalia, and her parents had eaten sandwiches and partaken of beer from a large bottle which Mrs. Duveen had brought in a sort of carpet-bag. Flamby remembered that she had been aroused from her slumbers by her father, who conceiving a sudden and violent antipathy against both bag and bottle (the latter being empty) had opened the carriage window and hurled them both out on to the line.

It was an odd memory but it brought a cloud of sadness, and Don, quick to detect the shadow, hurried Flamby off to the Coliseum and astounded her by booking a stage box. The Aunt was consulted over the telephone, the Aunt agreed to join the party in the evening, and during the remainder of that eventful afternoon there were all sorts of wonderful sights to be seen; delightful shops unlike any that Flamby had imagined, and an exhibition of water-colours in Bond Street which fired her ambition like a torch set to dry bracken, as Don had designed that it should do. They had tea at a fashionable tea-shop, and Don noted that even within the space of twenty-four hours the number of lovely women had perceptibly diminished. This historic day concluded, then, with dinner at the Carlton and Ellen Terry at the Coliseum. How otherwise an excellent programme was constituted mattered not, but when the red-robed Portia came finally before the curtain and bestowed one of her sweet smiles exclusively upon the enraptured girl, Flamby found that two big tears were trickling down her hot cheeks.

V

And now another figure in the pageant which Iamblichos called "the indissoluble bonds of Necessity" was about to reappear in his appointed place in response to the call of the unseen Prompter. Hideous are the settings of that pageant to-day; for where in the glowing pages of Dumas we see D'Artagnan, the gallant Forty-five and many another good friend riding in through the romantic gates of Old Paris, the modern historian finds himself concerned with railway stations which have supplanted those gates of Paris and of London alike. Thus Don entered by the gate of St. Pancras, Flamby by the smoky portal of London Bridge; and, on the following morning, Yvonne Mario stood upon a platform at Victoria awaiting the arrival of the Folkestone boat-train. She attracted considerable attention and excited adverse criticism amongst the other ladies present not only because of her personal charm but by reason of her dress. She wore a coat of black coney seal trimmed with white fox, and a little cap of the same, and her high-legged boots had white calf tops. Her complexion alone doomed her to the undying enmity of her sex, for the humid morning air had enhanced that clear freshness which quite naturally and properly annoyed every other woman who beheld it.

Several pressmen and photographers mingled with the groups along the platform, for the party with which Paul had been touring the French and British fronts included at least two other notable personages; and Bassett, Paul's press agent, said to Yvonne: "You will smile across a million breakfast tables to-morrow morning, Mrs. Mario, and from a thousand cinema screens later in the week."

Yvonne smiled there and then, a charming little one-sided smile, for she was really a very pretty woman in spite of her reputation as a beauty. "Modern journalism leaves nothing to the imagination," she replied.

"And very wisely. So few people have any."

They paced slowly along the platform. Excepting the porters who leaned against uptilted trucks and stared stolidly up the line, a spirit of furtive unrest had claimed everyone. People who meet trains always look so guilty, avoiding each other's glances and generally behaving as though their presence were a pure accident; periodically consulting the station clock as who should say, "If this train is not signalled very shortly I must be off. My time is of value." There is another type of course, much more rare, who appears at the last moment from some subterranean stairway. He is always running and his glance is wild. As the passengers begin to descend from the train he races along the platform, now and again pausing in his career and standing on tiptoe in order to look over the heads of the people in front of him. To every official he meets he says: "This train is the Folkestone train?" He rarely waits for a reply.

Indeed, at a modern railway station, as of old at the city gates, the fatuity of human aspirations may be studied advantageously. Soldiers were there, at Victoria, hundreds of them, lined up on a distant platform, and they symbolised the spirit of an age which exalts Mechanism to the pinnacle of a deity and which offers itself as a sacrifice upon his iron altars.

The train arrived in due course; cameras and note-books appeared; and people inquired "Is it Sir Douglas Haig they are expecting?" But presently the initiated spread the news that it was Paul Mario who returned from the Western front, and because his reputation was greater than that of Gabrielle D'Annunzio or Charlie Chaplin, everyone sought to obtain a glimpse of him.

He wore a heavy fur-lined coat and his eyes were dark with excitement. Surrounded by the other members of the party, like an emperor by his suite, Paul's was the outstanding personality among them all. There was a distinguished French general to bow, courtly, over Yvonne's hand, and a Labour Member to quote Cicero. But it was to Paul that the reporters sought to penetrate and upon Paul that the cameras were focussed. Bassett, who did not believe in thwarting the demands of popularity, induced him to say a few words.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I have no impressions to impart. My mind is numbed. I had never hitherto appreciated the genius of Philip Gibbs...."

In the car Paul talked exclusively to Jules Thessaly, who had accompanied him upon his tour. Yvonne was silent. When first he had seen her awaiting him upon the platform his eyes had lighted up in that ardent way which she loved, and he had pressed her hands very hard in greeting. But thereafter he had become absorbed again in his giant dreams, and now as they sped through the London streets homeward, he bent forward, one hand resting upon Thessaly's knee, wrapped up in the companionship of his memories.

"That chateau, Thessaly, holds a secret which if it could be divulged to the world would revolutionise theology."

"Of what chateau do you speak?" asked Bassett.

"On my way to the French front I was entertained for a night at a wonderful old chateau. The devouring war had passed it by, and it stood like a dignified grand seigneur looking sorrowfully over the countryside. In order to understand how the sight of the place affected me you must know that as a boy I was several times visited by a certain dream. I last dreamed this dream during the time that I was at Oxford but I have never forgotten it. I used to find myself in a spacious salon, its appointments and fashion those of Louis Treize, with ghostly moonlight pouring in at lofty church-like windows and painting distorted shadowgraphs of heraldic devices upon the floor. My costume was that of a Cavalier and I held a long sword in my hand. I was conscious of pain and great weakness. Creeping stealthily from recess to recess, window to window, I would approach the double doors at the end of the salon. There I would pause, my heart throbbing fiercely, and press my ear to the gaily painted panels. A murmur of conversation would seem to proceed from the room beyond, but forced onward by some urgent necessity, the nature of which I could never recall upon awakening, I would suddenly throw the doors widely open and hurl myself into a small ante-room. A fire of logs blazed in the open hearth, and some six or eight musketeers lounged about the place, hats, baldrics, swords and cloaks lying discarded upon tables, chairs and where not. All sprang to their feet as I entered, and one, a huge red fellow, snatched up his sword and stood before a low door on the right of the room which I sought to approach. We crossed blades ... and with their metallic clash sounding in my ears I invariably awoke. I have spoken of this to you, Yvonne?"

Paul glanced rapidly at Yvonne but proceeded immediately without waiting for a reply. "As Thessaly and I were conducted to our rooms on the night of which I am speaking, I found myself traversing the salon of my dreams!"

"Most extraordinary," muttered Bassett. "Nothing about the aspect of the other rooms of the chateau had struck you as familiar?"

"Nothing; except that I was glad to be there. I cannot make clear to you the almost sorrowful veneration with which I entered the gate. It was like that of a wayward son who returns, broken, to the home upon which he has brought sorrow, to find himself welcomed by his first confessor, old, feeble, lonely, but filled with sweet compassion. I ascribed this emotion to the atmosphere of a stately home abandoned by its owners. But the salon revealed the truth to me. Heavy plush curtains were drawn across the windows, but the flames of three candles in a silver candelabra carried by the servant created just such a half-light as I remembered. I paused, questioning the accuracy of my recollections, but it was all real, unmistakable. We passed through the doorway at the end of the salon—and there was my guardroom! A modern stove had taken the place of the old open hearth, and the furniture was totally different, but I knew the room. The servant crossed before me to a door which I could not recall having noticed in my dream. As he opened it I looked to the right; and where the other door had been before which I had many times crossed swords with the red musketeer I saw a blank wall."

"It was no more than a very remarkable coincidence after all?" said Bassett.

"On the contrary. I called to the man, a bent old fellow, his face furrowed with age and heavy with care. 'Have you been long in the service of the family?' I asked him. His eyes glistened tearfully. 'Forty-five years, monsieur,' he answered. 'Then perhaps you can tell me if there was ever a door opening on the right, yonder, beside that armchair?'

"He stared at me, Bassett, like a man dismayed, and his hand trembled so that spots of grease were shaken from the candles on to the floor. 'How can you know of the Duc's door?' he whispered, watching me all the time as if fascinated. 'How can you know of the Duc's door, monsieur?' His fear, his consternation, were so evident, that I recognised the necessity of reassuring him in order to learn more. Therefore, 'I have heard of it, or seen it depicted, somewhere in England,' I replied; 'but the story associated with it escapes my memory.'

