Looking remarkably at her ease in a smart tailor-made frock of navy serge, silk stockings, suede shoes, and a perfect summer hat trimmed with bright cherries as red as her lips, she sat amid a farraginous medley of newspapers, small parcels, and shiny leather traps, and presented an attractive picture of a flourishing schoolgirl of seventeen,—careless, mischievous, and keenly, though discreetly, interested in everything about her;—but, perhaps a little too healthy, and certainly too beautiful, to be quite typical either of the class or of the kind of school from which she hailed.

Her large dark eyes, veiled by unusually long lashes, looked sharply at you and then quickly turned away, with that air of mystery and secrecy, and love of secrets at all costs—even mock secrets—peculiar to the young virgin of all climes. Occasionally in glancing away they would half close in a thoughtful smile, which, to the uninitiated, unaware of the irrepressible spirits of their owner, was as unaccountable as it was provoking.

There was an air of childhood still clinging, as if from habit alone, to the outward insignia of maturity, in this mercurial, magnetic, and undaunted young person; and in her malicious elfish eyes could be read the solemn determination to force every possible claim that her double advantage, as child and adult, could, according to the occasion, uphold.

Her thick dark hair did not hang down her back in the rich spiral curl which is now becoming so common among schoolgirls; for that it was too plentiful, too troublesomely luxuriant. It hung like heavy bronze in a thick stiff plait—a badge both of her robust youth and the redundant richness of her blood,—and at its extremity it was tied with a broad ribbon of black silk. Beneath her hat, bold festoons of hair reached down almost to her eyebrows, and to these portions of her coiffure she constantly applied her soft shapely sun-tanned fingers, as if to reassure herself that they were keeping their proper position.

The roguish expression of her face was partly due to pure health and partly to wanton spirits, and her features possessed that exceptional animation which, even in the simple process of eating a fondant, produced the impression of extreme mobility.

Having long previously examined her fellow-passengers and judged them uninteresting, she divided her attention between the fleeting landscape at her side, a box of fruit creams, which she was consuming with grave perseverance, and the contents of a pocket-portfolio, which she appeared to be slowly sorting and weeding out. To everything she did, however, to each one of her movements, she had the air of imparting so much mysteriousness, so much elaborate secrecy, that she soon found herself the object of the united attention of all her companions. And occasionally when her fresh full lips parted in a smile at the things she read, the old gentleman opposite her had to turn also to the fleeting landscape as a prophylactic against the infection of her high spirits.

She gave the impression of that aggressive vitality with which Nature seems deliberately to equip her more favoured female children at this age, as if to challenge the other sex to a definite attitude immediately. A quivering freshness—the "bloom" of the poets—gave a soft shimmer to her skin of which the powder of later years is such a palpably poor travesty; her limbs were nicely rounded and not too fragile; her teeth, like Cleopatra's, were perfect, and although she was a trifle smaller than her sister, she was broad across the shoulders, and well developed.

Leonetta, as we have already seen, knew that she was attractive; but she did not know this fact as surely and unmistakably as—say, a philosopher looking at her did. She probably knew that she was sunburnt, for instance; but she was not aware of the depth which the dark natural virginal pigmentation of her neck, eyes, and knuckles, lent to the warm tanning of her skin. She did not know how prone the philosopher is to associate the combination of these two rich colourings with the wicked, dusky denizens of a tropical jungle—those creatures whose blood he suspects of being something deeper than red, who really look as if they were made from the earth and were going back to it, and who have nothing of that translucent pallor suggestive of heaven-sent and heaven-destined attributes.

She probably knew her dark eyes were fine and that their lashes were long; but she would have been surprised and perhaps even a little hurt if she had been told that their most striking feature was that, to every man, modest and shrewd enough to divine all that they could exact, they were terrifying. She knew her teeth were faultless; but she did not even suspect the thrill of pained joy that went through the philosopher's frame when he saw the life-hunger they revealed, and, what was more, the full deep bite and fast hold they would take of Life's entrails. A young girl's canines are self-revelatory in this respect. Let them be big and prominent, as Leonetta's were, and the fastness of her hold on Life, once she has bitten, promises to break all records. The sensitive philosopher has little patience with your fair delicate misses with small mouse-like canines. There are too many of them to begin with, and they are so instinctively ladylike.

Perhaps the most amusing thing in this world is to watch the antics of a large-canined virgin de bonne famille who is trying to be a lady,—by "lady" is here meant someone who, among other parlour tricks, can perform the feat of "controlling" her feelings,—who has, that is to say, on the one hand "control" and on the other hand "feelings," and whose feelings are weaker than her control.

Leonetta's highly pigmented and sunburnt fingers suddenly ceased their twofold activity with the box of fondants and the pocket-portfolio of secret papers, and held a letter long and steadily before her eyes. Again the old gentleman opposite turned to the landscape of fields on his right, and his loose lips worked ominously. The fixity of those keen eyes with their tell-tale slight inward squint, as she studied the letter, proved too much for him, particularly when she began to smile; and his glance wandered desperately to the country he was traversing, in the cool, pallid British greenness of which he found relief.

Evidently the letter was a piece of life, for Leonetta was now in deadly earnest, pinching her beautiful tawny neck thoughtfully here and there with her free hand, as she read, and breathing deeply. Her glance travelled rapidly, too, over certain passages, and would then stop dead, sometimes in order to allow a smile to dawn, sometimes to wander a moment to frown at the country-side. Evidently certain portions of the letter were quite uninteresting, or else she knew them by heart.

The letter she read was as follows:

"My own dearest Leo,

"Oh, how I miss you already! But I shan't be the only one! That's some comfort. Think of church now without your dreadful remarks about all the still more dreadful people. I know one or two who are not going to church any more now. Don't you feel ashamed of yourself? Don't you ever feel ashamed of yourself? And the river on Wednesdays, and the park on Saturday afternoons! The place will be dead. It will be a vast waste. You told me to make up to Dorothy Garforth. But she's not you. She'll never have the pluck to talk to strange young men about their motor bikes or their horses and things. You were a wonder! Still my own dear Leo, you promised to invite me up to London to meet your people, didn't you, and don't you dare to forget. I shall pine away here if you do.

"I must tell you something that happened last night. Well, I met Charlie as I was coming home from saying good-bye to you. He was desolate. You really have been a little cruel. He said you gave him back his match-box and gold pencil, and that that meant you did not want anything more to do with him. He said he had been waiting behind the usual shrubbery in the park for two hours, for a long last good-bye and that you never turned up. I know what you mean about him, that he isn't smart and clean and all that, but he is rather nice all the same. Almost the best we knew. I think the hair on his hands, as you pointed out, made up for a heap of other shortcomings in him. But I know what you mean. He's a little rough and there's an end of it. I thought of telling him to write to you; but then it struck me you would not like him to. He said you were a flirt, and that you would only have a rich man. I said it wasn't that a bit, that he had quite misunderstood you. I couldn't tell him the truth, could I?—that he wasn't altogether 'toothsome,' as you call it. He said he had seen us talking to that motor-cyclist fellow in the park last Saturday, and that proved it. I said it proved nothing, because we did not know then that he was one of the wealthiest boys in the county. However he seemed very bitter.

"Did you really give him so much encouragement? Of course men do think it a lot if you let them kiss you. Aren't they stupid? They can't understand that even if one does not love them overmuch one wants to know what it's like. And you did like pretending you were deeply in love, didn't you now?—all the time? I tell you who'll be glad you've gone, Alice Dewlap. She was sweet on Charlie long before you met him, because Kitty told me so.

"Oh, Leo, you were a wicked creature, a regular godsend! What shall we do without you! Do ask me to come soon. That's cool, isn't it? Asking for an invitation. But you know what I mean. Think of me in church next Sunday. Good Lord deliver us! Tell me what to say to Charlie if he bothers me about you again. And don't forget to tell me all that happens in London. Describe all the men you meet minutely,—you know to the smallest detail as you used to here. You taught me to notice heaps of things I should never have thought of.

"Good-bye my dearest treasure-trove, with heaps of love and kisses.

"Yours for ever and ever,

"Nessy."

The old gentleman lost sight of Leonetta during the lunch interval; but when she returned from the restaurant car, slightly flushed, and her eyelids lazily drooping, he concluded that she had probably partaken heartily of the good fare provided, more particularly as a few stray crumbs still clung about the corners of her lips, betraying to his experienced eye the unconscious eagerness which healthy people habitually show over their meals. Wisely he did not infer from these evidences of a youthful and unimpaired appetite that she was slovenly in her table manners, because the unmistakable gentleness of her upbringing precluded any such possibility. The observation merely confirmed his general impression of her, and left him pondering over the relationship of daintiness to health.

Drowsily the girl re-opened the letter which she had been perusing before the luncheon hour, and re-read it once or twice; then dropping it listlessly upon her lap, she turned upon her fellow-passengers a look of such guileless interest that they might have been excused had they been moved by that compassion, so frequently unwarranted, for innocence on the threshold of Life's great adventure.

