"No, let's go to supper," she exclaimed; "Fanny is quite right, I do want to be cheered up. Let's eat, drink, and be merry."

She turned rather feverishly and started rubbing the make-up off her face with Fanny's rag. The other girl, meanwhile, slipped behind a curtain which hung across one side of the room and finished her dressing, carrying on an animated conversation with Swetenham all the time.

Dick drew a little closer to Joan. "Why do you come?" he asked. "You know you hate it and us."

Under the vanishing paint the colour flamed to Joan's face and died away-again. "Because I want to," she said; "and as for hating—you are wrong there; I don't hate anything or anyone, except, perhaps, myself." The last words were so low he hardly heard them.

They strolled across to the Grand Hotel; it was Fanny's suggestion that they should not bother with a cab. She walked between the two men, a hand on each of them. Joan walked the further side of Swetenham, and Dick had no chance of seeing her even, but he knew that she was very silent, and, he could gather, depressed. At supper, which they had served in a little private room, and over the champagne, she won back to a certain hilarity of spirit. Swetenham was entirely immersed in amusing and being amused by Fanny, and Joan set herself—Dick fancied it was deliberately—to talk and laugh. It was almost as if she were afraid of any silence that might fall between them. He did not help her very much; he was content to watch her. Absurd as it may seem, he knew himself to be almost happy because she was so near him, because the fancied dream of the last two years had come to sudden reality. The other feelings, the disgust and disappointment which had lain behind their first meeting, were for the time being forgotten. Now and again he met her eyes and felt, from the odd pulse of happiness that leapt in his heart, that his long search was over. So triumphantly does love rise over the obstacles of common sense and worldly knowledge—love, which takes no count of time, degrees, or place.

He had her to himself on the way home, for Fanny had elected to go for a spin in Swetenham's side-car, suggesting that Dick and Joan should go home and wait up for them.

"We shan't be long," Swetenham assured Dick, remembering too late his promise to take the other man home, "and it is all right waiting there, they have got a sitting-room."

So Joan and Dick walked home through the silent streets and all pretence of gaiety fell away from Joan. She walked without speaking, head held very high, moving beside him, her face scarce discernible under the shadow of her hat. It was not to be believed that she was quite conscious of all she meant to this man; but she could not fail to know that he was attracted to her, she could not help feeling the warmth with which his thoughts surrounded her. And how does Love come to a woman? Not on the same quick-rushing wings which carry men's desires forward. Love creeps in more assiduously to a woman's thoughts. He brings with him first a sense of shyness, a rather wistful longing to be more worthy of his homage. Unconsciously Joan struggled with this intrusion into her life. The man had nice eyes, but she resented the tumult they roused in her. Why was he not content to find in her just a momentary amusement, why did his eyes wake this vague, uncomfortable feeling of shame in her heart; shame against herself and her surroundings?

At the door of the lodgings she turned to him; for the first time he could see her face, lit up by a neighbouring lamp.

"Do you want to come in?" she asked, her voice hesitated on the words. "I do not want to ask you," her eyes said as plainly as possible.

"No," he answered, "I would much rather you did not ask me to." Then suddenly he smiled at her. "We are going to be friends," he said. "I have a feeling that I have been looking for you for years; I am not going to let you go, once found."

He said the words so very earnestly, there was no hint of mockery in them, it could not seem that he was laughing at her. She put her hand into the one he held out.

"Well, friends," she said; an odd note of hesitation sounded in her voice.



CHAPTER XXI

"Love can tell, and Love alone, Whence the million stars were strewn; Why each atom knows its own; How, in spite of woe and death, Gay is life, and sweet is breath."

R. BRIDGES.

Dick walked home. It was a good long tramp, but he was glad of the exercise and the opportunity it gave him to arrange his thoughts into some sort of order. He had spoken to Joan, carried away by the moment, as they stood to say good-night, impelled to frankness by the appeal of her eyes. Now, slowly, reason gathered all its forces together to argue against his inclination. It would be wiser to break his half-made promise to the girl, and stay out of her life altogether. Immeasurable difficulties lay in the way of his marrying her. There was the child, her present position, his people's feelings and his own dismay as he had watched her dancing on the stage and seen her smiling and radiant from the applause it awoke. He had built his dreams on a five minutes' memory and for two years the girl's eyes had haunted him, but none the less it was surely rather absurd. Even love, strong, mysterious power as it is, can be suppressed and killed if a man really puts his mind to it.

At this moment, though of course Dick was not aware of the psychological happening, Love raised a defiant head amid the whirl of his thoughts and laughed at him—laughed deliberately, the sound echoing with all the old joy of the world, and Dick fell to thinking about Joan again. Her eyes, the way she walked, the undercurrent of sadness that had lain behind her gaiety. How good it would be to take her away from all the drabness of her present life and to bring real laughter, real happiness to her lips and eyes!

"I will marry her," he decided stormily, as he turned in to the drive of the house. "Why have I been arguing about it all this time? It is what I had made up my mind to do two years ago. I will marry her."

And again Love laughed, filling his heart with an indefinable glow of gladness.

His night mood stayed with him the next morning and started him singing most riotously in his bath. Mabel heard him and smiled to herself. It was good to listen, to him and know him so cheerful; whatever it was that had disturbed him the night before had evidently vanished this morning.

After breakfast, as was always her custom in summer, she took little Dickie out on to the lawn to sit under the big wide trees that threw so grateful a shade across the green. Big Dick joined them there with his pipe and he sat beside them in silence. It was very pleasant in the garden with the bluest of blue skies overhead and the baby chuckling and crowing in the very first rapture of life on the grass at their feet. Presently, however, a stern nurse descended on the scene and laughter was changed to tears for one short minute before the young gentleman, protesting but half-heartedly, was removed. Then Dick turned to Mabel.

"I am going in to Sevenoaks again," he announced, "and shall probably spend the day there. Would you like me to explain myself, Mabel?"

"Why, yes, if you care to," she answered, "and if there is anything to explain."

Dick nodded in apparent triumph. "Yes," he said, "there is something to explain all right, Mabel." He smiled at her with his eyes. "I have got a secret, I'll give you three guesses to reach it."

"No," Mabel spoke quickly, "I would rather you told me, Dick. Do you remember how once before I tried to dash in on your secret and how you shut me out. When it is ready to tell, I thought then, he will tell it me."

"Well, it is ready now," Dick said. "In a way it is the same old secret. I was shy of it in those days, Mabel, but last night it dawned on me that it was the only thing worth having in the world. I am in love, insanely and ridiculously. Do you know, if you asked me, I should tell you with the most prompt conceit that to-day is a beautiful, gorgeously fine day just because I woke up to it knowing that I was in love."

A spasm of half-formed jealousy snatched at Mabel's heart. She had always wanted Dick to fall in love and marry some nice girl, yet the reality was a little disturbing.

"Dick," she exclaimed, "and you never told me, you never said a word about it in your letters."

"I could not," he answered, "because in a way it only happened last night. Wait," he put his hand on her knee because she seemed to be going to say something. "Let me explain it first and then do your bit of arguing, for I know you are going to argue. You spoke just now about that other talk we once had before your marriage; do you remember what you said to me then? 'Did you think I should not know when you fell in love?' You had guessed the secret in my heart, Mabel, almost before I knew it myself." He leant forward, she noticed that suddenly his face flushed a very warm red. "Last night I saw her again; she was the dancer, you may have noticed her yourself. That was why I stayed behind. I wanted to put myself to the test, I wanted to meet her again."

He sat up straight and looked at her; she could see that some strong emotion was making it very difficult for him to speak.

"It is not any use trying to explain love, is it?" he asked. "I only know that I have always loved her, that I shall love her to the end."

Mabel sat stiffly silent. She could not meet his eyes. She was thinking of all the scandal which had leapt to life round Joan's name once the Rutherfords had left the village. She was remembering how last night Tom had said: "That little dancer girl is hot stuff."

"Dick," she forced herself to speak presently, "I have got to tell you, though it hurts and you will hate me for doing it, but this girl is not the kind of person you can ever marry, Dick. It is a kind of infatuation"—she struggled to make her meaning clear without using cruel words—"if you knew the truth about her, if——"

He stopped her quickly. "I know," he answered, "I have always known."

She turned to face him. "You knew," she gasped, "about the child?"

"Yes," he nodded, his eyes were very steady as they met hers. "That day when I was called in to see her, do you remember, she spoke out before her aunt and myself. She told us she was like Bridget Rendle. 'I am going to have a baby,' she said, 'but I am not ashamed or afraid. I have done nothing to be ashamed of.' Do you know how sometimes," he went on slowly, "you can see straight into a person's soul through their eyes. Well, I saw into hers that day and, before God, Mabel, it was white and innocent as a child's. I did not understand at the time, I have not understood since, what brought her to that cross way in her life, but nothing will alter my opinion. Some day I hope she will explain things, I am content to wait for that."

