"I think the bitterness of my mood must have sounded in my answer, for suddenly she turned to me and laid a hand on my arm.

"'Leave it then,' she whispered, her face close up against mine, 'leave it, come home with me.'

"'Home with you,' I repeated, thoroughly astonished, and at that moment a policeman, tall and stolid, strolled across the road towards us.

"'Don't let him hear what we are saying,' whispered the extraordinary woman; 'just turn back with me a little way and I will explain to you.'

"Well, I went. Perhaps you can realize why, and I saw for a little into the outside edge of life as lived by these women. I wonder how I can best convey to you the horror and pity of it, for we—despite the greyness of our lives—have something within ourselves to which we can turn, but they have weighed even hopes and dreams with the weights of shame, and found their poor value in pounds, shillings and pence. That is why their eyes as they pass you in the streets are so blank and expressionless. Each new day brings them nothing, they have learnt all things, and the groundwork of their knowledge is—sin."

She rose abruptly and moved across to the window, pulling aside the blue-tinted curtains, staring out over miles and miles of roof-covered London. From far in the distance Big Ben shone down on her, a round, dim face in the darkness.

"You are wondering why I stayed with the woman," she went on presently. "The answer is easy and may make you smile. I met a man, one of the many she brought to the house, and fell in love with him. I was stupid enough to forget my surroundings and the circumstances under which he had met me, or I dreamt that to him also they were only the outside wrappers of fate, easy to fling aside. Does it sound like a thrilling romance, and am I making myself out to be the heroine of one crowded hour of glorious life? Because my hour was never glorious."

She repeated the last word with a wry laugh and turned to face Joan. "I don't know why I have raked up all this," she said. "I thought it had lost its power to hurt; but I was mistaken. I have liked you, perhaps that is the reason, and I have wanted to save you from making the same mistake as myself. For before you plunge out of monotony you must see that there is nothing in your heart that can be hurt, as these women have to be hurt every hour of their lives."

Joan could find nothing to say; the other girl's confidence had been so overpowering, it left her tongue-tied and stupid. Rose came back after a little silence and sat down opposite her again.

"I am sorry," she said, "I have talked you into a mood of black depression; never mind, perhaps you will have learnt something from it none the less. And meanwhile, things are going to be better for you; it is no loss having to leave Shamrock House, otherwise you might grow into the house as I have. You will have to see about getting a room to-morrow, and then if you can meet me in the afternoon, I will take you and introduce you to your job. It is quite a nice one, I hope you will like it."

Joan stood up. "I don't know what to say," she began; "you—oh, if only we could wipe out the past," she flamed into sudden rebellion, "and start afresh."

Rose laughed. "I don't know about that," she said—the inevitable cigarette was in her mouth again—"I for one would be very unwilling to lose a wisdom which has been so dearly bought."



CHAPTER XV

"No one has any more right to go about unhappy than he has to go about ill bred."

R. L. STEVENSON.

Joan was not to start her new work till the following Monday. She was to be typist—her first real post filled her with some degree of self-conscious pride—to the Editor of the Evening Herald. Rose had herself worked on the paper some years ago and was a friend of the Editor's.

"I want you to give a girl I know a chance, Mr. Strangman," she had pleaded; "she is clever and well-educated, but she needs experience. Take her, there is a good man, while your slack time is on, and she will be game for anything when you get busy again."

Mr. Strangman twisted long nervous fingers into strange positions.

"I don't know about this girl," he said; "we are never slack at the office."

It was a pet fallacy of his that he was the hardest-worked man in London. Rose smiled. "But her typing is quite good," she argued, "and you are such an easy dictator, I am sure she will get on all right."

She had been exceptionally pleased when Mr. Strangman reluctantly gave way. Joan would, she hoped, take kindly to newspaper work, and it might open up new roads to her.

Meanwhile Joan had been out on her own and taken a room for herself in a house standing in a quiet, withdrawn square in the neighbourhood of King's Road, Chelsea. To call it a room was to dignify it by a title to which it could lay no real claim. It was an attic, up the last rickety flight of stairs, with roofs that sloped down within two feet of the ground, and a diminutive window from which one could get but the barest glimpse of the skies. Still it had possibilities, its aspect was not so terribly common-place as had been that of the other rooms which Joan had seen that morning. The sloping roofs, the small pane of glass which looked out higher than the neighbouring chimney-tops, were in their way attractive. She would take it, she told a somewhat surprised landlady, and would pay—everything included—ten shillings a week for the noble apartment. The "everything included" swept in breakfast—"Such as a young lady like yourself would eat, Miss"—the woman told her, and attendance. Suppers and fires she would have to provide for herself, though Mrs. Carew was prepared to cook for her; lunch, of course, fell in office hours.

On Saturday, therefore, and having forestalled Miss Nigel's request by announcing that she was leaving for good, Joan moved her luggage over to her new home and took possession.

"I am going to like it better than I liked being at Shamrock House," she told Rose, who had come to assist in the moving. "It is more my own, I can do just as I like here."

Rose was craning her neck to see out of the window's limited compass. "Just as you like," she repeated, laughing as she spoke, "on twenty-five shillings a week and an attic. You are not ambitious, my child."

She turned round to face the room; even in mid afternoon, with the sun shining outside, it was dim—the corners in positive darkness. "I don't think I should have chosen it," she said; "there is no sun, and"—she shook the thought off—"who else is in the house, did you ask?"

"There was not any need to," Joan answered. "Mrs. Carew, that is my landlady, you know, told me all their family histories while I was making up my mind whether I would come or not. Wait a minute," she paused in her unpacking to tick them off on her fingers. "There is the ground floor lady, who is an artist's model. No need to work just now though, for the last gentleman that painted her took a fancy to her and is paying for her at present. Drawing-room floor, old foreign lady who never seems to get out of bed. Second floor, retired army officer, 'fond of drink, more's the pity,'" she mimicked Mrs. Carew's voice, "and second floor back, young lady actress, who is not perhaps as good as she might be, 'but there, you can't always be blaming people'; and third floor, me! Doesn't sound respectable does it? But after Miss Nigel I am afraid of respectability."

Rose watched her with narrowed eyes. "It sounds anything but respectable," she agreed; "do not make a fool of yourself, kid, it won't be worth it, it never is."

"I am not likely to," Joan answered her. "My one real regret in leaving Shamrock House is that I shall not have you to talk to, oh, and the baths. Mrs. Carew does not hold with carrying too much water up these stairs."

"I am glad I rank before the baths," Rose laughed. She extricated herself from behind the luggage. "I will come and look you up sometimes," she announced, "though it probably won't be often; I am a bad hand at stirring myself out to see anyone in the evenings. Good-night, and I hope you will get on all right with Strangman, he is a kind little man really."

She went. Joan sat listening to her feet echoing down the stairs; a mouse could set the whole house creaking. She felt very much alone; Shamrock House, full as it had been of uncongenial companions, had yet been able to offer some distraction from one's own society.

The new office, to which she wended her way on the Monday morning, lay in a side alley opening off Fleet Street, a rickety old building, busy as a hive of bees in swarming time. The steep, wooden stairs, after she had been asked her business by the janitor in the box office and put in charge of a very small, very dirty boy, led her up and up into the heart of the building—past wide-open doors where numerous men sat at desks, the floor round them strewn with papers; up again, past rooms where the engines throbbed and panted, shaking the building with their noisy vibrations; up still further, till they landed her at that withdrawn and sacred sanctum, the Editor's room. Here worked Mr. Strangman and his satellites; spiders, in fact, in the centre of their cleverly-constructed web, throwing out feelers in search of news to all quarters of the globe.

Anything less like a spider than Mr. Strangman it would have been difficult to imagine. He was an alert, nervous man, with bright, kind eyes, a flexible mouth and very restless hands. His whole nature hung on wires, as if—which was indeed the case—his mental capacity was too big and overpowering for his physical strength. His manners under the strain of work were jerky and abrupt, but otherwise he was a very kindly and genial man. To Joan he was excessively polite, and so afraid that her capabilities might not come up to his expectations that for the first few days he left her practically with no work to do. She sat in a large, well-lit—if draughty—room, opposite Mr. Strangman at his table.

It was one of her duties, she discovered, to keep the aforesaid table tidy, and in time she learned that here more than anywhere else she could be of service to the man. He had an awe-inspiring way of piling up his desk with scraps of paper, cuttings, and slips, and stray manuscripts, and it was always under the most appalling muddle that the one small, indispensable news-slip would hide itself.

The Magazine Page-faker and the News-gleaner sat in the same room, the latter at a table next Joan. He was a stout man with a beaming smile and an inexhaustible supply of good temper. He would sit over his work, which as far as she could see consisted solely of running his eye over the day's papers and cutting out what appeared to be workable news, making a great deal of noise with his feet on the floor, a gigantic cutting-out scissors in his hand and a whistle which never varied its tune from early morning till late in the evening—a soft, subdued, under-his-breath whistle, Joan never even discovered what the tune was. He was, despite this disadvantage, an indefatigable worker and an ever-ready helper, always willing to do other people's work for them if necessary.

Of the other people on the staff Joan saw very little; the reporters came early in the morning to take their orders for the day, and threw in their copy downstairs in the evening. Sometimes they would come upstairs to discuss some feature of their day's work with Mr. Strangman, or to put in an article to the Literary Editor, but, as a whole, she hardly learned to know them, even by name. Then there were the office boys, a moving, fluctuating crowd; always in mischief, always dirty, always irrepressibly cheerful. For the rest, her work—one might almost say her life—lay between the four walls of the office room, with the shaking vibrations of the engines under her feet and the musty, curious smell of papers in the making and pile upon pile of papers that had been made all round her.

She arrived at 9.30 and left about 6 p.m., and by then she was too numbed—for the working of a typewriter is monotonous work—to do anything save walk with the hurrying crowds as far as Charing Cross and take a bus from there to Montague Square. But since work filled her days she had less time for discontent or depression. Sometimes she would be tempted to wander off the direct route on her way home and she would walk up to Piccadilly and past the region of brightly-lighted shops, watching the faces in the crowd round her, envying those who met friends and stopped to talk to them, following with rather wistful eyes the couples who passed, hand clasped in hand; but generally speaking she was too tired in the evenings to do anything save go straight home, eat a hasty supper and tumble into bed.