The letter she held had been brought to her that morning by Vanessa's maid. Leonetta and Vanessa had made friends the moment they first met, and when Vanessa, duly qualified, had left the School of Domesticity, about six months after Leonetta's arrival there, they had continued to see each other outside its walls. There was a difference of only a year in their ages, Vanessa being the elder; but the younger girl with her greater keenness of vision, more exuberant health and spirits, and more resolute unscrupulosity, had so carried the heart of the other by storm that it was Vanessa, the provincial termagant, who looked up to and worshipped her sister dare-devil of the Metropolis, and who watched her for her every cue.

The train was nearing London; already the coquettish veil of smoke with which the "hub of the Universe" conceals the full horror of her ugliness from the eyes of critics, gave the summer sky a murky yellow tinge. Leonetta yawned, glanced across the vast city which she hoped would hence-forward be her home, and then suddenly recollecting that her mother and sister would probably be at King's Cross to meet her, quickly folded the letter that was lying on her lap and relegated it to one of the interstices of her pocket-portfolio.



CHAPTER V

Leonetta was home again and the old house in Kensington felt the change acutely. The stairs creaked in a manner almost indignant; doors which for months had disported themselves with quiet dignity, manifested a sudden and youthful tendency to slam; Palmer, the parlour-maid could never be found, except at the heels of her youngest mistress, who seemed to have requisitioned her entire services; while a fresh young voice, as imperious as it was melodious, could be heard on almost every floor at the same time, calling the stately rooms back to life again, and shivering the cobwebs of monotony as it were by acoustic principles alone.

The expression of the kindly maiden aunt, who, after having played for some while with a boisterous and powerful young nephew, gradually realises that he is becoming too rough for her, is, as everybody knows, one of tremulous expectancy, in which a half-frightened flickering smile plays only a deceptive and scarcely convincing part in concealing the feelings of anxiety and disapproval that lie behind it.

Now there was, as we have seen, little of the maiden aunt in Mrs. Delarayne's disposition, and yet this is precisely the expression which, from the moment of Leonetta's arrival at King's Cross, had fastened upon her features. It was the look of one who, though anxious to humour a youthful relative as far as possible, was nevertheless determined that the young creature's pranks should not be allowed to extend to incendiarism, personal assault and battery, homicide, or anything equally upsetting. It scarcely requires description: the brows are permanently slightly raised, the eyes are kept steadily upon the youthful relative in question in mingled astonishment and fear, while there is the aforesaid agitated smile, which threatens at any moment to assume the hard and petulant lines of impatient reproach.

Leonetta had quite properly insisted upon a completely new outfit. She had not "unpacked" in the accepted sense. She had simply emptied her boxes into the dust-bin. Some of her things, it is true, had fallen to Palmer, and to Wilmott, her mother's maid, but very few of them, indeed, had she been willing to return to her wardrobe or her chests of drawers.

No one could take exception to this procedure. It was perfectly right and proper. It was the way it was done, as if it had been a forgone and incontrovertible conclusion, that unnerved Mrs. Delarayne, and drove Cleopatra, more abashed than indignant, to the quietest corner of the house for peace and solitude.

Obviously Leonetta had as yet received no check from life, no threat of an obstacle, or worse still a snub. Her pride pranced with an assurance, a certainty, that was at once baffling and unbaffled. In the presence of her sister's unbroken and unshaken will and resolute assertion of her smallest rights, Cleopatra shrank as before the force of an elemental upheaval. Her tottering self-confidence swayed ominously in the neighbourhood of the younger girl, and it was with alarm and helplessness in her eyes, that she sought a refuge where she could breathe undisturbed.

In the library she dropped desperately into a chair, and her glance ran nervously up and down the bookshelves, while her ears listened stealthily for echoes of the voice that was subordinating the house.

She had forgotten during these blissful months how beautiful her sister was. Some mysterious power in her, that found it easy to forget these things, had even led her memory to form quite a moderate estimate of Leonetta's charms in her absence,—even her sister's telling tricks with her hair had been completely banished from her mind.

Cleopatra rose and walked to the fire-place. On the mantelpiece, she knew, there was a photograph of herself at Leonetta's age. She felt she wanted to examine this record of her adolescence. She was groping for strength: she wished to fortify herself.

She drew the photograph towards her. No, she had not changed so very much. Only something inside her seemed to have grown less tense, less self-confident. Also, she had not had Leonetta's advantages,—advantages that she herself had been chiefly instrumental in securing for her younger sister. More arts than that of wielding the French tongue are learned in Paris. Apparently she never had arranged her hair quite as Baby arranged hers.

And then, all at once, the door opened, and she pushed the photograph violently from her, so that it fell with a clatter on the marble of the mantelpiece. It was her mother; and as the door opened and shut, the sound of Leonetta's voice upstairs swelled and died away again.

"Oh, it's you," Cleopatra cried, setting up the fallen frame.

Mrs. Delarayne walked to the window, spasmodically drew back a curtain, and then turned to face her daughter.

"She's amazingly high-spirited, isn't she?"

"Extraordinary!" Cleopatra exclaimed.

"Can you go with her to Mlle. Claude's to-morrow to order those frocks? You see, I have my Inner Light meeting in the afternoon."

"She won't like it."

"What does it matter? She won't listen to my suggestions, so I might just as well stay at home as go with her. She knows exactly what she wants down to the last button."

"Then why can't she go alone?"

"Well,—I don't know," replied Mrs. Delarayne anxiously; "she might perhaps feel that neither of us was taking much interest in her, don't you think?"

"How much are you allowing her?"

"A hundred pounds."

"Edith!"

"My dear,—I could say nothing!"

"But I never had half that sum all at once."

"I know," sighed her mother wearily. "But you can have it now, or more if you want it."

There was a loud drumming of feet, and the door opened.

"Oh, Peachy darling!" Leonetta cried, "you're the very person I wanted to see, and I couldn't think what had become of you."

She was brandishing a paper of the latest Paris fashions in her hand as she skipped to her mother's side.

"You see," she pursued, "this is what I want for my best evening turn-out, I couldn't find it a moment ago." And she proceeded to describe to her mother what the particular confection consisted of.

"Of course they do these things miles better in Paris," she added with a pout.

"No doubt," said Mrs. Delarayne coldly.

"And they're not a scrap more expensive either," Leonetta continued.

"Possibly not," her mother rejoined. Then there was a moment's silence while Leonetta ran rapidly through the newspaper in her hands.

At last Mrs. Delarayne spoke.

"Leo, darling," she began, "would you mind very much if Cleo went with you to-morrow instead of me?"

Leonetta glanced up, scrutinised her mother and sister for a second, and her brow clouded. "Oh, Peachy," she cried at last, "you are a worm!"

Mrs. Delarayne sat down, and fumbled nervously with a brooch at her neck. She realised dimly that she ought to protest against being addressed in this manner by her younger daughter and stared vacantly at Cleopatra.

"You see," she said, "I have my Inner Light meeting."

"Your inner what?" Leonetta exclaimed contemptuously.

A slight flush crept slowly up the widow's neck, and she looked hopelessly in the direction of her elder daughter.

Leonetta laughed. "Inner Light!" she cried. "Peachy, you are getting into funny ways in your old age; now come, aren't you?"

A look of such deep mortification came into Mrs. Delarayne's eyes, that Cleopatra herself felt provoked.

"There's no need to be rude, Baby!" she ejaculated angrily, not realising quite how much of her anger was utterly unconnected with her sister's treatment of their mother.

Leonetta glanced down at her paper in the thoughtful manner of a buck about to butt. For the first time she had perceived clearly that much of which she had not the smallest inkling must have happened during her long absences from home, and that these two women,—her mother and sister,—were united by strangely powerful bonds. Being an intelligent creature, therefore, she decided to postpone the framing of her strategy until she had learned more about the strength that seemed to be constantly combining against her.

She raised her eyes at last, and looked straight into her sister's face.

"I can't think what makes you so dreadfully stuffy," she declared, "surely there's no harm in what I said."

Mrs. Delarayne, who longed only for one thing—that the remark complained about, with its brutal reference to her old age, should not be repeated, and least of all discussed,—here interposed a word or two.

"No, my darling Leo, of course not. You come fresh from school; you are full of new ideas and schemes; and we,—well, we've remained at home."

This observation was perhaps a little feeble, and it also constituted a desertion of Cleopatra, but in any case it seemed to give Leonetta the necessary hint, for she went quite close to her mother and began smoothing her hair. "You must tell me all about the Inner Light some time," she said, "it sounds ripping."

She glanced triumphantly at her sister as she spoke. Half of her action had been completely unconscious. Obviously she felt the need of making one of these women her friend, and instinctively she inclined to the one who appeared to be the more powerful.

"Peachy darling," she continued, "don't you think this white satin frock that the Claude hag is going to make me might be my coming-out frock? It will be new for the early autumn."

Cleopatra gasped, and Mrs. Delarayne gave her a glance full of meaning.

"You see," Leonetta pursued, "it will be the best of the lot, won't it?"

Mrs. Delarayne drew Leonetta towards her with an affectionate gesture, and smiled in that ingratiating manner so necessary to timidity in distress.