What could she find to say to him? Her mind groped through a nightmare of horror. Dick's happiness meant so much to her, she had planned and thought of it ever since she could remember.

"Love is sometimes blind," she whispered at last. "Oh, my dear, don't throw away your life on a dream."

"My love has wide-open eyes," he answered, "and nothing weighs in the balance against it."

"Don't tell the others, Dick," she pleaded on their way back to the house; "leave it a little longer, think it out more carefully."

"Very well," he agreed, "and for that matter, Mabel, there is as yet nothing to tell. I only let you into my secret because, well, you are you, and I want you to meet her. You will be able to judge then for yourself better than you can from all my ravings."

She did not answer his suggestion then, but later on, as he was getting into the car to drive to Sevenoaks, she ran down the steps to him.

"Dick," she said quickly, "ask her to come out to tea some day and bring one of the other girls if she likes. Tom is never in to tea; there will just be mother and me."

"Bless you," he answered; his eyes beamed at her. "What a brick you are, Mabel, I knew you would turn up trumps about it."

It took him some time to persuade Joan to accept the proffered invitation. It took her, for one thing, too near her old home, and for another she was more than a little disturbed by all Fanny's remarks on the subject. Fanny had come back from her drive with Swetenham full of exciting information to give Joan about "the new victim," as she would call Dick.

"Do you know, honey," she confided, waking Joan out of a well simulated slumber, "I believe he is the same young man as was so taken with you that evening in the Strand. You remember the day we spent in town? It is love at first sight, that is what it is. Young Sockie"—that was her name for Swetenham, invented because of his gorgeous socks—"tells me he has never seen a chap so bowled over as the new victim was by your dancing, and he asked to be brought round and introduced. Did you catch him staring at you all through the dinner, and, honey, did he try to kiss you when he brought you home?"

"Of course not," Joan remonstrated; "I wish you would stop talking nonsense and get into bed. It is awfully late and I was asleep."

"That is only another sign then," Fanny went on, quite impervious to the other's requests. "You take it from me, honey, if a man falls really in love he is shy of kissing you. Thinks it is kind of irreverent to begin with. You mark my words, he will be round again to-morrow. Honey," she had a final shot at Joan's peace of mind just before she fell asleep, "if you play your cards well, that man will marry you, he is just the kind that does."

Joan lay thinking of Fanny's remarks long after the other had fallen asleep. She was a little annoyed to find how much impression the man had made on her; the idea was alarming to one who fancied herself as immune as she did from any such attraction. But until Fanny had burst in she had been pleased enough with the vague thoughts which his eyes had waked to life. If you took the dream down and analysed it as Fanny had rather ruthlessly done, it became untenable. Probably this man only thought of her as Landon had thought of her; she was not content to burn her fingers in the same fire.

Short of being extremely disagreeable, however, she could not avoid going out to lunch with him the next day, as Fanny had already accepted the invitation, and once with him, it was impossible not to be friends with Dick, he set himself so assiduously to please her. He did not make love to her; Fanny would have said he just loved her. There is delicate distinction between the two, and instinctively Joan grew to feel at her ease with him; when they laughed, which they did very often, their laughter had won back to the glad mirth of children.

Fanny watched over the romance with motherly eyes. She had, in fact, set her heart upon Joan marrying the young man. He came to the theatre every evening, but it was not until the sixth day of their acquaintance that Fanny was able to arrange for him to spend the afternoon alone with Joan. She had tried often enough before, but Joan had been too wary. On this particular afternoon, half way through lunch and after the three of them had just arranged to go out into the country for tea, Fanny suddenly discovered that she had most faithfully promised to go for a drive that afternoon in young Swetenham's side-car.

"I am so awfully sorry," she smiled at them sweetly, "but it doesn't really matter; you two will be just as happy without me."

"We could put it off and go to-morrow," suggested Joan quickly.

"We can go to-morrow too," Dick argued, and Fanny laughed at him.

"Don't disappoint him, honey, it's a shame," she said with unblushing effrontery, "and if it is a chaperon you are wanting, why, Sockie and I will meet you out there."

So it was arranged, and Dick and Joan started off alone. They were to drive out to a farmhouse that Swetenham knew of, where you got the most delicious jam for tea. Joan was a little shy of Dick to begin with, sitting beside him tongue-tied, and never letting her eyes meet his. From time to time, when he was busy with the steering, she would steal a glance at him from under her lashes. His face gave her a great sense of security and trust, but at times her memory still struggled with the thought that she had met him somewhere before.

Dick, turning suddenly, caught her looking at him, and for a second his eyes spoke a message which caused both their hearts to stand still.

"Were you really afraid of coming out with me alone?" he asked abruptly; he had perhaps been a little hurt by the suggestion.

"No, of course not," Joan answered; she hoped he did not notice how curiously shaken the moment had left her. "Only I thought it would probably be more lively if we waited till we could take Fanny with us. I am sometimes smitten with such awful blanks in my conversation."

"One does not always need to talk," he said; "it is supposed to be one of the tests of friendship when you can stay silent and not be bored. Well, we are friends, aren't we?"

"I suppose so," Joan agreed; "at least you have been very kind to us and we do all the things you ask us to."

"Doesn't it amount to more than that?" Dick asked; his eyes were busy with the road in front of him. "I had hoped you would let me give you advice and talk to you like a father and all that sort of thing." His face was perfectly serious and she could hear the earnestness behind his chaff.

"What were you going to advise me about?" she asked.

"Well, it is this theatre game." Dick plunged in boldly once the subject had been started. "You don't like it, you know, and you aren't a bit suited to it. Sometimes when I see you dance and hear the people clapping you I could go out and say things—really nasty things."

"You don't like it?" she said. "I have tried to do other things too," she went on quickly, "but you know I am not awfully much good at anything. When I first started in London, it is two years ago now, I used to boast about having put my hand to the plough. I used to say I wouldn't turn back from my own particular furrow, however dull and ugly it was. But I haven't been very much use at it, I have failed over and over again."

"There are failures and failures," he answered. "There was a book I read once, I don't remember its name or much about it, but there was a sentence in it that stuck in my mind: 'Real courage, means courage to stand up against the shocks of life—sorrow and pain and separation, and still have the force left to make of the remainder something fine and gay and brave.' I think you have still got that sort of courage left."

"No," whispered Joan. She looked away from him, for her eyes were miserably full of tears. "I haven't even got that left."

They had tea, the four of them, for strange to tell Fanny did deem it expedient to keep her promise, and it was after tea that Dick first mooted the idea of their coming out to tea with his people the next day.

Fanny was prompt in her acceptance. "Of course we'll come, won't we, honey," she said. "My new muslin will just come in for it."

"It won't be a party," Dick explained, his eyes were on Joan, "just the mother and my sister. Not very lively I am afraid, still it is a pretty place and I'll drive you both ways."

He came to the theatre again that night. Fanny pointed him out to Joan in a little aside as she stood beside her in the wings, but Joan had already seen him for herself. She could put no heart into her dancing that night, and she ran off the stage quickly when the music ceased, not waiting to take her applause.

"Feeling ill to-night?" Daddy Brown asked her. He eyed her at the same time somewhat sternly; he disapproved of signs of weakness in any of the company.

"I suppose I am tired," Joan answered. Only her own heart knew that it was because a certain couple of blue eyes had shown her that they wished she would not dance. "I am getting into a ridiculous state," she argued to herself; "why should it matter to me what he thinks? It must not, it must not."

"You did not dance at all well to-night, honey," Fanny added her meed of blame as the two of them were undressing for the night. "But there, I know what is wrong with you. You are in love, bless your heart, and so is he. Never took his eyes off you while you were dancing, my dear—I watched him."

The rather hurt feeling in Joan's heart burst into sudden fire. "I am not in love," she said, "and neither is he. Men do not fall in love with girls like us, and if you say another word about it, Fanny, I won't go out to tea to-morrow; I won't, I won't!"

Fanny could only shrug her shoulders. The words "girls like us" rather flicked at her pride. Later on, however, when they were both in bed and the room in darkness save for the light thrown across the shadows by the street lamp outside, she called softly across to Joan:

"You are wrong, honey," she said, "about men and love. They do fall in love with us, sometimes, bless them, even though we aren't worth it. And anyway, you are different, why shouldn't he love you?"

Joan made no answer, only when she fell asleep at last it was against a little damp patch of pillow and the lashes that lay along her cheeks were weighed down by tears.



CHAPTER XXII

"A man who has faith must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool."

