Lorraine sat quite still, and let the spell wrap her round for the precious moments that she could yet hold it. Of course it could not stay. In an hour at most she would be her old, brain-weary self again, with the best of her youth behind her; while he was still there on the treshold, young and strong and free. But even this one short hour was good. Life had not given her many such. She would fence it round with silence, and solitude, and the scent of violets.

Alymer went out into the streets wondering at himself vaguely, and yet with a pleasant glow of memory. He felt it bewildering that Lorraine Vivian, whose favours were so eagerly sought by men, should have allowed him to kiss her.

It seemed something apart altogether from her generous friendship and helpful influence. It made him pleased with himself, and filled his mind with a yet greater tenderness to her. He knew so much now of her early difficulties and following troubles - of the frivolous, unprincipled mother, and the long, uphill fight. She had honoured him with her confidence in spite of his youth, and now -

He quickened his steps, and his pulses leapt yet more fitfully. Spring was in the air and in his blood, and one of the recognised beauties of London had been gracious to him beyond all dreaming.

It was enough for the present hour. Why ask any inconvenient questions and spoil it all? Let the future look after itself.

Only one thought for a moment cast a little shadow upon his ardour. It crossed his mind, for no accountable reason, to wonder what Hal would think. He was a little afraid she would strongly disapprove.

But, after all, if she did, what matter? He owed nothing to Hal, and there was no reason why her views should disturb him in the least. Of course it did not... and yet... Hal's good opinion was a thing worth having; and, in short, he hoped she would not know.

It was not that she was straight-laced. She was too near the heart of humanity through her daily toil to be other than a generous judge; but she was also a creature of ideals for herself and for those who would be among her best friends; and she would have known unerringly that no great, consuming love had drowned his reason and filled his senses.

It was for that she would have judged him; and for that he would have stood before her direct gaze ashamed. One might be gay and irresponsible and merry, but there were just one or two things which must not be allowed in that category. Instinctively, he knew that in Hal's view he would have transgressed - not because he felt too much, but because he felt too little to be justified.

But why need she know? Why need any one know? He did not think his mother would follow up any further the story she had been told, and he would see his aunt about it personally. It was better to have it out with her, lest she took upon herself to interview Lorraine, and make more trouble still.

He ran up the stairs to the flat, two steps at a time; and scrambled to get changed for the dinner to which he was going, still feeling a pulsing thrill that, among all men, he was Lorraine Vivian's chosen friend.

In another flat - a bachelor one in Ryder Street - an elderly beau, likewise dressed for a dinner-party, though with the utmost care and precision, instead of a scramble. And to himself he said, as he took a long, last look at the image he loved:

"I must go to-morrow morning and settle this little matter about Alymer. No doubt Lorraine will be amazed to see how well-preserved I am. She cannot have any real feeling for such a boy, and, after all, a good-looking man of the world - "

He smiled to himself as over a thought that pleased him, and rang for his servant to go out and hail a taxi.



CHAPTER XXIX

It was not difficult for Alymer to persuade himself that a little diplomacy on his part would probably assuage his aunt's wish to upset his friendship, and incidentally allay his mother's fears; but, as it happened no one having his welfare so exceedingly at heart over this matter with the actress was in any degree as amenable or as quietly pacified as he imagined.

Another interview took place between his mother and his aunt, in which the latter advised writing to Miss Vivian direct to tell her what his father and mother thought of the friendship, and that an uncle of his would call upon her at once.

To say that the letter was an insult is to put it mildly, though at the same time it was not so much through intention as ignorance.

Lorraine read it with silent amazement, and thought the writer must be mad. It seemed quite incredible that any lady in the twentieth century should apparently be so ignorant concerning the status of a celebrated actress. It was evidently taken for granted that she was an adventuress of the worst type.

She was naturally somewhat angry and indignant, but decided it was not worth while to take any notice, and merely awaited with some curiosity the visit of the uncle who was to expostulate with her, and, practically, offer her terms.

He came at about twelve o'clock, and he did not give his name, merely asking to see Miss Vivian on a matter of business.

Lorraine dressed with special care, and looked her best when she quietly entered the drawing-room. She gave an order to her maid with the door half opened, in the most casual and imperturbed of voices, then she came siowly in, closed the door behind her, and advanced towards the figure standing on the hearth.

When she had taken two steps she stood still suddenly, and in a voice that was rasping and harsh, exclaimed:

"You! - "

Alymer's uncle squared his shoulders, stroked his white moustache with a gallant air, and replied:

"Yes - er - Lorraine. We meet again, you see. I may say - er - I am very glad indeed that it is so," and he advanced a step with outstretched hand.

But Lorraine was rooted to the spot where she stood, and a sudden, sharp fierceness seemed to burn in her eyes.

"Have-you-come-about-Alymer-Hermon?" she asked in slow, cutting tones, as if each word was hammered out of a seething whirlpool of suppressed emotions.

"Alymer is my nephew, and his mother asked me to come and - er - talk to you about him. She is a good deal perturbed on his behalf - er - because -"

"I do not want to know any more than I am able to gather from the extraordinary epistle I received from her this morning. What I should like to know is, did you agree to come here on this errand, knowing who I was?"

The faded blue eyes of the carefully dressed old rou began to look uncomfortably from one object to another; anywhere, indeed, but into those scorching orbs, with their suppressed fires.

Then he took his courage in his hands, and tried again.

"My dear Lorraine, you seem to be taking rather a theatrical view of a very commonplace matter. Of course it is bad for the boy to get mixed up in a scandal, just at the beginning of his career, or, for the matter of that, talked about with a celebrated actress whose husband is known to be living somewhere. I have come to you as a man of the world, to ask you as a woman of the world to be generous in the matter, and help me to set the minds of his parents at rest at once - "

"Ah! It was as a man of the world you came to me before ; but then I - I "-she gave a low, unpleasant laugh -" I wasn't a woman of the world, you see, until you had taught me, and left me."

He did not quite know what the laugh meant, but now his old eyes were roaming over the beauty that was yet hers, and memory was stirring, and something made him reckless.

"Don't speak of it like that," he pleaded drawing a little nearer. "I know I didn't perhaps treat you quite well; but if there are any amends I can make now? - If you will let us be friends again? - "

"Amends - amends. What do I want with amends from such as you ?" And her eyes flashed dangerously. He retreated quickly, with a hurt, rather cowed expression.

"Well, Fate has thrown us together again and I am still a bachelor - and I have money -"

"Do please try not to insult me any further."

Lorraine had grown calmer, though the dangerous look was still in her eyes, and she moved away to the window, leaving a large space between them, and half-turned her back to him.

"I have already burnt the epistle I received from Mrs. Hermon - its insults were too utterly foolish to notice. You may go back and tell her her son has never received any harm from me, and I absolutely decline to discuss the question any further. As for yourself - you will doubtless find a taxi on the rank, just outside."

"But, my dear lady, I cannot go back leaving the matter like that."

He grew emboldened again, now that he could not see her eyes.

"I am here to plead on Alymer's behalf. If you are fond of him, you must at least listen to reason for his sake."

"Not from you. And who are his people that they dare to treat me like this? . . . First an insulting letter, and then an emissary such as you - "

"Alymer is my nephew, and his mother is my sister, and therefore I am a most suitable emissary, except for a certain incident of long ago, which has long been consigned to oblivion by both of us, I am sure. The boy is young. He is on the threshold of life and a great career. What will be the result, do you think, if you refuse to listen, and perhaps ruin his prospects for your own pleasure ?"

She turned back to him a moment, and the smouldering fires leaped up.

"I was young. I was on the treshold of life. What did you care for my youth or my future? What do other men like you care? My mother was lax, and you knew it. I believe you gave her diamonds. And now you come to me and ask me to spare your nephew - you come - you!..." and the scorn in her voice lashed him like a stinging whip.

But lie tried valiantly to stand his ground, though all his fine attire and air of bravado could not save his visible shrinking into a faded, dissipated, worthless-looking old rogue.

"If you won't listen to any plea from me, will you permit me to make one from his mother, and appeal to the woman in you to realise her anxiety ?"

Lorraine turned again to the window and looked out upon the silver, shining river. And suddenly it was as though all her soul rose up in arms. She felt with swift passion that it seemed to matter so much in the world that a young man with a promising future should not run any risk of harm from an older woman.

But if it was a young woman, and an older man, what did it matter then ! Why, the very man who would have hurt her could allow himself to plead for another young thing, if that other were a man.

Doubtless he would argue, as all the rest of them, that years in men craved the freshness and revivifying of youth it was only natural, and a woman mattered so much less. But the mature woman herself, she has no right to indulge in any longing for that same freshness and revivifying.

Ten years ago this man had been lust at the age, and with just the handsome, aristocratic appearance, in spite of iron-grey hair, that so often attracts a girl in the early twenties. She scorns boys at that age, and feels the compliment of being chosen by a man of the world before the many older women she cannot choose but see would gladly be in her place. That it is her youth and not herself that holds the attraction is unknown to her, and a clever man may often dupe her young affections.

Lorraine, with her romantic, imaginative temperament, had grown to believe herself in love with him, and then had followed the old, sordid story of insult and her consequent disillusionment. The memories stung her now with a bitter stinging heightened by the feeling that life cared so much more for Alymer's welfare than it had ever done for hers.

And then that appeal to her woman's feeling to sympathise with the perturbed mother.

Well, because she was his mother, surely she was blessed enough. What had she - Lorraines - to place against that great fact ? She felt painfully that in spite of her success her life was pitifully, hopelessly barren, scarred this way and that, torn and rent and damaged by mistake upon mistake which could never now be rectified.