"But I didn't know you were to come out this autumn," she protested lamely, not daring to look at Cleopatra, whose attitude she only too shrewdly divined.

"It's ridiculous," Cleopatra exclaimed; "I didn't come out until I was eighteen. You know, Edith, you and father wouldn't hear of making it a moment sooner."

"Yes, but things are a little different now," Leonetta interposed.

"It would be unfair, grossly unfair, Edith," Cleopatra protested, "if you let her come out earlier than I did. Particularly as I did my best to make you and father let me, and you both absolutely refused."

Leonetta was now gently stroking her mother's hair. She would not trust her eyes to look at her sister.

"Well, Peachy," she said, "surely you can't make a fuss about six months, whatever you say, Cleo. After all, I'll be seventeen and a half."

"Any way," Cleopatra snapped, "it won't be right."

"But what can it matter to you?" the younger girl demanded, glaring not too amiably at her sister.

Cleopatra's face coloured a little at this question.

"Oh, nothing," she replied, and she moved towards the door. "I don't care what you do."

"Where are you going to, Cleo dear?" Mrs. Delarayne enquired in a voice fraught with all the sympathy she could not openly express.

"I'm going out to get a breath of air," replied Cleopatra without turning her head; and she swept out of the room, performing as she went those peculiar oscillations of the upper part of her body, which are not unusually adopted by young women who are very much upon their dignity when they retire. The oscillations in question consist in curving the body sideways over small obstacles, such as chairs and tables, at the moment of passing them, as if with an exaggerated effort to combine the utmost care with the utmost rapidity of movement.

Mrs. Delarayne rose and went sadly to the window. Her eyes, full of self-pity, gazed with unwonted indifference at the passers-by. How thankful she would have been to have Mr. Delarayne at her side at this critical moment in her life. There were times when she was not unappreciative of the many advantages of widowhood; but this was not precisely the moment when the bright side of her peculiar situation seemed to be conspicuous. With Leonetta home for good, and Cleo still unmarried, she felt the need of help and advice; and it was significant that, as she became more and more aware of the practical usefulness that the late Mr. Delarayne might have had at this juncture, her thoughts turned rather to Lord Henry than to Sir Joseph Bullion.

She must speak to Lord Henry. He would know how to direct her.

A sound in the room disturbed her meditations. Leonetta, having concluded a further examination of the Paris fashions, had tossed the paper on to the table.

"Peachy darling," she began, with slow deliberation. "May I have a friend to stay with me?"

Mrs. Delarayne continued to gaze into the street. She did not like being called Peachy. She had an indistinct feeling that it sounded vulgar,—why she would have been unable to explain. Nevertheless, since anything was preferable to being called "Mother" at the top of Leonetta's strident soprano in the public highway, and for some reason or other Leonetta would not make use of the name "Edith," she felt that it would perhaps be diplomatic to say nothing.

"Who is she?" she enquired cautiously.

Leonetta was silent for a moment. It was not the question, but the caution that dictated it, that struck the girl as strange.

"Isn't it enough that she is a friend of mine?" she observed.

"Quite, of course!" Mrs. Delarayne hastened to reply. "I only meant,—what is her name, who are her people?"

"Vanessa Vollenberg," answered Leonetta.

"It sounds foreign," was the mother's quiet comment.

"As a matter of fact, it is."

"It sounds a little Jewish."

"She is a Jewess," Leonetta admitted.

Mrs. Delarayne purred approvingly over her remarkable display of insight.

"She's very beautiful and wonderfully clever," Leonetta pursued.

"How old?"

"A year older than I am,—eighteen and a half."

"Jewesses are always pretty at that age," Mrs. Delarayne muttered, glancing at her daughter furtively for a moment.

"Oh yes, I know," Leonetta replied with unexpected warmth; "and they fade quickly afterwards. That's what everybody says."

It was clear that for some obscure reasons, she was very much attached to Vanessa Vollenberg.

"But Mrs. Vollenberg," she continued, "is the most beautiful woman in the world. She has been painted by every great artist in Europe. So she can't have faded much."

"How long do you want Vanessa to stay?"

Leonetta suggested that her friend might go to Brineweald with them for a fortnight; Mrs. Delarayne said that it might be three weeks if she chose, and the girl bounded towards her mother and embraced her.

"Oh Peachy, my own Peachy,—that is sweet of you," she exclaimed, "you are forgiven for not coming to the Claude hag to-morrow."

One of the points in Cleopatra's nature that greatly endeared her to her parent, was that she scarcely ever kissed, and when she did so, it was delicately, with a respectful consideration for her mother's facial toilet. Moreover, she never, in any circumstances, disarranged her mother's hair.

"Are they well off?" Mrs. Delarayne asked, easing a ringlet of hair tenderly back into its position near her ear.

"If you mean the Vollenbergs," Leonetta answered, "they're as rich as you and Sir Joseph knocked into one."

Her mother protested.

"Oh, very well. He owns a whole quarter of Hull, and has a West Indian Copra business into the bargain."

Leonetta did not know what "copra" was, but she thought it sounded sufficiently like a precious metal to suggest immense wealth.

Later in the evening, Mrs. Delarayne and Cleopatra were alone in the former's bedroom.

"I have a feeling," Cleopatra was saying, "that I don't love Denis sufficiently to go mad about him. You know what I mean: he may be the best specimen of manhood who has ever crossed this threshold, but he does not electrify me."

"That's very sound," her mother rejoined with unusual emphasis. "There's no need to be electrified by the man one marries."

"Yes, but I feel that one ought,—I mean that seeing that I could,—you know,—if one is going to be something to a man, one feels that one would like to be electrified by him."

Mrs. Delarayne deposited her voluminous transformation lovingly upon the dressing-table,—Cleo was such an intimate friend!

"Rubbish!" she ejaculated. "Romantic rubbish! How often have I told you girls that provided a man can keep you in comfort and has a clean sweet mouth, it doesn't matter a rap about anything else. Even if he has dirty hands and finger-nails in addition, it doesn't signify;—there's the English Channel and the Atlantic close by to wash them in. But if he hasn't a clean, sweet mouth, a second deluge wouldn't wash it for him. How can you attach so much importance to trifles, when in Denis you have the two first prerequisites in an eminent degree? You are romantic, my dear Cleo. And matrimony is a matter of flesh and blood. When the demands of these are properly attended to, I assure you the rest is mere foolishness. Denis can keep you in comfort, and he has the teeth of an African negro. What more can you want? You cannot go on losing chance after chance through these romantic notions."

"But surely," Cleo objected hopelessly, "a man ought to fire you with something more exciting than the consideration of his means and his dentition!"

"In our class," Mrs. Delarayne rejoined with gravity, "men no longer set fire to anything. Get that out of your mind at once. Modern English civilisation has entirely failed to produce men who can be at once gentlemen and fiery lovers. We have wanted things both ways, and that is why we have failed. We have wanted nice clean-minded men with whom we could walk, talk, and play games freely. But that means men who can exercise self-control. Now, of course, we are certainly free to enjoy men as safe playmates all through our youth; but we are, I'm afraid, also free to be bored with them as husbands for the rest of our lives."



CHAPTER VI

There are many people who would have considered Mrs. Delarayne a selfish mother. Despite the fact that no man, woman, or child has ever yet been known to perform an unselfish action, the superstition still holds ground, that "selfish" and "unselfish" are two different and possible descriptions of human life and action. Believing, as we do, however, that no intellectually honest man can any longer attach any significance to these words, it cannot be admitted in these pages that Mrs. Delarayne was selfish. Neither was she at all conscious of any evil impulses when, standing at the dining-room window on her "Inner Light" afternoon, she watched her two children leave the house on their way to the "Claude hag," as Leonetta called the lady. On the contrary, she felt wonderfully free, exceptionally happy, profoundly relieved. The big house was silent. She was alone. She even had to suppress the half-formed longing that it might always be so.

She knew that Cleopatra felt no deep sympathy with any part of the "Inner Light" doctrine, and she was convinced, before enquiring, that Leonetta would sympathise with it even less. Although, therefore, she expected a number of young men that afternoon,—Lord Henry, St. Maur, and Malster, among them,—who might have interested her daughters, she was not in the least conscious of having acted with deliberate hostility in arranging so neatly that they should be out of the house when these gentlemen came.

To explain precisely what the "Inner Light" meetings meant to Mrs. Delarayne would entail such a long discussion of the relation of women's religiosity in general to sex and to self-deception, that it would require almost the compass of another independent treatise to deal with it adequately.

In a word Mrs. Delarayne suffered, as a large number of modern women suffer, from receiving no sure and reliable guidance from men. As a widow this was, of course, incidental to her position; but she knew well enough that there were thousands who still had their husbands, who were no better off than she was. In addition to this, she had succumbed to the influence of that absurd belief, so prevalent in cultivated circles, that typical modern thought is superior to Christianity.

She felt the ease and peace of mind that resulted from having a belief of some sort; but she would have regarded it as a surrender of principle to return to Christianity; and, far from suspecting that most modern thought, as manifested in the doctrine of the "Inner Light," for instance, or Theosophy, or Christian Science, is inferior to Christianity, she had become a member of the Inner Light, and paid its heavy entrance fee of fifty guineas, with a feeling of deep pride and satisfaction.