C. CHESTERTON.

It did not need much intuition on Mrs. Grant's part to know herself suspicious of Dick's behaviour. She listened to Mabel's information about the two young ladies he was bringing to tea with her eyes lowered. Mabel had not volunteered the information till Mrs. Grant had noticed that there were two extra cups provided for tea. They always had tea out under the trees if it was fine enough, so there had been nothing surprising in that, but Mrs. Grant's eyes had spotted the extra cups even while they stayed piled up one within the other in the shade of the silver tea-pot.

"Two girls to tea," she commented; "who are they, Mabel?"

"Well, I really don't know," Mabel admitted, nobly untruthful, out of a desire not to prejudice Mrs. Grant from the beginning. "I fancy Dick met them at Sevenoaks, anyway, he was having lunch with them yesterday."

"And dinner every day this week," supplemented Mrs. Grant. "Did he meet them on his travels?"

"He did not say so," Mabel answered, "only just that he was seeing a good deal of them at Sevenoaks, and I thought it would be nice to ask them out here."

"Mabel," said Mrs. Grant, with intense seriousness; she lifted her eyes from her work and fixed them on her daughter, "do you not think it is very probable that Dick has become entangled? I have even wondered lately whether he may not be secretly married to some awful woman."

"Dear mother," laughed Mabel—though the first part of the sentence rather hurt her, it was the truth—"why secretly married? What has Dick done to deserve such a suspicion?"

"His manner has been peculiar ever since the first night he came home," Mrs. Grant explained, "and he has an uneasy way of trying not to be left with me alone. The other day I thought of going to see him very early in the morning when I happened to be unable to sleep, and, Mabel, his door was locked!"

"If you had knocked he would probably have opened it," Mabel suggested. "It is hardly likely that he keeps his wife concealed upstairs, is it?"

"You may laugh," Mrs. Grant spoke with an expression of hurt pride on her countenance, "but surely a mother can see things in her son which other people miss. Dick is in love, and not nicely in love, or he would not be so shy about it."

Further discussion was prevented, for at this point the motor, bringing Dick and his guests, came round the sweep of the drive and drew up at the front door. Mabel went across the lawn to meet them. She had schooled herself to this meeting for Dick's sake, and to please him; she could not, however, pretend to any pleasure in the prospect. It was only natural that she should view Joan with distrust. Dick had allowed himself to become entangled; all unknowingly Mother had expressed the matter in a nutshell.

She picked out Joan as being the girl at once; her eyes sped past Fanny's muslin-clad figure even as she was greeting her, and rested on the other girl's face. Pale, for Joan was very nervous of this afternoon, wide-eyed, the soft brown hair tucked away under the small, round-shaped hat. She was pretty and very young-looking. Mabel, seeing her, and remembering all the old stories in connection with her, was suddenly sorry for her very childishness. Then she hardened her heart; the innocence must at least be assumed, and the girl—Mabel had made up her mind as to that—should not win Dick as a husband without some effort being made to prevent her.

Because of this sense of antagonism between them, for Joan had not missed the swift glance, the cold hardening of her hostess' face, it was a relief to have Fanny between them. Fanny was talking very hard and fast, it was quite unnecessary for anyone else to say anything.

"My," she gasped, standing and staring round her with frank approval, "you have a beautiful place here. Dr. Grant has been telling us about it till we were mad to see it. Joan and I live in London; there is not much in the way of trees round our place, nothing but houses, and dirty pavements and motor-buses. I always say"—she took Mabel into her confidence with perfect friendliness—"that there is nothing so disagreeable in this world as a dirty pavement; don't you agree with me?"

"The country is nicer than town, certainly," Mabel answered. "We are having tea over there under the trees; will you come straight across, or would you like to go in and take off your motor-veils?"

"We will do nicely as we are," Fanny did all the talking for the two of them; Joan so far had not opened her lips. "It is such a little drive from Sevenoaks, and I am just dying for tea."

Mabel led the way across the lawn, with Fanny chattering volubly beside her, and Dick followed with Joan.

"The sister is a dear," he tried to tell her on the way across, for in some way he suddenly felt the tension which had fallen between the two women; "only she is most awfully shy. She is one of those people who take a lot of knowing."

"And I am one of the people that she doesn't want to know," Joan answered. She was angry with herself for having come. A feeling of having lost caste, of being a stranger within these other people's friendship, possessed her. It set Dick's kindliness, his evident attraction on a plane of patronage, and brought her to a sullen mood of despair. Why had she ventured back on to the borderline of this life that had once been hers? Mabel's cold, extreme politeness seemed to push her further and further beyond the pale.

Tea under these circumstances would have been a trying meal if it had not been for Fanny. Fanny had dressed with great care for this party, and she had also made many mental resolutions to "mind what she was saying." Her harshest critic could not have said that she had not made herself look pretty; it was only Joan's hurt eyes that could discover the jarring note everywhere in the carefully-thought-out costume. And Fanny realized that Joan, for some reason or other, was suffering from an attack of the sulks. She plunged because of it more and more recklessly into conversation. Fanny always felt that silence was a thing to be avoided at all costs.

"The War will make a lot of difference to us," she attempted finally, all preceding efforts having fallen a little flat. "Daddy Brown says, if there is war between Germany and England, there won't be any Spring tours."

"But of course there will not be War," Mrs. Grant put in with great precision; "the idea is impossible nowadays. And may I ask what a Spring tour is?"?

"Tom says the city is getting very uneasy," Mabel plunged into the breach. "It does seem an absurd idea, but of course Germany has been aching to fight us for years."

"Horrors, the Germans, don't you think?" chipped in Fanny; "they do eat so nastily."

"No doubt you meet a great many foreigners, travelling about as you do," Mrs. Grant agreed politely.

"Do you know this part of the country at all?"? Mabel questioned Joan, then flushed herself at the absurdity of the question; "I suppose not, if you live most of your time in London."

Joan lifted hard eyes. "I lived down here as a child," she said stiffly.

"And in London"—Mabel was doing her best to be friendly—"have you nice rooms? Dick tells me you live all alone; I mean that your home is not there."

"I live in an attic," Joan answered again, "and I have no home."

"Your son is ever so much too fond of the theatre," Fanny's voice broke across their monosyllabic conversation. "He is there every night, Mrs. Grant."

"And do you also go to the theatre every night?" Joan heard the petrified astonishment in Mrs. Grant's tone and caught the agitated glance which Mabel directed to Dick. The misery in her woke to sharp temper.

"Fanny has let the cat out of the bag," she said, leaning forward and speaking directly to Mrs. Grant. "But I am afraid it is unpleasantly true. We are on the stage, you know; Dr. Grant ought to have warned you; it was hardly fair to let you meet us without telling you."

A pained silence fell on the party; Mrs. Grant's face was a perfect study; Dick's had flushed dull red. Mabel stirred uneasily and made an attempt to gather her diplomacy about her.

"It was not a case of warning us," she began; "you forget that we saw you ourselves the other night when you played The Merry Widow. Won't you have some more tea, Miss Leicester?"—Joan had been introduced to them under that name.

A great nervousness had descended upon Fanny. She had talked a great deal too much, she knew, and probably Joan was furiously angry with her. But beyond that was the knowledge that she had—as she would have expressed it herself—upset Joan's apple-cart. Real contrition shone in the nervous smile she directed at Mrs. Grant.

"I'm that sorry," she said, "if I have said anything that annoyed you; but you mustn't mix me up with Joan; she is quite different. I——"

"Fanny!" Joan interrupted the jumbled explanation. "You have nothing to apologize for. We eat and look very much like ordinary people, don't we?"—she stared at Mabel as she spoke—"it is only just our manners, and morals that are a trifle peculiar. If you are ready, Fanny, I think we had better be getting back."

Dick stood up abruptly; he did not meet Mabel's eyes, but she could see that his face was very white and angry.

"I am driving you back," he said, "if you do not mind waiting here I will fetch the motor round."

He took the girl's side straight away without hesitation. Mabel caught her breath on the bitter words that rose to her lips. Joan's outburst had been an extraordinary breach of good manners; nothing that had happened could in any way excuse or condone it. Yet it was not Joan that Dick was angry with, but herself.

"I very much regret you should feel as you do," she said to Joan, after Dick had gone off to fetch the motor; "your friend and yourself were my guests; we none of us had the slightest desire to be rude to you."

"Oh, no," flamed Joan in answer; "you did not want to be rude, you just wanted to make us understand quite plainly the difference that lay between us. And you have made us realize it, and it is I that have been rude. Come along, Fanny"—the motor could be seen coming along the drive; she swept to her feet—"let us go without talking any more about it."

She turned, saying no good-byes, and walked away from them. Fanny hesitated a moment, her eyes held a pathetic appeal and there were tears near the surface. She felt she had ruined Joan's chances of a suitable marriage.

"I am sorry," she whispered; "it all began beautifully, and—Joan isn't like me," she hurried out again, "she is proud and—well, you would understand"—she appealed to Mabel—"for you are proud, too—if you had to earn your money as she has to."

