SUPERSEDED

 BY MAY SINCLAIR

 _Author of "The Divine Fire"_

 1906

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

Miss Sinclair has expressed a desire to have this book republished inAmerica, because she considers it the best of her work previous to "TheDivine Fire. " It originally appeared with another work in a volumeentitled "Two Sides of a Question, " a small imported edition of which isnow exhausted. 

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

 I. PROLOGUE. --MISS QUINCEY STOPS THE WAY II. HOUSEHOLD GODS III. INAUGURAL ADDRESSES IV. BASTIAN CAUTLEY, M. D. V. HEALERS AND REGENERATORS VI. SPRING FASHIONS VII. UNDER A BLUE MOON VIII. A PAINFUL MISUNDERSTANDING IX. THROUGH THE STETHOSCOPE X. MISS QUINCEY STANDS BACK XI. DR. CAUTLEY SENDS IN HIS BILL XII. EPILOGUE. --THE MAN AND THE WOMAN

SUPERSEDED

CHAPTER I

Prologue. --Miss Quincey Stops the Way

"Stand back, Miss Quincey, if you please. "

The school was filing out along the main corridor of St. Sidwell's. Itcame with a tramp and a rustle and a hiss and a tramp, urged to a trot bythe excited teachers. The First Division first, half-woman, carryingitself smoothly, with a swish of its long skirts, with a blush, a dreamyintellectual smile, or a steadfast impenetrable air, as it happened to bemore or less conscious of the presence of the Head. Then the SecondDivision, light-hearted, irrepressible, making a noise with its feet, loose hair flapping, pig-tails flopping to the beat of its march. Thenthe straggling, diminishing lines of the Third, a froth of whitepinafores, a confusion of legs, black or tan, staggering, shifting, shuffling in a frantic effort to keep time. 

On it came in a waving stream; a stream that flickered with innumerableeyes, a stream that rippled with the wind of its own flowing, thatflushed and paled and brightened as some flower-face was tossed upwards, or some crest, flame-coloured or golden, flung back the light. A streamthat was one in its rhythm and in the sex that was its soul, obscurely orluminously feminine; it might have been a single living thing thatthrobbed and undulated, as girl after girl gave out the radiance andpulsation of her youth. The effect was overpowering; your senses judgedSt. Sidwell's by these brilliant types that gave life and colour to thestream. The rest were nowhere. 

So at least it seemed to Miss Cursiter, the Head. That tall, lean, iron-grey Dignity stood at the cross junction of two corridors, talkingto Miss Rhoda Vivian, the new Classical Mistress. And while she talkedshe watched her girls as a general watches his columns wheeling intoaction. A dangerous spot that meeting of the corridors. There theprocession doubles the corner at a swinging curve, and there, time it asshe would, the little arithmetic teacher was doomed to fall foul of theprocession. Daily Miss Quincey thought to dodge the line; daily it caughther at the disastrous corner. Then Miss Quincey, desperate under the eyeof the Head, would try to rush the thing, with ridiculous results. AndFate or the Order of the day contrived that Miss Cursiter should alwaysbe there to witness her confusion. Nothing escaped Miss Cursiter; if herface grew tender for the young girls and the eight-year-olds, at thesight of Miss Quincey it stiffened into tolerance, cynically braced tobear. Miss Cursiter had an eye for magnificence of effect, and theunseemly impact of Miss Quincey was apt to throw the lines into disorder, demoralising the younger units and ruining the spectacle as a whole. To-day it made the new Classical Mistress smile, and somehow that smileannoyed Miss Cursiter. 

She, Miss Quincey, was a little dry, brown woman, with a soft pinchedmouth, and a dejected nose. So small and insignificant was she that shemight have crept along for ever unnoticed but for her punctuality inobstruction. As St. Sidwell's prided itself on the brilliance andefficiency of its staff, the wonder was how Miss Quincey came to bethere, but there she had been for five-and-twenty years. She seemed tohave stiffened into her place. Five-and-twenty years ago she had beenarithmetic teacher, vaguely attached to the Second Division, and she wasarithmetic teacher still. Miss Quincey was going on for fifty; she hadout-lived the old Head, and now she was the oldest teacher there, twiceas old as Miss Vivian, the new Classical Mistress, older, far older thanMiss Cursiter. She had found her way into St. Sidwell's, not because shewas brilliant or efficient, but because her younger sister Louisa alreadyheld an important post there. 

Louisa was brilliant and efficient enough for anybody, so brilliant andso efficient that the glory of it rested on her family. And when shemarried the Greek master and went away Juliana stayed on as a matter ofcourse, wearing a second-hand aureole of scholarship and supporting atradition. 