The doctrine of the Inner Light was an importation from America. It had been introduced into England by a very intelligent, very tall, but very delicate looking Virginian lady, about fifteen years before this story opens. It had not spread very much, it is true,—its total number of members in Great Britain amounted only to two thousand five hundred; but it was all the more select on that account, and it was guaranteed by its founders and by all who belonged to it, to be entirely free from those "regrettable remnants of superstition which so very much marred the beauty of the older religions."

It professed to recognise only one purifying and creative agent in life, and that was Light. "The world was all darkness and death," said the first prophet of the "Inner Light,"—an American named Adolf Albernspiel, who had died worth half a million dollars,—"and then Light appeared, and with it Life and the great lucid Powers: Thought, Spirit, Order."

It was so obviously superior to Christianity, it commended itself so cogently to the meanest intelligence, that the members of the "Inner Light," try how they might to exercise the tolerance which is universal to-day, could hardly refrain from a mild consciousness of superiority when they looked down upon other creeds.

Thus the priests of the Order were not called "Fathers" or "Brethren," which implied a false anthropomorphic relationship to a supreme parent "God"; they were simply "Incandescents":—Incandescent Bernard, Incandescent Margaret, Incandescent Mansel, and so on. Again, in allowing women to officiate at the altar of the Supreme Incandescence, the doctrine of the Inner Light rose superior to Christianity. "Owing to Judaic tradition and influence," as his Incandescence Albernspiel had truly pointed out, "the Christian Church had never enjoyed the eminent advantage of women's ministration. Even the Greeks had been wiser than this. And thus much of an essential character in all true religion had always been absent from Christianity, owing to this proscription of feminine influence." (The Doctrine of the Inner Light, Vol. II., p. 1303.)

There was only one Temple in England, at which all the faithful met once a year, and that was at Liverpool. It was hoped that other churches would be built sooner or later in other big centres, but meanwhile,—that is to say, pending the collecting of the necessary building fund,—all the faithful outside Liverpool were recommended to meet once a month at each other's houses, where one of the Incandescents would hold a service.

The Incandescent for London was a pale and feverish looking little man, Gerald Tribe by name, with false teeth and large, bony red hands, who lived as a sort of non-paying guest at the house of Miss Mallowcoid, Mrs. Delarayne's elder sister, at Hampstead. It was a perfectly orderly arrangement, because, apart from the fact that he had his young wife with him, he was in any case such a learned and pure-minded young man, that, as Miss Mallowcoid declared, even if he had not been married, she would have regarded it as a privilege to live under the same roof with him. She admitted, of course, that his wife was so far beneath him as to present an almost insufferable objection to the arrangement; but Miss Mallowcoid regarded this creature as the trial and chastisement sent by the supreme Incandescence, to bring both her own and Gerald Tribe's inner light to ever greater prodigies of brilliance and power.

Miss Mallowcoid, who had been responsible for her sister, Mrs. Delarayne's conversion to the Inner Light, was expected that afternoon, as were also Sir Joseph Bullion, and all the London faithful. Lord Henry had also reluctantly agreed to attend this one meeting after months of persuasion from Mrs. Delarayne.

If Mrs. Delarayne had been asked why she had joined the cult of the Inner Light, she would have probably replied that it was a simple doctrine. Light was the beginning, Light would be the end. Life on earth was simply the struggle of Light against Darkness. When you died, you became one with the Eternal Incandescence. Age, old age,—and this was the part that chiefly attracted Mrs. Delarayne,—was simply the fatigue incurred by battling with darkness. When Light prevailed, as it would in the other world, Age would pass away, and everybody would remain eternally youthful.

Thus, far from feeling selfish or unselfish, Mrs. Delarayne was conscious only of a sensation of supreme elation, as she watched her daughters leave the house on that afternoon in July. She was even able to contemplate their unusual beauty, which would have made them a credit to any family, with unmixed feelings of pride as they walked down the square, and she smiled as she noticed the eagerness with which Leonetta strode ahead, just about half a pace in front of her sister. When she turned away from the window, therefore, and once again surveyed the large stately dining-room, with its row upon row of chairs all ready for the meeting, she was conscious only of feeling supremely happy and above all secure.

Lord Henry was to come at last. For months, in fact ever since her first initiation into the Order, she had implored him to attend a meeting, and now that her will had prevailed she felt confident that once he saw with his own eyes the large number of distinguished people gathered that day under her roof—all followers and devotees of the Inner Light,—he would be forced to acknowledge that there was a good deal in it.

Among the first arrivals was Sir Lionel Borridge, the inventor of the most up-to-date calculating machine, and a mathematician of renown. He had a conical brow like a beautifully polished knee, and very sad eyes which seemed to proclaim to the world that the study of mathematics was, on the whole, a most harrowing occupation. With him came his aged wife and spinster daughter. Both appeared to be over fifty, and, like the head of their household, also deeply depressed by mathematics. These three, looking so learned, looking so miserable with learning, were surely the best evidence that could be advanced in support of the truth of the Inner Light; for they were all convinced adherents of the Order. Sir Joseph arrived punctually at three, the hour appointed for the meeting. With him came Malster, and one of the junior secretaries of Bullion Ltd., a certain Guy Tyrrell. Lord Henry and St. Maur came a minute after time, and were followed by a phalanx of ladies of uncertain age, with their Poms, their Pekinese, their Yorkshire and their toy terriers.

Mrs. Delarayne's dining-room was filling rapidly. A buzz of conversation, accompanied by the shuffling of the latest arrivals' feet, began to pervade the large room, and necks were craned in tense expectation of celebrities.

The philocanine Palmer was entrusted with the care of the legion of lap dogs out in the garden,—for the religious meeting could not admit even the most docile pet animal; and the sound of their spiteful yappings could be heard through the open windows at the back of the room.

"You know, my dear," said Lady Muriel Bellington, who had brought her Mexican hairless, "of course he is very, very naughty. And it's very tiresome. But they are so minute, one couldn't beat them. It would be really too too!"

Lady fflote, already purple with the heat, went almost black at the suggestion of beating the Mexican hairless.

"Beat them!" she ejaculated. "Oh that would be very wrong. Oh no, you couldn't bully them. Better far let them tyrannise over you. I should never forgive myself."

In another part of the room Sir Lionel Borridge was leaning across Mrs. Gerald Tribe, the delicate and emaciated wife of the Incandescent Gerald Tribe, to address a word to Miss Mallowcoid.

"I think it possible, you know," he said very gravely, and looking the image of the most unconquerable woe, "that I may be able to give our minister certain mathematical facts, which I feel convinced are all in support of the doctrine of the Inner Light. I was working at them with my daughter last night,—the results are simply astounding—astounding, that's the only word."

Miss Mallowcoid ejaculated, "Really! Really!" in a hushed, awed voice, and then quickly proceeded to communicate the thrilling intelligence to her right hand neighbour, who marvelled as reverently and as inaudibly as she had done.

Sir Joseph, feeling a little bewildered, was asking Guy Tyrrell a string of questions which this young man was quite unqualified to answer, and both looked and felt extremely uncomfortable.

Lord Henry, who was seated in the second row from the front, between Denis Malster and St. Maur, glanced round at the crowd behind him, and frowned darkly.

"I think, you know, Lord Henry," said Denis Malster, noticing the young nobleman's expression of angry scorn, "you do not allow sufficiently for the fact that all of us have a subconscious inkling of the supernatural behind phenomena, and these attempts on the part of the followers of the Inner Light, of the Theosophists, or the Spiritualists, to realise the nature of this supernatural basis to the material and visible world, are all proofs of this subconscious inkling."

"I don't think," Lord Henry replied, "that you are sufficiently inclined to allow for the fundamental fact, that mankind is very, very slow in dropping an old habit. We are now, thank goodness, witnessing the slow death agony of Christianity. These people here are among those who plume themselves on having abandoned Christian dogma. But deep down in their natures, there is not the inkling of the supernatural of which you speak, but simply the religious habit,—the habit of believing in something vague and indemonstrable, the habit of services and congregational worship. And while they are dropping away from the old Church in all directions, they simultaneously, from sheer habit, create new-fangled creeds very much more absurd than anything the Church ever taught, and not nearly so beautiful."

At this moment a hush suddenly fell upon the whole company, and Mrs. Delarayne, who by virtue of her role as hostess, was officiating as assistant to the Incandescent Gerald that afternoon, entered the room by a small door at the back, followed by the minister.

Everyone stood up, and Lord Henry noticed that the venerable bald head of Sir Lionel Borridge was bowed in humble reverence.

The service lasted about three quarters of an hour; even Sir Joseph Bullion, who, as the latest of the elect, was the new broom of the afternoon, was seen to gape once during the course of it; and when it was over and a sort of blessing had been pronounced by the minister, the whole company filed out of the dining-room into the library for refreshment and also for the discussion of the meeting.