Of Rose she saw, as the other had prophesied, very little. Joan realized that friendship, if their brief companionship could have been called such, counted for very little in Rose's life. The girl seemed entirely to ignore her once she was from constant sight, and since Joan could not herself call at Shamrock House and Rose habitually forgot to pay her promised visits, the friendship, such as it had been, faded away into the past.

The other inhabitants of 6, Montague Square, she saw very rarely. Occasionally she would encounter Miss Drummond, the downstairs tenant, paying off her taxi at the door—a tall, handsome girl, rather overblown in her beauty, who invariably stared at Joan with haughty defiance and stalked into her own room, calling loudly for Mrs. Carew. Once Joan had stumbled over the retired military gentleman from the second floor, sound asleep, in a very undignified position, half way up her own little stairs. The incident had brought with it a shudder of fear, and from that day onwards Joan was always careful to lock her door at night.

Miss Fanny Bellairs, the erring damsel on the second floor back, kept such strange hours that she was never visible; but Mrs. Carew had a large stock of not very savoury anecdotes about her which she would recount to Joan during the process of laying supper. As not even an earthquake would have stopped Mrs. Carew's desire to impart information, Joan gave up the attempt to silence her. Indeed, she sometimes listened with a certain amount of curiosity, and Fanny Bellairs assumed a marvellous personality and appearance in her mind's eye.

That the original did not in the least come up to her expectations was something of a surprise. About three months after her first arrival at Montague Square Joan reached home rather late one evening to find her room already occupied. A girl sat, her feet tucked underneath her, on the principal chair under the lamplight; she had been crying, for a tight, damp ball of a handkerchief lay on the floor, and at the sound of Joan's entry she turned a tear-stained face to greet her.

"I thought you were never coming"—the voice held a plaintive sob in it—"and I am that down-hearted and miserable."

Joan put down her things hastily and came across. "I am so sorry," she said, groping through her mind to discover who her visitor might be; "did Mrs. Carew tell you I was in?—how stupid of her."

The girl in the chair gulped back her tears and laughed. "No, she didn't," she contradicted; "she told me that you wouldn't want to see me if you were in; that the likes of you did not know the likes of me, and that I was not to come up. But I came"—she held out impulsive hands. "I guess you aren't angry," she said; "when I get the silly hump, which isn't often, I go mad if I have to stay by myself. I'll be as good as"—she glanced round the room—"as good as you," she finished, "if you will let me stay."

"Why, of course," said Joan. "I don't know what Mrs. Carew can have been talking about. I don't know you, so I can't see how she can have thought I would not want to see you."

"I can though." The girl shook forward a sudden halo of curls and laughed in a way which it was impossible to resist. "I am Fanny, from downstairs, and Mrs. Carew is a silly old woman who talks a lot, but she is not stupid enough not to know the difference between a girl like you and a fly-by-night like me. Now I have shocked you," she went on breathlessly, seeing Joan's flush, "just when I was setting out to be good. I'll bite my tongue out and start again."

She coughed once with alarming intensity. Joan moved slowly away and took off her hat and coat. So this was Fanny Bellairs, the girl whose doings provided such a purple background for her own dull existence. She looked again at the little figure, lying back now, eyes closed, lips tremulous from the struggle for breath which her fit of coughing had brought her. It was a perfectly-fashioned face, though when Joan had time to study it, she could see that the colouring was just a little crudely put on and that it had smudged in the shadows under her eyes where the tears had lain. She was such a thin, small slip of a girl, too, little dimpled hands and a baby face under the gold curls. Fanny opened her eyes at that moment, wide and innocent, and answered Joan's glance with a wistful smile.

"Thinking of all Mrs. Carew ever said about me?" she asked. "I am not as bad as she sometimes paints me. Still"—she stood up—"I'll go, if you would rather I did. Hate to make a nuisance of myself."

She moved slowly—it was, in reality, reluctantly—towards the door, and Joan came out of her reverie with a start.

"Please don't go," she said quickly. "You must think I am awfully rude, but really I was not thinking about Mrs. Carew or anything so disagreeable. I was thinking how pretty you were, and wondering how old you could be."

The girl at the door stopped and turned back. Laughter filled her eyes, yet there was a little hint of mockery behind the mirth.

"Go on!" she said, "you and your thoughts! I know just what they were, my dear; but it doesn't matter to me, I am used to it. Twenty-two, at your service, mum"—she came a little away from the door and swept Joan a curtsey—"and everything my own, even my hair, though you mayn't believe it."



CHAPTER XVI

"Pale dreams arise, swift heart-beats yearn, Up, up, some ecstasy to learn! The spirit dares not speak, afar Youth lures its fellow, like a star."

ANON.

Fanny was a real daughter of joy. The name is given to many who in no sense of the word near its meaning. To Fanny, to be alive was to laugh; she had a nature which shook aside the degradation of her profession much as a small London sparrow will shake the filthy water of the gutters from off his sky-plumed wings. She brought such an atmosphere of sunshine and laughter into Joan's life that the other girl grew to lean on it. The friendship between them ripened very quickly; on Fanny's side it amounted almost to love. Who knows what starvation of the heart side of her went to build up all that she felt for Joan? Through the dreary days that followed, and they sapped in passing at Joan's health and courage, Fanny was nearly always at hand, with fresh flowers for the attic, with tempting fruit for Joan to eat in place of the supper which night after night she rejected. Fanny would sometimes be away for weeks at a time. She still followed her profession as an actress, Mrs. Carew would tell Joan, and on those occasions Joan missed her intolerably. But Fanny herself never spoke about her life, and Joan never questioned her.

Autumn faded into winter; winter blew itself out in a cold and boisterous March, and spring crept back to London. Nowhere else in the world does she come so suddenly, or catch at your heart with the same sense of soft joy. You meet her, she catches you unawares, so to say, with your winter clothes on.

"What is this?" she whispers, blowing against your cheeks. "Surely you have forgotten my birthday, or you would never have come out in those drab old clothes."

Then with a little shake of her skirts she is gone, and your eyes are opened to the fact that the trees have put forth brave green buds, and that yellow crocuses and white snowdrops are dancing and curtseying to you from odd corners of the Park.

Joan's life at the Evening Herald Office, once the first novelty had worn off, and because it was spring outside, became very monotonous and very tiring. She nearly always ended the days conscious of a ridiculous desire to cry at everything. Because the buses were crowded, because the supper was greasy and unappetizing, or because Fanny was not at home to welcome her.

There was one afternoon in particular, on a hot, airless day in June, when Joan reached the last point of her endurance. Everything had combined to make the office unendurable. One of Mr. Strangman's most agitated moods held him. Early in the morning he had indulged in a wordy argument with Chester, the Literary Page editor, on the question of whether or not the telephone was to be used by the office boys to 'phone telegrams through to the post office. It was a custom just founded by Strangman and it saved a certain amount of time, but Chester—a thin, over-worked, intellectual-ridden gentleman, was driven nearly mad by occult messages, such as the following:

"Hulloa, hulloa, is that telegrams? Take a message please for the Evening Herald. What, can't hear? That's your fault, I am shouting and my mouth is near the tube. Look alive, miss. Listening? Well: to Davids. D for daddy, a for apples, v for varnish, i for I. I said I for i! Got it now? D for daddy again," and so on.

"The truth of it is," said Mr. Chester, during a pause in one of these wordy tussles, "I, or that telephone, will have to go, Strangman. I cannot work with it going on."

"My dear fellow"—Strangman was all agitation at once—"what is to be done? The messages must go and I must hear them sent or the boys would put in wrong words. I am sure it is not any pleasanter for me than it is for you; I have also got to work."

"T for Tommy, I keep telling you—Tommy, Tommy," the lad at the 'phone shrieked triumphantly.

Mr. Chester threw down his papers, pushed back his chair, and rose, tragic purpose on his face.

"It is not to be borne," he ejaculated.

"Oh, very well," stuttered Mr. Strangman, "that means, I suppose, that I shall have to do the 'phoning myself. Here, boy, get out, give me that."

And thereupon the message started over again, but this time breathed in Mr. Strangman's powerful whisper.

He certainly seemed to be able to manipulate it with less noise, only he soon wearied of the effort, and future wires were deputed to Joan. So, in addition to her other tasks, she had had the peculiarly irritating one of trying to induce attention into post office telephone girls.

Then, too, Mr. Strangman had not felt in the mood to dictate letters, with the result that at a quarter to six seven of them had to be altered and retyped. Joan was still sitting at her machine in a corner of the hot, noisy office, beating out: "Dear Sir, In answer to yours, etc.," when the clock struck six. Her back ached, her eyes throbbed, she was conscious of a feeling of intense hatred against mild, inoffensive Mr. Strangman.

That gentleman, having discovered the lateness of the hour by chance, kept her another quarter of an hour apologizing before he signed the letters.

Then he looked up at her suddenly.

"Do you think," he said, "that you could report on the dresses for us to-morrow night at the Artists' Ball?"

"I report?" Joan looked at him in astonishment; women reporters were disapproved of on the Evening Herald.

"I know it is unusual," Mr. Strangman admitted. "But Jones is ill, and our other men will all be busy on important turns. I just thought of you in passing; it is a pity to waste the ticket."

"I could try." Joan made an effort to keep the eagerness out of her voice.

"Yes, that is it, you could try. We should not want much," he added; "and it is not part of your duties as a secretary; still, you might enjoy it, eh?"

"Why, I should love it," she assented; hate was fast merging back into liking.

Strangman cackled his customary nervous laugh. "Then that is settled," he said, "and here is the ticket. You will have to have a fancy dress, hire it, I suppose, since the time is so short. That, and a taxi there and back, will come out of the paper. Hope it is a good show, for your sake."