She stayed on and taught arithmetic for one thing. And when she was notteaching arithmetic, she was giving little dictations, setting littlethemes, controlling some fifty young and very free translators of _LePhilosophe sous les Toils_. Miss Quincey had a passion for figures andfor everything that could be expressed in figures. Not a pure passion, nothing to do with the higher mathematics, which is the love of the soul, but an affection sadly alloyed with baser matter, with rods and perches, firkins and hogsheads, and articles out of the grocer's shop. 

Among these objects Miss Quincey's imagination ran voluptuous riot. Butupon such things as history or poetry she had a somewhat blightinginfluence. The flowers in the school Anthology withered under herfingers, and the flesh and blood of heroes crumbled into the dust ofdates. As for the philosopher under the roofs, who he was, and what washis philosophy, and how he ever came to be under the roofs at all, nobodyin St. Sidwell's ever knew or ever cared to know; Miss Quincey had madehim eternally uninteresting. Yet Miss Quincey's strength was in herlimitations. It was the strength of unreasoning but undying conviction. Nothing could shake her belief in the supreme importance of arithmeticand the majesty of its elementary rules. Pale and persistent andintolerably meek, she hammered hard facts into the brain with a sort ofmuffled stroke, hammered till the hardest stuck by reason of theirhardness, for she was a teacher of the old school. Thus in her own wayshe made her mark. Among the other cyphers, the irrelevant andinsignificant figure of Miss Quincey was indelibly engraved on many animmortal soul. There was a curious persistency about Miss Quincey. 

Miss Quincey was not exactly popular. The younger teachers pronounced hercut and dried; for dryness, conscientiously acquired, passed for hernatural condition. Nobody knew that it cost her much effort and industryto be so stiff and starched; that the starch had to be put on fresh everymorning; that it was quite a business getting up her limp littlepersonality for the day. In five-and-twenty years, owing to an incurablemalady of shyness, she had never made friends with any of her pupils. 

Her one exception proved her rule. Miss Quincey seemed to have gone outof her way to attract that odious little Laura Lazarus, who was known atSt. Sidwell's as the Mad Hatter. At fourteen, being still incapable ofadding two and two together, the Mad Hatter had been told off into anidiot's class by herself for arithmetic; and Miss Quincey, because shewas so meek and patient and persistent, was told off to teach her. Thechild, a queer, ugly little pariah, half-Jew, half-Cockney, held allother girls in abhorrence, and was avoided by them with an equalloathing. She seemed to have attached herself to the unpopular teacherout of sheer perversity and malignant contempt of public opinion. Abandoned in their corner, with their heads bent together over the sums, the two outsiders clung to each other in a common misery and isolation. 

Miss Quincey was well aware that she was of no account at St. Sidwell's. She supposed that it was because she had never taken her degree. To besure she had never tried to take it; but it was by no means certain thatshe could have taken it if she had tried. She was not clever; Louisa hadcarried off all the brains and the honours of the family. It had beenconsidered unnecessary for Juliana to develop an individuality of herown; enough for her that she belonged to Louisa, and was known asLouisa's sister. Louisa's sister was a part of Louisa; Louisa was a partof St. Sidwell's College, Regent's Park; and St. Sidwell's College, Regent's Park, was a part--no, St. Sidwell's was the whole; it was theglorious world. Miss Quincey had never seen, or even desired to see anyother. That college was to her a place of exquisite order and light. Light that was filtered through the high tilted windows, and reflectedfrom a prevailing background of green tiles and honey-white pine, fromcountless rows of shining desks and from hundreds of young faces. Light, the light of ideas, that streamed from the platform in the great hallwhere three times in the year Miss Cursiter gave her address to thestudents and teachers of St. Sidwell's. 

Now Miss Cursiter was a pioneer at war with the past, a woman of vastambitions, a woman with a system and an end; and she chose herinstruments finely, toiling early and late to increase their brillianceand efficiency. She was new to St. Sidwell's, and would have liked tomake a clean sweep of the old staff and to fill their places with womenlike Rhoda Vivian, young and magnificent and strong. As it was, she hadbeen weeding them out gradually, as opportunity arose; and the new staff, modern to its finger-tips, was all but complete and perfect now. OnlyMiss Quincey remained. St. Sidwell's in the weeding time had not been abed of roses for Miss Cursiter, and Miss Quincey, blameless butincompetent, was a thorn in her side, a thorn that stuck. Impossible toremove Miss Quincey quickly, she was so very blameless and she worked sohard. 

She worked from nine till one in the morning, from two-thirty tillfour-thirty in the afternoon, and from six-thirty in the evening till anyhour in the night. She worked with the desperate zeal of the supersededwho knows that she holds her post on sufferance, the terrified tenacityof the middle-aged who feels behind her the swift-footed rivalry ofyouth. And the more she worked the more she annoyed Miss Cursiter. 

So now, above all the tramping and shuffling and hissing, you heard theself-restrained and slightly metallic utterance of the Head. 