A nausea of it all made her feel in those tense moments, gazing at the serenely flowing river, that had she a child she would be borne away on the smooth silver water with her little one, out of the fret and turmoil, to some quiet nest in the cliffs at its mouth ; and there for the years that were left her she would fill her days with the peaceful, homely joys that had never yet been hers.

But how could she go alone? Only in the uneventful days to find her loneness intensified a thousand times, and without escape.

No; the river would flow on to that serene haven; but never for ever would she and a little one of her own be borne on its motherly bosom to the country of little things and peacefulness.

And the thought only stung her afresh; driving the sting in deep and sharp while this man remained under her roof.

"Well," he said at last; and in the interval his voice seemed to have regained some of its polished, self-possessed satisfaction. "I see you are deep in thought. You were always tender-hearted, and I felt I should not appeal to your womans heart in vain."

Her face was turned away, so that he could not see her expression, nor read what was in her eyes, and purposely she let him go on.

"You will, I know, let me go back with the message Mrs. Hermon is waiting for so anxiously. It will be quite simple. No doubt you have countless admirers, and if you summon another, and let Alymer think he is replaced, after the first hot-headed wrath he will quickly become normal again, and apply all his faculties to his profession. I know you are too clever not too appreciate just everything involved, and too generous not to give the young man his best chance."

Then he cleared his throat, stroked his moustache, and waited, wondering a little why she did not speak. He squared his shoulders again, and glanced round to catch a reflection of himself in the overmantel, then once more stroked his moustache with a sleek air of growing satisfaction.

It had certainly been a most ticklish undertaking, and but for his diplomacy, he believed one foredoomed to failure. But of course Lorraine was a woman of the world, with a larger mixture of the other kind of womanliness, perhaps, than was usual, and he in his perspicacity had deftly appealed to both.

Then Lorraine turned round, and at the first glimpse of her face his own fell, and suddenly he seemed to be shrinking visibly; as if he would not ungladly have vanished through the floor.

She took a step or two forward, and stood in front of him with her head held high, and those same scorching fires in her eyes ; and there was something almost over-awing in the taut intensity of her whole attitude, mental and physical.

"No," she said, in a cold, firm voice. "You may not go back and tell Alymer's mother that I agree to cease my friendship with him for you and for her. You may go back and tell her that because when I was young you had no thought of my future, and no consideration for my youth, I refuse absolutely to parley in the matter at all. I shall not change my course of action by one iota. I shall not take any single thought for the future. The future may take care of itself. If you can estrange Alymer from me, that is your affair. Rather than estrange him myself, I will bind him closer. That is my answer to you, and to the lady," with fine scorn, " who sat down yesterday and penned that unheard-of letter to a fellow-woman she knew nothing whatever against. Yet I think I could have charged that to her evident ignorance concerning theatrical matters, and forgiven her, if a monstrous irony had not sent you to plead her cause - "

"My dear Lorraine," he interposed, but she stopped him with an imperious gesture and continued:

"There is nothing for you to say, nothing that I am in the least likely to listen to. You have evidently mis-understood my character from first to last. Probably you even credited me with wantonness in those far-off days when I was fool enough to believe all you swore to me of love and devotion. However that may be, you tried to set my feet in the wrong path, and when it suited you, gave me a push that further evil might conveniently widen the breach between us. Probably you have done much the same again since, and with as little compunction. What I have to say to you now is just this, once again. Your mission to-day is not merely useless; it has considerably aggravated any danger there may have been. Because of every girl a middle-aged man has treated as you sought to treat me I shall hold Alymer to his friendship if I can, and use any influence I may have to increase rather than decrease his visits.

"It may be fiendish of me. I don't know. I am no angel ; not even the obliging soft-hearted fool you and Alymer's mother seem to have concluded I might be. And what is more, if I had a vein of kindliness and unselfish consideration, you have done your utmost to stamp it out. "Most of us are half good, and half bad. To-day, you have given the devil in me an impetus such as it has seldom had before. That is your affair. Go back and explain the real truth if you dare. Tell Mrs. Hermon you found the low adventuress a devil, and one that you yourself had tried to help to make. Tell her " - again with that low, unpleasant laugh - " that you fear the worst for Alymer. That is all. Now you can go."

Once more he futilely tried to speak, but she only waved him aside, and walked with a haughty, scornful step ahead of him.

"Jean," she called to her maid, as she passed through the little hall, "Will you open the door for this gentleman?"

In her own room, she slid down into a large cushioned chair and sobbed her heart out.



CHAPTER XXX

It was there Hal found her. By the merest chance she had run up to the flat at her midday hour, to ask a question about Sir Edwin Crathie. and a rumour concerning him that she felt an imperative need to have answered. When she saw Lorraine in tears the question was instantly banished for the moment.

Had Lorraine been in her normal condition, she could hardly have failed to notice that the "Hal" who came up in haste to ask this urgent question was not the "Hal" of a few months, a few weeks ago. She would probably have observed that the vague, indefinable change Alymer had seen in her had grown more marked anti more defined.

She seemed to have sprung suddenly into womanhood.

It was no light-hearted, careless, rather boisterous girl who appeared unexpectedly at the flat, to give her one or two eager hugs, tell her the latest news of her doings in gay, gossipy fashion, and eat an unconscionable amount of chocolates, usually kept for her special delectation.

The old, bright look was there on the surface, the ready, laughing speech, but there was also, with it, something that approached a dignified phase, and suggested a new reserve. She was also distinctly better-looking likewise, in some vague, incomprehensible way.

But Lorraine had not time to take any note of the change, for all her faculties were bent upon shielding herself.

Of course it was useless to hide that she had been crying, but at least Hal must not know that the crying had been soul-racking sobs.

With a look of consternation and dismay she, Hal, was across the room in a bound, kneeling beside the big chair.

"My dear old girl, what in the world is the matter ?"

Lorraine contrived to smile with some appearance of reality, as she dried her eyes, and said:

"I don't quite know. It's idiotic of me, isn't it? If you hadn't come and stopped me, I should never have been able to appear to-night for swollen eyes."

But Hal was not so easily put off. She grasped both Lorraine's hands in hers and said resolutely:

"Why are you crying, Lorry?"

Feeling it hopeless to avoid some sort of a reason, she replied:

"I had a letter this morning that upset me rather. It is silly of me to take any notice, and I shouldn't if I were well. I've been wretchedly nervy lately, and it makes me silly about things."

"What was the letter about?"

"Oh, only some one who is jealous, I suppose; trying to get a little satisfaction out of saying a few things that may hurt me. It is so silly of me to mind."

Hal's mind immediately flew to Mrs. Vivian, and instead of inquiring any further she just said:

"Poor old Lorry," and kissed her affectionately.

Then with a little laugh:

"I suppose you weren't going to have any lunch at all, but I'm frightfully hungry. I hope to goodness there is something in the house."

"Run and tell Jean to see cook about it, there's a dear. I must bathe my eyes and try to look presentable."

While they lunched Hal chatted of many things, but she noted that Lorraine was looking thin, and seemed to have something on her mind, while she made no attempt to eat what was placed on her plate.

When she was pulling her gloves on later she asked:

"Why don't von take a week's holiday and go into the country, Lorry?... It is no use going on until you are ill, as you did before."

"I think I must ask about it. I feel as if one week would do me a world of good. How is Sir Edwin? Have you seen him lately?"

"We played golf on Saturday."

A white look came suddenly into Hal's face, and she riveted her attention on an apparently tiresome fastener as she asked, with the greatest show of unconcern she could muster, the question that brought her there.

"Have you heard a rumour that he is going to marry Miss Bootes?" naming one of the richest heiresses cf the day.

"No; I hadn't heard it."

Lorraine gave a quick glance at her face, but saw only the look of concentration on the fractious fastener.

"Well," Hal said in level tones, " I suppose she is worth about half a million, and I don't think he is rich."

"Probably he has only been seen speaking to her, or taking her to supper at a big reception . That would be quite enough to make some people link them at once, and fix the date of the wedding."

"There's a bun-fight at the Bruces' to-night," Hal ran on, "with Llaney to play the violin, and Lascelles to sing - quite an elaborate affair : so it is sure to be very boring ; but I suppose Alymer will be there, looking adorably beautiful, and all the women gazing at him. It will be entertaining to chaff him, anyhow."

"Well, don't tell him you found nie weeping," with a little laugh. " He might not realise it was only nerves."

"I'll tell him he's to take you away for a week's holiday," Hal replied lightly. " Goodness knows, you've done enough for him."

She went back to the office and settled down to her work with resolute determination, but any one who knew her well would have seen that some cloud seemed to have descended upon her, and that all the time she stuck to her work she was wrestling to appear normal, in the face of some enshrouding worry.

Through all the letter she was writing, and over the proofs she read to aid the chief, there seemed to be one sentence dancing in letters of glee, like a war-dance executed by little black devils on the foolscap of her mind.

It was last night she had heard it, that ominous piece of news that took her violently by surprise, in spite of her practical common sense. Some one had said it quite casually in the motor bus - one man to another, as an item of news of the day.

"They say Sir Edwin Crathie is to marry Miss Bootes the heiress:

"What! The Right Honourable Sir Edwin Crathie?"

" So they say. He's very heavily in debt, I believe - over some bad speculations - and an heiress is about the only thing to float him. Besides, the party wants rich men, and it would be a good move on his part."

That was all, and then the two silk-hatted, frock-coated men had got out. Eminently well-to-do men - probably both stockbrokers, but men who looked as if they would know.