Afterwards, when she looked back at that evening, at the Artists' Ball, Joan was ashamed to remember the eager heat of excitement which took possession of her from the moment when she stepped out of the Evening Herald taxi and ran along the passage to the ladies' cloak-room. She had, it seemed to her, no excuse; she was not young enough to have made it pardonable and she had long ago decided that the intoxication of life could be no longer hers. Its loss was to be part of the bitter lesson fate had taught her. Yet as she saw herself in the glass, a ridiculous figure in black flounces with just one scarlet rose pinned at her waist and another nodding on the brim of her hat, she could not keep the excitement from sparkling in her eyes and the colour of youth was certainly flaming in her cheeks. Fanny had fitted her out with clever fingers as a black Pierrette. A Pierrette, taken from the leaves of some old French book, with her hair done in little dropping curls just faintly powdered, as if a mist of snow lay over the brown.

She was young, after all, and the music called to her with insistent voice. "I am looking nice," Joan confided to her reflection, "and I will have a good time just for to-night."

Then she turned and went quickly, walking with light feet and eager eyes that sought for adventure into the crowded room.

It gave her first of all an immense sense of space. The whole opera house had been converted into a ballroom. There were hundreds of people present, and every imaginable fancy dress under the sun. Brilliant colours, bright lights and the constant movement of the crowd made up a scene of kaleidoscopic splendour.

There was a waltz in progress and Joan stood for a little with her back to a pillar of one of the boxes, bewildered by the noise and moving colours. Standing opposite her, in the shadow of the other looped-up curtain, was a man. A Pierrot to her Pierrette, only his costume was carried out in white, and on his head, instead of the orthodox hat, he wore a tight-bound black handkerchief. His eyes, for some reason, made her restless. It was not that he stared exactly, the man's whole figure was too blatantly bored for that, but there was something in their expression which made her look and look again. At their sixth exchange of glances the man smiled, or so it seemed to Joan, but the next moment his face was sombre again. None the less there had been something in her idea, for before the next couple of dancers swung past her the man had moved from the shadow of his curtain and was standing near her.

"Don't think it is awful impudence on my part," he said, "but are you here all alone?"

Now there was just something in his voice that, as far as most women were concerned would sweep away all barriers. He spoke, in short, like a gentleman. Joan looked up at him.

"Yes," she admitted; she caught her breath on a little laugh. "I am here as a reporter, you know; it is business and pleasure combined."

Once more his eyes made her uncomfortable and she dropped hers quickly.

"That is strange," said the man gravely, "for I am a reporter too."

He was certainly not speaking the truth. Joan was not inclined to believe that Fleet Street had ever produced reporters the least like her companion. Still, what did it matter? just for this evening she would throw aside convention and have a good time.

"How awfully fortunate," she answered, "because you will be able to help me. I am new to the game."

"Well then," he suggested, "let us dance to the finish of this waltz and I will point out a few of the celebrities as we pass them."

Just for a second Joan hesitated, but her feet were tingling to be dancing.

"Couldn't we do it better standing here?" she parried.

"No," he assured her, "we could not do it at all unless we dance; movement helps my memory."

He was a most perfect dancer. No one, so numberless women would have told Joan, could hold you just as Robert Landon did, steer you untouched through the most crowded ballroom as he did, make himself and you, for the time being, seem part and parcel of the swaying tune, the strange enchantment of a waltz.

Joan was flushed and a little breathless at the close; they had danced until the last notes died on the air, and she had forgotten her mission, the celebrities, everything, indeed, except the dance and its bewildering melody. The man looked down at her as she stood beside him, an eager light awake in his eyes. His voice, however, was cool and friendly.

"You dance much too well to be a reporter," he said.

"What a ridiculous remark!" Joan retorted; "one cannot dance all day, can one? Besides, I am not even a real reporter. I am only a typist."

"That is worse, to think of you as that is impossible," he said. "Let us go outside and find somewhere to sit."

"But what about our reporting," Joan remonstrated; "I thought you were going to point out celebrities?"

"Time enough for that," he answered. "I am going to take you out on to a balcony meanwhile. There will only be the stars to look at us, and I am going to pretend you are a fairy and that you live in the heart of a rose, not a typist or any such awful thing."

Joan laughed. "I wish you could see my attic," she said. "It is such a funny rose for any fairy to live in."

They sat out four dances, or was it more? Joan lost count. Out here on the balcony, with only the stars as chaperon and a pulse of music calling to them from the ballroom, time sped past on silver wings. For Joan the evening was a dream; to-morrow morning she would wake, put on her old blue coat and skirt, catch her bus at the corner of the square and spend the day in sorting and arranging Mr. Strangman's papers. To-night she was content to watch the bubble held before her by this man's soft words, his strange, intent eyes; she made no attempt to investigate it too closely. But for Landon the evening was one step along an impulse he intended to follow to the end. He was busy laying sure foundations, learning all there was to know of Joan's life and surroundings, of the difficulties that might lie in the way of his desire, of the barriers he might have to pull down.

"Things are not going to end here," he told Joan, as, the last dance finished, they stood among the crowd waiting for a taxi. He had helped her on with her cloak and the feel of his strong warm hands on her shoulder had sent the blood rushing to Joan's heart.

"I don't see how it is not going to end," she answered; "you must remember I am not even a reporter."

"No, and I am," he smiled; "I had forgotten."

He moved to face her, and putting his hands over hers, fastened up her cloak for her. It seemed his hands lingered over the task, and finally stayed just holding hers lightly.

"I am going to see it does not end, none the less," he said. "I shall come and fetch you at your office this day next week and you shall dine with me somewhere and go on to a theatre. What time do you get out of office?"

"At about six," Joan answered; "but how can you? Why, we do not even know each other's names!"

"No more we do, and I don't want to, do you?" He smiled down at her undecided eyes. "I would rather think of you as Pierrette than Miss anything, and I shall be Pierrot. It is a romance, Pierrette; will you play it?"

"Yes," she answered slowly, but her eyes fell away from his.



CHAPTER XVII

"Aye, thought and brain were there, some kind Of faculty that men mistake For talent, when their wits are blind,— An aptitude to mar and break What others diligently make."

A. L. GORDON.

Impulse had always been a guiding factor in Robert Landon's life. If he saw a thing and wanted it, impulse would prompt him to reach out his hand and snatch it; if the thing were beyond his reach, he would climb—if necessary—over the heart of his best friend to obtain it; should it prove of very fragile substance and break in his hands, he would throw it away, but its loss, or the possible harm he had inflicted in his efforts to obtain it, brought no regrets. He made love deliriously, on fire himself for the moment, but never once had he so far forgot himself as to come from the flame in any way singed. Many tragedies lay behind the man, for impulse is hardly a safe guide through life; but he himself was essentially too level-headed, too selfish, to be the one who suffered.

He had spoken and danced and made love to Joan on an impulse. Beyond that, he set himself down seriously and painstakingly to win her. Most women, he knew, like to be carried forward on the wings of a swift-rushing desire, but there was some strange force of reserve behind this girl's constant disregard of his real meaning in the game they played. She was willing, almost anxious to be friends; it did not take him long to find out how lonely and dreary had been the life she was leading. She went out with him daily; it became a recognized thing for him to fetch her in his small car every evening at office. Sometimes they would dine together at one of the many little French restaurants in Soho, and go to a theatre afterwards; sometimes they would just drive about the crowded lighted streets, or slip into the Park for a stroll, leaving the car in charge of some urchin for a couple of pennies. Since he was out on the trail, as his friends would have said, every other interest in his life was given up to his impulse to beat down this girl's reserve, but all his attempts at passionate love-making left her unresponsive. She would draw back, as it were, into her shell, and for days she would avoid meeting him. Going out some back way at the office and never being at home when he called at Montague Square. Then he would write little notes to her and bribe the office-boy to deliver them, begging her pardon most humbly—he played his cards, it may be noticed, very seriously—imploring her to be friends again. And Joan would forgive him and for a little they would be the best of companions.

But through it all, and though she shut her eyes more or less to the trend of events, Joan's mind refused to be satisfied. She was restless and at times unhappy; she had her hours of wondering where it would all end, her spells of imagination when she saw Landon asking her to marry him. When she thought about it at all it always ended like that, for she could not blind her eyes to the fact of the man's love for her. Then she would shun his society, and endeavour to build up a wall of reserve between them, for it was her answer to his question that she could not bring herself to face.

It was on one of these occasions that she made up her mind definitely to break with him altogether. She wrote him a short note, saying that she was going to be dreadfully busy at office and that as she had another girl coming to stay with her—both statements equally untrue—she was afraid it would be no use his calling to fetch her.

Landon accepted this attitude in silence, though one may believe it did something to fan the flame of his passion, and for ten whole days he left her entirely alone. Then he wrote.

Joan found the letter waiting for her on the hall table when she came home one evening after a peculiarly dull and colourless day. It had been delivered by hand and was addressed simply to "Pierrette, In the Attic." Mrs. Carew must have been a little surprised at such a designation. Joan took it upstairs to read, lingering over the opening of it with a pleasurable thrill. The days had been very grey lacking his companionship.

"Dear Pierrette," Landon had written, "is our romance finished, and why? The only thing I have left to comfort me is a crushed red rose. You wore it the first evening we ever met. Pierrette, you are forgetting that it is summer. How can you wake each morning to blue skies and be conventional? Summer is nearly over, and you do not know what you are missing. Come out and play with me, Pierrette; I will not kiss even your hands if you object. I can take you down next Sunday to a garden that I know of on the river, and you shall pick red roses. Will you not come, Pierrette?"

Joan sat on in the dark of her little attic (for if the lamp was not required before supper Mrs. Carew had a way of not bringing it up until it was quite dark) with the letter on her lap. She was making up her mind to tell Landon about Gilbert, about her principles which had been rather roughly shaken, about her ideas, which still held obstinate root in her mind. If he loved her enough not to mind what was past, why should she not marry him? She had proved once how bitter it was to stand against the convictions of the world alone. His fortnight's absence had shown her how unbearable the dullness of her days had become; she could not struggle on much longer. Her mind played with the prospect of consenting, of how it would open up new worlds to her, of what a change it would bring into her life.