"Stand back, Miss Quincey, if you please. "

And Miss Quincey stood back, flattening herself against the wall, and theprocession passed her by, rosy, resonant, exulting, a triumph of life. 

CHAPTER II

Household Gods

Punctually at four-thirty Miss Quincey vanished from the light of St. Sidwell's, Regent's Park, into the obscurity of Camden Town. Camden Townis full of little houses standing back in side streets, houses withporticoed front doors monstrously disproportioned to their size. Nobodyever knocks at those front doors; nobody ever passes down those sidestreets if they can possibly help it. The houses are all exactly alike;they melt and merge into each other in dingy perspective, each with itsslag-bordered six foot of garden uttering a faint suburban protestagainst the advances of the pavement. Miss Quincey lived in half of oneof them (number ninety, Camden Street North) with her old aunt Mrs. Moonand their old servant Martha. She had lived there five-and-twenty years, ever since the death of her uncle. 

Tollington Moon had been what his family called unfortunate; that is tosay, he had mislaid the greater portion of his wife's money and the wholeof Juliana's and Louisa's; he, poor fellow, had none of his own to lose. Uncle Tollington, being the only male representative of the family, hadbeen appointed to drive the family coach. He was a genial good-naturedfellow and he cheerfully agreed, declaring that there was nothing in theworld he liked better than driving; though indeed he had had but littlepractice in the art. So they started with a splendid flourishing of whipsand blowing of horns; Tollington driving at a furious break-neck pace ina manner highly diverting and exhilarating to the ladies inside. Thegirls (they were girls in those days) sat tight and felt no fear, whileMrs. Moon, with her teeth shaking, explained to them the advantages ofhaving so expert a driver on the box seat. Of course there came theinevitable smash at the corner. The three climbed out of that coach moredead than alive; but they uttered no complaints; they had had their fun;and in accidents of this kind the poor driver generally gets the worst ofit. 

Mrs. Moon at any rate found consolation in disaster by steadily ignoringits most humiliating features. Secure in the new majesty of herwidowhood, she faced her nieces with an unflinching air and demanded ofthem eternal belief in the wisdom and rectitude of their uncleTollington. She hoped that they would never forget him, never forget whathe had to bear, never forget all he had done for them. Her attitudereduced Juliana to tears; in Louisa it roused the instinct of revolt, andLouisa was for separating from Mrs. Moon. It was then, in her firstdifference from Louisa, that Miss Quincey's tender and foolish littleface acquired its strangely persistent air. Hitherto the elder had servedthe younger; now she took her stand. She said, "Whatever we do, we mustkeep together"; and she professed her willingness to believe in her uncleTollington and remember him for ever. 

To this Louisa, who prided herself on speaking the truth or at any rateher mind, replied that she wasn't likely to forget him in a hurry; thather uncle Tollington had ruined her life, and she did not want to bereminded of him any more than she could help. Moreover, she found heraunt Moon's society depressing. She meant to get on and be independent;and she advised Juliana to do the same. 

Juliana did not press the point, for it was a delicate one, seeing thatLouisa was earning a hundred and twenty pounds a year and she but eighty. So she added her eighty pounds to her aunt's eighty and went to live withher in Camden Street North, while Louisa shrugged her shoulders andcarried herself and her salary elsewhere. 

There was very little room for Mrs. Moon and Juliana at number ninety. The poor souls had crowded themselves out with relics of their past, apathetic salvage, dragged hap-hazard from the wreck in the first frenzyof preservation. Dreadful things in marble and gilt and in _papier-maché_inlaid with mother-o'-pearl, rickety work tables with pouches underneaththem, banner-screens in silk and footstools in Berlin wool-work foughtwith each other and with Juliana for standing-room. For Juliana, with hergenius for collision, was always knocking up against them, always gettingin their way. In return, Juliana's place at an oblique angle of thefireside was disputed by a truculent cabinet with bandy legs. There was anever-ending quarrel between Juliana and that piece of furniture, inwhich Mrs. Moon took the part of the furniture. Her own world had shrunkto a square yard between the window and the fire. There she sat anddreamed among her household gods, smiling now and then under the spell ofthe dream, or watched her companion with critical disapproval. She hadaccepted Juliana's devotion as a proper sacrifice to the gods; but forJuliana, or Louisa for the matter of that, she seemed to have but littleaffection. If anything Louisa was her favourite. Louisa was bettercompany, to begin with; and Louisa, with her cleverness and her salaryand her general air of indifference and prosperity, raised no questions. Besides, Louisa was married. 

But Juliana, toiling from morning till night for her eighty pounds ayear; Juliana, painful and persistent, growing into middle-age without ahope, Juliana was an incarnate reproach, a perpetual monument to thefolly of Tollington Moon. Juliana disturbed her dream. 