"He began to look less frightened as I spoke, and finally, having several times moistened his dry lips, he replied. 'It has been walled up for more than two hundred years. It opened upon a staircase leading to the State apartments.' 'And why was it closed, my friend?' I asked. The old man shrugged his angular shoulders and moved on out of the room. 'That I cannot say, monsieur,' he answered: 'but in the reign of Louis XIII, Henri, second Duc de Montmorency, by whose father this chateau was built, escaped one night from the apartment in which he had been imprisoned under sentence of death, and attempted to force his way into the presence of the King, then lying in the chateau. At the foot of those stairs the Duc was mortally wounded by Guitry, Captain of the Bodyguard....'"

* * * * *

During lunch the conversation rarely became general. Bassett talked to Yvonne, bestowing upon her an elderly admiration which was not lacking in a poetry of its own, and Paul exchanged memories with Thessaly. His mental excitement was tremendous, and contagious, but of the three who listened to him Thessaly alone seemed to respond sympathetically. Bassett had never pretended to understand his distinguished client. He was always covertly watching Paul, his fat face wrinkled with perplexity, as though one day he hoped for a revelation by light of which he might grasp the clue to a personality that eluded him entirely.

"That boasted civilisation," said Paul—"the German Kultur—has thrown us back to the earliest savagery of which we hold record. All that education has done for us is to hold the savage in check for a time. He is still there. Spiritually humanity's record is one of retrogression."

Luncheon over, Paul accompanied Thessaly and Bassett to the latticed gate in the high monastic wall which concealed his house from the road. They walked away together and he stood for a time gazing after them, then returned and went to his study. Yvonne, who had watched him from the dining-room window, heard the study door close. She sat quite still looking across the table at a chair which Paul had occupied, her fair hair a crown about her brow as the wintry sunlight shone in upon it. Chelsea sometimes may seem as quiet as a lonely riverside village, and at the moment which followed the sound of the closing door it seemed to have become so to Yvonne. Only that muted droning which arises from the vast hive of London told of four millions of workers moving intimately about her. The house was perfectly still. Odin, Paul's wolf-hound, tugged at his chain in the garden and whined quaveringly. He had heard Paul arrive and was disappointed because his master had forgotten to pay him a visit. He was angry, too, because he also had heard the deep voice of Jules Thessaly; and Odin did not like Jules Thessaly.

* * * * *

A quantity of personal correspondence had accumulated, and Paul proceeded to inspect it. A letter addressed in Don's familiar sprawling hand demanded precedence, and Paul noted with excitement that it bore a Derbyshire postmark. It was dated from the house of one of Don's innumerable cousins, a house of a type for which the Peak district is notable, a manor of ghostly repute. This cheerful homestead was apparently constructed in or adjoining an ancient burial ground, was in fact a converted monastery, and Don dealt in characteristically whimsical fashion with its unpleasant peculiarities.

"One can scarcely expect a house constructed in a graveyard," he wrote, "to be otherwise than a haunted house. It is a house especially built for a ghost; it is not a house to which a ghost has come; it is a ghost around whom a house has been built. Erratic manifestations are to be looked for from a hitherto free and unfettered spectre who discovers himself to be confined in a residence possibly uncongenial to his taste and to have thrust upon him the society of a family with whose habits and ideals he has nothing in common...."

Finally, Don inquired how the affairs of Flamby were proceeding, and something very like a pang of remorse troubled Paul. The open letter lying before him, he fell into a reverie, arraigning himself before the tribunal of his own conscience. Had his attitude toward Flamby changed? It had done so. What was the nature of the change? His keen personal interest had given place to one impersonal, although sincere in its way. What was the explanation of this? He had enshrined her, set her upon a fairy pedestal, only to learn that she was humanly frail. Had this discovery hurt him? Intensely. How and why? It had shattered his belief in his omniscience. Yes, that was the unpalatable truth, brought to light at last. Frailty in woman he looked for, and because he knew it to be an offshoot of that Eternal Feminine which is a root-principle of the universe, he condoned. But in Flamby he had seemed to recognise a rare spirit, one loftily above the common traits of her sex, a fit companion for Yvonne; and had been in error. For long after the finding of those shameful photographs he had failed to recover confidence in himself, and had doubted his fitness to speak as a master who could be blinded by the guile of a girl.

It was, then, offended amour propre which had prompted him to hand over to Nevin, his solicitor, this sacred charge entrusted to him by Don? It was. Now he scourged himself remorselessly. If only because her fault was chargeable on one of his own kin he should have striven with might and main to help Flamby. The fact that she was daughter of the man who had saved Don's life at peril of his own redoubled the sanctity of the charge. And how had he acquitted himself of his stewardship? Pitifully. A hot flush rose to his brow, and he hesitated to open a letter from Nevin which also awaited his attention. But he forced himself to the task and read that which completed his humility. Mrs. Duveen had died of heart-failure two months before, whilst Paul had been abroad, and Flamby was an orphan.

"Captain Courtier, who is at present home on leave, has favoured us with direct instructions in the matter," Nevin continued, "and has placed a generous credit at our disposal for the purpose of securing suitable apartments for Miss Duveen, and for meeting the cost of her immediate maintenance and fees, together with other incidental disbursements. We have also secured authority to watch her interests in regard to any pension or gratuity to which she may be entitled as a minor and orphan of a non-commissioned officer killed in action...."

In the drawing-room, Yvonne very softly was playing a setting of Edgar Allan Poe's exquisite verses, To One in Paradise, and such is the magic of music wedded to poetry that it opened a door in Paul's heart and afforded him a glimpse of his inner self. He had neglected poor little Flamby, and his sensitive mind refused to contemplate her loneliness now that her last friend had been taken from her.

"Thou wast all that to me, love, For which my soul did pine— A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine...."

Paul rose and quietly entered the drawing-room. Yvonne looked up as he opened the door, and he saw that her eyes were dim. He knelt on a corner of the music-chair and clasped his arms tightly about her shoulders, pressing her cheek against his. As she ceased playing and turned her head he kissed her ardently, holding her fast and watching her with those yearning eyes whose gaze can make a woman's heart beat faster. She leaned back against him, sighing.

"Do you know that that is the first time you have kissed me since you returned?" she asked.

"Yvonne, forgive me. Don't misunderstand. You never doubt me, do you?"

"Sometimes—I don't seem to matter to you so much as I did."

Never releasing her he moved around so that they were side by side upon the narrow seat. "You matter more than anything in the world," he said. "You are so near to my heart day and night that I seem to have you always in my arms." He spoke softly, his lips very close to Yvonne's; her golden hair brushed his forehead. "You are the music to which I write the words. The memory of your lightest action since the very hour we met I treasure and revere. Without you I am nothing. All I dream and all I hope I dream and hope for you."

Yvonne ran her white fingers through his hair and looked up into his face. Paul kissed her, laughing happily. "My darling Yvonne," he whispered, "Do I sometimes forget to make love to you? It is only because I feel that you are so sure of me. Do you know that since I left you I have heard your voice like a prayer at twilight, seen your eyes watching me as I slept and found your hair gleaming in many a golden sunset."

"Of course I don't," cried Yvonne, with mock severity. "How can I possibly know what you are thinking when you are hundreds of miles away! I only know that when you come back you forget to kiss me."

"I don't forget, Yvonne. I think of you a thousand times a day, and every thought is a kiss."

"Then you have only thought of me twice to-day," said Yvonne, standing up and crossing to a Chesterfield. She seated herself, resting her head upon a black cushion and posing deliberately with the confidence of a pretty woman.

"That is a challenge," replied Paul, "and I accept it."

He followed her, but she covered her face with her hands tauntingly, and only resigned her lips after a long struggle. Then they sat silently, very close together, the golden head leaning against the dark one, and ere long Paul's restless mind was at work again.

"Don is on leave, Yvonne," he said. "Isn't that fine?"

"Oh, yes," replied Yvonne, stifling a sigh. "He called yesterday."

"He called!" cried Paul, sitting upright excitedly. "You did not tell me."

"How could I tell you, Paul? I have not seen you alone until now. Don did not know you were away. A letter came from him two days ago——"

"I know. That was how I learned of his being home."

"He said he would come this afternoon. Oh—perhaps here he is."

Yvonne smoothed her skirt and moved to a discreet distance from Paul as a parlourmaid came in. Paul leapt up, eagerly.

"Captain Courtier?" he cried to the girl.

"Yes, sir."

Paul ran out into the hall. Yvonne rose from the Chesterfield and slowly walked back to the piano. She stood for a while idly turning over the pages of music; then, as her husband did not return, she went up to her room. She could hear Paul talking excitedly as she passed the study door.

VI

Don gazed curiously around the large and lofty room. In early Victorian days this apartment had been a drawing-room or salon, wherein crinolined dames and whiskered knights had discoursed exclusively in sparkling epigrams according to certain memoirs in which this salon was frequently mentioned. It had been selected by Paul for a workroom because of its charming outlook upon the secluded little garden with its sundial and irregularly paved paths, and because it was the largest room in the house. Although in a lesser degree than Paul, Don also was responsive to environment, and he found himself endeavouring to analyse the impression made upon his mind by Paul's study.