It was with a conviction anyway that great things might be in the balance that she stepped into Landon's car on Sunday afternoon and settled herself back against the cushions. They disregarded the fortnight's lapse in their friendship; neither referred to it in any way, and Landon was exceptionally cheerful and full of conversation on the drive out. Joan was content to sit quiet and listen and to let her eyes, tired of dusty files and hours of typewriting, feast on the country as they flashed past.

The garden that he had promised her proved all that his descriptions had claimed. It lay at the back of an old stone house, off the high road and away from the haunts of the ordinary holiday makers. Landon had chanced on it once and the place had taken a great hold on his imagination. One could be so alone at the foot of the garden, where it sloped down to the water's edge, that one could fancy oneself in a world of one's own.

The house itself was a quaint, old-fashioned building with small rooms and tiny windows, but the walled-in garden where the roses grew, and the river garden, which stretched right down to the brim of the river with its fruit trees and tall scented grasses, were both beautiful. They had tea out there, and they picnicked on the grass, watching the sun's reflections playing hide and seek in the river.

After tea, Landon insisted on strolling round and collecting all the roses he could lay his hands on for Joan. He threw them finally, a heavy heap of scented blossoms, on to her lap. He said their colour was reflected in her cheeks, their beauty in her eyes.

"It is a shame to have picked them so early," Joan remonstrated; "they will die now before we get home."

"Let them," he answered, "at least they have had their day and done well in it." He threw himself down on the grass beside her. "Aren't they glorious, Pierrette?" he said; but his eyes were not on the flowers.

Joan stirred uneasily. The great moment was drawing closer and closer, she was growing afraid, as are all women when the sound of Love's wings comes too near them.

"I wish you wouldn't call me by that name any more," she said, "because——"

"Well, why because?" Landon asked as she hesitated. "One of the things that do not seem quite right to you, like kissing, or holding hands?" He took up one of the roses from her lap and pulled it to pieces with ruthless hands. "What a puritan you are!" he went on abruptly. "Do you know we can only love once, isn't your heart hungry for life, Pierrette? Sometimes your eyes are."

"Don't!" said Joan quickly, "that is another thing I wish you would not do, make personal remarks; it makes me feel uncomfortable."

"Why don't you tell the truth?" he asked fiercely. "Why don't you say afraid?"

"Because it does not," she answered; her eyes, however, would not meet his. "I think uncomfortable describes it better."

Landon stared at her with sombre eyes. He was beginning to tire of their pretty game of make believe; perhaps impulse was waning within him. Anyway he felt he had wasted enough time on the chase. But to-day Joan seemed very charming, and her fear, for he could see plainly enough that she was afraid, was fanning the flame of his desire into a new spurt of life.

"I am going to make love to you, Pierrette," he said; "I am going to wake up that cold heart of yours. Does the thought frighten you, Pierrette? because even that won't prevent me doing it."

He had drawn her close to him, she could feel his arms round her like strong bands of iron. Joan lifted a face from which all the colour had fled to his.

"Don't, please don't!" Her bewildered mind struggled with all the carefully thought-out things she was going to have said to him. But the crisis was too overwhelming for her; she could only remember the one final thought that had been with her. "You may not want to marry me when you know about me," she whispered, and ended her words with a sob.

The man laughed triumphantly. "I don't want to marry you," he answered, "I want to love you and make you for a little love me, and this is how I begin the lesson." He bent his face to hers quickly, kissing her passionately, fiercely, on the lips.

For a second such a tumult of passionate amazement shook Joan that she stayed quiet in his arms. Then everything that was strong, all the inherited purity in her nature, came to her aid and summoned her fighting forces to resist. She struggled in his arms furiously, she had not known she held such stores of strength; then she wrenched herself free and stood up. Fear, if fear had been the cause of her early discomfort, had certainly left her; it was blind, passionate rage that held her silent before him.

The man rose to his feet and essayed a laugh, but it was rather a strained effort. "That was a most undignified proceeding, Pierrette," he said; "what on earth made you do it?"

"How dared you?" flamed Joan. "How dared you speak to me, touch me like that?"

"Dared?" the man answered; he was watching her with mocking eyes and something evil had come to life on his face. Cold anger that she should have made a fool of him and a baulked passion which could very easily turn to hate. "This outburst is surely a little ridiculous. What did you think I wanted out of the game? Did it really occur to you that I was going to ask you to marry me? My dear girl!" He shrugged his shoulders, conveying by that movement a vast amount of contempt for her dreams. "And as for the rest, I have never yet met a woman who objected to being kissed, though some of them may pretend they do."

Joan stared at him; he had stooped and was gathering up the roses that lay between them. Rage was creeping away from her and leaving her with a dull sense of undignified defeat. Once again she had pitted the ideal of a dream against a man's harsh reality, and lost. Love! She had dreamed that this man loved her, she had held herself unworthy of the honour he paid her. This was what his honour amounted to—"I have never yet met a woman who objected to being kissed."

She turned away and walked blindly towards the house.

Landon caught her up before she reached the gate of the garden. His arms were full of the roses and apparently he had won back to his usual good nature.

"Having made ourselves thoroughly disagreeable to each other," he said, "let us make it up again for the time being. It is all rather absurd, and you have got to get back to town somehow or other."

He helped her into the car with just his usual solicitude, tucking the rug round her and laying the pile of roses on her lap; but on the way home he was very silent and from the moment they started till the time came for saying good-bye he did not speak a word to her.

As they stood together, while Joan was opening the door with her latch key, he put his hand for a moment over hers.

"Good-bye, Pierrette," he said, "I am sorry you won't have anything to do with me. I should have made you happy and given you a good time. Sometimes it is a pity to aim too high; you are apt to miss things altogether."

Fanny was waiting in Joan's room when she got back, tucked up in her favourite position in the arm-chair. She had been away for the last ten days on one of her periodical trips. "My!" she gasped, disentangling herself to greet the other; "what roses, honey! Straight from the country, aren't they, and a car—I can hear it buzzing outside. Is it your young man?" She paused on the thought tip-toe with excitement, her eyes studying Joan across the flowers she had seized. "And is he straight? the other sort won't do for you; you would hate yourself in a week."

Joan subsided on to the bed, taking off her hat with hands that shook over the task.

"No," she answered, "he is not straight, Fanny; but it doesn't matter, because I have finished with him. Take away the flowers with you, will you? they seem to have given me a headache."

Fanny dropped the roses in a shower and trod them under foot as she ran to Joan. "He has hurt you;" she spoke fiercely, flinging her arms round the other girl. "God, how I hate men at times! He has hurt you, honey."

"Only my pride," Joan admitted; but the tears so long held back came in a flood now; she laid her head down on Fanny's shoulder and sobbed and sobbed.

The other girl waited till the storm had passed; then she rose to her feet and bundling the roses together with an aggressive movement opened the door and flung them out into the passage.

"I have got an idea," she said; "you have been about fed up with office for months past. Well, why not chuck it? Come with me. I have got a job in a show that is going on tour next week. There is room in the chorus, I know; come with me, won't you?"

Her earnestness made Joan laugh. "What shall I come as, Fanny? I cannot sing, and I have never acted in my life."

"That is nothing," Fanny went on impatiently. "You are young, you are pretty; you can dance, I suppose, and look nice. I can get you taken on to-morrow, for old Daddy Brown, that is the manager, is a friend of mine, and while he is a friend he will do anything for me. Oh, come, do come." She caught hold of Joan's hands. "It will be great, we shall be together, and I will show you that there is fun in life; fun, and love, and laughter."

She was laughing herself hysterically, her figure seemed poised as if for an instant outbreak into the dance she spoke of. Joan watched her with envious eyes. Fanny's philosophy in life was so plain to see. She took things that came her way with eager hands; she seemed to pass unscathed, unsullied, through the dregs of life and find mirth in the dreariest surroundings. And to-day Landon had broken down one more barrier of the pride which kept Joan's feet upon the pathway of self-respect. Of what use were her ideals since they could not bring her even one half hour's happiness? The road stretched out in front of her empty and sunless.

These thoughts swept through her mind almost in the space of a second. Then she rose quickly to her feet.

"I'll come, Fanny," she said; "it really amounts to turning my back on a battle; still I will come."



CHAPTER XVIII

"To fill the hour—that is happiness: to fill The hour and leave no crevice for repentance."

ANON.

"Daddy Brown, this is the girl I spoke to you about; will she do?"

That had been Joan's introduction to the manager of the Brown travelling company. He was a large man, with his neck set in such rolls of fat that quick movement was an impossibility. His eyes, small and surrounded by a multitude of wrinkles, were bloodshot, but for all that excessively keen. Joan felt as they swept over her that she was being appraised, classed, and put aside under her correct value in the man's brain. His hair, which in youth must have grown thick and curly, had fallen off almost entirely from the top of his head, leaving a small island sprouting alone in the midst of the baldness. This was known among the company as "The Danger Mark," for when the skin round it flushed red a fearful storm was brewing for somebody.

He sat in front of a table littered with papers, in a small, rather dirty office, the windows of which opened on to Bedford Street. With the window open, as he kept it, the noise of the Strand traffic was plainly audible.

He eyed Joan slowly and methodically; then his glance turned back to Fanny. "What can she do?" he asked heavily.

"Oh, everything," Fanny answered with a little gasp; "and she can share my dressing-room and all that."

"Humph!" grunted the man; once more his small, shrewd eyes travelled all over Joan.

"Well, perhaps, she will do." He agreed finally, "Mind you are in time at the station to-morrow. Cut along now, girls, I am busy."

Fanny was jubilant all the way home. "I thought I should be able to work it," she bubbled; "it will be fun, honey, to-morrow we are due at Tonbridge and the tour ends at Sevenoaks. All little places this time. But mind you, it is the first rung of the ladder for you. Brown's is a good company to start with. Country Girl, Merry Widow, Waltz Dream." She ticked them all off on her fingers one by one. "You are glad about it, aren't you?" she broke off suddenly to ask.