Hal had gone on home in a sudden torment of feeling. Of course he was free to marry the heiress if be wished, but why, if so, had he dared once again to drop the mask of companiable friendliness with her and grow lover-like?

The change had been coming slowly of late, wrought with infinite caution and care. He had not meant to frighten her again, and find himself in disgrace, so he had taken each step very leisurely, and made sure of his ground before trusting himself upon it. The next time he kissed her, he had determined she should like it too well to resent his action.

And the safe moment, as he deemed it, had come the previous Saturday after a delightful afternoon at golf. They had motored down to the Sundridge Park Links, and stayed afterwards to dine at the club-house, then back to Bloomsbury, and into the pretty sitting-room, where Dudley was not likely to appear until late, because he had gone to a theatre with Doris.

And then forthe second time he had kissed her.

But this was quite a different kiss. It was a climax to one of the best days he had ever had - a day in which, besides playing golf, they had talked of State secrets and State affairs. He had paid her the compliment of talking to her as if she were a man, and Hal, being exceptionally well informed on most questions of the day, was able to hold her own with him, and to make the conversation of genuine interest.

And his quick, observant brain greatly admired her power of argument, and her woman's directness of method, confirming the view that while a an usually indulges in a good deal of preamble, with many doubts and side-lights, a woman trusts to her instinct and arrives at the same conclusion in half the time. Of late, too, he had talked to her of interesting modern problems; and what had been frivolous in their earlier friendshipm had solidified into a real companionship.

And now as he stood on the hearth with his back to the fire, looking with rather critical eyes round the pretty room that Hal had contrived to rob of nearly all its lodging-house aspect, she stood quite naturally and unconcernedly beside him drawing off her gloves.

"It was a good game," she was saying, "if you had not messed up that sixth hole. It's a brute, isn't it. I was lucky to escape that marshy bit."

"You are getting too good for me. Your drives out-classed mine nearly every time."

"But I can't approach. I never, never, shall be able to hit a ball just far enough. If I loft on to the green at all it is always the far side, with a roll."

"You'll soon master that. A little more practice, and you'll be in form for matches. I think we'll have to go away somewhere and have a fortnight's golfing! Why not to some little French place? You would finish up a first-class player."

Hal laughed lightly.

"Just imagine Brother Dudley's face when I told him I was going to France for a fortnight with you!"

"You wouldn't have to tell him anything about me," watching her with a sudden keenness in his eyes. "I should have to be personated by Miss Vivian or some one."

"Oh, I dare say Lorry would come for the matter of that. We might teach her to play too."

"Well, I hardly meant she should actually be there," he went on in a meaning voice. "She'd be rather in the way, wouldn't she? I don't know that I could do with any one else but you."

He stepped closer to her, and slipped his arm round her shoulders. "A third person will always be in the way when I am with you, Hal."

She changed colour, and breathed fitfully, moving as if to disengage herself from his arm.

"No, don't go. This is very harmless, and I've been exceedingly good for a long time, now, haven't I?"

"All the greater pity to spoil your record," putting up her hand to remove his.

But he only clasped her fingers tightly, and drew her closer, till he could feel her heart palpitating a little wildly; and that gave him courage.

"It has been far harder than you have the remotest idea of. I deserve one kiss, if only by way of encouragement."

His face was close to hers now, and with a little murmuring sound of gladness he kissed her cheek.

"Little woman," he murmured, "I've grown desperately fond of you. I hardly know how to do without you. Be a sensible little girl, won't you?"

She disengaged herself resolutely then, but she was not angry, and her eyes were shining.

"You are transgressing flagrantly - as I should express it in a newspaper report. Collect your forces, and retire gracefully, O transgressor."

"I suppose I really must go now. It's been such a splendid day, hasn't it?"

He seemed to speak with a shadow of regret; and there was a shadow of regret in his eyes also as he riveted them on her face. Then he turned suddenly and picked up his cap.

"Well - the best of friends must part - and the best of days come to an end. Good-bye, little girl."

With his cap in his hand, he suddenly put both his arms round her and kissed her with the old passionate eagerness - then he loosed her and turned to the door.

"I'm in love with you, Hal - head over ears in love; but it's a devilish hard world, and Heaven only knows what's to come of it."

With which enigmatical sentence he let himself out and departed.

When he had gone Hal stood quite still where he had left her, and looked into vacancy. About her lips there was the ghost of a smile. In her ears was only the recollection of the words, "I'm head over ears in love with you."

So, it was coming at last - the great, glad day of love and fulfilment. If he had set out to trifle with her at first, at least he was serious enough now. She, too, had only trifled in the beginning, seizing a little fun and adventure in her workaday world. There had been no reason to suppose it need hurt any one. Now, she, too, was serious.

Perhaps the things detrimental to him that she had heard previously had some truth in them then, but he was changed now. Love had changed him. He was like another man. She had seen and felt it in a thousand ways that could not be translated into speech or writing. It was just that he was different, and in every particular it was to his advantage.

She was different too. She did not resent the kiss, because she knew that he honestly cared for her. Ans she knew, too, that she honestly cared for him. The end of the enigmatical sentence rankled a little, but she did not led herself dwell upon it.

She chose instead to remember how he had kissed her; and that he had confessed he was head over ears in love with her. Which only showed that Hal - for all her worldly wisdom and practical common sense - could be as blind and as romantic ans any one when her heart was touched, and her pulses romping feverishly at a memory that thrilled all her being.

Three days later she had heard the conversation.

Of course it was absurd - manifestly so - and yet an yet -

After a miserable twenty-four hours of fighting against her own uneasiness, she paid the flying visit to Lorraine, to see if she could glean any light on the gossip from her, only to return to the office baffled and tormented.

It was the enigmatical sentence that pressed forward now, instead of the thrilling confession that he loved her. Was it possible he was indeed so base as to love her and tell her in the very same week that he had asked another woman to be his wife?

And if so, what had prompted him? What was in his mind? Why had he not left things as they were, and refrained both from the kiss and the confession?

And then above her tortured feelings rose the triumphant thought, goading and pleasing at the same time: "Whether it is true or not, he loves me - not her, the heiress, but me - Hal Pritchard - the peniless City worker."



CHAPTER XXXI



In the evening came the party at Dick Bruce's home, and it was necessary, she knew, to thrustl all recollection of Sir Edwin aside, in order to give rise to no questioning and appear as usual.

So she dressed herself with special care, rubbed a pink tinge on to her white cheeks, bathed and refreshed eyes dulled by worry and shadows, and made her appearance, looking, inf anything, a little more radiant than usual.

"By Jove! you look stunning, Hal," was her jovial uncle's warm greeting. "Who'd ever have thought, to see the ugly little imp of a small child you were, that you would grow up into a fashionable, striking woman? I congratulate you. When's the happy man coming along?"

"When I'm tired to enjoying of myself," she laughed, "and feel equal to coping with anything as trying as a husband. At present a brother keeps me quite sufficiently occupied, "and she passed on.

Across the large, well-lit room, towering above every one around him, she saw the head and shoulders of Alymer Hermon. All about her, as she moved towards him, she heard the low-voiced query: "Who is he?"

No society beauty at her zenith could have caused greater interest. He was looking grave, too, and thoughtful, which suited him better than laughter, giving him something of a look apart, and banishing all suggestion of the conceit and self-satisfaction that would have spoilt him. Then he caught sight of Hal, and instantly all his face lit up, and a twinkle shone in his eyes as he edged towards her.

"How late you are! I thought you were never coming. Did your hair require an extra half-hour? I suppose you've been tearing it out by the roots over your faithless swain."

"I don't know what you mean, and anyhow I shouldn't be such a fool as to tear my own hair out by the roots for any one. If hair is coming out in that fashion, it shall be his roots."

"Come and sit down. I'll soon find you a chair."

"What's the good of that? We can't converse unless you sit on the floor. I work too hard to spend my evening shouting banalities at the ceiling."

"Well, let's hunt for a couch; there are plenty here on ordinary occasions. Isn't it a poser where all the furniture goes to at a 'beano' like this! There's nothing in the hall, nor in the dinning-room; and there doesn't seem to be much here. Let's make for the lounge."

"But I can't take you away. I shall get my face scratched. You were made to be looked at, and half these silly people are staring their eyes out in your direction. I don't know how you put up with it so serenely. I should want to bite them all. If I were a man, and had been burdened with an appearance like yours, I should want to hit Life in the face for it."

"Don't be silly. What does it matter? It pleases them, and it doesn't hurt me. I get my own back a little anyway... when I want to" - with a low, significant laugh.

"Oh of course lots of women are in love with you," - with a contemptuous sniff; "but if I were a man I wouldn't give tuppence for the woman who made me a present of her affections. You miss all the fun of the chase, and the victory. It must be deadly dull."

"That's what Lorraine has sometimes said; but what can I do? Shall I paint my face black?"

"Oh, I've seen you look black enough, but it's rather becoming than otherwise. Anyhow, it isn't insipid. But you've grown quite manly lately, I suppose. I hear about you occasionally positively working hard. Heavens! - what you owe to Lorraine!"" "I do," fervently.

"Then why in the world don't you look after her a bit? I turned up unexpectedly at half-past one to-day, and found her sobbing her eyes out."

"You found Lorraine sobbing her eyes out..." incredulously.

"I did. She told me not to tell you, as it was only nerves - but of course it wasn't. You know as well as I that Lorraine doesn't suffer from weepy nerves. It's worry again; and she is looking thoroughly ill."

"Why again?..."

He was looking grave enough now, and there was anxiety in his voice.