But nobody else disturbed it, for nobody ever came to their half of thehouse in Camden Street North. Louisa used to come and go in a briefperfunctory manner; but Louisa had married the Greek professor and goneaway for good, and her friends at St. Sidwell's were not likely to wastetheir time in cultivating Juliana and Mrs. Moon. The thing had been triedby one or two of the younger teachers who went in for all-roundself-development and were getting up the minor virtues. But they had metwith no encouragement and they had ceased to come. Then nobody came; noteven the doctor or the clergyman. The two ladies were of one mind on thatpoint; it was convenient for them to ignore their trifling ailments, spiritual or bodily. And as soon as they saw that the world renouncedthem they adopted a lofty tone and said to each other that they hadrenounced the world. For they were proud, Mrs. Moon especially so. Tollington Moon had married slightly, ever so slightly beneath him, theMoons again marking a faint descent from the standing of the Quinceys. But the old lady had completely identified herself, not only with theMoons, but with the higher branch, which she always spoke of as "_my_family. " In fact she had worn her connection with the Quinceys as afeather in her cap so long that the feather had grown, as it were, intoan entire bird of paradise. And once a bird of paradise, always a bird ofparadise, though it had turned on the world a somewhat dilapidated tail. 

So the two lived on together; so they had always lived. Mrs. Moonwas an old woman before she was five-and-fifty; and before she wasfive-and-twenty Juliana's youth had withered away in the sour andsordid atmosphere born of perishing gentility and acrid personal remark. And their household gods looked down on them, miniatures and silhouettesof Moons and Quinceys, calm and somewhat contemptuous presences. From thepost of honour above the mantelshelf, Tollington, attired as an EarlyVictorian dandy, splendid in velvet waistcoat, scarf and chain-pin, leaned on a broken column symbolical of his fortunes, and smiled geniallyon the ruin he had made. 

That was how Miss Quincey came to St. Sidwell's. And now she wasfive-and-forty; she had always been five-and-forty; that is to say, shehad never been young, for to be young you must be happy. And this was sofar an advantage, that when middle-age came on her she felt nodifference. 

CHAPTER III

Inaugural Addresses

It was evening, early in the winter term, and Miss Cursiter was givingher usual inaugural address to the staff. Their number had increased soconsiderably that the little class-room was packed to overflowing. MissCursiter stood in the free space at the end, facing six rows of eagerfaces arranged in the form of a horse-shoe. She looked upon them andsmiled; she joyed with the joy of the creator who sees his idea incarnatebefore him. 

A striking figure, Miss Cursiter. Tall, academic and austere; a keeneagle head crowned with a mass of iron-grey hair; grey-black eyes burningunder a brow of ashen grey; an intelligence fervent with fire of theenthusiast, cold with the renunciant's frost. Such was Miss Cursiter. Shewas in splendid force to-day, grappling like an athlete with her enormoustheme--"The Educational Advantages of General Culture. " She delivered heraddress with an utterance rapid but distinct, keeping one eye on thereporter and the other on Miss Rhoda Vivian, M. A. 

She might well look to Rhoda Vivian. If she had needed a foil for her owncommanding personality, she had found it there. But the new ClassicalMistress was something more than Miss Cursiter's complement. Nature, usually so economical, not to say parsimonious, seemed to have made herfor her own delight, in a fit of reckless extravagance. She had given hera brilliant and efficient mind in a still more brilliant and efficientbody, clothed her in all the colours of life; made her a creature ofardent and elemental beauty. Rhoda Vivian had brown hair with sparkles ofgold in it and flakes of red fire; her eyes were liquid grey, the grey ofwater; her lips were full, and they pouted a little proudly; it was thepride of life. And she had other gifts which did not yet appear at St. Sidwell's. There was something about her still plastic and unformed; youcould not say whether it was the youth of genius, or only the genius ofyouth. But at three-and-twenty she had chosen her path, and gone far onit, and it had been honours all the way. She went up and down at St. Sidwell's, adored and unadoring, kindling the fire of a secret worship. In any other place, with any other woman at the head of it, such a vividindividuality might have proved fatal to her progress. But Miss Cursiterwas too original herself not to perceive the fine uses of originality. All her hopes for the future were centred in Rhoda Vivian. She lookedbelow that brilliant surface and saw in her the ideal leader of youngwomanhood. Rhoda was a force that could strike fire from a stone; whatshe wanted she was certain to get; she seemed to compel work from thelaziest and intelligence from the dullest by the mere word of her will. What was more, her nature was too large for vanity; she held herworshippers at arm's length and consecrated her power of personalseduction to strictly intellectual ends. At the end of her first term herposition was second only to the Head. If Miss Cursiter was the will andintelligence of St. Sidwell's, Rhoda Vivian was its subtle poetry and itssoul. And Miss Cursiter meant to keep her there; being a woman who madeall sacrifices and demanded them. 