Then she turned and hurried after her retreating companion. Something that she had said stayed, however, like a little pin-prick, in Mabel's thoughts. It brought her to a sudden realization of Joan's feelings and regret that she had not succeeded in being nicer to the girl.

"If Dick is married to either of those two young ladies," said Mrs. Grant heavily, "he is ruined already." She rose majestically and gathered up her work. "I have been thoroughly upset," she announced, "and must go and lie down. Perhaps when Dick comes back you will point out to him that some explanation is necessary to me for the extraordinary scene I have just been through. I shall be ready to see him in an hour."

Fanny wept a few tears on the drive home. It had all been her fault, she explained between sniffs to Joan.

"And I promised not to talk too much," she gulped. "Oh, honey, don't let it stand between him and you"—she nodded at Dick's back, for he was occupying the front seat alone—"I shall never forgive myself if you do."

"Don't fuss, Fanny," Joan answered; she was beginning to feel thoroughly ashamed of her ill-mannered outburst. "And for goodness' sake don't cry. You have not brought anything more between us than has always been there."

"Oh, I wish we hadn't gone," wailed Fanny. "He wants to marry you, Joan; they always do if they introduce their mothers to you."

For no reason whatsoever, for she had not thought of him for months, a memory of Gilbert flashed into Joan's mind. Her eyes were fixed on the back of Dick's head, and it was strange—the feeling that surged over her as she brought these, the two men in her life, before her mind's eye. Perhaps it was only at that very moment that she realized her love for Dick; realized it and fought against it in the same breath. She had known him so short a time; he had been kind to her; but what, after all, did that amount to? When the company left Sevenoaks he would probably never see her or think of her again. Does one build love from so fleeting a fancy?

None the less the thought brought her to a mood of gentleness and she could not bear to let him go away thinking her still hurt and angry. As he helped her out of the car she smiled at him.

"I am sorry that I lost my temper and was rude," she said. Fanny had fled indoors and left them tactfully alone. "I don't know what you must think of me." Her eyes fell away from his, he saw the slow red creeping into her cheeks.

"Don't," he spoke quickly, he was for the moment feeling very vindictive against Mabel. "When you apologize you make it ten times worse. It was not your fault the least little bit in the world."

"But it was," she answered; she looked up at him. "If you must have the honest truth, I was jealous from the moment I got out there. And jealousy hurts sometimes, you know, especially when it is mixed up with memories of something you once had and have lost for ever."

"That is nonsense," Dick said. It was in his heart to propose there and then, but he held it back. "I meant you to enjoy yourself, I hoped you would like Mabel, and you did not—thanks to her own amiability. Am I forgiven?"

"We forgive each other," she answered; she put her hand into his, "and good-night, if not good-bye. To-morrow is our last performance, you know, we leave the next day."

"And even with that it is not good-bye," he told her. "I shall be at the theatre to-morrow night."

Mrs. Grant and Dick had one very stormy and decided interview. That is to say, Mrs. Grant stormed and wept, Dick merely stated quite quietly and very definitely that he intended to follow Joan to London and that he was going to do his best to make her marry him.

"You do not mind how much you break my heart," Mrs. Grant sobbed, "your mother is of no consequence to you. My years of love and devotion to you when you were a baby count for nothing. You throw them all aside for this impossible, outrageous girl."

"Nothing is to be gained by calling her names," Dick answered, "and there is no reason why your heart should break, Mother. When you see her again——"

"Never," interrupted Mrs. Grant dramatically, "never. Even as your wife I shall always refuse to meet her."

"You must do as you please about that," Dick answered, and turned and went from the room.

Upstairs he met Mabel just coming out of the nursery and would have passed her without speaking, but that she put out a hand to stop him.

"Dick," she said, "you are awfully angry with me, I know, and I realize that more or less it was my fault. But I wanted and I still want to be friends with her. You know how sometimes, even against one's will, one stiffens up and cannot talk."

"I know you never were any use at dissembling," he answered. "I had hoped you might like her, but you evidently did not do that."

"I do not think I gave myself a chance," Mabel spoke slowly. "I had been arguing against her in my own mind ever since you told me about her. You see I am being truthful, Dick. It was just because one half of me wanted to like her and the other half did not, that the result was so disastrous."

Dick laughed. "Disastrous just about describes it," he admitted. "I am going to marry her, Mabel, though mother does threaten to break her heart."

"I know," Mabel nodded. "I knew from the very first moment I saw your eyes when they looked at her. Perhaps that was what made the unpleasant side of me so frigid. Will you give me her address, Dick, in London? Next week, when I am up there with Tom, I will call and make it up with her. If I go all alone I shall be able to explain things."

"And what about mother's broken heart?" Dick questioned.

Mabel shook her head. "It won't break," she said. "As soon as you are married she will start thinking that she arranged the match and saying what a good one it is."

Again Dick laughed, but there was more lightness in the sound now. He put his two hands on her shoulders and looked down at her.

"You are a good sort, Mabel," he said; "this afternoon I thought you were the most horrible sister a man could have, and that just shows how little even I know you."

"No," she answered; her eyes held a shadow of pain in them. "It is not that, it is just that a man in love is sometimes blind to everything and everybody excepting the woman he is in love with. She is a lucky girl, Dick, I nope she realizes how lucky."



CHAPTER XXIII

"But through all the joy I knew—I only— How the hostel of my heart lay bare and cold, Silent of its music, and how lonely! Never, though you crown me with your gold. Shall I find that little chamber as of old!"

F. BANNERMAN.

Brown called an early rehearsal next morning. They were to play The Waltz Dream as their last performance, for on leaving Sevenoaks the company was to break up, and just at the very last moment, before the curtain had come down on the previous night's performance, Grace Binning—the girl who usually played the part of Franzi—had fallen down and sprained her ankle. Who was to play her part? Fanny proposed Joan for the vacant place, but Brown was dubious, and Joan herself not at all anxious for the honour. She had more or less understudied the part, every member of the chorus took it in turn to understudy; but the question was whether it would not be better if Fanny's understudy took the part of the Princess and Fanny played Franzi. It was a character which she had often scored it. Against this had to be set the fact that Fanny's voice was needed for songs which the Princess had to sing, and that Franzi had very little singing to do. What she did have could be very largely cut.

Anyway the whole company assembled at 10.30, and Brown put them through their paces. Finally he decided on Joan; she had already achieved popularity by her dancing, the audience would be kind to her. If she saved up her voice for her duet with Strachan and her one little solo at the fall of the curtain, Brown thought she might be heard beyond the footlights.

"Now look slippy," he ordered, "only the principals need stay. We will just run through the thing, Miss Leicester, and see if you know what to do."

Joan found herself living out the part of Franzi as she rehearsed. It seemed somehow to fit into her own feelings.

"Now love has come to me, I pray, That while I have the chance to, I still may have the heart to play A tune that you can dance to."

Franzi's one brief night of love which shone out, showing all the world golden, and then the little singer creeping back into the shadows with a broken heart but gay words on her lips.

"I still may have the heart to play A tune that you can dance to."

Brown thought as he watched her that she showed promise as an actress. Why had he not noticed it before. He meditated a proposal by which she should be persuaded to join the company again when it started out on its Spring tour. Fanny had told him that Joan was tired of the life and meant to go back to office work, but if she had talent, that was of course absurd. Perhaps he had not done enough to encourage her. To-morrow he would have a good long talk with her and point out to her just how things stood.

Fanny, too, was impressed by Joan's powers. "You act as if you really meant it, honey," she said. "You make me want to cry in that last bit where Franzi goes off and leaves me, a bloated aristocrat on the throne, with my erring husband beside me. You make me think you feel it."

"Perhaps I do," Joan answered; "perhaps I am going back alone."

"But why," Fanny cried out; she ran to Joan and threw her arms round the other girl, they were in the dressing-room making up for the evening performance. "Why, honey? He is ready to go with you."

"And the Prince was ready to go with Franzi," Joan answered, "but she would not take him, not back into her land of shadows. Oh, Fanny, you are a dear, romantic soul, but you don't understand. Once, long ago when I was young, doesn't that sound romantic, there were two paths open to me and I chose the one which has to be travelled alone. If I dragged him on to it now it would only hurt him. You would not want to hurt something you loved," her voice dropped to a whisper, "would you?"

"No," Fanny admitted. She had drawn a little back and was watching Joan with wide eyes. "But——" she broke off abruptly. "I haven't any right to ask," she said, "but do you mean that there is something which you have done that you would be ashamed to tell him."

"Not exactly ashamed," Joan answered, "it would hurt him to know, that is all. I came to London two years ago because I was going to have a baby. It was never born, because I was in an accident a few months before it should have come."