"Oh, because there's often something to worry her - either her mother, or her memories, or the future. I suppose you haven't bothered to go and see her lately to cheer her up? Been too busy with your briefs!"

"I was there yesterday, to inquire how she was after a bad sick headache. The room was all violets and snow-drops"; and his eyes grew soft.

"And did she sight of her robust health knock you backwards?"

Hal was irritable from the strain on her own nerves, and it pleased her to hurl sarcasms at him, feeling somehow angry at his calm, smoothly-flowing path to success.

"I thought she looked ill, and I advised her to go away for a week."

"That was kind of you. And why won't she take your safe advice?"

"She won't go alone, and she said there was no one to go with her."

"Too many briefs, eh?"

"What have my briefs to do with it?"

"Oh, nothing. She's given hours and hours to you and your future; but of course you couldn't risk sparing a week -"

"But!... " he began with raised eyebrows.

""Oh, don't 'but' in that inane fashion. If you say it isn't proper I shall scream. Lorraine is nearly old enough to be your mother, and she has far too much sense to be in love with you; and you wouldn't be so idiote as to imagine it any use for you to be in love with her. Therefore it's only a companion she wants to keep her from moping and dwelling on sad thoughts; and you seem to be able to do that - as well as any of us; so why can't you get another man, or boy if you prefer it, to go for a run into the country with you? Flip would take her by the next train if he were there. He wouldn't care a farthing for scandalmongers. But I suppose he can do that sort of thing because he's a man. And, anyhow, I don't suppose she would go with you, even with a third person. She might think a whole week of you too much of a good thing."

His face has grown still more thoughtful, and he paid small heed to her taunts.

Lorraine sobbing, Lorraine ailing, Lorraine unhappy, filled his mind. What could have happened to upset her so? True, she had not been looking well for some weeks, and had complained of headaches and weariness; but he felt sure something quie apart had transpired to upset her so thoroughly.

Neither did he think it was Hal's version of the usual worries. He greatly feared his own people had made some move of which he was in ignorance. He contemplated with deep vexation the probability that he himself was indirectly the cause of her new trouble, and he mentally decided then and there to go to considerable lengths, if she wished it, on her behalf.

Probably if he travelled down to some sea-side place and saw her comfortably settled, and later on ran down to fetch her, she would be more easily induced to go. At any rate he would call the very next day and see, if his proposition simplified matters at all.

Hal watched him a little impatiently, and at length remarked:

"You seem to be thinking rather hard. Are you meditating upon Lorraine's trouble, or my suggestion, that it is unlikely she could endure a whole week of you, unadulterated?"

"Both," with a humorous glance at her. "I'm thinking it would be interesting to find out the truth in both cases."

"Well, you won't do that. Lorraine never tells her troubles. Not even to me. And she's too tender-hearted to hurt your feelings on the other question."

"I'm not afraid of that."

His face grew a little brighter, and, as if satisfied with the result of his cogitations, he changed the subject.

"What's making you so ratty to-night? Is it the faithless swain?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Perhaps you haven't seen the evening paper."

"I haven't. I'm sick to death of papers by six o'clock."

"Well, you oughtn't to have missed it to-night, and then you'd have had the pleasure of seeing the announcement of the faithless swain's engagement to the rich heiress."

Hal bit her lip suddenly, and felt her blood run cold, but she kept her outward composure perfectly, and merely commented:

"Oh, you mean about Sir Edwin Crathie and Miss Bootes!... that's very old news."

"Well, it was only in the paper to-night anyhow; and only given as a rumour then. I was going to ask you if it is true. Yhey say he's in the dickens of a mess for money. But of course you know all about it."

He was enjoying himself now, feeling that he was getting a little of his own back, and it made him unconsciously merciless.

"It must have been rather a trying moment when you had to break to him that you couldn't possibly pay any of his debts, and that therefore you must part?"

"I don't know anything about his debts. They don't interest me. I can beat him at golf, playing level, and that's far more to the point."

"Then you are going to play golf with him, while Miss Bootes bears his proud name in return for paying his debts! Sure, it sounds a nice handy arrangement for him."

Then Hal got up.

"I don't want to talk to you, because you are talking such drivel; and I don't want to look at you, because your pink and white and blue and gold irritate me beyond words, so you'd better go and stand in the middle of the room for the benefit of those who delight to gaze; and I'll go in search of a refreshingly ugly person who can talk sense!"

Hermon gave a low chuckle of enjoyment, and continued to chuckle to himself until she was lost to sight and his hostess was introducing some charming dbutante to him. The dbutante was pink and white and blue and gold likewise, and gazed up at him adorably under long curling lashes; but he might have expressed a fellow-feeling with Hal, for he found himself merely bored, and longed to go in search, not of a refreshingly ugly person, but of the refreshingly irritable, snappy, unappreciative one who had just left him.

When at last he was free, however, he found Hal had complained of a headache and gone home early, unattended.



CHAPTER XXXII

On her way home Hal stopped the taxi and bought an evening paper. When she got it, however, she found Dudley there, so she merely held it under her cloak.

"You are back early," he said, in a surprised voice.

"Yes. It was very formal and very dull, and I was tired."

He glanced up with questioning eyes. It was something new for Hal not to stay untill the last moment at a festivity. He thought she looked a little paler than usual, and there were shadows about her eyes, but she interrupted any comment he might make by an inquiry after Doris.

"She is very well."

He stopped short rather suddenly, and seemed thoughtful. He had been urging Doris to fix the date of their wedding, and let him see about taking a house or a flat, but she had seemed to avoid the subject lately, and he was a little troubled.

"I suppose poor Basil is much the same?"

"Yes. He and Ethel were both asking what had become of you. They said you hadn't been up for a long time."

"I haven't. I'll go to-morrow. Good-night," and she kissed him, and went upstairs.

In her own room she sat on the bed, and read the evening paper.

Yes, it was there sure enough, but it was only given as a rumour. "We understand there is a rumour..." How well she knew the phrase, with its dangerous suggestiveness, and safe retreat. She wondered who had started the rumour, and how the paper had got it.

But, again, insistently she asserted it could not be true. If it had not been for last Saturday she might have believed it. But after that... no, he could not be so base. She put the thought away from her, and tried to sleep, but her eyes would look out into the blackness, and her brain ask questions.

"What if it were true?" She clenched her hands and fought the question. It could not be true; why worry? Yet he had never made the slightest suggestion of marrying her. She remembered that, but scorned it.

Why should he? There had been nothing lover-like between them until the previous Saturday; and of course had there been any one else, it would have been so easy to go on the same and make no change that particular afternoon.

Finding what comfort she could out of these thoughts, she fell at last into a troubled sleep.

The following afternoon, in fulfilment of her promise, she went up to Holloway from the office. Doris was out, and Ethel not home yet, but the door was opened to her by a gaunt stranger, who said:

"Come in. This is one of my days. I'm in charge this afternoon."

Hal looked into the angular face, which appeared to her as if it had been roughly hewn with a chisel, by some one who was a mere amateur, and she could not repress a little smile.

"I don't think I've met you before. Are you - are you - a friend of Mr. Hayward's?"

"Well, he's a friend of mine, if that will do as well. I'm generally know here as G. The letter isn't stamped on my face, but it's on the door of my flat, and that's much the same."

She stood aside for Hal to pass down the passage, adding grimly as Hal loitered, with rather an amused, engaging expression:

"I don't stand for much more than a door, with a G on it, as I often tell Mr. Hayward, but I suppose it's all right."

"A little more occasionally," suggested Hal. "A door wouldn't be much use to Mr. Hayward, anyhow."

"That's what he says. Won't you go down to his room?"

"What are you going to do?"

"Get the tea. It's one of the few things I can do passably well."

"Let me come and help. It won't take long. I'm interested in that door. You see, I'm not even G; and I don't possess a front door."

The music-teacher looked searchingly into her face, and was evidently pleased with what she saw, for she adopted a friendly note, and seemed ready to chat. Hal followed her into the little kitchen, and commenced to take off her hat.

"I'm an old friend," she volunteered, "and I often leave my hat in here. Are both Mr. Hayward's sisters out?"

"Miss Hayward will be late to-night, and her sister is uncertain. It depends somewhat upon which young man she is out with," in acid tones.

Hal glanced up in astonishment, but her companion was busy with the cups and saucers, and did not notice the look.

"All I can say is, I'm sorry for that nice gentleman who is fool enough to think of marrying her. Lord! he'd be safer with some one with a face like a door-knocker, such as mine. But there, they're all the same; and the nicest of them are generally the biggest fools."

Hal grasped the situation at once, and instead of enlightening her concerning her own identity, said casually:

"There's another young man as well, is there?"

"There is so. A pawnbroker I should take him to be, who wears the jewellery left in his care on his person for safety. As a matter of fact, I believe he is a South African millionaire. He brought her home one day, and Blakde - that's the housekeeper's husband down below - recognised him. He was out in South Africa in the war, and he saw him then."

Hal drummed on the table with her fingers to assume nonchalance.

"Does Miss Hayward know?"

'Know? Of course she doesn't. How should she know, particularly if that artful monkey did not want her to? I don't know where the poor sick man would be now but for me. She's always off somewhere - that minx - and I rush back from my music pupils, because I can't rest for the thought of him here all alone. I've given one up, who wanted a lesson at half-past four every day. That's the time he needs his tea."

"Why do you do all this for him?" Hal found herself asking, a little unaccountably. "He is nothing to you, is he - no relation, I mean?"

"Nothing to me!... Oh, isn't he though! I'd like to know what is anything, if he's nothing?"