He had last seen it during the time that Paul, newly returned from Florence, was passing the proofs of his great tragedy, Francesca of the Lilies. Then it had been the study of a Cardinal of the Middle Ages or of a mediaeval noble devoted to the arts. In what respect did it differ now? The massive table of cedar of Lebanon, figured in ivory and mother o' pearl with the Rape of Proserpine, the work of a pupil of Benvenuto Cellini, remained, as also did the prie-dieu, enriched with silver daisies, which Michelangelo had designed for Margaret of Navarre. The jewelled crucifix was gone, together with the old chain bible and ebony lectern from the Cistercian Monastery at La Trappe. The curious chalice, too, of porphyry starred with beryl, taken at the sack of Panama, and recovered a century later from an inn at Saragossa, had disappeared from its place; and where illuminated missals and monkish books had formerly lain upon the long window seat were works dealing with the war, associated with its causes or arising out of it: Ambassador Gerard to The Book of Artemas, God the Invisible King and Also Sprach Zarathustra. Even the magnificent Book of Hours bearing the monogram of Diana of Poictiers and bound by Aldo Manuzio, Byzantine fashion, in carved ivory wreathed about with gold filigree and studded with fourteen precious stones, was hidden.

Those tapestries for which Paul had paid so extravagant a price at the sale of the Mayence heirlooms were stripped from the wall, and gone were the Damascus sword, the lance-head and black armour of Godfrey de Bouillon. A definite note was lacking; the stage was in a state of transition, and not yet set for the new drama.

Paul came in, hands extended in cordial welcome. "Good old Don!" he cried. "On Friday I was within twenty miles of the part of the line where I imagined you to be, but was unable to get across."

"How fortunate. You would have had a vain journey, Paul. I was in Derbyshire on Friday. I would have met you this morning, but I knew you would prefer to be tete-a-tete with Yvonne."

"My dear fellow, Bassett ordained it otherwise. I found myself surrounded by pressmen and picture people. Of course, he disclaimed responsibility as usual, but I could read his guilt in his eyes. He persists in 'booming' me as though I were an operatic nightingale with a poor voice or a variety comedian who was not funny."

"Yvonne told you I had called?"

"Yes. You did not know I was away?"

"My knowledge of your movements up to the time that I left France was based upon those two or three brief communications, partially undecipherable, with which you have favoured me during the past six months. I read your paper, Le Bateleur, in the Review. Everybody has read it. Paul, you have created a bigger sensation with those five or six thousand words than Hindenburg can create with an output of five or six thousand lives!"

"It was designed to pave the way, Don. You think it has succeeded?"

"Succeeded! You have stirred up the religious world from Little Bethel to St. Peter's." Don dropped into an armchair and began to load his pipe from the Mycenaean vase. "Some of your facts are startlingly novel. For instance, where on earth did you get hold of that idea about the initiation of Christ by the Essenes at Lake Moeris in Egypt?"

Paul's expression grew wrapt and introspective. "From material in the possession of Jules Thessaly," he replied. "In a tomb near the Pyramid of Hawara in the Egyptian Fayum was found the sarcophagus of one Menahim, chief of the Order of the Essenes, who were established near Lake Moeris. Menahim's period of office dated from the year 18 B.C. to the year of his death in the reign of Caligula, and amid the dust of his bones was found the Golden Chalice of Initiation. I cannot hope to make clear to you without a very lengthy explanation how the fact dawned upon my mind that Jehoshoua of Nazareth, son of Joseph, became an initiate, but the significance of these dates must be evident. When you see the Chalice you will understand."

"Had it been found in Renan's time what a different Vie de Christ we should have had."

"Possibly. Renan's Vie de Christ is an exquisite evasion, a jewelled confession of failure. But there are equally wonderful things at Thessaly's house, Don. You must come there with me."

"I shall do so without fail. It appears to me, Paul, that you have materially altered your original plan. You have abandoned the idea of casting your book in the form of a romance?"

"I have—yes. The purely romantic appeal may be dispensed with, I think, in this case. Zarathustra has entered the blood of the German people like a virus from a hypodermic needle. I do not hesitate to accept its lesson. Where I desire to cite instances of illustrative human lives they will be strictly biographical but anonymous."

"You hope to succeed where Maeterlinck failed."

"Maeterlinck thinks as a poet and only fails when he writes as a philosopher. Don, I wish I could have you beside me in my hours of doubt. Thessaly is inspiring, but his influence is sheerly intellectual. You have the trick of harmonising all that was discordant within myself. I see my work as a moving pageant and every figure is in its appointed place. I realise that all the knowledge of the world means nothing beside one short human existence. Upon the Ogam tablets, the Assyrian cylinders, the Egyptian monuments is written a wisdom perhaps greater than ours, but it is cold, like the stone that bears it; within ourselves it lives—all that knowledge, that universe of truth. What do the Egyptologists know of the message of Egypt? I have stood upon the summit of the Great Pyramid and have watched its shadow steal out and out touching the distant lands with its sceptre, claiming Egypt for its own; I have listened in the profound darkness at its heart to the voice of the silence and have thought myself an initiate buried, awaiting the unfolding of the mystic Rose of Isis. And science would have us believe that that wondrous temple is a tomb! A tomb! when truly it is a birthplace!"

His dark eyes glowed almost fiercely. To Don alone did he thus reveal himself, mantled in a golden rhetoric.

"Mitrahina, too, the village on the mounds which cloak with their memorable ashes the splendour that was Memphis; who has not experienced the mournful allurement of those palm-groves amid which lie the fallen colossi of Rameses? But how many have responded to it? They beckon me, Don, bidding me to the gates of royal Memphis, to the palace of the Pharaoh. A faint breeze steals over the desert, and they shudder and sigh because palace and temple are dust and the King of the Upper and Lower Land is but a half-remembered name strange upon the lips of men. Ah! who that has heard it can forget the call, soft and mournful, of the palm-groves of Mitrahina?

"I would make such places sacred and no vulgar foot should ever profane them. Once, as I passed the entrance to the tomb of Seti in the Valley of the Kings, I met a fat German coming out. He was munching sandwiches, and I had to turn aside; I believe I clenched my fists. A picture of the shameful Clodius at the feast of Bona Dea arose before me. My very soul revolted against this profanation of the ancient royal dead. To left and right upon the slopes above and perhaps beneath the very path along which the gross Teuton was retiring lay those who ruled the world ere Rome bestrode the seven hills, whose body-slaves were princes when the proud states and empires of to-day slumbered unborn in the womb of Time. Seti I! what a name of power! His face, Don, is unforgettable and his image seems to haunt those subterranean halls in which at last he had thought to find rest. To-day his tomb is a public resort, his alabaster sarcophagus an exhibit at the Sloane Museum, and his body, stripped of its regal raiment, is lying exposed to curious eyes in a glass case in Cairo!

"We honour the departed of our own times, and tread lightly in God's acre; why, because they passed from the world before Western civilisation had raised its head above primeval jungles, should we fail in our respect for Egypt's mightier dead? I tell you, Don, there is not one man in a million who understands; who, having the eyes to see, the ears to hear, has the soul to comprehend. And this understanding is a lonely, sorrowful gift. I looked out from an observation-post on the Somme over a landscape like the blasted heath in Macbeth. No living thing moved, but the earth was pregnant with agony and the roar of the guns from hidden pits was like that of the grindstones of hell. There, upon the grave of an epoc, I listened to that deathly music and it beckoned to me like the palm fronds of Mitrahina and spoke the same message as the voice of the pyramid silence. Don! all that has ever been, is, and within us dwells the first and the last."

VII

A silence fell between them which endured for a long time, such an understanding silence as is only possible in rare friendships. Paul began to fill his pipe, and Don almost regretfully broke the spell. "My real mission," he said, "is to release you from a bargain into which you entered blindfolded, without realising that you had to deal with an utterly unprincipled partner."

"Whatever do you mean?"

"I owe a debt to the late Michael Duveen, Paul, which you generously offered to assist me in liquidating——"

Paul reached over and grasped Don's arm. "Stop there!" he cried, "and hear me. You are going to say that my enthusiasm has cooled——"

"I am going to say nothing of the kind."

"Ah, but you think it is so. Yet you know me so well, Don, that you should understand me better. I handed the whole affair over to Nevin, and to you that seems like ennui, I know. But it does not mean that; it simply means that as a hopeless man of business I appoint another to do what I know myself incapable of doing. Once I am committed to the production of a book, Don, I cease to exist outside its pages. I live and move and have my being in it. But please don't misunderstand. Anything within my power to do for Flamby I will do gladly. I only learned to-day of her second bereavement. Don, we must protect her from the fate which so often befalls girls in such circumstances."