Everyone seemed intent upon reaching Mrs. Delarayne, and among those who struggled most to achieve this end was Sir Joseph Bullion. Congratulations were being pronounced on all sides. "How well she had read the Articles of Faith!" "How clearly she had announced the hymns!" "How cool and collected she was, and yet how reverent!"

Gradually the throng pressed less thickly about her, and Sir Joseph reached his idol.

"Wonderful, Edith,—wonderful!" he whispered. "And what a beautiful impressive service!"

Mrs. Delarayne grasped his hand, and even nodded, but her eyes were busy elsewhere. She was watching the movements of Lord Henry, who had not yet spoken to her, and who, apparently in animated conversation with Sir Lionel Borridge, had hitherto held himself aloof.

"You wouldn't remember, of course," Sir Joseph pursued, "the arrival of Baroness Puckha Bilj in London in the late eighties, with her doctrine of 'Self-Exteriorisation.' The Inner Light reminds me somewhat of that. We were her bankers. She was most successful."

"Your husband surpassed himself, Mrs. Tribe," said Denis Malster to the emaciated wife of the Incandescent Gerald. Denis felt extremely superior behind his solid Anglican Protestant entrenchments, and thought that he could afford to be generous and even patronising to the members of a struggling creed.

"Of course, Baroness Puckha Bilj had not your advantages," continued the undaunted Sir Joseph. "She was already advanced in years when she left Hungary."

"Have some cake?" said Mrs. Delarayne.

"I admit," Lord Henry was saying, "that a new religion is perhaps the most urgent need of modern times; but then this Age is scarcely great enough to make it."

"Come, come!" exclaimed Sir Lionel gruffly, his melancholy eyes closing heavily as he spoke, "you are a little hard surely. Is not this your first attendance here? I don't seem to remember having seen you amongst us before."

Lord Henry apologised and turned away. He had noticed his hostess's eye upon him, and he hastened towards her.

"Sir Lionel's conversation seems to have been singularly engrossing," remarked Mrs. Delarayne as he approached.

"It always amazes me," declared the young nobleman with laughter in his eyes, "how the men of the so-called 'exact sciences' become involved in our new emergency substitutes for a great Faith."

Mrs. Delarayne purred with a slightly treble note of dissent.

"Why not?" Sir Joseph demanded.

"I suppose it is the refuge of the mind that deals only with precise and exact terms and rules, to plunge into the opposite extreme,—into blue mistiness for instance. Or is it perhaps the fact that mathematicians and physicists deal very largely with symbols, with abstractions as opposed to realities, and that they therefore easily fall a prey to this sort of thing?"

Sir Joseph shrugged his shoulders and tried hard to look wise.

"The worst of it is," Lord Henry pursued, "the adherence of a man like Borridge, makes lesser men imagine that the creed to which he lends his support, must have something in it."

Mrs. Delarayne contented herself with pouting, and casting a glance full of distress signals at Sir Joseph.

But Sir Joseph appeared not to notice, and taking unnecessarily large bites at a piece of cake he held, was evidently hoping to convey the impression that a sudden and inconvenient access of appetite prevented his opposing Lord Henry as violently as he might otherwise have done on the subject of the Inner Light.

The occupants of the room were beginning to revolve in that purposeful manner which augurs of leave-taking. People came up to shake hands with their hostess, and gradually the library emptied. Only Denis Malster, St. Maur, Sir Joseph, and Lord Henry remained.

Their hostess fidgeted uneasily. She wished to be alone with Lord Henry. Gradually the others understood, and ultimately took their leave.

"Now quickly, explain to me," Lord Henry began severely, "why you have anything to do with this arrant nonsense. Surely it would be more dignified, more sensible to be a Christian again, than to lend your support to this inferior modern bunkum?"

Mrs. Delarayne, with her elbow on the mantelpiece and her chin in her hand, stood sulking and was mute.

"Good Heavens! The Inner Light!" He strode towards her. "Promise me you'll give it up," he said.

"What for?"

That was her position. What for? What did he propose to offer in compensation? His protection? His devotion? His love? Then the sacrifice might be worth while. She bowed her head and smiled icily. She adored this young man. This was the last weapon she believed she could still wield against him. She was aware, perhaps, that the Inner Light was all nonsense. The fact that he said it was made it abundantly probable to her. But was it possible that the Inner Light might afford her a means of bringing their relationship to its desired conclusion?

"A supremely intelligent woman like you," Lord Henry continued, "—really! And the Incandescent Gerald! And hymn number 27——!"

"You may scoff," said the poor lady, feeling uncommonly hot, "but it all means something to me."

"That is not true!" Lord Henry exclaimed. "You know it's not true. Oh, and Lady fflote, and Lady Muriel. And Adolf Albernspiel—God!"

"Are you still determined to go to China?" Mrs. Delarayne demanded, her voice faltering a little.

"As firmly as ever."

"Well, don't let us quarrel then," she said. "The time is short enough."

"Lord Henry," she began hesitatingly, as she pulled a marguerite to pieces over the fender. "I asked you to stay for a few minutes because I wanted to consult you on a very delicate matter."

He sat down facing her, and began to tug at the mesh over his brow. He frowned and blinked rapidly, as was his wont when interested. He wondered whether this charming and unhappy creature realised how thoroughly he understood her.

"You know Leonetta is home again," Mrs. Delarayne continued.

Lord Henry nodded.

"She is rather difficult to manage."

He nodded again.

"She is so full of life, so eager, so—well, can you imagine me at seventeen? Can you picture the mercurial creature I was, with every sense agog, with every nerve on the qui vive?—a dreadful little person in every way."

Lord Henry chuckled, and gave his forelock one or two unusually rapid twists.

"Leonetta is if anything worse than I was," Mrs. Delarayne continued, "for she is of this century. I belonged to the last one. D'you understand?"

He bowed.

"She is vitality incarnate,—wilful, womanly, vain, beautiful,—not more beautiful than Cleopatra, but more intrepid, more inquisitive, more determined to live than her elder sister."

"Have you a photograph of her?" Lord Henry enquired.

Mrs. Delarayne darted across the room, and returned with a large framed photograph which she handed to her visitor.

"There's the latest. It was taken a month ago."

Lord Henry examined it closely.

"Yes," he said, with his customary gravity in dealing with interesting questions. "I see. I see now. Well?"

"Can you see the girl she is? Daring,—oh, and can I say it?"

Lord Henry looked up and blinked rapidly again.

"A little—a little——"

"A little inclined to temperamental precocity?" Lord Henry enquired.

Mrs. Delarayne, very much relieved, nodded quickly.

"That's exactly it,—that's just what I meant to say,—that's it precisely. Oh how accurately that describes her!"

The elegant widow was uncommonly agitated and anxious. Lord Henry noted her state of mind, and wondered what it signified.

"I feel—people tell me,—I feel I ought perhaps to tell Leonetta——"

"You are wondering," Lord Henry interrupted, hoping to help her, "whether it is your duty to enlighten the child at all concerning——"

She sat down beside him. "Yes, I am," she said quickly.

"Has she asked any questions?" Lord Henry demanded, allowing his hand for a moment to hang motionless from his mesh of hair and glancing up at the cornice.

"No, I scarcely expect that," Mrs. Delarayne replied. "But in case. You see Cleopatra was so different. I never had any difficulty with her. Her reserve was always so rigid, I would have trusted her as a cantiniere in a barracks of Zouaves. I never spoke a word about anything to Cleopatra. But Leonetta!"

"Yes, I see. You think Leonetta different?"

"What ought I to do? Do help me! Some say this and some say that. Some say that a mother should speak; some say that they never did, and they don't see why I should. My sister, Miss Mallowcoid, you know, says I ought to."

Lord Henry gave vent to an expletive of contempt.

"I'll do what you say;—only what you say," said the harassed matron, resting a hand on his.

"You should begin, my dear lady," Lord Henry replied, "by utterly distrusting all the nonsense the modern world says on this subject."

"But I do,—I don't! I mean, I pay no heed to what anybody says but you."

A shadow from the Inner Light passed across Lord Henry's mind; but that, he rightly imagined, was the widow's last little fortress against him.

"The bond that unites parent to child is a very precious one," Lord Henry continued. "It is, however, as brittle as it is precious. A trifle will snap it. Now there is one aspect of the relationship between parent and child, the physical aspect, the physical relation, which lies beneath a sort of sacred seal: it is deliberately never fully realised; it does not require to be fully realised, particularly by the child——"

Mrs. Delarayne nodded quickly and smiled.

"Think of the havoc you may create, through yourself breaking this seal by calling this delicate aspect into prominence, by discussing with your child all those matters which, as between you and her, by virtue of your relationship, are a closed book!"

"Yes, I see, I see," cried the widow quickly. "My feelings, my instincts, were always against it from the very start, and I see now that I was right."

"The modern world is immensely stupid; few of us know how immensely stupid it is. Everything that modern thought expresses, on this subject, particularly, you must feel sure therefore is utterly and radically absurd. You cannot afford to weaken the precious bond that unites you to your children; therefore do not attempt this business."

"Yes, I see. Yes, you are right. I feel you are right."