She rattled the cups and saucers a little restlessly, and Hal, with growing interest, waited for her to go on.

"Before I knew him, I was nothing in the world but a door with a letter on it, as I've just told you. That's all I stood for, a mere letter of the alphabet who paid a monthly rent. I told him so, when I first came across, and he said, 'Well, I'm very glad they didn't leave G out of the alphabet.' That's all." "But I'm his slave now. Nobody cared whether there was a G or not before. It isn't pleasant to feel you're a mere cypher, with no particular meaning to any one; just shot in haphazard to fill up a blank - a mere creature, useful to teach exercises and scales to odious children one only longs to slap. "Fancy being expected to keep yourself alive in a dingy little flat, for ever alone, just to do that!" The cups rattled more restively still. "I say, the universe is the grimmest jester there ever was. Me to teach music to keep life in a body that doesn't want it! If I'd been employed laying out corpses in their grave-clothes there'd have been some sense in it. I'm not much more that a figurehead of an old hulk myself. But music!... music!... Oh Lord, and I haven't one real note of it in my whole composition."

Hal seated herself on the table. With her quick intuition she perceived at once entertainment of an original kind was before her, and she promptly laid herself out to obtain all she could.

"Why do you teach music? I don't think you do quite suggest a musician?"

"Of course I don't."

The gaunt spinster was cutting some bread-and-butter now with a savage air.

"Do I suggest anything, except perhaps a butcher or an undertaker? Yet I can only keep myself alive with music. That's the jest of the Arch Humorist. My father was a clergyman. He droned out services for fifty years in a hamlet, with a little square church like a wooden money-box. I was taught music so that I could - well - make the tin-pot organ groan, I used to call it. I had twenty-five years of that, with never a break. I got so that, to keep myself from turning into a stone gargoyle on the organ seat, I must have my little jest too. "One way I had it was by making the organ groan dismallest at weddings and christenings, and squeak hilariously at funerals. Father never noticed, he'd already turned gargoyle, you see, and as for the village people! well, it suited them, because they always wept at weddings, and overate themselves at funerals."

"And then?..." Hal was so thoroughly enjoying herself now, she had almost forgotten the invalid.

"Well, then the gargoyle died, or ran down, or something. I should think he got tired of sing-song the tender mercies of God to the devout people, and His judgments on the wicked. It always seemed to me the good folks got the nastiest knocks; and the wicked, well, they fairly left the green bay tree behind. "Anyhow, I'd been devout enough, as far as sinning goes, for forty years. I wasn't even blessed with the chance to be anything else. Then a new parson came, an underdone young man with new fal-da-dal ideas. I wonder how soon he'd become a gargoyle? I defy him to stand out long against the cast-iron nonentity of that village. But he didn't take kindly either to me or my music. Hadn't any sens of humour at all. I don't know what I ever knew a clergyman who had. Perhaps a man couldn't very well go on being a clergyman if he possessed such a trait. "Anyhow, this particular one did not think I put enough expression into the tunes. He said they hardly sounded like sacred tunes at all; which wasn't surprising, when you come to think that sometimes a low note and sometimes a high note on that little tin-pot organ would take it into its head to stick, and would either boom or squeak all through the thing I was playing." Hal burst out laughing, quite unable to contain herself any longer, but the spinster went on calmly: "The tune might just as well have been 'Down by the Old Bull and Bush' then, but it wasn't my fault, because when your hands and arms and feet and eyes and ears are all struggling to keep time with a village choir that varies its pace every few bars, you've got nothing left to release a stuck note with."

"I hope you didn't tell the under-done young parson about 'The Old Bull and Bush'?" said Hal, still rocking with enjoyment and bent chiefly upon leading her on.

"I'd never heard of it then, or I might have. Even that won't reach the village I'm thinking of for a hundred years; and then they'll play it until the very birds lose heart, and think they are uncannily up to date. So they are if you count it when things come round the second time. I told him if the organ seemed to be playing 'Yankee Doodle,' I supposed it was because it felt like it; as, for twenty-five years, it had more or less pleased itself at my expense. "But he'll be a gargoyle soon, and then he won't notice, and it will boom and squaek to its heart's content. Of course I ought to have stayed on because I matched it all, and I didn't mind the booming and squeaking as long as the choir didn't get convulsed, and stop altogether - because that was liable to catch father's attention. A gargoyle is out of place in London. It's as mad for me bo be here as that I'm here to teach music. After I became fossilised I ought to have stayed on till I died, and then that self-willed organ could have fairly squeaked itself out over my corpse. Come along and have some tea now. Poor Mr. Hayward will be getting faint."

"But you're too perfectly delicious for anything!" Hal cried, springing off the table. "Why haven't I known you for years? Why haven't I known you all my life? You must meet my cousin Dick Bruce. You absolutely must, with the least possible delay. He'll simply dote on you. Come along to Basil, and tell me heaps and heaps more"; and she caught her by the arm in the friendliest fashion, and half-pulled her along to the little sitting-room.



CHAPTER XXXIII

"What a gossip you two have been having!" Basil said, and, seeing the laughter in Hal's eyes, he added, "has G been telling you some of her amazing theories, or tearing the existing order of the universe to shreds?"

"Oh, I don't know, but she's simply immense. Have you heard about the tin-pot organ that will play its own way, and the choir that gets convulsed, and the underdone young parson? She's simply got to know Dick. He wouldn't miss it for the world."

"Yes; I've heard most of it. She plays an organ of laughter for me nowadays, that makes me bless the day she was born."

The gaunt spinster positively blushed.

"Oh, that's just your way," she snapped, bashfully trying to hide her pleasure. "If I hadn't been G, a pretty, charming young woman with real music in her might have been, and you'd have liked that much better."

"No, I shouldn't. She'd have played 'Home, Sweet Home,' with variations, and 'The Maiden's Prayer ' - I know her at a glance. If you do only play scales and exercises I'm sure you manage to put a lot of character into them."

"That's only thumping; and who wants thumping ?"

"I do, when it's the universe. I'm just as much askew with it as you are, only I haven't got the wit to thump it so satisfactorily. You are going it for the two of us now."

"Still, you're not a gargoyle..." with a queer twist of her face that delighted Hal.

"I shall positively take you to Dick myself," she said, "or bring him here to you. He'll talk to you about a mother's patience, and babies; and you'll talk to him about gargoyles and organs, and Heaven only knows where you'll both get to ; but I wouldn't miss it for anything."

"I don't know who Dick may be, but if he talks to me about mothers and babies " - grimly - " I shall groan like that organ did at christenings. They may be useful in the general scheme, but beyond that I don't know how any one can put up with them at all; with their potsy-wotsy, and pucksie-ducksie, and general stickiness. It's quite enough for me that I have to knit stupid little socks for their silly little feet, for bread-and-butter. The most I can say for it is, that it's a more satisfactory plan than casting your bread on the waters, on the off-chance some kindly Elijah will butter it."

"Where are the socks, G ?" Basil asked, looking round. "I should like Hal to enjoy the edifying spectacle of your knitting babies' socks."

"You don't mean that," interrupted Hal comically. "I can't believe it."

"It's the horrible truth," asserted the spinster, calmly going on with her tea -" most of them go to little black whelps in the Antipodes. After all, it isn't any more incongruous than the music - is it ?"

"But you don't do it for the under-done young parson, surely ?"

"Goodness gracious, no. What an idea! He wiped his hands of me long ago. The wildest stretch of imagination, you see, could not picture me ever looking like an angel; so he left me to my fate!" And again the humorous twisted smile delighted her small audience.

"Have you seen Splodgkins lately ?" Basil asked. "You say all babies are sticky and objectionable; but you must admit that sticky imp down below is better than two-thirds of the other babies in the world shining with soap polish."

"So he is"; and the grim face relaxed still further. "He was sitting in my way on the stairs this morning, and as I could not get by, I said, 'Make room, please, Master Splodgkins; you don't own the universe.' 'Eth oi doth,' he lisped. 'Noime ain't thplodums. Damn th' ooniverth.'"

It was good to hear Basil's whole-hearted laughter. "We ought to have had him to tea," he said regretfully. "He would have delighted Hal. He's two-and-a-halfyears old" - turning to her - "this remarkable person-age; and, like most gutter snipes, has developed as an ordinary child of four. He and G have debates occasionally. He wishes to be called D, because that is the letter on his front door, and 'Splodgkins ' hurts his dignity but he's so funny when he is indignant we can't resist teasing him."

A little wistful smile crept into the invalid's eyes.

"We have lots of fun in this dingy old barrack between us," he told Hal. "We are rarely silly enough to be dull, with so many queer, interesting folks under the same roof."

Hal felt something like a sudden lump in her throat, but she smiled brightly as she looked from one to the other, feeling somehow the better for knowing such waifs of life and circumstance, who could yet baffle Fate's pitilessness with genuine laughter.

"Dick is writing a most weird and incomprehensible book on vegetables and babies. I'm quite certain you could give him lots of ideas," she remarked to G.

"He'd better put Splodgkins in if he wants to make it sell," said she. "Only they mightn't allow it at the libraries. Splodgkins's vocabulary is fortunately sometimes indistinguishable for his lisp."

"Splodgkins couldn't be translated," put in Basil. "He sometimes comes to tea with me and G; but he is almost too exhausting. I think he knows every bad word in the English language; but one has to forgive him because he always saves half his cake for his baby sister, and hurls violent abuse at any one who dares to disparage her. "Are you going?..." as G got up. "I'm sure Miss Pritchard doesn't want you to leave us."