"My dear Paul, in accusing me of misjudging you, you are misjudging me. If I don't understand you nobody does. My offer to release you from the bargain is not to be understood as a reproach; it is a confession. I am a man utterly devoid of common sense, one to whom reason is a stranger and moderation an enemy. I am a funny joke. I should be obliged if you would sell me to Punch."

"You puzzle me."

"I puzzle myself. Don Courtier is a conundrum with which I struggle night and morning. In brief, Paul, I have been shopping with Flamby."

"With Flamby? Then she is in London?"

"She arrived yesterday morning, a most pathetic little picture in black. I wish you could have seen her, Paul; then you might understand and condone."

The vertical wrinkle between Paul's brows grew darker. His mind was a playground of conflicting thoughts. When he spoke he did so almost automatically. "She has never had a chance, Don. God knows I am eager to help her."

"But I cannot permit it. To put the matter in a nutshell, I have already spent roughly a hundred and twenty pounds in this worthy cause!"

Paul laughed outright. "My dear fellow, what are a hundred and twenty pounds in the scale against your life? You are worth more to me than sixty pounds!"

"This is only the beginning. Having beguiled her into an extravagant mode of expenditure, from motives of self-protection I have been forced to plunge deeper into the mire of deception. I have informed her that she is to refer all tradespeople to Nevin. Quite innocently she may let us in for any amount of money!"

Paul put his hands upon Don's shoulders, laughing more loudly than ever. "I don't know to what extent your service has depleted your exchequer, and how far you can afford to pursue the Quixotic, but for my own part all I have is at your disposal—and at Flamby's."

"I shall see that no such demand is made upon you. But you must come and visit her, Paul. She has few friends."

"Poor little girl. I will come when you like, Don. To-night I am going to Thessaly's, and I wish you could join the party. He would welcome you, I know."

"Impossible, unfortunately. I am dining with a man who was attached to us for a time."

"Don't fill up your entire programme, Don, and leave no room for me. Give me at least one whole day."

"To-morrow, then."

"Splendid. Thessaly will be joining us in the evening, too, and I am anxious for you to renew your acquaintance. We had projected a ramble around London's Bohemian haunts. I must keep in touch with the ideas of contemporary writers, painters and composers, for these it is who make opinion. Then I propose to plumb the depths of our modern dissipations, Don. The physician's diagnosis is based upon symptoms of sickness."

"Certainly. A nation is known not by its virtues, but by its vices. In the haversack of the fallen Frenchman it is true that we may find a silk stocking, or a dainty high-heeled shoe, but in that of the German we find a liver sausage. Most illuminating, I think. To-morrow, then. Shall I call here for you? Yvonne might like to lunch with us. The wife of a genius must often be very lonely."

VIII

Before the bookstall in the entrance to the Cafe Royal, Paul stood on the following night, with Jules Thessaly and Don.

"I shall never cease to regret Kirchner," said Thessaly. "He popularised thin legs, and so many women have them. Ha, Mario! here you are again on the front page of a perfectly respectable weekly journal, just alighting from the train. You look like an intelligent baboon, and your wife will doubtless instruct Nevin directly her attention is drawn to this picture. It creates an impression that she was not sober at the time. What a public benefactor was he who introduced popular illustrated journalism. He brought all the physical deformities of the great within reach of the most modest purse."

"It is very curious," said Don, "but you do not appear in the photograph, Mr. Thessaly. You appear in none that I have seen."

"Modesty is a cloak, Captain Courtier, which can even defy the camera. Let us inhale the gratifying odour, suggestive of truffles frying in oil, which is the hall-mark of your true cafe, and is as ambergris in the nostrils of the gourmand. Do you inhale it?"

"It is unavoidable," replied Paul. "The triumph of Continental cookery rests upon a basis of oil."

"We will bathe in the unctuous fumes. Enter, my friends."

Passing the swing-door they entered the cafe, which was full as usual, so that at first it seemed as though they would find no accommodation.

"Twenty-five per cent of elbows are nudging fifty per cent of ribs," said Thessaly, "and ninety per cent of eyes are staring at Paul Mario. Personally, my extreme modesty would revolt. I once endeavoured to visualise Fame and the resultant picture was that of a huge room filled with pretty women, all of whom watched me with the fixed gaze of nascent love. It was exquisite but embarrassing. I think there is a table near the corner, on the right, a spot sanctified by the frequent presence of Jacob Epstein. Let us intrude."

They made their way to the table indicated by Thessaly, and the curious sudden silence which notability imposes upon the ordinary marked their progress. Paul's handsome olive face became the focus of a hundred glances. Several people who were seated with their backs toward the entrance, half rose to look covertly at him as he walked in. They seated themselves at the marble-topped table, Don and Paul upon the plush lounge and Thessaly upon a chair facing them. "I have a mirror before me," said Thessaly, "and can stare without fear of rebuke. Yonder is a group of Johnsons."

"To whom do you refer?" asked Don.

"To those young men wearing Soho whiskers and coloured collars. I call them Johnsons because they regard Augustus John as their spiritual father."

"And what is your opinion of his school?" inquired Don.

"He has no school. His work is aspirative, if you will grant me the word; the striving of a soul which knew the art of an earlier civilisation to seek expression in this. Such a man may have imitators, but he can never have disciples."

"He is a master of paint."

"Quite possibly. Henry James was a master of ink, but only by prayer and fasting can we hope to grasp his message. Both afford examples of very strange and experienced spirits trammelled by the limitations of imperfect humanity. Their dreams cannot be expressed in terms within the present human compass. Debussy's extraordinary music may be explained in the same way. Those who seek to follow such a lead follow a Jack-o'-lantern. The more I see of the work of the Johnsons the more fully I recognise it to embody all that we do not ask of art."

"Those views do not apply to the Johnsons' spiritual father?" suggested Paul, laughingly.

"Not in the least. If we confounded the errors of the follower with the message of the Master must not the Messianic tradition have died with Judas?"

Paul gave an order to the waiter and Don began to load his pipe. Thessaly watched him, smiling whilst he packed the Latakia mixture into the bowl with meticulous care, rejecting fragments of stalk as Paphnutius rejected Thais; more in sorrow than in anger.

"Half the absinthe drinker's joy is derived from filtering the necessary drops of water through a lump of sugar," he said as Don reclosed his pouch; "and in the same way, to the lover of my lady Nicotine the filling of the pipe is a ritual, the lighting a burnt offering and the smoking a mere habit."

"Quite agree," replied Don, fumbling for matches in the pocket of his trench-coat, "as the Aunt would say. Our own pipe never tastes so sweet as the other fellow's smells. There is Chauvin over there and I want to speak to him. Perhaps he fails to recognise me in uniform. Ah! he has seen me." He waved his hand to a fresh-coloured, middle-aged man seated with a lady dressed in green, whose cerise hair lent her an interesting likeness to a human geranium. Chauvin rose, having obtained the lady's permission, bowed to her, and coming across to the table, shook Don warmly by the hand.

"Paul," said Don, "This is Claude Chauvin. You have one of his pictures in your dining-room. Paul Mario—Mr. Jules Thessaly. Chauvin, I know you require another assistant in your studio. You cannot possibly turn out so much black and white stuff for the sporting journals and all those etchings as well as your big pictures."

"It is hopeless to expect to find anyone to help me," replied Chauvin. "Nobody understands animals nowadays. I would pay a good assistant any amount as well as putting him in the way of doing well for himself later on."

"I am bringing a girl around to you in the morning who knows nearly as much about animals as you know yourself."

"A girl."

"A girl—yes; a female Briton Riviere."

Chauvin's rather tired-looking eyes lighted up with professional interest and he bent lower over the table upon which he was resting his hands. "Really! Who is she?"

"Flamby Duveen. I would never trust her to anybody's care but yours, Chauvin. She is the daughter of a man who saved my life and she is a born artist as well. She starts at Guilder's on Monday. Her style wants broadening of course. But look at this."

Don dived into the capacious pocket of his trench-coat and brought forth a large envelope marked "On His Majesty's Service. Strictly Confidential." From the envelope he took a water-colour drawing representing a pair of long-legged ungainly colts standing snuggled up to their mother under a wild briar hedge. He handed the drawing to Chauvin, and Chauvin, adjusting a pair of huge horn-rimmed spectacles upon his nose, examined it critically. All three watched him in silence. Presently he removed the spectacles and laid the drawing down on the table. He held out his hand to Don.

"Bring her along early," he said. "Good night." He returned to the human geranium.

Don replaced the drawing in the official envelope, smiling happily. "Old Chauvin is not exactly chatty," he remarked; "but he knows."

"I should say that he was a man of very extraordinary talent," said Thessaly, "even if I were unacquainted with his work. His choice of a companion alone marks him as no ordinary mortal."