So now, while Miss Cursiter stood explaining, ostensibly to the entirestaff, the unique advantages of General Culture, it was to Rhoda Vivianas to a supreme audience that she addressed her deeper thought and herfiner phrase. If Miss Cursiter had not had to consult her notes now andagain, she must have seen that Rhoda Vivian's mind was wandering, thatthe Classical Mistress was if anything more interested in her companionsthan in the noble utterances of the Head. As her grey eyes swept thetiers of faces, they lingered on that corner where Miss Quincey seemedperpetually striving to suppress, consume, and utterly obliterateherself. And each time she smiled, as she had smiled earlier in the daywhen first she saw Miss Quincey. 

For Miss Quincey was there, far back in the ranks of the brilliant andefficient. Note-book on desk, she followed the quick march of thoughtwith a fatigued and stumbling brain. She was painfully, ludicrously outof step; yet to judge by the light that shone now and then in her eyes, by the smile that played about the corners of her weak, tender mouth, shetoo had caught the sympathetic rapture, the intellectual thrill. Ready todrop was Miss Quincey, but she would not have missed that illuminatinghour, not if you had paid her--three times her salary. It was her oneglimpse of the larger life; her one point of contact with the ideal. Herpencil staggered over her note-book as Miss Cursiter flamed and lightenedin her peroration. 

"We have looked at our subject in the light of the ideals by which andfor which we live. Let us now turn to the practical side of the matter, as it touches our business and our bosoms. Do not say we have no room forpoetry in our crowded days. " A score of weary heads looked up; there wasa vague inquiry in all eyes. "You have your evenings--all of you. Muchcan be done with evenings; if your training has done nothing else for youit has taught you the economy of time. You are tired in the evenings, yes. But the poets, Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Browning, are the greathealers and regenerators of worn-out humanity. When you are faint andweary with your day's work, the best thing you can do is to rise andrefresh yourselves at the living wells of literature. "

Long before the closing sentence Miss Quincey's MS. Had become asightless blur. But she had managed to jot down in her neat arithmeticalway: "Poets = healers and regenerators. "

The address was printed and a copy was given to each member of the staff. Miss Quincey treasured up hers as a priceless scripture. 

Miss Quincey was aware of her shortcomings and had struggled hard to mendthem, toiling pantingly after those younger ones who had attained thestandard of brilliance and efficiency. She joined the Teachers' DebatingSociety. Not that she debated. She had once put some elementary questionsin an inaudible voice, and had been requested to speak a little louder, whereupon she sank into her seat and spoke no more. But she heard a greatdeal. About the emancipation of women; about the women's labour market;about the doors that were now thrown open to women. She was told that allthey wanted was a fair field and no favour. (The speaker, a rosy-cheekedchild of one-and-twenty, was quite violent in her repudiation of favour. )And Miss Quincey believed it all, though she understood very little aboutit. 

But it was illumination, a new gospel to her, this doctrine of GeneralCulture; it was the large easy-fitting formula which she had seemed toneed. With touching simplicity she determined to follow the courserecommended by the Head. Though by the time she had corrected someseventy manuscripts in marble-backed covers, and prepared her lesson forthe next day, she had nothing but the fag-end of her brain to give to thehealers and regenerators; as for rising, Miss Quincey felt much more likegoing to bed, and it was as much as she could do to drag her poor littlebody there. Still Miss Quincey was nothing if not heroic; night afternight twelve o'clock would find her painfully trying to draw water fromthe wells of literature. She had begun upon Browning; set herself to readthrough the whole of _Sordello_ from beginning to end. It is as easy as asum in arithmetic if you don't bother your head too much about theGuelphs and Ghibellines and the metaphors and things, and if you take itin short fits, say three pages every evening. Never any more, or youmight go to sleep and forget all about it; never any less, or you wouldhave bad arrears. As there are exactly two hundred and thirteen pages, she calculated that she would finish it in ten weeks and a day. There wasno place for Miss Quincey and her pile of marble-backed exercise-books inthe dim and dingy first-floor drawing-room (Mrs. Moon and thebandy-legged cabinet would have had something to say to that). All thisterrific intellectual travail went on in a dimmer and dingier dining-roombeneath it. 

Then one night, old Martha, disturbed by sounds that came from MissJuliana's bedroom, groped her way fumblingly in and found Miss Julianasitting up in her sleep and posing the darkness with a problem. 

"If, " said Miss Juliana, "three men can finish one hundred and nineteenhogsheads of Browning in eight weeks, how long will it take seven womento finish a thousand and forty-five--forty-five--forty-five, if one womanworks twice as hard as eleven men?"

Martha shook her head and went fumbling back to bed again; and being aconscientious servant she said nothing about it for fear of frighteningthe old lady. 