"Miss Pritchard!..." In a horrified voice.

"Never mind," said Hal quickly. "It didn't matter." Then to Basil, in explanation: "G said something about Doris's fianc, not knowing I was his sister, but I quite forget what it was. Good-bye, G," holding out a frank hand. "I think you're a delightful person, and I'm just as glad as Basil that you weren't left out of the alphabet."

A few minutes later Doris came in, looking flushed and stealthy, and the first thing Hal noticed was a loverly little diamon brooch she had not seen before.

"What a darling brooch," she exclaimed, after their greeting. "Did Dudley give you that? He might have shown it to me."

"No..." stammered Doris, turning red. "I've had it a long time. It's not real."

"Well, it's a wonderful imitation, then" said Hall a little drily - and remembered the man like a pawnbroker's shop.

Then Ethel joined them, and Hal's quick eyes saw sthe still increasing anxiety, just as surely as she saw the increased furtiveness in Doris's side-long glances. And because of all that she felt for Ethel, she trust her own care into the background resolutely, and made the evening as gay as she could while she was there.

Only afterwards she went home through the lamp-lit darkness, feeling as if some vague shadow had descended silently upon her little world.

What was this insistent, nameless fear at her own heart? Why was Lorraine weeping when she found her yesterday? Why was trouble steadily gathering on Ethel's face? What was this gossip about Doris? -

The gloom of a foggy night added to her depression. Why, in the tube railway, did all these people about her look so white and tired and lifeless? Did they just go on in their niches, in the same way that the grotesque music-teacher had gone on in hers for all those monotonous years; only to become like an uncared-for, unwanted letter of the alphabet pushed in to fill up a blank in a big city at last?

Were they all gargoyles-fixed, rigid, joyless, carved things, fastened in their respective niches, not for ornament, or for use specially, but just because the general machine seemed to require them?

And if so - why? ... why? ... why? -

It was so easy to be joyous if one was made for it. Such a little would make every one gay, if they were fashioned accordingly. What could be the good of disfiguring a beautiful world with all these vacant, expressionless, hopeless masks?

Hal did not read poetry. She was perfectly frank about being utterly bored with it. When she had anything to say, she liked to say it straight out, she explained, without twisting it about to make it rhyme with something just shoved in to fill up the line; and she preferred other people to do the same.

Yet, perhaps, at that particular moment, had she seen the lines:

"Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would not we shatter it to bits - and then Remould it nearer to the Heart's Desire?"

In her present mood she might have recognised also the stateliness and the beauty of a thought transcribed into verse.

Or possibly she would have obstinately asserted there was no occasion to introduce the word Love at all - and it was no one's Heart's Desire she wanted, but just a common-sense, reasonable amount of pleasure for all, and a spring-cleaning of all the gloomy, wooden faces.

In the sitting-room at Bloomsbury she threw her hat down on the sofa, and ran her fingers through her hair with an almost petulant air.

"I just feel to-night as if it was a rotten old world after all," she said.

Dudley, sitting poring over some plans with a reading-lamp, looked up in mild surprise.

"And what has made you feel all that? - not Basil, I'm sure."

"Well, there's no occasion to be so very sure. I think it's decidedly rotten where Basil is concerned."

She came and half-sat on one of the arms of his chair, and rested her hand on his coat-collar.

"I wonder what G would think of a sane man spending his evening ruling pointless-looking lines on a big sheet of paper?"

"And who may 'G' be?"

"I hardly know - except that she's the quaintest person I've ever struck yet - and I've seen some funny ones."

"Oh, I know who you mean. Yes; she is an oddity. Well, how was every one. How was Doris?"

"I hardly know. She was not there when I arrived, and she did not come in until a few minutes before Ethel."

"I wonder where she was?" thoughtfully. "I asked her to come for tea and a walk in the Park to-day, and she said she could not leave Basil."

Hal looked keenly into his face, and immediately he smiled and said:

"I suppose the tenant opposite was free unexpectedly, and Doris was able to get out after all. Poor little girl. I'm glad. But I wonder she didn't telephone me."

Hal turned away, feeling a little sick at heart.

Were they all then in the maelstrom of this gloomy sense of an engulfing cloud? What could be the meaning of Doris's behaviour? Did Dudley suspect anything? Certainly he had been a good deal preoccupied of late, and spoken very little of the future.

She looked out of her window across the blue of London lights, and her thoughts roved a little pitifully across the wide reaches of her own small world. From Sir Edwin, with his high post in the nation's councils, and Lorraine with her brilliant atmosphere of success and triumph, to the dingy block of flats in Holloway, where, in spite of almost tragic circumstances, to quote Basil, they had "lots of fun" among themselves.

She believed he meant it, too. It was no empty phrase. Rather something in touch with Life's great scheme of compensations, which she manipulates in her own great way, beyond the comprehension of puny humans.

Certainly neither Sir Edwin nor Lorraine could boast of "lots of fun." Rather, instead, much care and worry and brain-weary grappling with problems of modern succesful conditions.

She wondered, with a still further sinking at heart, if perhaps the time had come when she would have to grapple too. Was it very likely, after their delightful friendship, and after that confession of his the previous Saturday, Sir Edwin was prepared tamely to give her up? In her heart, she knew him better.

And yet, if the rumour was not false, what else could result? Vaguely she felt it might be one of those problems of modern society, coming across the evenly flowing river of her life, to demand solution. Not the solution of the crowd - to follow a beaten track is rarely difficult - but her own individual solution, which might mean much warfare of spirit and weary heartache. The foregoing of an alluring pleasure she deeply longed to take - not for any reward nor any gain, but solely for the sake of the mysterious power abroad in the world which is called Good; and which demands of the Present Hour that it is ready to crucify itself and its deep desires for the sake of the Future.



CHAPTER XXXIV

As the days of that new spring-time crept on, it appeared that the shadow descending upon Hal's little world had come to stay.

Things happened with surprising quickness, and each happening was of that particular order which presents itself enshrouded in gloom, and, with a pitilessness which is almost wanton, refuses to allow one gleam of the sunshine, carefully wrapped up in its gloomy folds, to send a single glad ray of hope to those wrestling in its sinister grip.

One knows the sunshine may possibly be hidden there somewhere - sunshine always is hidden in each event somewhere - but what is the use of expecting it weeks or months or years hence, when it seems that one single ray now would be of more help than a whole sun in some vague, distant future?

May it not be that in the development needed to fit the individual for the full and glad enjoyment of the sunshine to come, a ray of light would blur the film, and spoil the picture instead of producing one that is strong, clear and beautiful?

So, a dauntless belief in the sunshine to come, without a ray to promise it, may make for greater perfectness through steadfast courage than had one beam crept through to lessen the need for effort and for strong enduring.

Yet it was strange that the grim hand of destiny should strike at so many in that little world at the same time, and that its blows should be of that intimate nature which allows of no speech, even to one's dearest friend.

Lorraine knew that the rumour of Sir Edwin Crathie's engagement was an admitted fact; but she did not know how hard it hit Hal. She could only have learnt by accident, and, because of events in her own life, she was out of the line of such a discovery.

Hal knew that Lorraine, after a nervous breakdown, had gone somewhere into the country for a week or so, and that Alymer Hermon had run down later to see how she was getting on, and if he could do anything for her, but of the almost tragic circumstances that led up to his action she knew nothing, and imagined the merest generous attention.

She saw also the preoccupied, aged look growing on Dudley's face, and knew that the shadow was over him too.

Ethel saw the change creeping over Basil as no one else saw it, and knew that not even the far future could shed a single gleam for her upon the darkness coming.

Yet - for life is oversad to dwell upon rayless darkness even in books - bright, enduring, beautiful sunshine was wrapped up in those black clouds to flood the little world with joy at the appointed hour.

It was Lorraine's life that events moved first. After Hal left her, she spent a wretched, restless, brain-racking afternoon, and was only just able to struggle through her part at night.

And afterwards she became suddenly sickened with the need to struggle. She was not extravagant by nature, and had saved enough money from her enormous salaries to liver very comfortably if she chose.

A nausea of the theatrical world and its incessant demands began to obsess her. She felt that from the first day she stood in a manager's office, seeking the chance to start, it had given her everything except happiness.

Money, success, position, jewels, fine clothes, admirers, friends, adventures, gaieties - all these had come, if by slow degrees, but not one single gift had contained the kernel of happiness.

Perhaps it was her own fault. Perhaps the trouble lay in the wrong start she had made and never been able to retrieve. But at least there was time to try another plan yet.

Finally, feeling the nerve strain of recent events was seriously affecting her health, she decided to arrange a week's holiday to think the matter out.

But then what of Alymer?

Nothing had changed her mood since his uncle paid his ill-chosen visit. She did not actually intend to try to influence Alymer against his people, but she did intend that he should not change to her, nor pass out of her life, if she could help it.

Because she, and she alone, had started him off on his promising career, she meant to be there to watch it for some time to come. Her influence might not any longer be actually needed. The devine fire to achieve had already lit into a steady flame in his soul, and her presence would make very little difference in future. He had tasted the sweets of success, and ambition would not let him reject all that the future might hold.

But she must be there to see. In her lonely life he meant everything now. There was no need for him to think of marriage for years yet; and in the meantime she felt her claim upon him was as strong as any mother's fears.

So she waited for his next visit, wondering much what would transpire if he had heard of his uncle's call.

As it happened, he had. In the interview he had sought with his aunt, to request her not to interfere in his affairs, the indignant lady hurled at him the story of the visit; or such garbled account of it as she had received from the participator himself.