Don laughed outright, fitting the envelope into his pocket again. "The lady is a Parisienne," he replied, "and very entertaining company."

"Parisiennes make delightful companions for any man," declared Thessaly, "and good wives for one who is fond of adventure. She is studying you with keen interest, Mario."

"She probably regards me as an embodiment of mediaeval turpitude. People persist in confusing novelists with their creations."

"Quite so. Yet because de Quincey was an opium-fiend, Poe a drunkard and Oscar Wilde a pervert, it does not follow that every clever writer is unfit for decent society. Even if he were, his popularity would not suffer. Few things help a man's public reputation so much as his private vices. Don't you think you could cultivate hashish, Mario? Sherlock Holmes' weakness for cocaine has endeared him to the hearts of two generations."

"I shall endeavour to dispense with it, Thessaly. Excepting a liking for honey which almost amounts to a passion, my private life is exemplary."

"Honey? Most peculiar. Don't let Bassett know or he will paragraph the fact. Honey to my way of thinking is a much overrated commodity which survives merely because of its biblical reputation and its poetic life-history. It is only one's imagination which lends to it the fragrance of flowers. Personally I prefer treacle. Is Chauvin's attachment to the French lady of a Platonic nature, Captain Courtier?"

"I cannot say. He is quite capable of marrying her."

"Probably he knows his own mind," Paul murmured absently.

"Quite probably; but does he know hers?" asked Thessaly. "I always think this so important in London although it may not matter in Paris. Some infatuations are like rare orchids. A certain youth of Cnidus fell in love with a statue of Aphrodite, and my secretary, Caspar, has fallen in love with Gaby Deslys. Apollonius of Tyana cured the Cnidian youth, but what hope is there for Caspar? My nightly prayer is that he may find the courage to shave his side-whiskers and renounce the passionate life—a second Plato burning his poems."

* * * * *

Paul became absorbed in contemplation of the unique turmoil about him. The excitement created by his entrance had somewhat subsided and the various groups in the cafe had resumed their respective characteristics. The place was seething with potential things; the pressure of force might be felt. At a centre table a party of musicians talked excitedly, one of them, a pale young man with feline eyes, shouting hoarsely and continuously. Well-known painters were there, illustrating the fact that many a successful artist patronises a cheap tailor. There was a large blonde woman who smoked incessantly as she walked from table to table. She seemed to have an extensive circle of acquaintances. And there was a small dark girl with eyes feverishly bright who watched her; and whenever the glances of the twain met, the big woman glared and the small one sneered and showed her white teeth. A little fat man with a large fat notebook sat near the door apparently engaged in compiling a history of some kind and paying no attention whatever to a tall thin man who persistently interrupted him by ordering refreshments. The little fat man absently emptied glass after glass; his powers of absorption were remarkable.

There were models with pale faces and short fabulous hair surrounding a celebrated figure-painter who was said to have seven wives named after the days of the week, and there were soldiers who looked like poets and artists who looked like soldiers. A sculptor who had discovered the secret of making ugliness out of beauty and selling it, was deep in conversation with an author of shocking mysteries whose fame rested largely upon his creation of the word "beetlesque" and the appearance of a certain blue-faced ourang-outang in every story which he published.

Paul's immediate neighbours on the right-hand side were two earnest young brushmen, one wearing military uniform, and the other a rational check suit designed with much firmness. They shared a common pencil and drank black coffee, demonstrating their ideas in line upon the marble table-top. They evidently thought with Mr. Nevinson, that man invented circles but the Lord created cubes. Beyond them was a lady of title who aspired to the mantle of George Sand. In the absence of an Alfred de Musset she had fled from her husband with a handsome actor of romantic roles whom later she had left for an ugly violinist with a beautiful technique. She was sipping pomegranate juice in the company of her publisher and glancing under her lashes at a ferocious-looking ballad writer who had just seated himself behind the next table from whence he directed a malevolent glare upon no one in particular.

"His gentle work deserves a kinder master," said Thessaly, observing Paul watching the melody-maker. "I have noticed, Mario, that although there are few pressmen present, there are a number of publicists. Our progress is merely in terminology after all. The writers who matter may readily be recognised by their complacent air; the others, who have not yet succeeded in mattering, by their hungry look. They have missed a course in the banquet of life. They have failed to grasp the fact that our artificial civilisation has made a mystery of marriage, which, veil by veil, it is the duty of the successful novelist to disclose. If I were a novelist I should seek my characters in the Divorce Court; if I were a painter I should study those superstitions which have grown up around human nudity so that the very word 'naked' has become invested with a covert significance and must very shortly be obsolete. I contemplate opening a new Pythagorean Institute for instruction of the artistic young. Above the portal I shall cause to be inscribed the following profound thought: 'Art does not pay; portrait and figure painting do.'"

"Some portrait painters are artists," said Don.

"I agree: Velasquez for instance; and consider the treatment of the velvet draperies in Collier's Pomps and Vanities so widely popularised by its reproduction in the Telephone Directory." He turned to Paul. "I have noted no fewer than six novelists, Mario, engaged in outlining to admirers projected masterpieces dealing with the war from a psychological aspect. Think of the disappointments. Excepting the creators of omniscient detectives and exotic criminals (who form a class apart, self-contained, opulent and immune from the stress of life) every writer dies with his greatest work unwritten. We are beginning to bore one another. Let us proceed to Murray's and contemplate bare backs."

IX

One evening early in the following week Flamby and Mrs. Chumley stood upon a platform of Victoria Station looking after a train from which protruded a forest of waving hands. Somewhere amongst them was the hand of Don, but because of that uncomfortable mistiness which troubled her sight at times, Flamby was quite unable to distinguish anything clearly. "Damn the German pigs," she said under her breath.

"Did I hear you swearing, dear?" asked Mrs. Chumley tearfully. "So many girls seem to be able to swear nowadays. No doubt they find it a great relief."

"I am so sorry," said Flamby breathlessly. "I had really made up my mind never to swear again and never to say things in Latin or quote Shakespeare; but it's very hard for me."

"It must be, dear. Quite agree. I once tried to make up my mind never to give money to blind beggars again. It was in Cairo, and I found that so many of them were not really blind at all. Do you know, dear, it was not a bit of good. I found myself doing it when I wasn't thinking. I tried going out without money and then all the blind men followed me about the streets. It was most awkward. The poor things couldn't understand why I had changed, of course."

"You had not changed, Mrs. Chumley. You never could change," said Flamby, squeezing the old lady's arm as they made their way out of the station. "You will always be generous, but I hope I shall not always swear on the slightest provocation."

"I hope you won't, dear, if you think it would be as well."

* * * * *

Number twenty-three at The Hostel now was converted into a miniature suite de luxe. Flamby's instinctive good taste had enabled her to arrange her new possessions and her old to the best possible advantage. The cost of those purely useful articles which had not been purchased under the guidance of Don, as compared with such delightful things as cushions and gowns, surprised her very much indeed, but the ingenious Don had secured a quantity of cutlery, linen and other household necessities from an acquaintance "in the wholesale trade," thus saving Flamby more than half the usual cost. Once committed to an emprise, Don's resource was limitless.

Flamby switched on the centre light of her little domain, fitted with a charming shade of Japanese silk, and removing her coat (purchased locally at a price which she had considered preposterous) she stood gazing vacantly into the little square mirror above the mantelpiece behind the china clock. It reflected the figure of a slim girl wearing a blue serge skirt, a blue jersey coat and a grey velour hat—a very pretty girl indeed, her colour heightened by the humid night air.

How swiftly her life had moved in that one short week. She stared at her reflection with a sudden interest, seeking for signs of age. Eight days ago she had possessed no friend in all the world; now, friends seemed to have sprung up around her miraculously, and all at the bidding of Don. From such lonely despondence as she had never known he had lifted her into a new and brighter world. She had seen the studio of the great Claude Chauvin; she was actually going to work there on three days of every week. On the other three she was to attend the art school. The crowning wonder of it all lay in the fact that Chauvin proposed to pay her a salary. Her father had taught her to expect nothing but rebuffs, although he had assured her that some day she would make a reputation as an animal painter. She recognised that Don was the magician whose transmuting wand had surrounded her with the gold of good fellowship. He had forgotten nothing.

* * * * *

One day they had lunched at Regali's, that esoteric Italian restaurant wherein disciples of all the Arts congregate to pay tribute to good cooking and modest bills.

Don, who seemed to know everybody, presented the great Severus Regali himself, a vast man ponderously moustached and endowed with a mighty voice and the fierce bearing of a Bellino; a figure in bravura with the heart of a child. He bowed low before Flamby, one huge hirsute hand pressed to his bosom.

"Ragout Regali is on to-day," he said; no more—but those words constituted an initiation, admitting Flamby to the Epicurean circle.