About a fortnight later, Rhoda Vivian, sailing down the corridor, cameupon the little arithmetic teacher all sick and tremulous, leaning upagainst the hot-water pipes beside a pile of exercise-books. The sweatstreamed from her sallow forehead, and her face was white and drawn. Shecould give no rational account of herself, but offered two hypotheses asequally satisfactory; either she had taken a bad chill, or else the hotair from the water-pipes had turned her faint. Rhoda picked up the pileof exercise-books and led her into the dressing-room, and Miss Quinceywas docile and ridiculously grateful. She was glad that Miss Vivian wasgoing to take her home. She even smiled her little pinched smile andpressed Rhoda's hand as she said, "A friend in need is a friend indeed. "Rhoda would have given anything to be able to return the pressure and thesentiment, but Rhoda was too desperately sincere. She was sorry for MissQuincey; but all her youth, unfettered and unfeeling, revolted from thebond of friendship. So she only stooped and laced up the shabby boots, and fastened the thin cape by its solitary button. The touch of MissQuincey's clothes thrilled her with a pang of pity, and she could havewept over the unutterable pathos of her hat. In form and substance it wasa rock, beaten by the weather; its limp ribbons clung to it like seaweedwashed up and abandoned by the tide. When Miss Quincey's head was insideit the hat seemed to become one with Miss Quincey; you could not conceiveanything more melancholy and forlorn. Rhoda was beautifully attired inpale grey cloth. Rhoda wore golden sables about her throat, and a bigblack Gainsborough hat on the top of her head, a hat that Miss Quinceywould have thought a little daring and theatrical on anybody else; butRhoda wore it and looked like a Puritan princess. Rhoda's clothes wereenough to show that she was a woman for whom a profession is asuperfluity, a luxury. 

Rhoda sent for a hansom, and having left Miss Quincey at her home wentoff in search of a doctor. She had insisted on a doctor, in spite of MissQuincey's protestations. After exploring a dozen dingy streets andconceiving a deep disgust for Camden Town, she walked back to find herman in the neighbourhood of St. Sidwell's. 

CHAPTER IV

Bastian Cautley, M. D. 

It was half-past five and Dr. Bastian Cautley had put on his housejacket, loosened his waistcoat, settled down by his library fire with apipe and a book, and was thanking Heaven that for once he had an hour tohimself between his afternoon round and his time for consultation. He hadbeen working hard ever since nine o'clock in the morning; but now nobodycould have looked more superlatively lazy than Bastian Cautley as hestretched himself on two armchairs in an attitude of reckless ease. Hisvery intellect (the most unrestful part of him) was at rest; all hisweary being merged in a confused voluptuous sensation, a beatific statein which smoking became a higher kind of thinking, and thought betrayedan increasing tendency to end in smoke. The room was double-walled withbook-shelves, and but for the far away underground humming of a happymaidservant the house was soundless. He rejoiced to think that there wasnot a soul in it above stairs to disturb his deep tranquility. At sixo'clock he would have to take his legs off that chair, and get into afrock-coat; once in the frock-coat he would become another man, allpatience and politeness. After six there would be no pipe and no peacefor him, but the knocking and ringing at his front door would go onincessantly till seven-thirty. There was flattery in every knock, for itmeant that Dr. Cautley was growing eminent, and that at the ridiculouslyearly age of nine-and-twenty. 

There was a sharp ring now. He turned wearily in his chairs. 

"There's another damned patient, " said Dr. Cautley. 

He was really so eminent that he could afford to think blasphemously ofpatients; and he had no love for those who came to consult him beforetheir time. He sat up with his irritable nerves on edge. The servant wascertainly letting somebody in, and from the soft rustling sounds in thehall he gathered that somebody was a woman; much patience and muchpoliteness would then be required of him, and he was feeling anything butpatient and polite. 

"Miss Rhoda Vivian" was the name on the card that was brought to him. Hedid not know Miss Rhoda Vivian. 

The gas-jets were turned low in the consulting-room; when he raised themhe saw a beautiful woman standing by the fire in an attitude ofimpatience. He had kept her waiting; and it seemed that this adorableperson knew the value of time. She was not going to waste words either. As it was impossible to associate her with the ordinary business of theplace, he was prepared for her terse and lucid statement of somebodyelse's case. He said he would look round early in the morning (MissVivian looked dissatisfied); or perhaps that evening (Miss Vivian wasdubious); or possibly at once (Miss Vivian smiled in hurried approval). She was eager to be gone. And when she had gone he stood deliberating. Miss Quincey was a pathological abstraction, Miss Vivian was a radiantreality; it was clear that Miss Quincey was not urgent, and that oncesafe in her bed she could very well wait till to-morrow; but when hethought of Miss Vivian he became impressed with the gravity and interestof Miss Quincey's case. 