"But why tell him, why tell him?" Fanny clamoured. "Men have lots of secrets in their lives which they don't tell to good women, why must they want to know all about our pasts. I have always thought I should tell a man just exactly as much as I wanted to and not a whisper more. Honey," she drew close again and caught hold of Joan's hands, "it doesn't pay to tell them, the better they are the more they bring it up against you. If they don't say anything you can see it in their eyes. 'She has been bad once,' they say, 'she may always be bad again.'"

"Yes," agreed Joan. "It does not pay to tell them, as you say. That is why I am going to go back to my own shadows alone, because if you love a person you cannot keep a secret from him."

"But it wouldn't exactly be a secret," Fanny pleaded, "it would just be something that it was no business of his to know."

Joan laughed. "Your philosophy of life, Fanny, is delightful. But if you don't hurry up with your dressing you will be late when the call boy comes."

She had the dressing-room to herself presently, for she did not have to appear until the second act, and as she sat there, reading over her part, the call boy put in his head with an impish grin.

"A gentleman left these for you, miss," he held out a large bunch of violets, "most particular you should get them before you went on, he was, and he will be round again after the show. Same gentleman," he winked at her, "as has been here most regular like since the third night."

"All right, Tommy, thank you," Joan answered. She held out her hands for the violets. They were very sweet-scented and heavy; she let them fall on the dressing-table, but after Tommy had vanished, whistling shrilly along the passage, she bent forward and buried her cheeks and lips in their fragrance. Her tears smarted in her eyes. This man had grown so suddenly dear to her that it hurt her almost more than she could bear to shut him out of her life.

When Fanny danced into the room presently it was to find her standing before the looking-glass, and against the soft blue of her waistbelt the violets showed up almost like a stain.

"He's there," Fanny told her, "third from centre in the second row. Young Swetenham is with him, but none of the women folk, praise be to heaven. Have you asked him to the supper afterwards?"

"No," Joan admitted, "and, Fanny, if it could possibly be arranged and Brown would not be very hurt, would it matter if I did not come myself? I feel so much more like going home to bed."

"Doesn't do to mope," Fanny remonstrated. "Why not bring him along and have one good evening to finish?"

She studied the other's face. "There," she added impulsively, "if you don't feel like it you shan't be made to do it. Bother Daddy Brown and his feelings. You stay here quiet and let us all get away; we will be walking over to the 'Queen's,' you see, then you can slip out after we have gone and cut home on your own. I will tell Brown you are over-wrought after the show, it is quite natural you should be."

"Yes," admitted Joan; she hesitated on her way out, for the call boy had just run down the passage shouting her name, "and, Fanny, if he is there"—she met the other girl's eyes just for a moment—"take him along with you, will you? I—I am afraid of meeting him to-night."

Joan caught Dick's eyes just for a second before she began her first song, but she was careful not to look his way again. For the rest she moved and acted in a dream, not conscious of the theatre or the audience. Yet she knew she must be playing her part passably well, for Strachan whispered to her at the end of the duet: "You are doing splendidly." And Brown himself was waiting to greet her with congratulations when she ran into the wings for a moment.

The heat of the theatre killed her violets; they were crushed and dead at the end of the second act, yet when she changed for the third she picked them up and pinned them in again. Franzi's part in the third act is very brief. She is called in to give evidence of the Prince's infidelity, and instead she persuades the Princess that her husband has always loved her. Then, as the happy pair kiss one another at the back of the stage, Franzi turns to the audience, taking them, as it were, into her confidence:

"Now love has come to me, I pray, That while I have the chance to, I still may have the heart to play A tune that you can dance to."

Joan's voice broke on the last line, the little sob on which she caught her breath was more effective than any carefully-thought-out tragedy. With her eyes held by those other eyes in the audience she took the violets from her belt and held them, just for a second, to her lips. Then they fell from her hands and she stood, her last farewell said, straight and silent, while the house shouted over what they considered to be a very fine piece of acting. They would have liked to have had her back to bow to them after the fall of the curtain, but Joan would not go, and Fanny brought Brown to realize that if the girl were worried in any way she would probably wax hysterical.

"Fine acting," Brown kept repeating over and over again. Joan heard him vaguely. He was so impressed by it, however, that he sent for some champagne and insisted on their all drinking her health on the spot. There, however, he was content to leave it, and presently the company slipped away, one after the other, and Joan and Fanny were left alone.

"You really think you won't come on, honey?" Fanny tried a final argument before she followed the others. "He has sent up his card, you know; he is waiting downstairs for you."

"I simply can't, Fanny," Joan answered. "You go, like a dear, tell him anything you like; that I have gone on with Brown, or that I am coming later; only just persuade him to go away with you, that's all I ask."

Fanny looked at her reflectively, but she did not say anything further, gathering her cloak round her and going from the room.

Joan waited till the place seemed silent and deserted save for the call boy's shrill whistle as he strolled round, locking up the various dressing-rooms. She did not want him to see her as she groped her way back to the front of the stage and stooped to feel in the dark for her bunch of violets. It was quite ridiculous, but she could not leave them to lie there all night and be swept into the rubbish-basket in the morning. It took her a minute or two, but at last her hands closed on them and she stood up and moved into the light just as he came dashing along the passage.

"Hulloa," he called out to her, "you still here, miss? Everyone else has gone. You might have got shut in."

"I am just going myself," she answered; "and I knew you were here, Tommy; I heard you."

He followed her to the door and stood watching her along the street with curious eyes. To his mind it seemed strange that she should have stayed on after the others had gone. It betokened something that she wished to hide from prying eyes, and his were not satisfied till he saw a man's figure come forward out of the darkness and meet her.

"Thought as much," commented Tommy, the worldly-wise. "Gent of the violets, I suppose. Not likely they would be going to a crowded supper-party."

"I thought you were never coming," Dick was saying quickly to Joan. "Miss Bellairs told me you weren't feeling very well and were going straight home. I was just screwing up my courage to come upstairs and find out for myself what had happened to you."

So Fanny had failed her. Joan, guessing the other's purpose, smiled ruthfully.

"I had a headache," she admitted, "and I could not face a supper-party. I am so sorry you should have waited about, though; I had hoped you would go on with Fanny."

"Hoped!" said Dick. "Did you think I would?"

They had turned in the direction of the girls' lodgings and were walking very fast. Joan set the pace, also she was rather obstinately silent. Dick walked in silence, too, but for another reason. Clamorous words were in his heart; he did not wish to say them. Not yet, not here. Up in London, in her own place, when she would be free from the surroundings and trappings of theatrical life, he was going to ask her to marry him. Till then, and since his heart would carry on in this ridiculous way because she was near him, there was nothing for it but silence.

At the door of the house, though, he found his tongue out of a desire to keep her with him a little longer.

"You played splendidly to-night," he said, holding her hand. "Were those my violets you kissed at the end?"

"Yes," she answered; the words were almost a whisper, she stood before him, eyes lowered, breathing a little fast as if afraid.

The spell of the night, the force of his own emotion shook Dick out of his self-control. The street was empty and dimly lit, the houses on either side shuttered and dark. The two of them were alone, and suddenly all his carefully thought-out plans went to the wind.

"Joan," he whispered. She was all desirable with her little fluttered breath, her eyes that fell from his, her soft, warm hand. "Joan!"

Joan lifted shut eyes and trembling lips to his; she made no protest as he drew her into his arms, his kiss lifted her for the time being into a heaven of great content. So they clung together for a breathing-space, then Joan woke out of her dream and shuddered away from him, hiding her face in her hands.

"Oh, don't," she begged, "please, please don't!"

Her words, the very piteousness of her appeal, remembering all her circumstances, hurt Dick. "My dear," he said, "don't you understand; have I made you afraid? I love you; I have always loved you. I was going to have waited to ask you to marry me until next week when I came to you in town. But to-night, because I love you, because you are going away to-morrow, I couldn't keep sensible any longer. And anyway, Joan, what does it matter?—to-day or to-morrow, the question will always be the same. I love you, will you marry me, dear? No, wait." He saw her movement to answer. "I don't really want you to say anything now, I would rather wait till we meet in town next week. You are not angry with me, are you, Joan? You are not afraid of my love?"

But Joan could make no answer, only she turned from him and ran up the steps; the bunch of violets lay where she had dropped them when he caught her hands, but neither of them noticed it. He saw her face for a second against the lighted hall and a little to his dismay he could see that she was crying. Then she had gone and the door shut to behind her quickly.

Dick waited about for a little, but she made no sign, and finally he turned rather disconsolately away. One thought, however, was left to comfort him through the night, the memory of her soft, yielding hands, the glad surrender of her lips.



CHAPTER XXIV

"Ah, sweet, and we too, can we bring One sigh back, bid one smile revive? Can God restore one ruined thing, Or he who slays our souls alive Make dead things thrive?"