Of Severus Regali and his famous ragout a story was told, and this was the story as related by Don: No other chef in Europe (Regali had formerly been chef to a Personage) could make a like ragout, and Regali jealously retained the secret of the preparation, which he only served to privileged guests. To him came M. Sapin, the great artist responsible for the menus of a certain peer far-famed as the foremost living disciple of Lucullus. A banquet extraordinary was shortly to take place, and M. Sapin, the mastermind, came to beg of Regali the recipe for his ragout. Wrapped in a fur-lined coat, the immortal Sapin descended from his car (for his salary was that of a Cabinet Minister). Hollow-cheeked, sallow, and having death in his eyes, he begged this favour of his modest rival.

"It shall never be prepared by my hand again, Regali," he said. "My physician gives me but one month of life."

"What!" cried Regali. "It is then a dying request?"

"It is indeed," was the mournful reply. "For this great affair I have sought inspiration from all the classic authorities. I have considered the dormice served with honey and poppy-seed and the grape-fed beccafico dressed with garum piperatum, which, according to Petronius, were served at Trimalchio's banquet. But neither of these rare dishes can compare with Ragout Regali." Regali bowed. "Therefore, I beg of you, grant me permission to prepare that supreme triumph of our beautiful art, and in honour of the guest of the evening, to present it for the first and, alas! the last time as 'Ragout Prince Leopold!'"

Regali consented, and that night after closing-time a strange scene was enacted. Outside the restaurant stood the luxurious car of M. Sapin, and downstairs in the kitchen, behind double-locked doors, the two chefs made Ragout Regali, M. Sapin noting the method of preparation with those pathetic dying eyes. But at the great banquet following the appearance of "Ragout Prince Leopold," M. Sapin was summoned to the dining-room and toasted by the epicures there gathered. This was his final triumph. He died a few weeks later. But of such dream stuff was the wonder-dish to whose mystery Regali had admitted Flamby with the words "Ragout Regali is on to-day."

Another morning they went to Guilder's, the art school of which Don had said, "They teach you everything except how to sell your pictures," and Flamby made the acquaintance of Hammett, famous as a painter of dogs, velvet and lace, under whom she was to work. The school surprised her. It was so extremely untidy, and the big windows were so very dirty. Busts and plaster casts, canvas-stretchers, easels, stools and stacks of sketches littered the first, or "antique" room, and they were all mantled in dust. There was no one in the "life" room at the time of Flamby's visit, except an old Italian, who was a model, but who looked like an organ-grinder. The suspended lamps, with their huge ugly shades, had an ominous appearance by daylight, and Flamby found herself considering the unfinished drawings and paintings which were visible about the large bleak room, and trying to conjure up thought-forms of the students who had executed them. Later she learned that there were a number of smaller painting-rooms right and left, above and below, but the dirtiest room of all was that in which lumps of clay lay casually about on tables and rests and on the floor, where embryonic things perched upon tripods, like antediluvian birds and saurians, and where the daughters of Praxiteles and sons of Phidias pursued their claggy but fascinating studies under a sculptor who possessed the inestimable gift of teaching more than he knew himself. It was all very unromantic. Strange how ugliness is the mother of beauty, and the sacred fairy-winged scarab of Art comes forth from dirt.

* * * * *

One day Paul came to The Hostel. Flamby was engaged in hanging pictures when she heard his voice in the courtyard below. She was standing on a chair, but her heart began to beat so ridiculously that she was compelled to sit down. She swore with a fluency and resource worthy of her father, then in feverish haste attempted to strip off her overall and wash her hands and adjust her unruly hair at one and the same time. She ceased her frantic efforts as suddenly as she had begun them, drying her hands and tousling her hair fiercely. What did she care? Let him find her looking like a freak; it did not matter. "You are a little ass," she told herself bitterly; "a silly little donkey! Have you no brains? He doesn't care how you look. You should not care what he thinks about you. Why don't you get in a panic when Don comes alone? You were as red as a tomato half a minute ago; now you are as white as a ghost. You poor contemptible little idiot!"

She snatched up the hammer which she had dropped and resumed the task of attaching a picture fastener to the wall; but as she passed the mirror above the fireplace she raised her disengaged hand and pulled a curl into place. She banged a little brass nail so hard that it bounced out of the plaster and fell upon the floor. Paul and Don were at the door and the bell was ringing. Flamby achieved composure, and hammer in hand she went to admit her visitors.

One swift glance she ventured, and in Paul's eyes she read that which none could have deduced from his manner. The shameful phantom which had pursued her so long had not been illusory; the photographs taken by Sir Jacques had survived him. Paul had seen them. Momentarily she almost hated him, and she found a savage and painful satisfaction in the discovery that there was something in his nature less than godlike. It should be easy to forget a man capable of believing that of her which Paul believed. She longed to hide herself from his sight. But almost with his first word of charming greeting came the old joy of hearing him speak, the old foolish sense of inferiority, of helpless gladness. Flamby even ceased to resist it, but she noted that Don was more silent than usual; and once in his grey eyes she detected a look almost of sadness. In the very charm of Paul's unchanged manner there lay a sting, for if he had cared he could not have believed that which Flamby was convinced he did believe and have dismissed the matter thus. But, of course, he did not care.

"Why should he care?" she asked aloud, when again she found herself alone. "He is just sorry that I am not a good girl. Dad saved the life of his dearest friend, and therefore he considers it his duty to be kind to me. But that is all."

In vain Flamby sought to reason with her unreasonable heart. What did she desire?—that Paul should love her? A hot flush crept all over her body. That his wife should die? Oh! what a coldly merciless thing was logic! Flamby at this point discovered that she had been weeping for quite a long time. She was very sorry for herself indeed; and recognising this in turn she began to laugh, perhaps rather hysterically. She was laughing when Mrs. Chumley came to look for her, nor could she stop.

"Whatever are you laughing about, dear? Has Don been telling you one of his ridiculous stories?"

"No. I just thought of a silly trifling thing, and began to laugh and couldn't leave off."

"Quite understand, dear. I've been like that. I once began laughing in the Tube; so unfortunate. And a man sitting opposite became really annoyed. He had a very odd nose, you see, and he thought I was laughing at it. I could see he thought so, which made me laugh all the more. I had to get out at the next station, dear. Most ridiculous, because I wasn't laughing at the poor man's nose at all, I was laughing at his funny umbrella."

X

Six months stole almost unobserved into a dim land of memories. The war, which ate up all things, did not spare the almanack; and what should appear to later generations as the most stirring period in the world's history, appeared to many of those who lived through it in London as a dreary blank in their lives, a hiatus, an interval of waiting—a time to be speedily forgotten when its dull aches were no more and absent dear ones again worked side by side for simple ends, and the sweeter triumphs of peace. Some there were whose sorrows drove them like Sarak in quest of the Waters of Oblivion, but, to all, those days were poppy days, unreal and meaningless; transitionary, as a bridge between unlike states.

Flamby made progress at Guilder's, growing more and more familiar with the technique of her art, but, under the careful guidance of Hammett, never losing that characteristic nonchalance of style which was the outstanding charm of her work. So many professors seem to regard their pupils as misshapen creatures, who must be reduced to a uniform pattern, but Hammett was not as one of these. He encouraged originality whilst he suppressed eccentricity, and although, recognising the budding genius in the girl's work, he lavished particular care upon her artistic development, he never tried to make love to her, which proved that he was not only a good painter, but also a sound philosopher. He took her to lunch once or twice to Regali's, which created a coterie of female enemies, but Flamby regarded all women in a more charitable manner since her meeting with Mrs. Chumley, and some of her enemies afterwards became her friends, for she bore them no malice, but sought them out and did her utmost to understand them. Her father had taught her to despise the pettiness of women, but in Mrs. Chumley's sweet sympathy she had found a new model of conduct. Her later philosophy was a quaint one.

"It isn't fair, Mrs. Chumley," she said one day, sitting on the settee in her little room, knees drawn up to chin and her arms embracing them—"it isn't fair to hate a girl for being spiteful. You might as well hate a cat for killing mice."

"Quite agree, dear. I am glad you think so."

"Women are different from men. They haven't got the same big interests in life, and they are not meant to have. I am sorry for women who have to live alone and fight for themselves. But I can't be sorry for those who want to fight. Loneliness must be very terrible, and there is really no such thing as a girl friend after school days, is there? Except for very ugly girls or very daft ones."

"I am sure you would be a staunch friend to anyone, dear."

"Yes; but they don't know it, you see. Naturally they judge me by themselves," said Flamby wistfully. "I used to hate being a woman before I met you, Mrs. Chumley, but I am not quite so sorry now."

"I am glad, dear. So nice of you to say so."