That was quite enough for Alymer - that and Hal's account of Lorraine in tears. He felt that his benefactress, his great friend, had been abominably insulted, and he hastened in all the warmth of his ardour to her side.

Lorraine was waiting for him in her low, favourite chair, and when he first saw her he could not suppress an exclamation to see how frail she seemed suddenly to have grown.

Her skin of ivory whiteness, enhanced by the tinge of colour in her cheeks, and there were shadows round her eyes placed there by no cosmetic art.

All that was most chivalrous, most protective, most affectionate in his nature rose uppermost, and shone in his face as he said:

"Lorraine, it is too feeble just to say I am sorry. I heve been cursing the blunder with all my heart ever since I knew."

"Thas was dear of you," she said; "but of course I knew that you would."

"I hoped so. I told myself over and over, you must know it had all happened without my knowledge."

Lorraine had no mind to make light of the matter. She felt she would hold him better by simply leaving it alone, and letting his own feelings work on her side.

She knew of course that his uncle had probably tried to injure her case; but then, Alymer was a man of the world, and she trusted him, knowing what he must about his uncle, to judge her kindly.

But all this seemed to fade into nothingness when she saw the distress and the affection in his eyes - the anger that any one had dared to hurt her, and the eager wish to make amends. It made all her smouldering love leap up into flame, and the strength of the suddenly roused passion almost frightened her. She felt there was desperation in it, the desperation of the drowning man who catches at a straw, of the condemned man who seizes a last joy.

Quite unexpectedly a reckless, surging desire began to take possession of her soul. She had lost so much already; been hit so many times; missed so many things.

A picture came back to her, with a new allurement. The picture of herself with a little one of her own, floating down the peacefully flowing river to some quiet haven, far removed from the glare of the footlights. Should she make a bold bid to win that much from the years that were left?

She sat quiet, looking into the heart of the fire while the thoughts coursed through her brain, and her long lashes hid from the man above her the glowing dreamlights in her eyes.

Then he too pulled up a low chair and sat down, so that his head was more nearly on a level with hers, and still his eyes looked at her with that regretful, protecting expression.

"You must go away, Lorry," he said, using Hal's pet name; "you are beginning to look thoroughly ill."

"I don't feel well, but I haven't the heart to go alone. I should only get melancholia."

"Hal seemed to think I ought to offer you a little companionship." He said it with a slightly bashful air.

"Hal?..." in a sharp, questioning voice. "What has Hal been saying to you?"

"Not much. She was in great form at the Bruces' last night. She rubbed it into me finely on various subjects, and finally went off with her head in the air to find some one refreshingly ugly who could talk sense."

They both laughed, but Lorraine's eyes were thoughtful.

"And what did she say about your companionship?"

"Oh, that it was only some one to talk to and be company you wanted if you went away, and that I seemed to fill the post better than any one just now." He paused, then added: "Do I?"

She felt him looking hard into her face, and kept her eyes lowered. She did not want him to know that the thought of his companionship in the country was like the straw to the drowning man - the last joy to the condemned one.

"You always make me forget the years, and feel young," she said slowly and thoughtfully, "and I dare say that is a very good tonic in itself."

"You oughtn't to need help from any one for that"; and she knew there was genuine admiration in his voice. "You never look anything but young. I suppose it is temperament."

"Temperatment doesn't erase lines," with a little sad smile.

"Perhaps not, but it makes them, in some way, suit you; and they add to the character in a face."

"It is sweet of you to say so, Alymer, but it sounds a fairy tale. I don't so very much mind growing old, if only it were not so... empty-handed."

"But surely you have so much!"

"Not very much that counts. Anyhow, I hope some day you will have a great deal more."

"You are depressed. You must really get away somewhere at once."

He was grandfatherly now, the mood she always loved and laughed at, and her pulses quickened to it. He placed one of his large, strong-looking hand over hers - it covered them both out of sight - and he leanded a little nearer as he said:

"I can see I shall have to take the ordering of it all. You have done worlds for me. Now I shall have to take you in hand."

A harsh expression crossed her face for a moment, thiking of what his mother had written her.

"And go straight to perdition!" she said bitterly.

He winced a little.

"I'm sure you wouldn't want me to make excuses for my own mother," he remarked, with the quiet dignity that was aldready winning his name in the Law Courts, side by side with his gift for light satire. "You cannot but know in your heart just how far removed her outlook on the world is from ours."

She wanted to ask him if any outlook gave one woman the right to insult another at her pleasure, but she remembered Mrs. Hermon probably dit not realise that she would have the fineness to see the insult, and was not even aware that she had been insulting.

"I should like you to know my father," he went on. "He is a very understanding man."

"But surely he..."

"No; he knew nothing about it. When my mother spoke to him he asked her not to interfere."

"Ah!"

For a few swift moments the generous treatment called to her own generosity, and for the sake of the understanding father she was almost ready to let go the straw. Only then again came the recollection of the uncle, and his impudent offer to substitute himself, and make amends at the same time; and again the smouldering fires leaped up, fed by the strong, protecting touch of the hand upon hers.

"I think Hal was right," Alymer was saying. "If my companionship, just to run down and see how you are, wherever you may be, will help to cheer you up and amuse you, there is no reason why I shouldn't manage it."

She knew he was making a concession of which he was half-afraid, because of what he owed her, and while one half of her longed to be self-sacrificing and release him, the other half fiercely demanded the straw that yet might save. And still she said nothing, gazing, gazing, into the flames.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"I hardly know," with a tired smile. "Of course I want you, but if -"

"Never mind the 'if'," cheerfully. "If I promise to run down and see you, will you go away at once, and try to get well again quickly?"

"It would make a lot of difference."

"Then that settles it. Can you start to-morrow?"

"I think I could."

Her pulses were leaping fitfull now - leaping and bounding with a swift delight. Perhaps he felt it, for he withdrew his hand, and gave himself a little shake, as if warding off something dangerous.

"Where will you go?" in a matter-of-fact voice.

"I hardly know, but I like the sea. Any little place that is warm in the spring. I might as well motor down, so it doesn't matter about trains, and the motor can come back for you."

"Shall I bring any one else?" his eyes searched her face.

"Just as you like." She leant forward and casually stirred the fire. "Anyhow, there is sure to be plenty of room at this time of year."

"Plenty of room, but not plenty of available companion chaperones," with a little laugh.

"Then we should have to make Sydney serve," naming her chauffeur. She got up form her seat.

"I suppose I must think about dinner," glancing at the clock. "Are you joining me this evening?"

"I can't; I have to go to Morrison's."

"How gay you are!"

"It is diplomatic. Morrison could get me a brief to-morrow if he liked."

"There is a very pretty daughter, just out; isn't there?"

"Yes."

"And is she so strikingly lovely?"

"I suppose she is; but she is so full of airs and graces she irritates one almost past endurance."

"I'm afraid you are a severe critic. The way is made too smooth for you."

She had moved near to him again, and stood beside him with one hand resting lightly on the mantelpiece, and one foot on the fender. He was standing as usual with his back to the fire. He looked down into her upturned face, fascinating now from a touch of roguishness.

"The splendid knight is hard to please; mere beauty is too commonplace."

"Isn't it sure to be?" a little smile played round his lips as he made his gallant retort. "How can mere beauty ever appeal to me, who have been accustomed to all you have besides?"

"Ah, flatterer!..." she said softly, and smiled into the fire.

There was a tense moment in which he longed to bend down and kiss her as he had done when the room was full of violets, but instead he pulled himself up sharply and moved away.

"Well, I must be off. Perhaps to-night I shall have the luck to be able to look at her from a distance, and not strike the jarring note. I'll try to come in to-morrow to see what you have decided, and then I'll run down on Friday afternoon for a long week-end, to see that you are taking decent care of yourself." As an afterthought he added: "I suppose Hal couldn't get off?"

"I'll ask her if you like. She would love it, if she could."

"And keep us amused too. I should get my head bitten off, but you could put it on again for me. Good-bye. Anyhow, it is a promise that you will go"; and with rather a hurried farewell, he was gone.

Lorraine remained some moments gazing into the fire, and there was a softness in her eyes. She knew perfectly well that he had hurried at the last moment because when they stood together on the hearth he had wanted to kiss her.

And she could not help comparing his strength in refraining with what would have been the action of most of the men she had known, who would have professed more, and meant less. She leaned her head down on her hand, and wondered a little pitifully:

"Why had the best she had ever known come to her too late?"

And then followed the dangerous thought: "Is it indeed too late?"



CHAPTER XXXV

Lorraine was not able to see Hal, but she talked to her on the telephone, and told her she was going into the country at once, and Alymer was coming down for the week-end. "We wondered if you could get off too. Do try," she said.

Hal answered at once that she could not manage it this week, but possibly the next, if Lorraine were still away.

"I've only arranged for a week's holiday," Lorr aine replied. "What a nuisance you should be unable to come this week."

As a matter of fact, Hal was only going out for the day with her cousin on Sunday, but an urgent little note from Sir Edwin had begged her to keep Saturday free for him; and because the suspense was becoming unendurable, she granted his request, determined to know the truth.

So it happened that Lorraine motored down alone to a quaint little fishing-village on the south coast, where there was a charming, old-fashioned, creeper-decked hotel, too far from the railway for the ordinary week-end tourists, and patronised mainly by motorists in the summer.

And on Friday the motor went back to town to fetch Alymer, bringing him down about four o'clock, unaccompanied.

"So Sydney will have to be chaperone after all," Lorraine said lightly. "Now, what should you like to do to-morrow?"

"Is there any chance of fishing?"