A. C. SWINBURNE.

Early morning brought Joan a letter from Dick. She had hardly slept all night. Once she had got up, determined to write him; the truth would look more cold and formal in a letter, but her courage had failed her, and instead she had sat crouched over the table, her body shaken with a storm of tears. Then Fanny had come in, an after-supper Fanny, noisy and sentimental, and she had had to be helped to bed, coughing and explaining that "life was good if you only knew how to live it." Joan had crept back to her own bed once the other girl had fallen asleep, and she had lain with wide eyes watching the night turn from blackness to soft grey, from grey to clear, bright yellow. There were dark shadows round her eyes in the morning, and her face was white and strained-looking.

"DEAR HEART," Dick had written:

"Is it cheek to begin a letter like that to you? Only after last night I seem to know that you love me and that is all that really matters. I am coming to 6, Montague Square, on Tuesday afternoon at five o'clock to get my answer. Doesn't that sound precise? I would like to come to-day, but I won't because I don't want to hurry you. Oh, dear heart, I love you!—I have loved you for longer than you know of just at present. That is one of the things I am going to explain to you on Tuesday,

"Yours ever, "DICK GRANT."

Fanny was much perturbed by Joan's appearance when she was sufficiently awake to notice it.

"My, honey, you do look bad," she gasped. "Daddy Brown will see I was talking the truth last night, which is a good thing in one way. He was most particularly anxious to see you last night, was very fussed when he found you hadn't come." She paused and studied Joan's face from under her lashes. "Did you meet him?" she inquired finally.

"Yes," Joan admitted; she turned away from the other's inquisitive eyes. "He walked home with me."

"I told him you had a headache and were not coming to supper with us," Fanny confessed. "It is no use being annoyed with me, honey. I thought it over and it seemed to me that by saying 'No' to him because of something that happened before he knew you, you were cutting off your nose to spite your face. Not that I personally should tell him," she added reflectively; "he is too straight himself to understand a woman doing wrong; but that is for you to decide. One thing I do know: it won't make a pin's worth of difference to his wanting to marry you; he is too much in love for that."

She was saying aloud the fear which had knocked at Joan's heart all night. It might be true that Dick was too much in love to let what she had to tell him stand between them. But afterwards, when love had had time to cool, when trust and good-fellowship would be called on to take the place of passion, when he saw her, perhaps, with his child in her arms, how would he look at her then? Would he not remember and regret, would not a shadow stand between them, a shadow from the one sin which no man can forgive in a woman? She was like a creature brought to bay; he had guessed that she loved him; what arguments could she use, how stand firm in her denial against that knowledge?

For a little she had thought of the possibility of his taking her just as Gilbert had done. She was not worthy to be his wife, but she would be content, she knew, to follow him to the end of the world. Not because she viewed the matter now in the same light as she had done in those days. She had never loved Gilbert; if she had, shame and disgrace would have been powerless to drive her from his side, and she would have wanted him to marry her, just as now she wanted marriage with Dick. It seemed to her that, despite pioneers and rebels and the need for greater freedom, which she and girls like her had been fighting for, the initial fact remained and would always remain the same. When you loved you wanted to belong to the man absolutely and entirely; freedom counted for very little, you wanted to give him your life, you wanted to have the right to bear his children. That was what it all came down to in the end; Love was bigger and stronger than any ideas, and marriage had been built upon the law of Love.

* * * * *

Daddy Brown came round in the course of the morning to talk over his new idea for Joan's future. It appeared that if she was willing to think it over, he would pay for her to have singing and dancing lessons during the winter. That was, of course, provided the War did not come off. If it did, as he had said once before to Fanny, there would not be any Spring tours for the Brown Company.

"But war isn't likely," he spoke heavily. "England has too much to lose to go running into it if she can steer clear, and there's my offer, my girl. I think, from what I saw last night, that if you like to put your heart into it you ought to make something of an actress. You have distinct ability, and you have charm, which is on the good side too."

Joan was hardly in the mood to pay much attention to her future prospects; the present loomed too forbiddingly ahead of her. She would let him know, she told him finally; she was most awfully grateful to him for his suggestion, but she must have at least a fortnight to think things out and decide what she was going to do.

"Very well," Brown agreed, he rose to take his leave; "but mind you, it is worth considering, young lady; you don't get such an offer every day."

Fanny was staying behind for another day; she had some amusement in store with Swetenham which she did not want to miss, but the rest of the company, Joan included, caught the three o'clock train back to town. Joan could not refuse to go with them, but the journey was one long torture to her; she wanted to get right away by herself; there was only one day left in which to plan and make ready for Dick's visit. Some of Brown's ponderous remarks as to the probable effect of a war on the theatrical profession had filtered down to the junior members of the company. They talked together rather mournfully as to what the winter might be going to mean for them. "If it knocks pantomimes, we are done," Grace Binning summed up the situation. But Grace Binning was inclined to be mournful; as Mrs. O'Malley said, her sprained ankle would keep her out of work in any case for six weeks.

At Victoria Station Strachan ferreted out Joan's luggage and hailed a taxi for her.

"Good-bye," he said to her at the last—they had always been very good friends, with a little encouragement he might have considered himself in love with her—"and good luck. Also, if you will excuse me saying so, Miss Rutherford, I should marry that faithful young man. You are not a bit suited or happy in our life."

Then he drew back his head quickly and smiled at her as the taxi started off.

Joan had written to Mrs. Carew, asking her to see about a room, and found to her relief that her old attic was still at her disposal.

"Thought you would find it homelike," Mrs. Carew panted up the stairs in front of her, "and for that matter it has been shut up since you left. Bad year for letting this has been."

Obviously the room had been shut up since she left. Joan struggled with the fast-closed window and threw it open, but even so the place retained an atmosphere of overpowering stuffiness, and presently, not staying to unpack or open the letter which had been waiting for her on the hall table, she sallied out again in search of fresh air.

She would walk to Knightsbridge, she decided, and so on through the Park. If she tired herself out perhaps she would be able to sleep when she went to bed, and sleep was what she needed almost more than anything else.

The Park was deserted and sun-swept; it had been an exceptionally hot summer, the trees and bushes seemed smothered under a weight of dust. Joan found a seat in sight of one of the stretches of water and opened her letter. It was from Miss Abercrombie, that she had known from the envelope, and written from the Rutherford home at Wrotham.

"DEAR JOAN," the letter ran:

"Your people are home, they have just come back from abroad and had a very tiresome journey over because of the mobilization on the Continent. Janet wrote, or rather your uncle wrote for her, asking me to be here to meet them. Janet is very ill, she will never be able to walk or stand up again in her life. They have tried all sorts of things for her abroad, now it has come to the last. All day, and most of the night, for she sleeps very badly, she lies flat on her back, and all the time her eyes seem to be watching for something. She speaks very little, everything seems to be shut away in her heart, but yesterday—after having first talked the matter over with your uncle—I went up to her room and asked her point blank: 'Janet, aren't you eating out your heart for Joan?' and she nodded stiffly, the tears in her eyes. So I sat right down and told her all about you: about your accident, about the hard (child, I know it has been hard) fight you have had, and at the end I said: 'Shall I send for her, Janet?' This time when she nodded the tears were streaming down her face. So I am sending for you. Don't let pride or anger stand between you, enough anguish has been caused already on both sides, and she is practically dying. Come, child, show a charity which your struggle will have taught you, and help to make her going a little easier, for she has always loved you, and her heart breaks for the need of you."

It was a very sentimental letter for Miss Abercrombie to have written. And Aunt Janet was dying; quite long ago Joan had forgiven the hardness from her, there was no bitterness in her heart now, only a great sense of pity. She would go, of course she would go. Like a flash it came to her that she might just slip away and leave no address, no message to Dick. But even with the thought came the knowledge that she would only be shelving the difficulty for a little; he would wait, he would search till he found her. She did not think he would be very easy to put off.

With Miss Abercrombie's letter open on her lap, she sat and watched the people passing by her. She was thinking of all her life since she had first come to London; Gilbert, their time together—strange how that memory had no more power to hurt—the black days that had followed, Rose and Fanny. Of them all perhaps she had loved Fanny the best; Fanny's philosophy of life was so delightfully simple, she was like some little animal that followed every fresh impulse. And she never seemed to regret or pay for her misdeeds. Apparently when you sinned calmly in the full knowledge that it was sin, you paid no penalty; it was only when you sinned attempting to make new laws for yourself and calling it no sin that the burden of retribution was so heavy to bear.

A man was coming down the path towards her; she did not notice him, although he was staring at her rather intently. Opposite to her he came to a pause and took off his hat.

"Hallo," he said, "I am not mistaken, am I, it is Pierrette."

She lifted startled eyes to his and Landon laughed at her. He had forgotten all about her till this moment, but just for the time being he was at a loose end in London when all his friends were out of town, and with no new passion on to entertain him. Pierrette, were she willing, would fill in the gap pleasantly; they had not parted the best of friends, but he had forgotten just enough for that memory not to rankle. He sat down on the chair beside her and took one of her hands in his.