"Of course I am glad," Joan answered quickly, "and it is sweet of you to have got it for me. Perhaps I am a little nervous; it strikes me one might get very frightened of Mr. Brown."

"What, Daddy? He is all right if you know how to manage him, and he won't bother you." Fanny took a quick look at her. "You aren't his sort."

Was she really glad? Joan pondered the matter over when Fanny had at last betaken herself to her own room. At any rate she had, as it were, burnt her boats. She had left the Evening Herald, she had told Mrs. Carew to sublet her rooms. At least it would be good to get away from London for a bit.

Mrs. Carew had been quite frank and decided in her views on the subject.

"For a young lady like you to go off with the likes of 'er," this referred to Fanny, "it hardly seems seemly to me, Miss. Not that Miss Bellairs ain't all right in her own way, but it is not your way. Mark my words, Miss, you will regret it."

"And if I do," Joan had answered, "I can always leave and come back here, can't I, Mrs. Carew? I am sure you will always do your best to put me up even if this room is let."

"If I have a corner; Miss, you shall 'ave it and welcome. Nice and quiet young lady you have always been, and I know something of young ladies, I do."

It was evident, even in her efforts to be polite, that she considered Joan's present line of action to be one of deterioration. Was it, after all, a wise move, Joan wondered rather vaguely, as she packed away her few possessions. There was a great deal in Fanny's nature that she disapproved of, that could at times even fill her with disgust. In itself, that would merely hold her from ever coming to look at life from Fanny's standpoint. And perhaps she would find in the existence, which Fanny claimed to be full of love and laughter, something to satisfy the dull aching discontent which had wrenched at her heart all this last summer. Aunt Janet, Uncle John, the old home-life, the atmosphere of love and admiration, these had been torn from her, she needed something to take their place.

They met the rest of the company next day at the station. Fanny introduced them all to Joan, rather breathlessly.

"Mr. Strachan, who plays our hero, and who is the idol of the stalls. Mr. O'Malley, our comic man. Mr. Whistler, who does heavy father parts, wig and all. Mr. Jimmy Rolls, who dances on light toes and who prompts when nothing else is doing. The ladies, honey, take their names on trust, you will find them out sooner or later."

There were, Joan discovered, eight other ladies in the company. She never knew more than four of them. Mrs. O'Malley, Grace Binning, a small soft-voiced girl, Rhoda Tompkins, and Rose Weyland—a very golden-haired, dark-eyebrowed lady, who had been in some far back period, so Fanny contrived to whisper, a flame of Brown's.

Of the men, Joan liked Mr. Strachan best; he was an ugly man with very pleasant eyes and a rare smile that lit up the whole of his face. He seemed quiet, she thought, and rather apart from the others.

The journey down to Tonbridge proved slightly disastrous. To begin with, thanks to Daddy Brown himself, the company missed the best train of the day and had to travel by one that meant two changes. On arrival at Tonbridge at four o'clock in the afternoon they found that one of the stage property boxes had gone astray. Considering that they were billed to appear that evening at eight and the next train did not arrive till ten-thirty, the prospect was not a promising one.

"Always merry and bright," as Jimmie, the stage prompter, remarked in an aside to Strachan. "By the way, is it the Arcadians that we are doing to-night?"

"How the hell can we do anything," growled Daddy Brown, the patch of skin round his danger-mark showed alarmingly red, "if that box does not appear. Who was the blasted idiot who was supposed to be looking after it?"

"Well, it was and it was not me, Sir," Jimmie acknowledged; "the truth is that I saw it labelled all right and left it with the rest of the luggage to look after itself. I suppose——"

"Oh, what is the use of talking," Brown broke in impatiently; he had thrust his hat back on his fiery head, the lines of fat above his collar shone with perspiration. "You had better go on, all of you, and see about getting rooms; the first rehearsal is in an hour, box or no box, and don't you forget it."

"I don't see," wailed Mrs. O'Malley, almost as soon as his back was turned, "how we are to live through this sort of thing. What is the use of a rehearsal if none of our things are going to turn up?"

"I guess there will be a performance whether or no," Fanny told her. "Come along, honey," this to Joan, "seize up your bag and follow me; we have got to find diggings of sorts before the hour is up."

Joan found, as they trudged from lodging-house to lodging-house, that the theatrical profession was apparently very unpopular in Tonbridge. As Fanny remarked, it was always as well to tell the old ladies what to expect, but the very mention of the word theatre caused a chill to descend on the prospective landladies' faces. They found rooms finally in one of the smaller side streets; a fair-sized double bedroom, and a tiny little sitting-room. The house had the added advantage of being very near the theatre, which was just as well, for they had barely time to settle with the woman before they had to hurry off for the rehearsal.

"It won't do to be late," Fanny confided to Joan. "Daddy is in an awful temper; we shan't get any champagne to-night unless some of us soothe him down."

At the small tin-roofed theatre supreme chaos reigned upon the stage and behind it. Daddy Brown, his hat thrown off, his coat discarded, stormed and raged at everyone within hearing. The Country Girl had replaced The Arcadians on the bill; it was an old favourite and less troublesome to stage. Fanny was to play Molly; it was a part that she might have been born for. Daddy Brown won back to his good humour as he watched her; her voice, clear and sweet, carried with it a certain untouched charm of youth, for Fanny put her whole heart into her work.

Joan felt herself infected by the other's spirit, she joined in the singing, laughing with real merriment at her chorus partner. The stage boards cracked and creaked, the man at the piano watched the performers with admiring eyes—the music was so familiar that it was quite unnecessary for him to follow the notes. Daddy Brown and the box office man, sole occupants of the stalls, saw fit to applaud as the chorus swung to a breathless pause.

"That's good, that's good," Brown shouted. "Just once more again please, ladies, then we'll call a rest. Don't want to tire you out before to-night."

The dance flourished to its second end and Fanny flung herself exhausted against the wings. Her cough was troubling her again, shaking her thin body, fighting its way through her tightened throat.

"It's worth it though," she laughed in answer to Joan's remonstrance; "it is the only time I really live when I am dancing, you see."

The rehearsal dragged out its weary length, but not until Brown had reduced all the company to such a state of exhaustion that they could raise no quiver of protest to any of his orders. A man of iron himself, he extracted and expected from the people under him the same powers of endurance which he himself possessed. Since Fanny and Joan could not go home to their lodgings, the time being too short, Strachan escorted them out to obtain a meal of sorts before the evening's performance. Short of Daddy Brown's hotel, which stood close to the theatre and which they were all reluctant to try, there did not appear to be any restaurants in the neighbourhood and they ended up by having a kind of high tea at a little baker's. "Eggs are splendid things to act on," Strachan told Joan.

The girls, however, on their return found a bottle of champagne and two glasses waiting for them in Fanny's dressing-room. It had been sent with Mr. Brown's compliments to Miss Bellairs. The sight of it sent up Fanny's spirits with a bound.

"I did not know how I was going to get through the evening," she confessed, "but this will put new life into us."

She insisted upon Joan having a glass, and the latter, conscious that in her present state of tiredness she could hardly stand, far less dance, sipped a little of the clear, bubbling liquid—sipped till the small room grew large, till her feet seemed to tread on air, and her eyes shone and sparkled like the brightest of stars on a dark night.

The theatre after that, the crowded rows of faces, the music and the thunder of applause—the audience were good-tempered and inclined to be amused at anything—passed before her like some gorgeous light-flecked dream. When the soldiers in the back row took up the words of Fanny's song and shouted the refrain she felt swept along on the wings of success.

At the fall of the curtain Daddy Brown patted her on the back. He was by this time radiant with cheerfulness once more.

"You will do, young lady," he said. "We'll have to see if we can't work in a special dance for you;" and Fanny flung her arms round Joan in wild joy. "You're made, honey," she whispered, "if Brown has noticed you, you're made. I always said you could dance."

It was very thrilling and exciting, but the champagne was beginning to lose its effect. The world was growing grey again. Joan's head throbbed, and she felt self-consciously inclined to make a fool of herself. She sat very silent through the supper to which Brown treated the company at his hotel. There were about twenty people present, nearly all men; Joan wondered where they had been collected from, and she did not quite like the look of any of them. Fanny was making a great deal of noise, and how funny and tawdry their faces looked under the bright light. After supper there was a dance, the table was pushed aside, and someone—Joan saw with surprise that it was Daddy Brown—pounded away at a one-step on the piano. Everyone danced, the men, since there were not enough ladies to go around, with each other.

Fanny, wilder, gayer than ever, skirts held very high, showed off a new cake-walk in the centre of the room. Her companion, a young, weak-looking youth, was evidently far from sober, and the more intricate the step, the more hopelessly did he become entangled with his own feet, amidst shouts of amusement from the onlookers.

Joan turned presently—she had narrowly escaped being dragged into the dance by a noisily cheerful gentleman—to find Strachan standing beside her. He was watching her with some shade of curiosity.

"Why don't you go home?" he suggested; "it isn't amusing you and I can see you are tired. We get used to these kind of shows after a time."

"I think I will," Joan agreed; "no one will mind if I do, will they?"

"Not they, most of them are incapable of noticing anything." A cynical smile stirred on his face. "It is no wonder," he commented, "that we are known as a danger to provincial towns. You see the state of confusion we reduce the young bloods to." His eyes passed round the room and came back to Joan with a shade of apology in them. "A bad night, for your first experience," he said; "we are not always as noisy as this. Come along though, I'll see you home, if I may, my rooms are somewhere down your street."

Joan lay awake long after she had got into bed, and when she did at last drop off to sleep it was to dream strange, noise-haunted dreams, that brought her little rest. It was morning, for a faint golden light was invading the room, when she woke to find Fanny standing at the foot of the bed. A different Fanny to any Joan had ever seen before, tired and blowsy-looking, her hair pulled about her face, the colour rubbed in patches from her cheeks and lips.

"My word, it has been a night;" she stood swaying and peering at Joan. "It's life though, isn't it, honey?"

Then a wild fit of coughing seized her and Joan had to scramble out of bed and give what help she could. There was no hope of sleep after that, and when Fanny had been helped to bed Joan took up a chair to the window and drew aside the curtain.