"If there were no men in the world I think women might be nicer," continued Flamby the philosopher—"not at first, of course, but when they had got over it. Nearly all the mean things girls do to one another are done because of men, and yet all the splendid things they do are done for men as well. Aren't we funny? Three of the girls from the school went to be nurses recently, one because her boy had been killed, another because she was in love with a doctor, and the third because she had heard that a great many girls became engaged to Colonials in France. Not one of them went because she wanted to be a nurse. Now, if you went, Mrs. Chumley, you would go because you were sorry for all the poor wounded, I know. It would have been just the same when you were eighteen, and that's why I think you are so wonderful."

Mrs. Chumley became the victim of silent merriment, from which she recovered but slowly. "You are a really extraordinary child, dear," she said. "Yet you seem to have quite a number of girl friends come to see you as well as boys."

"Yes. You see I make allowances for them and then they are quite good friends."

"Who was that fair man who took you to the theatre last night, and brought you home in a lovely car?"

"Orlando James. He has the next studio to Mr. Chauvin. I hate him."

Mrs. Chumley's blue eyes became even more circular than usual. "But you went to the theatre with him?"

"Yes; that was why I went. He buys me nice presents, too. I wouldn't take them if I liked him."

* * * * *

Presently, retiring to her own abode, Flamby picked up a copy of a daily paper and stared for a long time at two closely-printed columns headed, "Mr. Paul Mario's Challenge to the Churches." The article was a commentary by a prominent literary man upon Paul's second paper, Le Monde, which had appeared that week and had occasioned even wider comment than the first, Le Bateleur. Long excerpts had been printed by practically every journal of note in Great Britain. It had been published in full in New York, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Christiania and Copenhagen, and had been quoted at great length by the entire Colonial press. It was extraordinary; revolutionary, but convincing. It appealed to every man and woman who had loved, lost and doubted; it was written with conviction and displayed knowledge beyond the compass of ordinary minds. Touching as it did upon mysteries hitherto veiled from public ken, it set the civilized world agog, hoping and questioning, studying the secrets of the Tarot and seeking to divine the hidden significance of the word of power, Yod-he-vau-he.

Flamby, disciple of the Greek sages, could face the truth unflinchingly, and now she recognised that to endeavour to battle against the memory of Paul Mario was a waste of energy. But because her pride was lofty and implacable she avoided meeting him, yet could not avoid following all that he said and wrote, nor could her pride withhold her from seeking glimpses of him in places which she knew him to frequent. Le Monde frightened her. It had the authority of conviction based upon knowledge, and it slew hope in her breast. If nothing was hidden from this wonderful man, why did he omit to explain the mystery of unrequited love?

On more than one occasion Flamby had found herself in that part of Chelsea where Paul's house was situated, and from a discreet distance she had looked at his lighted windows, and then had gone home to consider her own folly from a critical point of view. Flamby, the human Eve, mercilessly taxed by Flamby the philosopher, pleaded guilty to a charge of personal vanity. Yes, she had dared to think herself pretty—until she had seen Yvonne Mario. Flamby, the daughter of Michael Duveen, had defined Yvonne's appearance as "a slap in the face." She no longer expected any man who had seen Yvonne Mario to display the slightest interest in little insignificant Flamby Duveen; for Yvonne possessed the type of beauty which women count irresistible, but which oddly enough rarely enchains the love of men, which inflames the imagination without kindling the heart. Thus was the fairness of the daughter of Icarius, which might not withhold Ulysses from the arms of Calypso, and of this patrician beauty was Fulvia, whom Antony forgot when the taunting smiles of Cleopatra set his soul on fire.

That Paul's esteem was diminished Flamby had known from the very hour that he had quitted Lower Charleswood without word of farewell. His first visit to The Hostel had confirmed her opinion, although confirmation was not needed. He had visited her twice since then; once at Chauvin's studio and once at Guilder's. She had met him on a third occasion by chance. His manner had been charming as ever but marked by a certain gravity, and as Flamby had thought, by restraint. Sense of a duty to Don alone had impelled him to see her. He had never mentioned his wife.

* * * * *

Flamby first saw Yvonne in the cloisteresque passage into which Chauvin's studio opened, for the studio was one of a set built around three sides of a small open courtyard in the centre of which was a marble faun. Orlando James, the fashionable portrait painter, occupied the studio next to Chauvin. Flamby had been rather anxious to meet James because Chauvin had warned her to avoid him, and one afternoon as she was leaving for home, she came out into the passage at the same moment that a man and a woman passed the studio door on their way to the gate. The woman walked on without glancing aside, but the man covertly looked back, bestowing a bold glance of his large brown eyes upon Flamby. It was Orlando James. She recognised him immediately, tall, fair, arrogantly handsome and wearing his soft hat a la Mousquetaire. But, at the moment, Flamby had no eyes for the debonair Orlando. Stepping back into the shadow of the door, she gazed and gazed, fascinatedly, at the tall, graceful figure of his companion whose slim, daintily shod feet seemed to disdain the common pavement, whose hair of burnished gold gleamed so wonderfully in the wintry sunlight. Flamby's heart would have told her even if she were not familiar with the many published photographs that this elegant woman was Yvonne Mario. Opening the gate, Orlando James held it whilst Yvonne passed out; then ere following her he looked back again smiling destructively at Flamby.

He was painting Yvonne's portrait, as Flamby had pointed out to Chauvin when Chauvin had uttered veiled warnings against his neighbour.

"I know, my dear kid," Chauvin had replied, peering over his horn-rimmed spectacles; "but Mrs. Paul Mario can walk in where angels fear to tread. She is Mrs. Paul Mario, my dear kid, and if Mr. Paul Mario approves it is nobody else's business. But your Uncle Chauvin does not approve and your Uncle Chauvin is responsible to your Uncle Don."

"Don't call him that!" Flamby had cried, with one of her swift changes of mood. "It sounds damned silly!"

Thereupon Chauvin had laughed until he had had to polish his spectacles, for Chauvin was a cheery soul and the embodiment of all that Muerger meant when he spoke of a Bohemian. "Oh! oh!" he had chuckled—"you little devil! I must tell Hammett." And he had been as good as his word; but that same day he had bought Flamby a huge box of chocolates which was a direct and highly immoral encouragement of profanity.

Nevertheless Flamby managed to make the acquaintance of Orlando James, but she did not tell Chauvin. She detested James, but it had been very gratifying to be noticed by a man actually in the company of the dazzling Yvonne Mario. Flamby had profound faith in her ability to take care of herself and not without sound reason, for she was experienced and wise beyond her years, and James's pride in his new conquest amused her vastly because she knew it to be no conquest at all. Only with age do women learn that the foolish world judges beauty harshly and that the judgment of the foolish world may not be wholly neglected. Thus, for human life is a paradox, this knowledge comes when it is no longer of any use, since every woman is not a Ninon de Lenclos.

Of such-like matters were Flamby's thoughts as she sat squeezed up into the smallest possible compass upon her settee, arms embracing knees; and, as was so often the case, they led her back to Paul Mario. It was wonderful how all paths seemed to lead to Paul Mario. She sighed, reaching down for the newspaper which had slipped to the floor. As her fingers touched it, the door-bell rang.

Flamby jumped up impetuously, glancing at the celebrated china clock, which recorded the hour of ten p.m. She assumed that Mrs. Chumley had called for what she was wont to describe as "a goodnight chat." Flamby opened the door, and the light shone out upon Paul Mario.

XI

There are surprises which transcend the surprising, and as the finer tones of music defeat our ears and pass by us unnoticed so do these super-dramatic happenings find us unmoved. Flamby was aware of a vague numbness; she felt like an automaton, but she was quite composed.

"Good evening, Mr. Mario," she said. "How nice of you to call."

The trite precision of her greeting sounded unfamiliar—the speech of a stranger.

"May I come in, or will the lateness of my visit excite comment among your neighbours?"

"Of course you may come in."

Paul walked into the cosy little sitting-room and Flamby having closed the door contrived to kick the newspaper under the bureau whilst placing an armchair for Paul. Paul smiled and made a nest of cushions in a corner of the settee. "Sit there, Flamby," he said, "and let me talk to you."

Flamby sat down facing him, and her nerves beginning to recover from the shock imposed upon them, she found that her heart was really beating, and beating rapidly. Paul was in evening dress, and as the night was showery, wore a loose Burberry. A hard-working Stetson hat, splashed with rain, he had dropped upon the floor beside his chair. His face looked rather gaunt in the artificial light, which cast deep shadows below his eyes, and he was watching her in a way that led her to hope, yet fear, that he might have come to speak about the Charleswood photographs. He was endowed with that natural distinction whose possessor can never be ill at ease, yet he was palpably bent upon some project which he scarcely knew how to approach.

"Will you have a cigarette?" asked Flamby, in a faint voice. "You may smoke your pipe if you would rather."

"May I really?" said Paul buoyantly. "It is a very foul pipe, and will perfume your curtains frightfully."

"I like it. Lots of my visitors smoke pipes."

"You have a number of visitors, Flamby?"