While the doctor was making up his mind, little Miss Quincey, in hershabby back bedroom, lay waiting for him, trembling, fretting her nervesinto a fever, starting at imaginary footsteps, and entertaining all kindsof dismal possibilities. She was convinced that she was going to die, orworse still, to break down, to be a perpetual invalid. She thought ofseveral likely illnesses, beginning with general paralysis and endingwith anemia of the brain. It _might_ be anemia of the brain, but sherather thought it would be general paralysis, because this would be somuch the more disagreeable of the two. Anyhow Rhoda Vivian must havethought she was pretty bad or she would not have called in a doctor. Tocall in a doctor seemed to Miss Quincey next door to invoking Providenceitself; it was the final desperate resort, implying catastrophe and theend of all things. Oh, dear! Miss Quincey wished he would come up if hewas coming, and get it over. 

After all he did not keep her waiting long, and it was over in fiveminutes. And yet it was amazing the amount of observation, and insight, and solid concentrated thought the young man contrived to pack into thosefive minutes. 

Well--it seemed that it was not general paralysis this time, nor yetanemia of the brain; but he could tell her more about it in the morning. Meanwhile she had nothing to do but to do what he told her and stay whereshe was till he saw her again. And he was gone before she realized thathe had been there. 

Again? So he was coming again, was he? Miss Quincey did not know whetherto be glad or sorry. His presence had given her a rare and curiouslyagreeable sense of protection, but she had to think of the expense. Shehad to think too of what Mrs. Moon would say to it--of what she would sayto him. 

Mrs. Moon had a good deal to say to it. She took Juliana's illness as apersonal affront, as a deliberate back-handed blow struck at the memoryof Tollington Moon. With all the base implications of her daily acts, Juliana had never attempted anything like this. 

"Capers and nonsense, " she said, "Juliana has never had an illness in herlife. "

She said it to Rhoda Vivian, the bold young person who had taken uponherself to bring the doctor into the house. Mrs. Moon spoke of the doctoras if he was a disease. 

Fortunately Miss Vivian was by when he endured the first terrifyingencounter. Her manner suggested that she took him under her protection, stood between him and some unfathomable hostility. 

He found the Old Lady disentangling herself with immense dignity from hermaze of furniture. Mrs. Moon was a small woman shrunk with her eightyyears, shrunk almost to extinction in her black woollen gown and blackwoollen mittens. Her very face seemed to be vanishing under the immenseshadow of her black net cap. Spirals of thin grey hair stuck flat to herforehead; she wore other and similar spirals enclosed behind glass in anenormous brooch; it was the hair of her ancestors, that is to say of theQuinceys. As the Old Lady looked at Cautley her little black eyes burnedlike pinpoints pierced in a paste-board mask. 

"I think you've been brought here on a wild goose chase, doctor, " saidshe, "there is nothing the matter with my niece. "

He replied (battling sternly with his desire to laugh) that he would bedelighted if it were so; adding that a wild goose chase was the sport hepreferred to any other. 

Here he looked at Miss Vivian to the imminent peril of his self-control. Mrs. Moon's gaze had embraced them in a common condemnation, and thesubtle sympathy of their youth linked them closer and made them one intheir intimate appreciation of her. 

"Then you must be a very singular young man. I thought you doctors werenever happy until you'd found some mare's nest in people's constitutions?You'd much better let well alone. "

"Miss Quincey is very far from well, " said Cautley with recoveredgravity, "and I rather fancy she has been let alone too long. "

Cautley thought that he had said quite enough to alarm any old lady. Andindeed Mrs. Moon was slowly taking in the idea of disaster, and it senther poor wits wandering in the past. Her voice sank suddenly fromgrating; antagonism to pensive garrulity. 

"I've no faith in medicine, " she quavered, "nor in medical men either. Though to be sure my husband had a brother-in-law once on his wife'sside, Dr. Quincey, Dr. Arnold Quincey, Juliana's father and Louisa's. Hewas a medical man. He wrote a book, I daresay you've heard of it;_Quincey on Diseases of the Heart_ it was. But he's dead now, of one of'em, poor man. We haven't seen a doctor for five-and-twenty years. "

"Then isn't it almost time that you should see one now?" said he, cheerfully taking his leave. "I shall look round again in the morning. "

He looked round again in the morning and sat half an hour with MissQuincey; so she had time to take a good look at him. 

He was very nice to look at, this young man. He was so clean-cut and talland muscular; he had such an intellectual forehead; his mouth was sofirm, you could trust it to tell no secrets; and his eyes (they were darkand deep set) looked as if they saw nothing but Miss Quincey. Indeed, atthe moment he had forgotten all about Rhoda Vivian, and did see nothingbut the little figure in the bed looking more like a rather worn andwizened child than a middle-aged woman. He was very gentle andsympathetic; but for that his youth would have been terrible to her. Asit was, Miss Quincey felt a little bit in awe of this clever doctor, whoin spite of his cleverness looked so young, and not only so young but soformidably fastidious and refined. She had not expected him to look likethat. All the clever young men she had met had displayed a noble contemptfor appearances. To be sure, Miss Quincey knew but little of the world ofmen; for at St. Sidwell's the types were limited to three littleeccentric professors, and the plaster gods in the art studio. But for thegods she might just as well have lived in a nunnery, for whenever MissQuincey thought of a man she thought of something like Louisa's husband, Andrew Mackinnon, who spoke with a strong Scotch accent, and wore flannelshirts with celluloid collars, and coats that hung about him all anyhow. But Dr. Cautley was not in the least like Andrew Mackinnon. He had adistinguished voice; his clothes fitted him to perfection; and his linen, irreproachable itself, reproved her silently. 