"It can only lead to the most acute embarrassment as between parent and child,—however well it is done;—and you would do it admirably, I know. Unfortunately, when one is embarrassed one is not at one's best for understanding. Consequently the whole proceeding, besides being dangerous, would be utterly futile."

Mrs. Delarayne pressed his hand. "It is at times like these," she burst out a little tearfully, "that I think of you going to China, and all that."

He rose.

"One minute," she said, turning eyes glistening with tears pleadingly upon him. "You have not told me what to do."

"The natural and proper thing," he replied, "is to keep her well in hand and then to trust her to her husband. The good husband is the best hierophant."

"Yes, I understand," said Mrs. Delarayne rising also.

"They master these things better on the Continent than we do in England," Lord Henry continued. "The young girl is carefully supervised, scrupulously watched, and a good husband is entrusted with the rest. That is by far the best."

"Yes," Mrs. Delarayne exclaimed, laughing in her old way for the first time that afternoon, "but then, you see, they happen to have the Continental husband to whom they can entrust the matter."

"True," Lord Henry replied. "Never mind. We must try to find her someone who is as like a Continental husband as possible."

"St. Maur is a most fascinating boy," Mrs. Delarayne observed.

"Ah—hands off Aubrey, at least for the present. He's not ripe yet," said Lord Henry; and in a moment he was gone.



CHAPTER VII

A day or two later,—that is to say on the Saturday before Sir Joseph's evening At Home in honour of Leonetta's homecoming,—Mrs. Delarayne herself gave a dinner party, to which a few of her more intimate friends were invited. Sir Joseph, of course, was among the guests, as were also Denis and Guy Tyrrell. For some reason, into which she made no effort to enquire, however, Mrs. Delarayne did not ask Lord Henry.

On the afternoon of the day in question, Leonetta, after her tea, ensconced herself in the library and wrote the following letter to her friend, Vanessa Vollenberg:

"My Sweetheart,

"It is Saturday and we are having a dinner party this evening, and I'm feeling awfully excited. Things are particularly slow here on the whole. I have scarcely spoken to a man since I addressed my porter at King's Cross four days ago. Isn't it rank? What mother and my sister Cleo do with their men I can't imagine, unless they think they are better out of harm's way. I know they know heaps of men.

"By the way, talking of keeping out of harm's way, you remember you used to tell me at school that if I looked long enough at a young man with my dark eyes he would get sunburnt,—well, the day before yesterday a very funny thing happened. I was in the train with poor old Cleo (she's grown a most appalling old maid, by-the-bye), and there was a young man opposite who really looked a most awful devil. You know, he had those wicked eyes that go up at their outside corners like tigers'. He was heavenly. I simply couldn't take my eyes off him, and he kept looking at me. Cleo said very stuffily (she's always stuffy with me), 'Don't stare!' and he must have overheard, because he turned away, and there was a most devilish curl on his lips. If we hadn't got out at the next station, I'm sure we should have ended by smiling at each other quite openly. You know, he was one of the sort who one guesses has got good teeth before they even open their mouths.

"Some men are coming this evening, thank God! But what they'll be like Heaven alone knows! I have hopes though, because mother always did have a sweet tooth for rather nice men, you see father was tremendously attractive. But what poor Auntie Cleo's choice will be I daren't think. One of the men is supposed to be earmarked for her.

"Oh, and now listen. Peachy—that's my mother—insists upon your coming to our place at Brineweald for at least three weeks during the summer holidays. Oh, Nessy, my heart's love!—what a joy to see you again! So you will come, won't you? I told Peachy you could play a good game of tennis, and now she insists on your coming. So mind, no refusal. You must tell your dear mother she simply must spare you, and there's an end of it.

"Thank you a billion trillion times for your absolutely divine letter. But I cannot write about all you say, I'm too excited as it is. When can you come? Then we can talk. Oh for another long talk with my wise and wicked Nessy.

"Now listen! We leave for Brineweald in about ten days. Can you join us in about a fortnight from now? We might have gone at once, but I must have some clothes. And it seems to me that it will take all my time to get them before we start.

"Oh, and now another thing (and this is very, very secret, so secret that you must swear you'll tear up this letter at once, the moment you have read it). You remember you and the other girls used to laugh at me at school about my brown neck and my brown eyelids, and my brownish knuckles. You used to chaff me and tell me it was because I hadn't washed. Well, you were all wrong, and I told you at the time you were all wrong. I have just been reading a most interesting book, all about these things (but you must never let Peachy know about it, as it is one of father's and I have been reading it on the sly). Remember you've sworn to tear this letter up. In any case it explains all about my brown neck and my brown eyelids and knuckles. It calls it 'Pigmentation'—the 'pigmentation of the mature virgin.' Isn't it interesting? So you see it was quite natural; and I can't help it; on the contrary it shows I am very vigorous. So you were all wrong—even Miss Butterworth who said I was afraid of cold water.

"But I'll forgive everything to my sweet Nessy if only, if only she will come to the bosom of her love at Brineweald.

"With crates of kisses,

"Yours ever,

"LEO."

"P.S. Excuse this short scribble. I must go to dress. Tell Charlie that if he has not kissed that horrid Dewlap girl yet, I send him a nice long kiss. By-the-bye, he's such a blind fool, he won't have noticed she bites her nails. Do tell him!

"Yours LEO."

This letter written, sealed, and stamped, Leonetta put on a tam-o'-shanter, and ran to the post with it; whereupon hurrying upstairs, she burst violently into her mother's bedroom, to announce what she had done. It was half-past six and her mother was dressing.

Now Mrs. Delarayne's toilet, as may be imagined, was an unusually elaborate and skilful business. Every corner of her large bedroom seemed to offer its contribution towards the final effect. The bed, the chairs, and even the mantelpiece participated in the process, while cupboard and wardrobe doors stood ominously open.

Mrs. Delarayne's maid Wilmott,—silent, grave, preoccupied and efficient,—moved hither and thither, calmly but quickly, her head discreetly bowed, her voice more subdued than at ordinary times, as if she were officiating at a rite; and gradually, very gradually, the business proceeded.

Facing a corner of the bedroom, with a large window to her left, Mrs. Delarayne sat before her dressing-table, upon which, towering above the forest of bottles, brushes, boxes, and other paraphernalia, stood a large triple mirror, which enabled the elegant widow to get three different aspects of her handsome face at the same time.

The expression upon Mrs. Delarayne's face when she peered into this formidable reflector of her own image was scarcely self-complacent or serene. It was rather studious, anxious, critical, almost fierce, like that one would expect to find on the face of an ancient alchemist contemplating an alembic of precious compounds. Year in, year out, ever since her gradually waning youth had begun to add ever fresh complications to her once rapid and easy toilet, Mrs. Delarayne had faced herself with this determined and defiant expression on her features, resolved to overcome every difficulty and every undesirable innovation of time. Slowly the complex equipment had grown up. Now it was so extensive, that it required all the dexterity and knowledge that habit alone can impart, in order to master and understand its multitudinous intricacies.

In this mirror, then, when her expression was at its fiercest in intentness and concentration, she saw her daughter enter the room behind her, and for an instant a spasmodic frown darkened her already lowering brow.

"I cannot see you now, you know that, Leo darling," she hastened to exclaim as sweetly as possible, while her daughter was still on the threshold.

"All right, Peachy,—I shan't keep you a moment."

A slight flush crept up the mother's neck just below her ears,—this was a thing Cleo had too much delicacy to do. Cleo never disturbed her while she was dressing,—and she straightway stopped all operations and laid her hands resignedly in her lap.

"Well, be quick," she said, with ill-concealed irritation. "What is it?"

In the glass she could see her daughter's quick and intelligent eyes wandering all about her with the deepest interest, and resting here and there as if more than usually absorbed, and she frowned again.

Meanwhile, Leonetta, who had not seen her mother's bedroom, particularly the dressing-table, at such a busy crisis for many years, and who, when she had seen it in the past had been too young to grasp its full meaning, was too eagerly engaged scanning its imposing array of creams, scents, powders, oils, salves, cosmetics, tresses of hair, and other "aids," to be able to remember what she had come for, and simply stood there like one fascinated and spellbound.

"Quick, child! can't you see you're wasting my time?" her mother ejaculated irascibly. "Besides, you've got to get dressed too!"

This was an unfortunate remark. It brought out more vividly than was necessary, the immense contrast between her own and her daughter's toilet, and before she had time to think, Leonetta had replied.

"Oh, I've got heaps of time. It doesn't take me a moment. I'll race you easily, even now."

Then a thought entered Leonetta's mind, which, to her credit be it said, she resisted at first, but which was too overpowering to be completely banished. It struck her for a moment that there was something faintly comical, almost pathetically ridiculous, in this elderly matron taking such laborious and elaborate pains to make herself attractive. Try as she might, Leonetta, from her angle of vision of seventeen years, could not repress the question: "What was it all for? What was the good of it all? Who could possibly care? Was the end commensurate with the exhaustive and exhausting means?" As the fierce light from the window beat down upon her mother's face, it seemed so old, so wondrously old, that all the formidable machinery of beautification about the room struck a chord of compassion in the flapper's breast, which was, however, at once compounded with humour in her mind. And then she could control herself no longer, and was forced to smile,—one of those broad mirthful smiles that are parlously near a laugh. Feeling, however, that her mood was one of derision, she turned quickly aside,—but not soon enough successfully to evade her mother's observant scrutiny.