"Where have you been, Pierrette? And what have you been doing? Also, are you not glad to see me, and whose love letter were you reading?"

"It is not a love letter." Joan took her hand away and folding up Miss Abercrombie's letter, slipped it into her purse. "It is from my people, asking me to come home, and I am going."

"Going, when I have only just found you again!"

His tone, his whole manner was unbearably familiar. Joan turned with quick words of resentment on her lips, but they were never said. A sudden thought came across her brain. Here was something with which she could fight down and kill Dick's purpose. Better, far better than any confession of hers, better than any stating of the truth, however bluntly put, would be this man's easy familiarity, his almost air of ownership. She found herself staring at Landon. What had she ever seen in him that was either pleasant or attractive? She hated his eyes, and the way they looked at her, the too evident care which had been expended on his appearance, his long, shapely hands.

"Well, Pierrette, when you have finished studying my personal appearance," Landon broke in, "perhaps you will explain yourself more explicitly. Why are you flying from me just when I have found you? And, Pierrette, what about supper to-night at Les Gobelins?"

"I can't do that," Joan spoke quickly. She had clenched her hands in her lap; he did not notice that, but he could see that the colour had fled from her face. "And I have got to go away the day after to-morrow. But couldn't you come and have tea with me to-morrow at 6, Montague Square? Do, please do."

What was she driving at? Landon caught his breath on a laugh. Was it the last final flutter before she had to go back to home life and having her wings cut? Or was she throwing herself into his arms after having fought so furiously—he remembered that she had fought the last time, perhaps she had learned her lesson; perhaps the poor little devil had really fallen in love with him, and had been eating her heart out all this time. That was almost amusing. She had never, even in their days of greatest friendship, asked him into her room before, though he had often suggested coming.

"Why, Pierrette, of course," he said. Then he laughed out loud. "And I'll bring some red roses, afterwards we will go out to supper, and it shall be like old times."

"Afterwards," Joan repeated. The excitement had left her, she sounded on the instant very tired, "I don't know about afterwards, but bring the red roses and come at half-past four, will you?" She stood up, "I must go home," she said, "I have got to pack and get everything ready before to-morrow."

He could not understand her mood in the least, but he could draw his own conclusions from her invitation. It set him whistling softly on his way home. The tune he selected was one that was being played everywhere in London at the time. It fitted into his thoughts excellently:

"Just a little love, a little kiss, I will give my life for this."

Poor, silly little Pierrette! Why had she fought with him before and wasted so much precious time? As a matter of fact, he broke off his whistle as the startling truth flashed on him, he might quite easily have forgotten all about her in the interval, and then where would she have been?



CHAPTER XXV

"I have left you behind In the path of the past; With the white breath of flowers, With the best of God's hours, I have left you at last."

DORA SIGERSON.

Mrs. Carew was in a state of discontent which amounted almost to anger.

"I knew such kind of things were bound to happen," she grumbled fiercely, "if she joined in with a girl like that Miss Bellairs. I have never held and I never will hold with young ladies having men to tea in their bedrooms."

"Why don't you just tell her so?" suggested her helpmate from his customary entrenched position in an armchair behind the newspaper. "It would be a good deal cheaper than breaking the kitchen china, Maria."

"Tell her!" snorted Mrs. Carew. "She don't give me a chance. Cool as a cucumber she turns to me this morning, she says: 'Oh, I've two gentlemen to tea this afternoon, Mrs. Carew, just show them up when they come.' Then she 'ops it out of the front door like a rabbit. 'Gentlemen,' indeed, and she with not so much as a screen round her bed."

"Perhaps they are her brothers," ventured Mr. Carew.

Mrs. Carew came to a pause beside him and swept aside his paper. "Brothers!" she repeated, "now, Arthur, you know better than to say that. What I say and what I always shall say is: Let 'em do what they like outside, poor motherless girls that they are, but in my house things have got to be run straight. I won't have them bringing men in here."

"Well, hang it all, Maria, what do you want me to do? Go upstairs and turn the gents out?"

"We'll see," said Mrs. Carew darkly. She grabbed up the tea-tray and made for the door. "To-morrow I shall tell her it is not to happen again."

"All right, you tell her," her husband muttered behind her retreating back. "Can't think, though, why you don't leave the girls alone. However they start it always ends that way. You and I have seen quite a number take to the streets, and you don't do much to prevent them short of grumbling at them."

"They shan't do it in my house," reiterated Mrs. Carew; she stumped in dignified protest from the room, and upstairs to the offender's attic.

The first guest had already arrived, so Mrs. Carew could not voice her disapproval; she expressed it, however, in a glare which she directed towards him, and the noise with which she dumped down the tea-tray. The room was full of flowers, which did not add to her approval; she detected in them a sure sign of immorality. Great, beautiful red roses, nodding from every vase, filling the air with their rather heavy scent. The visitor also inspired her with a sense of distrust. He looked what Mrs. Carew described as "a man about town." She had been fond of Joan; behind her anger lay a small hurt sense of pity; she was too nice a young lady to go the way of the others.

She opened the door to Dick a little later with a sour face, and she did not even trouble to take him upstairs.

"Miss Rutherford is high up as you can get"—she jerked her thumb upwards—"it's the only door on the landing, you can't mistake it."

With that she left him, and Dick found his own way upstairs. He had stayed away all day till the exact hour he had named, with some difficulty, but with a punctilious sense of doing right. Joan had not answered his letter and he looked upon her silence as an admission that she loved him, but there were a great many things between them that would have to be talked over first coldly and sensibly. He had thought the matter out and he had decided that he would not leave it all to her, to tell or not to tell as she thought best, which had been his first idea. He would help her by telling her that he had always known, and that it made no difference. He wanted to make her confession as easy as possible.

It was not until after he had knocked that he realized with a shock of disappointment that Joan was not alone. He could hear her talking to somebody, then she moved across the room and pulled the door open. He saw only her first of all, his eyes sought hers and stayed there. He could notice that she seemed very pale, and almost frightened looking, and that she had dressed for the afternoon in black. Some long clinging stuff, and up near where the blouse opened at the neck she had pinned in one red rose, its warm and velvety petals lying against the white of her neck. The room seemed full of the scent of the roses too, and a little oppressive. Dick held his breath as he looked at her; to him she seemed so beautiful as to be almost amazing; then he came a little further into the room and his eyes took in the other occupant. A man sat, or rather lounged, on the sofa, pulled up under the window. He was watching the meeting with curious eyes, and in his hands he held another rose, the same sort as the one Joan wore. When Dick's eyes met his, he smiled, and laying the rose aside, stood up.

"Did not know it was to be a tea-party, Pierrette," he said, "you ought to have warned me."

Joan had shut the door and moved forward into the centre of the room. She was evidently very nervous over something; Landon was more than a little amused, though also inclined to be annoyed.

"Oh, it isn't a tea-party," she was saying. "It's just us three. Doctor Grant, this is Mr. Landon. Will you have this chair?—it is really the only one which is quite safe to sit on."

Dick took the proffered chair stiffly; he was conscious of a bitter sense of disappointment, tinged with disapproval. It was, of course, different for himself, but he loathed to see the other man so much at home in this quaint little dust-laden attic where Joan lived. Her bed stood against the wall, a black counterpane of sorts thrown across it; her brush and comb, the little silver things for her dressing-table were scattered about on the top of the chest of drawers standing near. The place would have been sacred to him; but how did this other man look at it? And why had Joan asked him? Was it a deliberate attempt to shield herself from something she dreaded? or did it mean that, after all, she had only been playing with him—that the fluttered surrender of her lips had been but a flirt's last fling in the game of passion? If a man is really very much in love, as was Dick, and something occurs to make him lose his temper, it is sure to end in rapid and sometimes lasting disaster. After the first five minutes Dick made no attempt even to be polite to Landon. Rage, blind, merciless rage, and a sense of having made a damned fool of himself, throbbed in his mind as he watched Joan talking to the other man, and saw the evident familiarity which lay between them. Yet he could not get up and go away; he would not leave her, not till he had hurt her as much as she was now hurting him.

For Landon, the amusement of baiting the other man's evident misery soon palled. He was a little annoyed himself that Joan should have seen fit to drag him in as such a cat's-paw, for a very few minutes of their threesome had shown him what his part was intended to be. It meant in addition that the girl had fooled him, and that he had wasted his background of red roses. It was all very annoying and a very stupid way of spending the afternoon, for no one could imagine that there was any amusement to be got out of a bad tea in squalid surroundings—thus mercilessly but almost truthfully did he dismiss the atmosphere of Joan's attic—with a girl palpably in love with someone else. Landon rose presently with his most languid air of boredom.