Her mind was a tumult of angry thoughts, but her heart ached miserably. If this was what Fanny called life and laughter, she had no wish to live it.



CHAPTER XIX

"I did not choose thee, dearest. It was Love That made the choice, not I."

W. S. BLUNT.

All the way up the river from the Nore after they had picked up the pilot the ship moved through a dense fog. A huge P. & O. liner, heavily laden with passengers and mails, she had to proceed cautiously, like some blind giant, emitting every two minutes a dolorous wail from her foghorns.

"Clear the way, I am coming," was the substance of the weird sound, and in answer to it shrill whistles sounded on all sides, from small fleets of fishing-boats, coal hulks, and cargo boats bound from far-off lands.

"We are here too," they panted in answer; "don't run us down, please."

It was eerie work, even for the passengers, who remained in blissful ignorance of the danger of their situation. By rights the ship should have been in dock before breakfast; they had planned the night before that an early dawn should see them awake and preparing to land; yet here was eleven o'clock, and from what the more hardy of them could learn by direct questioning of those in authority, they had not as yet passed Canvey Island. Dick Grant, ship's doctor and therefore free of access to inquirers, underwent a searching examination from all and sundry. The P. & O. regulations are, that the officers shall not talk or in any way become friendly with any of the passengers; the ship's doctor and the purser share the responsibility of looking after their clients' comfort, well-being, and amusement. On occasions such as a fog, when the hearts of passengers are naturally full of questions as to where they are, how long will the fog last, is there any danger, and ought we to have on our life-belts, these two afore-mentioned officials have a busy time. Dick felt that Barton, the purser in question, had played him rather a shabby trick, for Barton had asserted that the work of sorting out passengers' luggage and seeing to their valuables would confine him to his office till the ship docked, which excuse left Dick alone to cope with the fog-produced situation.

Dick had been at sea now for close on two years. He had shifted from ship to ship, had visited most of the ports in the near and far East. This was his last voyage; he was going to go back and take up life in London. From Marseilles he had written to Mabel telling her to expect him the week-end after they got in.

His journeyings had given him many and varied experiences. The blue eyes had taken unto themselves some of that unwavering facing of life which seems to come almost always into the eyes of people who spend their lives upon the sea. He had learned to be patient and long-suffering with the oddities of his patients, passengers who passed through his hands on their brief journeyings; he had seen the pathos of the sick who were shipped with the full knowledge that they would die ere the first port was reached, simply because the wistful ache of home-sickness would not allow them to rest. Home-sickness! Dick had known it keep a man alive till the grey cliffs of Dover grew out of the sea and he could fall back dead and satisfied.

Board ship throws people together into appalling intimacy; Love springs full-winged into being in the course of an afternoon; passion burns at red-heat through drowsy, moon-filled nights. Almost wilfully, to begin with, Dick had flung himself into romance after romance; perhaps unknown to himself, he sought to satisfy the hunger of heart which could throb in answer to a dream, but which all reality left untouched. He played at love lightly; he had an ingrained reverence for women that even intercourse with Anglo-Indian grass-widows and the girl who revels in a board-ship flirtation was unable altogether to eradicate. He made love, that is to say, only to those women who first and openly made love to him; but it is to be doubted whether even the most ardent of them could boast that Dicky Grant had ever been in love with them. They slipped out of his ken when they disembarked at their various ports, and the photographs with which they dowered him hardly served to keep him in mind of their names. And a certain weariness had grown up in his heart; he felt glad that this was to be his last voyage. He had put in two good crowded years, but he was no nearer realizing his dream than he had been on the day when Mabel had said to him: "Did you think I should not know when you fell in love?"

Dick was thinking of this remark of Mabel's as he stood by himself for the time being, right up by the front of the ship peering into the fog, and with the thought came a memory of the girl with the brown eyes who had stood to face him, her hands clenched at her sides, as she told her piteous tale. Piteous, because of its very bravado. "I am not afraid or ashamed," she had claimed, while fear stared out of her eyes and shame flung the colour to her face. What had the past two years brought her? Had she stood with her back to the wall of public opinion and fought her fight, or had the forces of contempt and blame been too strong for her?

A very light hand on his arm brought him out of his thoughts with a start, and he turned to find a small, daintily-clad lady standing beside him.

"How much longer shall we be?" she asked; "and when am I going to see you again, Dicky, once we land?"

She had called him Dicky from the second day of their acquaintance. Mrs. Hayter always called men by their Christian names, or by nicknames invented by herself.

Dick let his eyes linger over her before he answered—immaculately dressed as ever—the wildest storm saw Mrs. Hayter with her hair waved, the other ladies claimed—small, piquante face, blue eyes and a marvellous complexion despite her many seasons spent in the East. She was the wife of an Indian Civilian, a tall, grey-headed man, who had come on board to see her off at Bombay. Dick had been rather struck with the tragedy of the man's face, that once he had seen it; he connected it always for some unexplainable reason with Mrs. Hayter's small, soft hands and the slumberous fire in her blue eyes. Not that Dick was not friendly with Mrs. Hayter; he had had on the contrary rather a fierce-tempered flirtation with her. Once, under the spell of a night all purple sea and sky and dim set stars, he had caught her to him and kissed her. Kissed the eager, laughing mouth, the warm, soft neck, just where the little pulse beat in the hollow of her throat. She had practically asked him to kiss her, yet that, he reflected in his cooler mood the next morning, was no excuse for his conduct, and, rather ashamed of himself, he had succeeded in avoiding her fairly well until this moment. He had not the slightest desire to kiss her again; that was always the sad end to all his venturings into the kingdom of romance.

"Where are you going to?" he answered her last question first; "if it is anywhere near London, I shall hope to look you up."

Mrs. Hayter laughed, a little caught-in laugh. "Look me up, Dicky, between you and me! Never mind, you funny, shy, big boy, you shall put it that way if you like. As a matter of fact, I am going to stay at the Knightsbridge Hotel for a week or so on my way through to my husband's people. Why don't you come there too?"

The invitation in her voice was unmistakable and set his teeth on edge. "It's too expensive for me," he answered shortly; "but I will come and call one day if I may."

"Of course," she agreed, "let's make it dinner the day after to-morrow. Dicky," she moved a little closer to him, "is it me or yourself you are angry with about the other night?"

"Myself," Dick said dryly, and had no time for more, for on the second a shiver shook the ship, throwing Mrs. Hayter forcibly against him, and the air was suddenly clamorous with shrill whistles, cries, and the quick throb of engines reversed.

Through the fog, which with a seeming malignity was lifting, veil upon thick veil, now that the mischief was accomplished, Dick could see the faint outlines of land; gaunt trees and a house, quite near at hand, certainly within call. Mrs. Hayter was in a paroxysm of terror, murmuring her fright and strange endearing terms all jumbled together, and the deck had waked to life; they seemed in the centre of a curious, nerve-ridden crowd. It was all very embarrassing; Dick had to hold on to Mrs. Hayter because he knew she would fall if he let her go, and she clung to him, arms thrown round his neck, golden hair brushing against his chin.

"There's not a particle of danger," a strong voice shouted from somewhere in the crowd. Dick could recognize it as the captain's. "Please don't get alarmed, ladies, it is quite unnecessary, with any luck we will be off almost immediately."

In that he proved incorrect, for, heavily weighted as the India was, she stayed firmly fixed in Thames mud. By slow degrees the fog lifted and showed the long lines of the shore, and the solitary house standing out like a sentinel in the surrounding flatness.

Dick had succeeded in disentangling Mrs. Hayter's arms and had escorted her to a seat.

"I am afraid I have given myself away hopelessly," she whispered, clutching him with rather a shaky hand. "Did anybody see us?"

"Everybody, I should think," he told her gravely, "But, after all, most things are excusable in a possible wreck."

"Yes," she agreed, "only Mrs. Sandeman is all eyes to my doings, and on one occasion she even wrote Robert. Cat!"

The last expression was full of vindictiveness. Dick was seized with a disgust for his own share in the proceedings; he hoped devoutly that Mrs. Sandeman, a rather austere-faced, tight-lipped woman, would not write and disturb Robert's peace of mind for any doings of his. Also he took a mental resolve to see no more of Mrs. Hayter.

By four o'clock all the passengers, with a mild proportion of their luggage, had been transferred to small tugs for transport to Tilbury; for on a further examination into the state of affairs it had been found that the India would probably remain where she was until a certain lightening of her freight should make it easier for her to refloat.

It was three days later, in fact, before Dick reached London. He found two letters waiting for him at his club; one from Mabel, telling him how glad they would be to see him, could he not make it earlier than the week-end; and one from Mrs. Hayter. Would he come and dine with her that evening? He need not trouble to answer, she was dining all alone and would not wait for him after half-past seven.

"If you can't come to dinner," she had added, "look in afterwards; there is something I rather particularly want to say to you."

He dressed for the evening meal in a vague state of discontent. He had not the slightest intention of going to Mrs. Hayter's, still the thought of her, waiting for him and expecting him, made him uneasy. At one moment he meditated telephoning to her to tell her he was unavoidably prevented from coming, but dismissed the excuse as being too palpably a lie. He was restless, too, and at a loss as to how to spend his evening, the loneliness of being by himself in London after a two years' absence was beginning to oppress him. None of his old pals seemed to be in town—anyway they did not turn up at the club. Finally he decided to look in at the Empire, or one of the neighbouring music-halls, and strolled forth in that direction.

London certainly seemed no emptier than usual. Streams of motor-cars, taxis, and buses hurried along Piccadilly, the streets were busy with people coming and going. Out of the shadows just by the Burlington Arcade a woman spoke to him—little whispered words that he could pass on without noticing; but she had brushed against him as she spoke, the heavy scent she used seemed to cling to him, and he had been conscious in the one brief glance he had given her, that she was young, pretty, brown-eyed. The incident touched on his mind like the flick of a whip. He stared at the other women as they passed him, meeting always the same bold yet weary invitation of their eyes, the smile which betokened nothing of mirth. And as he stared and passed and stared again it grew on him that he was in reality searching for someone, searching those street faces in the same way as once before he had sought among the passers-by for one girl's face. The thought was no sooner matured than he hated it—and now he tried to keep his eyes off these women passing by, loathing the thought of their nightly pilgrimage, of their shame-haunted trade.