He asked the question with some diffidence, fearing that it might only bore her.

Lorraine clapped her hands.

"Exactly what I thought. We're going to have the jolliest little fishing-smack imaginable for the whole day; and Sunday too, if you like; and take our lunch with us, and fish until we are tired."

A glad light leapt to Alymer's eyes.

"By gad! You are a trump," he said.

In the meantime Hal waited a little feverishly for Saturday. They were to have one of their long outings. Meet at twelve, motor for two hours, lunch at two, then a walk; back to town to dine, without changing, in some grill room.

Sir Edwin had mapped it all out beforehand, sitting at his desk, with an anxious, unhappy expression, unrelieved by the evidences all around him of what he had achieved - of the proud position that was his. Indeed he almost wished he could will it all away, and be just an independent, moderately successful solicitor, able to please himself in all things; instead of bound by the demands of party and position.

And those demands just now were very exacting. It was not an easy party to serve, and the less so in that its ranks numbered many soldiers of fortune of the swah-buckler type, who meant to hold the power they had attained partly on the exploitation of a lie, by fair means or otherwise; even if necessary by further lies - lies upon lies - but clever, carefully manipulated ones; not bald, childish, outspoken ones.

One of their most prominent office-holders had recently perpetrated a lie of the latter type. Such a barefaced, impudent, obvious lie, that there was no possibility of covering it up, and the whole country talked of it. Music halls laughed at it, comic papers and comic songs rang with it, election platforms bristled with it.

Naturally the party was very annoyed. One could imagine them saying indignantly to the offender: "Lie as much as you like, but for goodness' sake have the common sense to lie cleverly. If you can't do that, better confine yourself to merely distorting facts."

The official in question held a post in the same department as Sir Edwin - which meant that quite enough opprobrium had been recently hurled at the Law without risk of any further scandal.

The party was not sufficiently strong for that. They had fright enough over a paragraph in the Church Gazette, hinting at a lady in connection with one of their Ministers - where there should be no lady; but prompt action had steered the ship through those shoals in safety.

But all the same, this business of The Right Honourable Sir Edwin Crathie and the Stock Exchange had got to be attended to at once. Under no possible consideration must it leak out that a Cabinet Minister had been speculating so heavily, and lost to such an extent, that nothing but an immense sum of money could save him from disgrace, bankruptey, and ruin.

One friend and another had tided him over for some little time, but he had continued to be reckless and incautious, relying with an unpleasant sneer upon his title.

"Oh well!" had been his conclusion; "if the worst comes to the worst, I can always sell my name to an heiress."

Finally, that unhappy condition had arrived. It had further choses the worst possible moment - the moment when the music halls and comic papers were waxing hilarious over the badly executed lie.

Sir Edwin had been summoned to a consultation that had been the reverse of pleasant. The only thing was that the way of escape had been thoughtfully planned for him. He had no need to hunt up the heiress for himself. She was considerately provided.

Miss Bootes' father was a wealthy Liberal, who had more than once generously supplied funds to the party, in return for some small favour he craved. Now he wanted a celebrity, with a title, for his daughter. Sir Edwin hardly came up to the required standard, but Mr. Bootes was easily persuaded that there was absolutely no limit to his possibilities, were he once set on his feet as far as money was concerned.

The Prime Ministership, followed by a Peerage, were in his certain grasp, had he but the necessary money to back him.

Papa Bootes said over an over to himself: "My daughter, Lady Elizabeth Crathie" (it was really Eliza, but had been discreetly changed to suit the fashion), and came to the conclusion that a Cabinet Minister for a son-in-law sufficiently banished the odorous flavour patent manures had given to his fortune.

Finally he inquired the amount of Sir Edwin's debts, and promised a cheque if the delicate little matter were settled.

Hence the consultation, and the polite but firm intimation that Sir Edwin must close with the offer - that he had not even the right to choose ruin instead, because of its effect on the party.

And of course, now the crisis had come, Sir Edwin did not want to close with the offer. In his own mind he consigned the party, and all belonging to it, to the very worst hell of Dante's Inferno.

But, beyond relieving his mind a little, their imaginary exodus did not help him in the least. He found himself in the very undesirable position of furnishing a telling example of the utter impossibility of serving two masters.

To do his common sense justice he had never had the least intention of attempting to. Without any prevarication as far as his own feelings were concerned, he had quite honestly chosen to serve Mammon. Having decided thus far, he banished the very memory of any other possible master. He did not exist for him. Mammon, in that it meant place, and power, and money, was the only god he wanted to serve.

And now? -

Well, of course, the Little Girl must go. At first he said it harshly, shrugging his shoulders and pursing his lips. It had only been a pastime all through, and, thanks to her owon pluck and sense, it had been one of those rare, delightful pastimes that, ended suddenly, might leave only a gracious, enjoyable memory behind. He was glad of that.

Somewhere in his heart, that was mostly impressionless india-rubber, there had proved to be a healthy, flesh-and-blood spot after all. She had found it quickly - gone straight to it with the unerring directness of a little child. It existed still - would always exist for her.

But in future the india-rubber would have to close over it, and hide it from all chance of discovery. In future he must not even remember it himself. For that way lay weakness. No serving of Mammon could be achieved, whichever way he turned, with the frank, candid, clever Little Girl.

And so she must go; and since it was inevitable, the sooner the better.

Then had come the afternoon's golf; and, without asking himself why, he had hidden from her that there was any change. Afterwards, because the impending finale made him desire her as he had never desired her before, he went into the pretty little sitting-room and kissed her.

When he hurriedly departed, he remembered only that the kiss had been sweet. Also that evidently no rumour had reached her yet. But of course it would. Any moment of any day her newspaper office might get the news and publish it.

He spent a wretched week, torn mercilessly by his desire to serve two masters. In the end, because he was a man who hated to be thwarted, he swore a violent oath, and said that he would.

Then he sent Hal the urgent little note, and made his plans for the day. They all hinged largely upon his hope to get her to go to his flat in Jermyn Street, after that grill-room dinner. That was why when they met he cleverly took the bull by the horns directly he saw in her eyes that she had heard the news. He appealed, with insight, to her sense of humour.

"If you look at me like that," he said, "I shall punish you by sitting down here, in St. James's Park, on the curbstone, and giving you an explanation before all London that lasts an hour."

"I've a great mind to keep you to it," with her low, musical laugh, "and send Peter to bring a phonograph man with a blank record to take it down."

"And a dozen journalists with snap-shot cameras, and biograph apparatus, to link us in notorious publicity to all eternity."

"No; I couldn't stand that. What is your alternative?"

"A long, perfect day in this heavenly sunshine, pretending anything in the world you like that will make us forget the stale, boresome, old week-day world. Then, at the end of it, the unfolding of a glorious plan that is an explanation in itself."

Hal looked doubtful, and seemed to cogitate. He waited in an anxiety he could scarce conceal, watching her mobile, sensitive face. Finally the sunshine and the light-hearted carelessness made the strongest appeal, and she gave in.

"Very well. If it had been dull and cloudy I would not have agreed. But one daren't trifle with sunshine. We'll take our fill of it while it lasts."

So it happened that their last long day was one of the best they had known - each being clever enough to carry out the suggested programme and banish the following cloud for the time.

Hal was a little feverish - a little gayer than usual, with some hidden strain; a little pathetically anxious to act an indifference she could not possibly feel, concerning that rumour, and throw herself heart and soul into their compact of forgetting everything for a little while except the sunshine and the exhilarating dash through a spring-decked England.

In some places the hedges were white with hawthorn; and in sheltered nooks they sped past primroses, like pale stars in the grass. There were plantations of feathery, exquisite larch trees, their lovely green enhanced by tall dark pines, standing among them like sentinels. In gay gardens joyous daffodils nodded and laughed to them as they whirled past. Sir Edwin ventured an appreciative remark.

"Don't talk," Hal said. "Pretend you are in a worldwide cathedral, and it is the great annual festival of spring."

"May I sing?" he asked humorously.

"No; not as you value your life. We have only to listen to the choir. Hush, don't you hear the birds singing the grand spring 'Te Deum'!"

But after a time she spoke herself.

"Was it all like this on Thursday night - all these delicious scents and sights and sounds cast broadcast, for all who passed to enjoy?"

"I expect so. Why?"

The kindliness in the quizzical grey eyes was amazing, as he sat back, watching her with covert insistence, instead of the spring glories. How the divine spark changes a man for the brief moments when it reigns! Banishing utterly Stock Exchange scandals, convenient heiresses, exacting parties, the merciless claims of the god Mammon. He might have looked just so, years and years ago, before he entered that hard service, and buried all his best under layer upon layer of harsh, deadening, world-wise grasping. Pity that the best is so frail to withstand the onslaught of the demons of power and place - so easily overcome and thrust away probably for ever.

"I was up in Holloway. I suppose you know it? And there was a strong man dying a helpless invalid, and his sister breaking her heart, and a woman from the opposite flat, who said she stood for nothing in the world but a letter of the alphabet. And all round was gloom, and murk, and shabbiness, and hard, pitiless facts. I came home in the tube, and all the passengers seemed to look like lifeless, starved, white-faced mummies. They made me feel frightened. I wondered where joy had fled to.

"And here, was it just like this all the time? ... flowers, and sweet scents, and spring, and hopefulness? ... And scarcely any one to enjoy it all; while those white-faced, vacant mummies were journeying foolishly to and fro in that stuffy, detestable tube."

"You shouldn't go to such places. What have you to do with Holloway, and shabbiness, and starving people? If you belonged to me, I wouldn't let you go."