"Sorry, Pierrette," he said; "must fly, but I leave my roses behind me as a memory. They are not what I should call my lucky flower." He turned to Dick, who stood up with a grim face and stern-set mouth. "Good-bye, Doctor Grant; delighted to have met you: if Pierrette feels like it, get her to tell you about our last venture into the rose world. Romantic tale, isn't it, Pierrette?" He laughed, lifting her hand to his heart very impressively. "But ours has always been a romance, hasn't it? That is why we christened each other Pierrot and Pierrette." He let go her hand and bowed gravely. Joan followed him to the door. "I'll come and see you out," she said; she had not realized until the moment came how horribly afraid she was of Dick. "You might lose your way."

"Oh no," Landon assured her; he shot one last slightly vindictive glance at Dick; "I know it by heart." Then he laughed and went from the room, shutting the door behind him.

Joan stayed where she was, a seeming weight on her lids, which prevented her lifting her eyes to look at Dick. But she was intensely conscious of him, and round her heart something had closed like a band of iron. At last, since he said nothing and made no sign, she moved forward blindly and sat down in the nearest chair.

"Aren't you ever going to speak again?" she whispered.

Her words shook Dick out of his silent self-restraint. Hot anger, passionate reproaches, fought for speech in his throat; he drove them back.

"Is this your answer to my question?" he said finally. "It would have been simpler to have put it some other way. But you may at least congratulate yourself on having succeeded. You have killed something that I had thought to be almost eternal." He drew in his breath sharply, but passion was shaking him now, it had to have its say. "I have loved you," he went on hoarsely, "ever since I first saw you. Common sense has argued against you; pride has fought to throw you out of my life; but against everything your face has lived triumphant. I don't know why God makes us feel like that for women of your stamp, why we should bring such great ideals to so poor a shrine. I am talking arrant nonsense, just raving at you, you think, and I sound rather absurd even to myself. Only—my God! you don't know what you have done—you have broken my faith in you; it was the strongest, the best thing in my life."

Joan crouched down in the chair; she seemed to be trying to get as far away from his voice as possible; she sat with her head buried in her arms.

"I built up a dream about you two years ago," Dick went on. "You don't remember anything about me; but our meeting, your face as you stood that day with your back to the wall, were stamped on my heart as with a branding-iron. Of all the foolish things that a man could do perhaps I chose the worst; for ever as I stood and watched you the shadow of shame grew up beside you, and other people turned away from you. But I thought I saw further than the rest; I imagined that I had seen through your eyes, because already I loved them, into your soul. There is some mistake here, I argued, some mystery which she herself shall one day make clear to me." Joan had lifted her head and was staring at him. "From that day I started building my dream. I went abroad, but the memory of your face went with me; I used to make love to other women, but it was because I looked for you in their eyes. Then I came home and I saw you again. Suddenly my dream crystallized into clear, unshakable fact; I loved, I had always loved you; nothing that other people could say against you would have any effect. It lay just with you, and to-day you have given me your answer and broken with your own hand the dream."

He turned towards the door; Joan staggered to her feet and ran to him. The vague memory in her mind had leapt to life; his eyes had often reminded her of someone. She remembered now that he was the young doctor that Aunt Janet had sent for. She remembered her own defiance as she had faced him and the pity in his eyes.

"Dick," she whispered, "Dick, I didn't know, I didn't understand. I thought—oh, don't go away and leave me just like this, I might explain." Her torrent of words broke down before the look on his face; she fell to her knees, clutching at his hands. "Won't you listen? It was because I was afraid to tell you; I was afraid, afraid."

Her position, the paroxysm of tears which, once they came, she could in no way stop, disquieted him. He shook her hands from him. "And because you were afraid," he said stiffly, "I suppose you had the other man here to protect you." Then his mood changed.

"Whatever you have done," he said, "it isn't any business of mine. Please forgive me for ranting like a schoolmaster, and please don't cry like that. While I sat there watching that other man and feeling that everything my heart had been set on was falling to pieces all round me, I wanted to hurt you back again. It's a pugnacious sensation that one gets sometimes, but it's gone now; I don't want you to be hurt. It was not your fault that I lifted you up in my heart like that; it is not altogether your fault that you have fallen. Perhaps you did not know how cruel you were being when you had that other man here to make clear to me something you did not wish to put into words yourself. I have said some beastly things to you, and I am sorry for them. Please don't let them worry you for long."

Then he had gone, before she had time to speak or lift her hands to hold him. Gone, and as she crouched against the door the sound of his feet trod into her heart, each step a throb of agony.

Mrs. Carew was holding forth to Fanny in the hall as Dick swung past them. He did not glance at them even, and Fanny did not have a chance to call out to him, he went so rapidly, slamming the door behind him.

"Not as how they haven't left at seasonable hours," Mrs. Carew went rambling on; "but I 'as always said and always will say, I don't hold with such doings in my house."

"What doings?" Fanny expostulated. "For goodness, old Carew, do try and make yourself more clear; who has been carrying on and how?"

"Miss Rutherford," Mrs. Carew announced. She was viewing Fanny with unfriendly suspicion. "Only came back from this 'ere theatrical show yesterday, and to-day she has two men to tea with her in her bedroom."

"Two men?" repeated Fanny. "Did you know they were coming?"

"Ask them," snorted Mrs. Carew. "And what I said is——"

"Oh, run away, Carew," Fanny broke in, "with your nasty suspicion. It's all my bad example, you'll be saying next. Bring up some tea for me, there's an old dear; I'm fairly parched for a drink."

But before she went into her own room Fanny ran upstairs and knocked softly oh Joan's door. There was no answer and no sound from within the room; yet when she tried turning the handle, and pushing her foot against the door, it was to find it locked. What did it all mean? Two men to tea, Dick's face as he had passed through the hall, and Joan's locked door? That was a problem which Fanny set herself to disentangle in her own particular way.



CHAPTER XXVI

"Of all strange things in this strange new world Most strange is this; Ever my lips must speak and smile Without your kiss. Ever mine eyes must see, despite Those eyes they miss."

F. HEASLIP LEE.

How Joan lived through the hours that followed she never knew. Heart and brain seemed paralysed; things had lost their power to hurt. When Fanny crept upstairs in the early morning and knocked timidly at the door, Joan opened it to her. She had no wish to see Fanny; she did not want to talk about yesterday, or explain what had happened; but vaguely through her absolute misery she realized that life had still to be gone on with, and that Fanny was one of the items of life which it was no use trying to disregard. As a matter of fact, until she opened the door and caught Fanny's look of dismay, she did not remember that she was still in her black afternoon frock, nor the fact that she had spent most of the night crouched against the door as Dick had left her.

"Oh, my dear, my dear!" Fanny whispered; she came quickly into the room and threw warm, loving arms round Joan. "You haven't been to bed at all; why didn't you let me in last night? I'd have helped you somehow or other."

Joan stood limply in the embrace, but she did not turn and cling to Fanny, or weep as the other girl rather wished she would.

"How ridiculous of me," she answered. "I must look a strange sight this morning."

Fanny became practical on the moment, since sympathy was evidently not desired. "Well, you'll start right away now," she stated, "and get out of your things. It's early yet, only about seven; I will brush your hair for you, and you will slip into bed. You needn't get up until late to-day, you know."

"I haven't the slightest desire to sleep," Joan told her; none the less she was obeying the other's commands. "And I have got to catch an early train."

"You are going away?" gasped Fanny.

"Back home," Joan answered. "They have sent for me; my aunt has been ill. Oh, it's not for good, Fanny"—she almost laughed at the other's amazed face—"I shall be back here before long."

"I hope not;" Fanny spoke, for her, fiercely. "I shall hate to lose you, honey, but after all I don't stand for much, and you aren't meant for this kind of world. You can't get the fun out of it I can, it only hurts you." She was brushing out the soft brown hair. "What happened yesterday?" she asked suddenly, her head on one side.

Joan moved from under the deft hands and stood up. "You want to know why I am looking like a tragedy queen this morning," she said. "It isn't strange you should be curious; I must seem quite mad. Yesterday"—she caught her hands to her throat—"was what might be called a disastrous failure. I tried to be very clever, and I was nothing but a most awful fool. He knew, he had known all the time, the thing which I had been so afraid to tell him. It had not made any difference to his loving me, but yesterday I had that other man here, you remember him, don't you? You might almost recognize his roses." Her eyes wandered round the room, her hands came away slowly from her throat; she had seemed to be near tears, but suddenly the outburst passed. "That's all," she said dryly, "Dick drew his own conclusions from the man being here. I tried to explain, at least I think I tried to explain. I know I wanted to hold him back, but he threw aside my hands and went from the room. I shan't ever see him again, Fanny, and the funny thing is that it doesn't really seem to matter this morning."