The Empire performance hardly served to distract his thoughts. He was out in the streets again before the ballet turn came on even. It had started to rain, a slight, indefinite drizzle; Leicester Square presented a drab and dingy appearance. The blaze of lights from the surrounding theatres shone on wet streets and slippery pavements. A drunken woman who had been ejected from the public-house at the corner stood leaning against a neighbouring lamp-post; her hat had fallen askew, stray, ragged wisps of hair hung about her face, from time to time she lifted up her voice and shouted at the children who had gathered in a ring to watch her antics. Life was horribly, hurtfully ugly at times. Dick would have liked to have shaken his shoulders free of it all and known himself back once more on the wind-swept deck of an outgoing steamer.

He strode off in the direction of Trafalgar Square, and still dim, draggled shapes haunted his footsteps, leered at him from the shadows, brushed against him as he passed. As he turned into the lighted purlieus of the Strand he paused for a moment, undecided which course to take next, and it was then that he saw Joan again.

She was standing a little in front of him on the edge of the pavement, evidently waiting for a bus. Another girl stood near her, talking in quick, childish excitement, recounting some conversation, for she acted the parts as she spoke. Joan seemed to pay very little attention to her companion, though occasionally she smiled in answer to the other's laughter.

He had recognized her at once! Now he stood with his eyes glued on her, taking in every detail of her appearance—the wide-brimmed hat, the little lace collar showing outside her jacket, the neat shoes.

Even as she talked Fanny's bird-like eyes darted here and there among the crowd and lit presently on the young man, so palpably staring at her companion. She edged nearer to Joan and nudged her.

"You have got off, honey," she whispered. "Turn your eyes slowly and you will catch such a look of devotion as will keep you in comfort for the rest of your life."

Joan flushed: Fanny could always succeed in bringing the hot blush to her face, even though she had been on tour with the company now for two months. Also she still resented being stared at, though Fanny was doing her best to break her in to that most necessary adjunct of their profession. Rather haughtily, therefore, she turned, and for a second his eyes met hers, bringing a quick, disturbing memory which she could in no way place.

At any other time Dick would have taken off his hat and claimed acquaintance; just for the present moment, though, something held him spellbound, staring. Fanny giggled, and Joan, having had time to raise her feelings to a proper pitch of anger, let her eyes pass very coldly and calmly from the top of the young man's hat to the tip of his boots and back again. Contempt and dislike were in the glance, what Fanny called her "Kill the worm" expression. Then No. 11 motor-bus plunged alongside, and "Here we are at last!" called Fanny, dragging at Joan's arm.

With a sense of victory in her heart, since the young man had obviously been quelled by her anger, Joan climbed up to the top of the bus and sat down in a seat out of sight. Fanny, however, turned to have a final look at the enemy from the top step. As the bus moved, she saw him shake himself out of his trance and start forward.

"Good-night," she called in cheerfully affectionate tones; the conductor turned to stare up at her. "Some other day; can't be done to-night, sonny."

Then she subsided, almost weak with laughter at her own joke, beside a righteously irritated Joan.

"Nearly had the cheek to follow us, mind you," she told her, amid gasps; "properly smitten, he was."

"I wish you had not called out to him," said Joan stiffly. "It is so—so undignified."

Fanny quelled her laughter and looked up at Joan. "Undignified," she repeated; "it stopped him from coming, anyway. You don't look at things the right way, honey. One must not be disagreeable or rude to men in our trade, but one can often choke them off by laughing at them."



CHAPTER XX

"Love lent is mortal, lavished, is divine. Not by its intake is love's fount supplied, But by the ceaseless outrush of its tide."

"And there is little Dickie," Mabel said; she stood, one hand on the cot, her grey eyes lowered—"he has brought such happiness into my life that sometimes I am afraid."

The baby. Some women were like that, Dick knew. A child could build anew their world for them and make it radiant with a heaven-sent wonder. He had never thought of Mabel as a mother. He had been almost afraid to meet her after two years away—her letters had given him no clue to her feelings; but then she rarely wrote of herself and she had never been the sort of person to complain. So he had come down to Sevenoaks rather wondering what he would find, remembering their last talk together the day before her wedding. Mabel had met him at the station and driven him back to the house in their car. She had talked chiefly about himself; was he glad to be back?—had he enjoyed the years away?—what plans had he made for the future? But her face, her quiet grey eyes had spoken for her. He knew she was happy, only the reason, the foundation of this happiness, had been a mystery to him until this moment.

"Little Dickie," he repeated, leaning forward to peer at the small atom of humanity who lay fast asleep. "You have called it after me, then?"

Mabel nodded. "Of course; and don't call him 'it,' Dick; he is a boy."

A sudden intuition came to her, she lifted her eyes to Dick's. "Tom wanted him called that, too," she said, speaking a little quickly; "but that is not wonderful, because Tom always wants just exactly what he thinks I do. We will go downstairs now, shall we, Dick? You know Mother insisted upon a dinner-party in your honour this evening, and we are going on to some awful theatre in Sevenoaks afterwards."

"Good Lord!" groaned Dick; "why did you let her?"

"I thought you wouldn't be too pleased," Mabel admitted; "but surely you must remember that it is no use arguing with mother about what she calls—amusing us. She took the tickets as a pleasant surprise yesterday when she was in Sevenoaks. As Tom says, 'Let's be amused with a good grace.' Dick"—she paused on the lowest step to look up at him—"you haven't the slightest idea of how good Tom is; he spoils mother almost as much as father did, and yet he manages her."

"And you," said Dick, "are absolutely and entirely happy, Mabel?"

"Absolutely and entirely," she answered; he could see the truth of her words shining in her eyes.

Mrs. Grant loved dinner-parties and going-on to the theatre. It is to be believed that she imagined that the younger people enjoyed them too, because, for herself, she invariably went to sleep half-way through the most brilliant performance—earlier, were the show not quite so good. Dick remembered many unpleasant entertainments in his youth which could be traced to this passion of Mrs. Grant's. She would drill them into amusement, becoming excessively annoyed with them did they not show immediate appreciation, and pleasure is too fragile a dream for such treatment; it can be very easily destroyed.

Dick and Mabel found her downstairs, giving the final orders as to the setting out of the table to a harassed and sulky-looking maid. Everything had always to be done in Mrs. Grant's own particular way, even down to the placing of the salt-spoons. She was the bane of the servants' lives when they were new-comers; if they lived through the persecution they learned how best to avoid her gimlet eyes and could get a certain amount of amusement out of hoodwinking her. Dick contrived to display the correct amount of pleasure at the festivity in prospect for him. He wondered at the back of his mind how glad his mother really was to see him, and strolled away upstairs presently to his own room to unpack and change.

The first had already been accomplished for him by Tom's valet, and the man apparently proposed to stay and help him change, murmuring something about a hot bath being ready.

"Thanks," answered Dick, "then I will manage for myself; you need not wait."

He stood for some time, the man having slipped discreetly away, staring out of the wide-open window. It was still late summer, and the days stayed very hot. Beyond the well-kept lawn at the back of the house the fields stretched away till they reached the fringe of the forest, and above the trees again rose the chalk hills that lay, he knew, just behind Wrotham. He was thinking vaguely of many things as he stood there; first of Mabel and the new happiness shining in her eyes. Mabel and her small son; thank heaven, she had won through to such content, for if anyone deserved to be happy it was Mabel. Then little moments from the past two years strayed into his mind. Hot, sun-blazing ports, with their crowds of noisy, gesticulating natives; the very brazen blue of an Indian sky over an Indian sea; the moonlit night that had made him kiss Mrs. Hayter; he could almost feel for one second the throb of her heart against his. Then, like a flash, as if all his other thoughts had been but a shifting background for this, the principal one, Joan's face swung up before him. Where had she been going to that night? Who had her companion been? Why had not he had the courage to speak to her, to follow her at least, and find out where she lived? She was in London, anyway; he would have, even at the risk of hurting Mabel's feelings, to get back to London as soon as possible. It was a huge place, certainly, to look for just one person in, but Fate would bring them together again; he had learned to be a believer in Fate. There was truth, then, behind all the strange stories one heard about Love. A girl's voice, some face in the crowd, and a man's heart was all on flame. The waters of common-sense could do nothing to quench that fire. He would search, ridiculous and absurd as it seemed, till he found her—and then.... His thoughts broke off abruptly; there was a sound from downstairs which might be the dinner-bell, and he had not even had his bath yet.

The dinner-party, specially arranged by Mrs. Grant for Dick's benefit, consisted of a Mr. and Mrs. Bevis, who lived in a large new house on the other side of the park, their two daughters, Dr. English, who had taken Dick's place at Wrotham, and a young man from Sevenoaks itself. "Someone in a bank," as Mrs. Grant described him.

Dick's health was drunk and his mother insisted on "Just a little speech, dear boy," which thoroughly upset his temper for the rest of the evening, so that he found it difficult to be even decently polite to the eldest Miss Bevis, whom he had taken in to dinner. The talk turned, after the speech-making episode, to the theatre they were bound for, Mr. Jarvis asking young Swetenham if he knew anything of the company and what it was like.

"Rather," the youth answered, "been twice myself this time already. They are real good for travellers. Some jolly pretty girls among them."

"Musical comedy, isn't it?" Mrs. Bevis asked. "Dorothy has always so wanted to see The Merry Widow."

"Well, that is what they are playing to-night," Swetenham assured her, "and I hear it is Miss Bellairs' best part. She is good, mind you, in most things, and there is a girl who dances top-hole."

"I don't know why we have never heard of it before," Mrs. Bevis meandered gently on; "it is so clever of you, Mrs. Grant, to have found that there was a theatre in Sevenoaks at all. I am sure we never dreamed of there being one."

"They use the town hall," Dr. English put in. "If we can guarantee a large enough audience, I expect they will favour us at Wrotham."