"Heaps. I never had so many friends in my life."

Paul began to charge his briar from a tattered pouch. "Have you ever thought, Flamby, that I neglected you?" he asked slowly.

"Neglected me? Of course not. You have been to see me twice, and I felt all the time that I was keeping you from your work. Besides—why should I expect you to bother about me?"

"You have every reason to expect it, Flamby. Your father was—a tenant of my uncle, and as I am my uncle's heir, his debts are mine. Your father saved me from the greatest loss in the world. Lastly"—he lighted his pipe—"I want you to count me amongst your friends."

He held the extinguished match in his fingers, looking around for an ash-tray. Flamby jumped up, took the match and threw it in the hearth, then returned slowly to her place. Her hands were rather unsteady, and she tucked them away behind her, squeezing up closely against the cushions. "We are friends," she said. "You have always been my friend."

"I don't want you to feel alone in the world, as though nobody cared for you. When Don is home I have no fear, but when he is away there is really no one to study your interests, and, after all, Flamby, you are only a girl."

"There is Mrs. Chumley and Mr. Hammett and Claude Chauvin."

"Three quite delightful people, Flamby, I admit. But Hammett and Chauvin cannot always be with you, and Mrs. Chumley's sweet and unselfish life affords nothing but an illustration of unworldliness. Yet, if these were your only friends, I should be more contented."

Flamby tapped her foot upon the carpet and stared down at it unseeingly. "Are there some of my friends you don't think quite nice?" she asked. Her humility must have surprised many a one who had thought he knew her well.

Paul bent forward, resting one hand upon the head of the settee. "I know very little about your friendships, Flamby. That is why I reproach myself. But a girl who lives alone should exercise the greatest discretion in such matters. You must see that this is so. Friends who would be possible if you were under the care of a mother become impossible when you are deprived of that care. It is not enough to know yourself blameless, Flamby. Worldly folks are grossly suspicious, especially of a pretty girl, and believe me, life is easier and sweeter without misunderstanding."

"Someone has been telling you tales about me," said Flamby, an ominous scarlet enflaming her cheeks.

Paul laughed, bending further forward and seeking to draw Flamby's hands out from their silken hiding-place. She resisted a little, averting her flushed face, but finally yielded, although she did not look at Paul. "Dear little Flamby," he said, and the tenderness in his voice seemed now to turn her cold. "You are not angry with me?" He held her hands between his own, looking at her earnestly. She glanced up under her lashes. "If I had not cared I should have said nothing."

"Everybody goes on at me," said Flamby tremulously. "I haven't done any harm."

"Who has been 'going on' at you, little Flamby?"

"You have, and Chauvin, and everybody."

"But what have they said? What have I said?"

"That I am no good—an absolute rotter!"

"Flamby! Who has said such a thing? Not Chauvin, I'll swear, and not I. You are wilfully misjudging your real friends, little girl. Because you are clever—and you are clever, Flamby—you have faith in your judgment of men yet lack faith in your judgment of yourself. Now, tell me frankly, have you any friends of whom Don would disapprove?"

"No. Don trusts me."

"But he does not trust the world, Flamby, any more than I do, and the world can slay the innocent as readily as the guilty."

"I know!" cried Flamby, looking up quickly. "It was Mr. Thessaly who told you."

"Who told me what?"

"That he had seen me at supper with Orlando James. I didn't see him, but James said he was there."

She met Paul's gaze for a moment and tried to withdraw her hands, but he held them fast, and presently Flamby looked down again at the carpet.

"Whoever told me," said Paul, "it is the truth. Do you write often to Don?"

"Yes—sometimes."

"Then write and ask him if he thinks you should be seen about with Orlando James and I shall be content if you will promise to abide by his reply. Will you do that, Flamby? Please don't be angry with me because I try to help you. I have lived longer than you and I have learned that if we scorn the world's opinion the world will have its revenge. Will you promise?"

"Yes," said Flamby, all humility again.

Paul stood up, taking his hat from the floor and beginning to button his Burberry. "I am coming to see you at the school one day soon, but if ever there is anything you want to tell me or if ever I can be of the slightest use to you, telephone to me, Flamby. Don't regard me as a bogey-man." Flamby had stood up, too, and now Paul held her by the shoulders looking at her charming downcast face. "We are friends, are we not, little Flamby?"

Flamby glanced up swiftly. "Yes," she said. "Thank you for thinking about me."

XII

The rain-swept deserted streets made a curious appeal to Paul that night—an appeal to something in his mood that was feverish and unquiet, that first had stirred in response to an apparently chance remark of Thessaly's and that had sent him out to seek Flamby in despite of the weather and the late hour. He did not strive to analyse it, but rather sought to quench it, unknown, and his joy in the steady downpour was a reflection of this sub-conscious state. Self-distrust, vague and indefinite, touched him unaccountably. He considered the intellectual uproar (for it was nothing less) which he had occasioned by the publication of his two papers—comprising as they did selections from the first part of his book. The attitude of the Church alone indicated how shrewdly he had struck. He had bred no mere nine days' wonder but had sowed a seed which, steadily propagating, already had assumed tall sapling form and had unfolded nascent branches. The bookstalls were beginning to display both anonymous pamphlets and brochures by well-known divines; not all of them directly attacking Mario nor openly defending dogma, but all of them, covertly or overtly, being aimed at him and his works. He had been inundated with correspondence from the two hemispheres; he had been persecuted by callers of many nationalities; a strange grey-haired woman with the inspired eyes of a Sita who had addressed him as Master and acclaimed him one long expected, and a party of little brown men, turbaned and urbane, from India, who spoke of the Vishnu-Purana, hailing him as a brother, and whose presence had conjured up pictures of the forests of Hindustan. A dignified Chinaman, too, armed with letters of introduction, had presented him with a wonderful book painted upon ivory of the Trigrams of Fo-Hi. But most singular visitor of all was a sort of monk, having a black, matted beard and carrying a staff, who had gained access to the study, Paul never learned by what means, and who had thundered out an incomprehensible warning against "unveiling the shrine," had denounced what he had termed "the poison of Fabre d'Olivet" and had departed mysteriously as he had come.

There had been something really terrifying in the personality of this last visitor, power of some kind, and Paul, whose third paper, La Force, was in the press, seemed often to hear those strange words ringing in his ears, and he hesitated even now to widen the chasm which already he had opened and which yawned threateningly between the old faith and the new wisdom which yet was a wisdom more ancient than the world. He was but a common man, born of woman; no Krishna conceived of a Virgin Devaki, nor even a Pythagoras initiate of Memphis and heir of Zoroaster; and this night he distrusted his genius. What if he should beckon men, like a vaporous will-o'-the-wisp, out into a morass of error wherein their souls should perish? His power he might doubt no longer; a thousand denunciations, a million acclamations, had borne witness to it. And he had barely begun to speak. Truly the world awaited him and already he bent beneath the burden of a world's desire.

* * * * *

Few pedestrians were abroad and no cabs were to be seen. Every motor-bus appeared to be full inside, with many passengers standing, and even a heroic minority hidden beneath gleaming umbrellas on top. Paul had found the interiors of these vehicles to possess an odour of imperfectly washed humanity, and he avoided the roof, unless a front seat were available, because of the existence of that type of roof-traveller who converts himself into a human fountain by expectorating playfully at selected intervals. Theatre audiences were on their several ways home, and as Paul passed by the entrance to a Tube station he found a considerable crowd seeking to force its way in, a motley crowd representative of every stratum of society from Whitechapel to Mayfair. Women wearing opera cloaks and shod in fragile dress-shoes stood shivering upon the gleaming pavement beside Jewesses from the East-End. Fur-collared coats were pressed against wet working raiments, white gloved hands rested upon greasy shoulders. Officers jostled privates, sailors vied with soldiers in the scrum before the entrance to the microbic land of tunnels. War is a potent demagogue.

Isolated standard lamps whose blackened tops gave them an odd appearance of wearing skull caps, broke the gloom of the rain mist at wide intervals. All shops were shut, apparently. One or two cafes preserved a ghostly life within their depths, but their sombre illuminations were suggestive of the Rat Mort. Musicians from theatre orchestras hurried in the direction of the friendly Tube, instrument cases in hand, and one or two hardy members of the Overseas forces defied the elements and lounged about on corners as though this were a summer's evening in Melbourne. Policemen sheltered in dark porches. Paul walked on, his hands thrust into his coat pockets and the brim of his hat pulled down. He experienced no discomfort and was quite contented with the prospect of walking the remainder of the way home; he determined, however, to light his pipe and in order to do so he stepped into the recess formed by a shop door, found his pouch and having loaded his briar was about to strike a match when he saw a taxi-cab apparently disengaged and approaching slowly. He stepped out from his shelter, calling to the man, and collided heavily with a girl wearing a conspicuous white raincoat and carrying an umbrella.