Mrs. Delarayne was too well aware of the awkward possibilities of the situation, and moreover too acutely sensitive generally, to be in any doubt as to the meaning of her younger daughter's amusement, and the flush beneath her ears spread to her cheeks. Simultaneously, however, her handsome face seemed suddenly to grow wonderfully stern and composed, and her eyes flashed with the fire which every woman seems to hold in reserve for an anti-feminine attack.

"Wilmott," she said quietly, "will you leave the room a moment? I'll ring when I want you."

Without even turning round to satisfy her curiosity, the well-trained servant dropped on to the corner of the bed the things she held in her hands, and was gone.

For some unaccountable reason Leonetta at the same time felt a tremor of apprehension pass slowly over her, and her hands grew icily cold. She could feel her mother's masterful will in the atmosphere of the room, and glancing tremulously askance at the widow's unfinished coiffure, every line of which seemed crisp with power, walked over to the hearth-rug.

Mrs. Delarayne's redness had now vanished. She was if anything a little pale, and she turned to face her daughter.

"I am not angry, Leo," she began with terrifying suavity, "but I felt I really could not explain all these things to you,"—she waved a hand over the mass of articles displayed on the dressing-table,— "in front of Wilmott. You see, servants have to take these things for granted without explanation."

Leonetta felt her ears beginning to burn furiously. Her mother could be terrible.

"Yes, you see now," continued the widow, "how worrying and how difficult are the means which I have to use to make myself presentable. Age is a tiresome thing, is it not? It is so much more simple when one is young."

The invincible "Warrior" smiled kindly, and saw that tears were gathering in her daughter's eyes.

"Would you perhaps like me to go through these things with you, and explain them to you one by one?" she continued. "I have had to learn it all myself. I might save you a good many pitfalls in the remote future."

Leonetta's throat was dry, and her lips were parched.

"No, thank you," she replied hoarsely, and she made quickly towards the door.

"You have not told me what you wanted to say," said her mother playfully.

"I'll tell you later on," rejoined the girl in broken tones.

"Then will you please ring for Wilmott?" said Mrs. Delarayne, turning calmly to face her mirror again.

And after savagely pressing the bell, the flapper vanished.

With her eyes blinded by stinging tears, and feeling very much more maddened by regret than by mortification, Leonetta fled to her room. She was not only staggered, she was also thoroughly ashamed. A boy suddenly butted by a lamb, which he had believed he might torment with impunity, could not have felt more astonished. A convert brought face to face with the livid wounds which, in her days of unbelief, she had inflicted upon a Christian martyr could not have felt more deeply dejected and penitent. Like a flash, an old emotion of childhood had filled her breast; an old emotion that seemed only to have gathered strength in the intervening years,—that blind, unthinking and dependent love of the infant for its mother.

Should she go back and throw herself at the wonderful woman's knees? Should she set out her plea for forgiveness in the folds of her mother's dress as she had done as a baby? No, Wilmott would be there,—Wilmott and everything besides! Moreover,—she looked in the glass,—her face was distraught, her ears flared, her eyes still smarted horribly. Even if Wilmott were dismissed as before, the girl would guess something.

Slowly she proceeded with her dressing, and, as she did so, a certain vague delicacy of feeling, a sort of secret reverence for her brave youth-loving mother downstairs, kept her from glancing too frequently in the glass. The contrast now, instead of elating her, simply accentuated her reminiscence of guilt. The very speed with which she adjusted her hair and made it "presentable," as her mother had expressed it, brought back the cruel memory of what had happened only a few minutes previously.

In being thus affected by Mrs. Delarayne's able and perfectly relentless handling of a difficult situation; in feeling her love for her mother intensified backwards, so to speak, to the degree it had attained in infancy, as the result of the incident, Leonetta showed not only that she was worthy of her incomparable mother, but also that she had survived less unimpaired, than some might have thought, the questionable blessings of a finishing education.

Mrs. Delarayne who, without being truculently triumphant, was nevertheless mildly conscious of having scored a valuable and highly desirable point, repaired to the drawing-room twenty minutes later in a mood admirably suited to giving her guests a warm and hearty welcome.

Cleopatra was the first to join her. Each woman honestly thought that she had rarely seen the other look quite so beautiful, and the comments that were exchanged were as sincere as they were flattering.

Mrs. Delarayne was too loyal to betray one sister to the other, so she did not refer to the incident in her bedroom. Occasionally, however, thoughts of it would make her glance a little anxiously in the direction of the door, and as she did so, she fervently hoped that the lesson she had administered to her younger daughter had not been too severe.

"I wonder what Baby can be doing all this time!" Cleopatra exclaimed at last.

"I'll go and see, I think," said Mrs. Delarayne, lifting her dress just slightly in front, and making towards the door.

"No, Edith," her daughter exclaimed, rising quickly. "I'll go. I cannot have you making yourself hot by climbing all those stairs. Please let me go!"

Mrs. Delarayne's wiry arm braced itself as her hand clasped the handle of the door. "I think I'd better go," she replied.

For the first time Cleopatra began to suspect that something had happened. She knew the relations existing between Leonetta and her mother, but as the latter had always been so surprisingly patient and long-suffering, she was very far from suspecting what had actually occurred.

Their hesitation was cut short for them by the arrival of the first guest, Sir Joseph Bullion, who, a moment later, was followed by Denis Malster, Guy Tyrrell, Agatha Fearwell and her brother Stephen (friends of Cleopatra's), and Miss Mallowcoid.

The last to enter the drawing-room was Leonetta. She had evidently dreaded encountering her mother and sister alone, and she had purposely waited till she heard the guests arrive before coming down. Although to those who knew her there were certain unusual signs of demurity in her expression and demeanour in the early part of the evening, she presented a dramatically beautiful appearance, and the sober reserve of her mood if anything enhanced this effect, by lending it the additional charm of mystery and inscrutableness.

Cleopatra was a little puzzled. Never had she expected that Leo would behave in this way, particularly in the presence of young men, and her feeling towards her sister underwent a momentary revulsion. She noticed that Denis scarcely took his eyes off her sister; but she also observed that Leo hardly ever responded, and simply talked quietly and demurely on to Guy Tyrrell or Stephen Fearwell. She could not understand, nor did her deepest wishes allow her to suspect, that her sister's delightfully sober mood was only a transient one.

During the dinner a slight diversion was created by Leonetta's addressing her parent as "Mother." But the poor child was so confused when she realised what she had done, and particularly when she thought of why she had done it, that everybody except Miss Mallowcoid endeavoured to ease the situation by being tremendously voluble.

After what had occurred between herself and her mother, the cold and distant appellation "Edith" did not spring naturally or spontaneously to Leonetta's lips. On the other hand "Peachy" seemed to belong to another and previous existence. She did not wish her mother to suspect, however, that she had used the term "mother" with deliberate intent to annoy.

"That's right, my child," cried Miss Mallowcoid. "It is really refreshing to hear one of you girls, at least, addressing your mother in the usual and proper fashion!"

Leonetta with her cheeks ablaze, glared at her aunt menacingly.

"Well, I don't like it," she blurted out. "It was a slip of the tongue. Cleo and I much prefer the name Edith."

She spoke sharply and even rudely, seeing that it was her aunt she was addressing, but Mrs. Delarayne, who was beginning to understand the penitential spirit she was in, smiled kindly at her notwithstanding.

"I always look upon them as three sisters," Sir Joseph exclaimed somewhat laboriously, "whatever they call one another."

Miss Mallowcoid scoffed, and Mrs. Delarayne patted his hand persuasively. "You get on with your dinner," she said playfully.

Meanwhile Miss Mallowcoid had not taken her vindictive eyes off her younger niece, and the latter in sheer desperation plunged into an animated but very perfunctory conversation with her right-hand neighbour, Guy Tyrrell.

It is time that this young man should be described. He was the type usually called healthy and "clean-minded." He loved all sports and all kinds of exercise, particularly walking, and he could talk about these out-of-door occupations fairly amusingly. He was fair, blue-eyed, clean-shaven, and healthy-looking, and he believed in the possibility of being a "pal" to a girl,—particularly if she happened to be a flapper. His age was twenty-seven.