"Oh, what a splendid idea," cried the youngest Miss Bevis; "fancy a real live theatrical company in Wrotham."

"I hope it will stay at 'fancy,'" grunted Mr. Bevis. "From what I remember of travelling companies, Wrotham is better without them."

Despite all Swetenham's praise and the Miss Bevis' enthusiastic anticipation Dick settled into his seat in the fourth row of the so-called stalls with the firm conviction that he was going to be thoroughly bored.

"The one consolation," he whispered to Mabel on their way in, "is that mother will not be able to sleep comfortably. I don't want to appear vicious, but really that is a consolation."

Mrs. Grant had apparently come to the same conclusion herself, for she was expressing great dissatisfaction in a queenly manner to the timid programme seller.

"Are these the best seats in the house?" they could hear her say. "It is quite absurd to expect anyone to sit in them for a whole evening."

Mabel had to laugh at Dick's remark, then she went forward to soothe her troubled parent as much as possible. "It isn't like a London theatre, mother, and Tom has ordered one of the cars to stay just outside. The minute you get tired he will take you straight home. He says he does not mind, as he has so often seen The Merry Widow before."

"Oh, well," Mrs. Grant sighed, and settled her weighty body into one of the creaking, straight-backed wooden chairs of which the stalls were composed. "So long as you young people enjoy yourselves I do not really mind."

Swetenham had purchased a stack of programmes and was pointing out the stars on the list to the youngest Miss Bevis. The back of the hall was rapidly filling, and one or two other parties strolled into the stalls. The orchestra had already commenced to play the overture rather shakily.

"Music, and bad music at that," groaned Dick inwardly. He took a despairing glance round him and wondered if it would be possible to go and lose himself after the first act. Then the lights went out abruptly and the curtain went up.

The beginning chorus dragged distinctly; Dick heard Swetenham whispering to his companions that it would be better when the principals came on. In this he proved correct, for the Merry Widow girl could sing, and she could also act. Fanny's prettiness, her quick, light way of moving, shone out in contrast to her surroundings. High and sweet above the uncertain accompaniment her voice rose triumphant. The back of the house thundered with applause at the end of her song.

"Now wait," announced Swetenham, "the girl who dances comes on here. She hasn't any business to, it is not in the play, but old Brown finds it a good draw."

Mechanically the stage had been cleared, the characters sitting rather stiffly round the ball-room scene while the orchestra was making quite a good effort at "The Merry Widow Waltz." There was a second's pause, then down from the steps at the back of the stage came a girl; slim, straight-held, her eyes looking out over the audience as if they saw some vision beyond. It had taken Daddy Brown three very heated lessons to teach Joan this exact entrance. She was to move forward to the centre of the stage as if in a dream, almost sleep-walking, Fanny had suggested, the music was calling her. She was to begin her dance languidly, unwillingly, till note by note the melody crept into her veins and set all her blood tingling. "Now for abandon," Daddy Brown would exclaim, thumping the top of the piano with his baton. "That is right, my girl, fling yourself into it." And Joan had learned her lesson well, Daddy Brown and Fanny between them had wakened a talent to life in her which she had not known she possessed. Dance, yes, she could dance. The music seemed to give her wings. If she had seen her own performance she would probably have been a little shocked; she did not in the least realize how vividly she answered the call.

When she had finished she stood, flushed and breathless, listening to the shouted and clapped applause.

"Do it again, miss," a man's voice sounded from back in the hall. She tried to find him, to smile at him—that was more of Fanny's teaching. But Daddy Brown allowed no encores, it was only for a minute that she stood there, bowing and smiling, in her ridiculously short, flounced skirt and baby bodice, then the rest of the chorus moved out to take their places, and she vanished into the side wings again.

From the moment of her entry till the last flutter of her skirts as she ran off, Dick sat as if mesmerized, leaning slightly forward, his hands clenched. Every movement of her body had stabbed, as it were, at his heart. He had not heard the call of the music, he could not guess at the spirit that was awake in her, he only saw the abandon—of which Daddy Brown was so proud—the painted face, the smiles which came and went so gaily at the shouted applause. Common-sense might not kill love, but this! The knowledge that even this could not kill love was what clenched his hands.

At the end of the first act Swetenham leant across and asked if he was coming out for a drink. It may have been that the younger man had noticed Dick's intense interest in the dancer, or perhaps it was merely because he wished to air a familiarity which struck him as delightfully bold, anyway, as they strolled about outside he put a suggestion to Dick.

"If you can arrange to stay on after the show," he said, "and would care to, I could take you round and introduce you to those two girls, the one who dances and Miss Bellairs."

"Miss Bellairs," Dick repeated stupidly, his mind was grappling with a far bigger problem than young Swetenham could guess at.

"Yes," the other answered, "I met her last time she was down here, and the other is a great pal of hers."

He looked sideways at his companion as they went in under the lights; it occurred to him that Grant was either in a bad temper or had a headache, he looked anyway not in the least jovial. Swetenham almost regretted his rash invitation.

"Thank you," Dick was saying, speaking almost mechanically, "I should like to come very much. It doesn't in the least matter about getting home."

Swetenham glanced at him again. "If it comes to that," he said, "I have a motor-bike I could run you in on."

The fellow, it suddenly dawned on him, had gone clean off his head about one of the girls. Swetenham could understand and sympathize with him in that.

Dick managed to convey the information that he was staying on to Mabel during the third act. She looked a little astonished; Dick, in the old days, had been so scornful about young men's stage amusements. Anyway, it did not affect the party very much, for Mrs. Grant and Mr. Jarvis had already gone home, and Mabel was giving Dr. English a lift.

"Shall I send the motor back for you?" she asked, just as they moved away.

Dick shook his head. "Swetenham is going to give me a lift out," he answered her, and Dr. English chuckled an explanation as they rolled away.

"What it is to be young, eh, Mrs. Jarvis? One can find beauty even in the chorus of a travelling company."

But was that the explanation? Mabel wondered. Dick's face had not looked as if he had found anything beautiful in the performance.

Swetenham and Dick made their way round to the side entrance of the town hall which acted as stage door on these occasions, after they had seen the rest of the party off, and Swetenham found someone to take his card up to Miss Bellairs.

"We might take them out to supper at the 'Grand,'" he suggested, as they waited about for the answer. "I don't know about the new girl, but Miss Bellairs is always good fun."

"Yes," agreed Dick half-heartedly. He was already regretting the impulse which had made him come. What should he do, or how feel or act, when he really met Joan face to face? His throat seemed ridiculously dry, and he was conscious of a hot sense of nervousness all over him which made the atmosphere of the night very oppressive. The boy who had run up with Swetenham's card came back presently with a message.

"Would the gentlemen come upstairs, Miss Bellairs was just taking off her make-up."

"Come on," Swetenham whispered to Dick; "Fanny is a caution, she doesn't mind a bit what sort of state you see her in."

The boy led them up the stairs, through a small door and across what was evidently the back of the stage. At the foot of some steps on the further side he came to pause outside a door on which he knocked violently.

"Come in," Fanny's voice shrilled from inside; "don't mind us."

The boy with a grin threw the door open and indicated with his thumb that Swetenham and Dick might advance. He winked at them as they passed him, a fund of malignant impudence in his eyes. The room inside was small and scattered with a profusion of clothes. Fanny, attired in a long silk dressing wrap, sat on a low chair by the only table, very busy with a grease-pot and a soft rag removing the paint from her face. She turned to smile at Swetenham and held out her hand to Dick when he was introduced with a disarming air of absolute frankness.

"You catch me not looking my best," she acknowledged; "just take a seat, dears; I'll be as beautiful as ever in a jiffy."

Joan—Dick's eyes found her at once—was standing in a corner of the room behind the door. She had changed into a blouse and skirt, but the change had evidently only just been completed. The fluffy flounces of her dancing skirt lay on the ground beside her and the make-up was still on her face. At this close range it gave her eyes a curiously beautiful appearance—the heavy lashes, the dark-smudged shadows, adding to their size and brilliancy. She did not come forward to greet the two men, but she lifted those strange eyes and returned Dick's glance with a stare in which defiance and a rather hurt self-consciousness were oddly mixed.

The tumult of anger and regret which had surged up in his heart as he had watched her dance died away as he looked at her; pity, and an intense desire to shield her, took its place. He moved forward impulsively, and Fanny, noticing the movement, turned with a little laugh.

"I had forgotten," she said; "my manners are perfectly scandalous. Joan, come out of your corner and be introduced. Mr. Swetenham is going to take us to supper at the 'Grand,' so he has just confided into my shell-like ear. I can do with a bit of supper, can't you?"

Joan dragged her eyes away from Dick. The painted lashes lay like stiff threads of black against her cheeks. "I don't think I will come," she answered. "I am tired to-night, Fanny, and I shan't be amusing."

She turned away and reached up for her hat, which hung on a peg just above her head. "I think I would rather go straight home," she added.

Fanny sprang to her feet and caught at her companion with impulsive hands, dragging her into the centre of the room.

"Nonsense," she said, "you want cheering up far more than I do. Here, gentlemen," she went on, "you perceive a young lady suffering from an attack of the blues. If you will wait two minutes I'll make her face respectable—doesn't do to shock Sevenoaks—and we will all go to supper. Meanwhile let me introduce you—Miss Rutherford, known in the company as Sylvia Leicester, the some dancer of the Brown show."

"If Miss Rutherford does not feel up to supper," Dick suggested—he wanted, if possible, to help the girl out of her difficulty; he realized that she did not want to come—"let us make it another night, or perhaps you could all come to lunch with me to-morrow?"

Again Joan had lifted her eyes and was watching him, but now the defiance was uppermost in her mind. His face, to begin with, had worried her; the faint hint of having seen him somewhere before had been perplexing. She always disliked the way Fanny would welcome the most promiscuous acquaintances in their joint dressing-room at all times. She thought now that it must have been contempt which she had read in this man's eyes, and apart from their attraction—for in an indefinite way they had attracted her—the idea spurred her to instant rebellion.