It is not generally understood what precisely is implied by the so-called healthy "clean-minded" unmarried Englishman of twenty-seven, or thereabouts. As a rule the epithet "clean-minded" sums up not merely a mental condition, but a method of life. It signifies that the young man to whom it may justly be applied is either a master, or at least a lover, of games, that his outlook is what is known as "breezy," that he observes the rules of cricket in every relation to his fellow creatures, and that he is capable of enduring defeat or success with the same impassable calm and good-nature. Now it would be absurd to deny that here we have a very imposing catalogue of highly desirable characteristics; it would, however, be equally absurd to claim that the person in whom they are all happily combined, necessarily displays, side by side with his mastery of games and his deep understanding of cricket in particular, that mastery or understanding of the mysteries of life, that virtuosity in the art of life, which would constitute him a desirable mate. There is a savoir faire, there are problems and intricacies in life, which no degree of familiarity with cricket, no vast fund of experience in the football field, can help a man to master; and it is even questionable whether a young man's ultimate destiny as a husband and a father, far from being assisted, is not even seriously complicated by the extent to which he must have specialised in games and sports in order to earn for himself the whiteflower of "clean-mindedness." It is the wives of such men who are in a position to throw the most light on this question. There is no doubt that they frequently have a tale to tell; but the best among them are naturally disinclined to admit the very serious reasons they may have for disliking the silver trophies that adorn their homes.

As the dinner wore on, animation waxed greater; Sir Joseph dropped an ever-increasing number of aspirates, and Leonetta was actually heard to laugh quite merrily.

Cleopatra still noticed that Denis was very much interested in her, and also observed that, from time to time, Leonetta now responded to his attentive scrutiny.

The conversation turned on gymnastics. Denis, Guy, and Leonetta all seemed to be talking at once; it was a subject that Cleopatra did not know much about.

"We always had three quarters of an hour's gym a day," said Leonetta, looking straight at Denis.

He laughed. "Oh, well," he exclaimed, "you have done me. I haven't touched parallel bars or a trapeze for ten years."

"Neither have I," Guy added.

Thereupon Leonetta allowed Guy to feel the muscles of her arm.

"Iron!" he ejaculated, while Cleopatra looked on with just a little surprise.

"You might at least say steel," she interjected, trying to sustain her role as one of the juveniles at table.

In the midst of a very prosy conversation with Sir Joseph and Miss Mallowcoid, Mrs. Delarayne found opportunities enough to watch the younger people, and she was not a little relieved to see the cloud gradually lifting from Leonetta's brow. She knew that in the circumstances she had not been too hard, and gathered from a hundred different signs that her relationship to her younger daughter had been materially improved by what had occurred.

Later on in the drawing-room, before the men arrived, however, Leonetta seemed to suffer a relapse into her former mood of excessive sobriety, and it was then that Miss Mallowcoid beckoned her niece to her.

"I think you were unnecessarily cross with me at dinner," Mrs. Delarayne overheard her sister saying.

Leonetta pouted, and with an air of utter indifference turned to Cleopatra.

"I think Guy Tyrrell rather tame, don't you? It was most awful uphill work talking to him all through dinner."

Cleopatra held up a finger admonishingly. "You seemed to be talking animatedly enough," she said.

"Yes," Leonetta began, "all about photography, walking tours, and things that don't matter—" Then she felt Miss Mallowcoid's huge cold hand on her arm.

"Leonetta dear, I said something to you a moment ago," lisped the elderly spinster. And again Mrs. Delarayne looked up to try to catch her daughter's reply.

"I'm sorry, Aunt Bella," said the girl, "but really one does not usually expect to be congratulated on a slip of the tongue, and your—" she burst out laughing.

Mrs. Delarayne thereupon resumed her conversation with Agatha Fearwell, as she was now satisfied that Leonetta was both thoroughly recovered and satisfactorily reformed.

"But I did not congratulate you, I—" her aunt persisted.

"Oh, well," Leonetta interrupted, "it really isn't worth discussing."

In any case it was not discussed, for at this juncture the men appeared.

They distributed themselves anything but haphazardly; Sir Joseph, for instance, seating himself by the side of his hostess; Denis Malster between Leonetta and her sister, and Guy and Stephen, as their diffidence suggested, as remotely as possible from the younger women of the party.

"Now, Leonetta," Sir Joseph began, "tell us something about your school life. You are the only one amongst us who has just come from a strange world."

Leonetta laughed. "Yes, a very strange world," she exclaimed.

Sir Joseph laughed too at what he conceived to be a most whimsical suggestion.

"And did you 'ave nice teachers?" he pursued.

"Miss Tomlinson, the history mistress was my favourite," replied the girl.

Denis remarked that he did not know they taught history at a school of Domesticity.

"Yes, you see," Leonetta replied, "the history of the subject. Cookery since the dawn of civilisation, or something desperate like that."

"Was she nice?" Sir Joseph enquired.

"I thought so," answered the girl, "though she wasn't beautiful. You know, she had that sort of very long chin that you feel you ought to shake hands with."

Sir Joseph laughed and made all kinds of grimaces at Mrs. Delarayne, intended to convey that Leonetta was indeed a chip of the old block.

"That's unkind," said Miss Mallowcoid.

Denis Malster threw out his legs and clasped his hands at the back of his head preparatory to making a speech.

"The heartlessness of flappers!" he murmured. "This is indeed a subject worthy of elaboration. Why is the flapper usually heartless?"

Mrs. Delarayne was quick to perceive the unpleasant possibilities of developing such a theme, particularly in view of what had happened earlier in the evening, and, seeking to save Leonetta's feelings, she valiantly tried to change the subject.

"Well, in any case," she said, addressing Leonetta, "you are none the worse for it, my dear. Two years ago you were such a tomboy you could scarcely get out of the door without chipping a piece off each hip; and now——"

"Yes, now she chips pieces off other people," interposed Miss Mallowcoid.

Leonetta, however, was not attending. Her eyes were for the moment fastened on Denis Malster. He had known how to say just the very thing to provoke her interest. He had as much as declared that she was heartless. He,—a man,—had said this. It was like a challenge. She, who felt all heart, or what the world calls "heart," was strangely moved. How could he say such a thing? This was the last remark she would have expected from any man. Her curiosity was kindled, and with it her vanity.

She noticed, as her sister had noticed before her, that he was efficient, well-groomed, smart of speech, passably good-looking, independent at least in bearing, hard, at least in appearance, and possessed of a certain gift of irony that could act like a lash.

She began to think more highly of him; in fact the recollection of his last remark actually piqued her now she thought of it again. At last, for sheer decency, she had to look away from him, and as she did so, she observed that Cleopatra averted her eyes from her.

There was a stir in the company. Agatha Fearwell was going to sing, and Miss Mallowcoid went to the piano.

The performance was not above the usual standard of such amateur efforts, and at the end of it the singer was vouchsafed the usual perfunctory plaudits.

Thereupon Sir Joseph requested a song from Cleopatra. This apparently necessitated a long search in the music cabinet during which all the young people rose from their seats. At last a song was found; it was a sort of French folk-song entitled Les Epouseuses du Berry.

As Cleopatra turned to join her aunt at the piano, however, a spectacle met her eyes which, innocent as it appeared, was nevertheless fatal to her composure.

Denis Malster and Leonetta, facing each other in a far corner of the room, with heads so close that they almost touched, and with hands tightly clasped, were playing the old, old game of trying the strength of each other's wrists, each endeavouring to force the other to kneel.

It was harmless enough,—simply one of those very transparent and very early attempts that are almost unconsciously made by two young people of opposite sexes, to become decently and interestingly in close touch with each other.

Cleopatra's first feeling was one of surprise at Leonetta's being so wonderfully resourceful in engaging the attention of men. When, however, she observed the details of the contest,—the closely gripped hands, the fingers intertwined, the palms now meeting, now parting, and the two smiling faces, Denis Malster's rather attractive figure, appearing to tremendous advantage now, she could not quite see why,—a feeling of uncontrollable alarm took possession of her, and she spread her music with some agitation before her aunt.

Miss Mallowcoid played the opening bars, and still the contest in the far corner did not stop. Denis was not even aware that she—Cleopatra—was about to sing.

At last Mrs. Delarayne, who had not been blind to what was taking place, felt she must interfere. Cleopatra's first note was already overdue.

"Leo, Leo, my dear," she cried, "your sister is going to sing to us."

Leonetta turned round, said she was sorry, released her hands, and she and Denis joined the seated group at some distance from the piano.

The incident, however, was not over yet; for, just as her sister sang her first note, Leonetta, her eyes sparkling with excitement, and her hands discoloured by the struggle, ejaculated loud enough for everyone to hear, "Denis, you're a fibber. Your hands are like iron too!"

Mrs. Delarayne put a finger to her lips, but it was too late. There was a sound of music being roughly folded up, and Cleopatra turned away from the piano.

"If you're all going to talk," she said, looking a little pale, "it's no use my singing, is it? I can wait a moment."

"Sorry, old girl," Leonetta cried. "It was only me. I'm dumb now."

Mrs. Delarayne had risen and was urging her elder daughter back to the piano. Sir Joseph was also trying his hand at persuasion, and when Miss Mallowcoid and Agatha added their prayers to the rest, Cleopatra at last spread her music out again, and the song began.

Those, however, who know the swing and gaiety of Les Epouseuses du Berry, will hardly require to be told how hopeless was the effect of it when sung by a voice which, owing to recent and unabated vexation, was continually on the verge of tears. Nothing, perhaps, is more thoroughly tragic than a really lively melody intoned by a voice quavering with emotion, and even Sir Joseph, who did not understand a word of the song, was deeply grateful when it was all over.