Her eyes left him suddenly and wandered about the room. She was full oflittle tremors and agitations; she wished that the towels wouldn't lookso much like dish-cloths; she credited him with powers of microscopicobservation, and wondered if he had noticed the stain on the carpet andthe dust on the book-shelves, and if he would be likely to mistake thequinine tabloids for vulgar liver pills, or her bottle of hair-wash forhair-dye. Once released from its unnatural labours, her mind returnedinstinctively to the trivial as to its home. She glanced at her hat, perched conspicuously on the knob of the looking-glass, and a dim senseof its imperfections came over her and vanished as it came. Then shetried to compose herself for the verdict. 

It did not come all at once. First of all he asked her a great manyquestions about herself and her family, whereupon she gave him a completepathological story of the Moons and Quinceys. And all the time he lookedso hard at her that it was quite embarrassing. His eyes seemed to betaking her in (no other eyes had ever performed that act of hospitalityfor Miss Quincey). He pulled out a little book from his pocket and madenotes of everything she said; Miss Quincey's biography was written inthat little book (you may be sure nobody else had ever thought of writingit). And when he had finished the biography he talked to her about herwork (nobody else had ever been the least interested in Miss Quincey'swork). Then Miss Quincey sat up in bed and became lyrical as shedescribed the delirious joy of decimals--recurring decimals--and therapture of cube-root. She herself had never got farther than cube-root;but it was enough. Beyond that, she hinted, lay the infinite. And Dr. Cautley laughed at her defence of the noble science. Oh yes, he couldunderstand its fascination, its irresistible appeal to the emotions; heonly wished to remind her that it was the most debilitating study in theworld. He refused to commit himself to any opinion as to the originalstrength and magnitude of Miss Quincey's brain; he could only assure herthat the most powerful intellect in the world would break down if youkept it perpetually doing sums in arithmetic. It was the monotony of thething, you see; year after year Miss Quincey had been ploughing up thesame little patch of brain. No, certainly _not_--she mustn't think ofgoing back to St. Sidwell's for another three months. 

Three months! Impossible! It was a whole term. 

Dr. Cautley scowled horribly and said that if she was ever to be fit forcube-root and decimals again, she positively and absolutely _must_. Whereupon Miss Quincey gave way to emotion. 

To leave St. Sidwell's, abandon her post for three months, she who hadnever been absent for a day! If she did that it would be all up with MissQuincey; a hundred eager applicants were ready to fill her empty place. It was as if she heard the hungry, leaping pack behind her, the strongyoung animals trained for the chase; they came tearing on the scent, hunting her, treading her down. 

When Rhoda Vivian looked in after morning school, she found a flushed andembarrassed young man trying to soothe Miss Quincey, who paid not theleast attention to him; she seemed to have shrunk into her bed, and laythere staring with dilated eyes like a hare crouched flat and tremblingin her form. From the other side of the bed Dr. Cautley's helpless anddesperate smile claimed Rhoda as his ally. It seemed to say, "For God'ssake take my part against this unreasonable woman. "

Now no one (not even Miss Quincey) could realize the insecurity of MissQuincey's position better than Rhoda, who was fathoms deep in theconfidence of the Head. She happened to know that Miss Cursiter was onlywaiting for an opportunity like this to rid herself for ever of thelittle obstructive. She knew too that once they had ceased to fill theirparticular notch in it, the world had no further use for people like MissQuincey; that she, Rhoda Vivian, belonged to the new race whose eternaldestiny was to precipitate their doom. It was the first time that Rhodahad thought of it in that light; the first time indeed that she hadgreatly concerned herself with any career beside her own. She sat for afew minutes talking to Miss Quincey and thinking as she talked. Perhapsshe was wondering how she would like to be forty-five and incompetent; tobe overtaken on the terrible middle-way; to feel the hurrying generationsafter her, their breath on her shoulders, their feet on her heels; tohave no hope; to see Mrs. Moon sitting before her, immovable andsymbolic, the image of what she must become. They were two very absurdand diminutive figures, but they stood for a good deal. 

To Cautley, Rhoda herself as she revolved these things looked significantenough. Leaning forward, one elbow bent on her knee, her chin propped onher hand, her lips pouting, her forehead knit, she might have been ayoung and passionate Pallas, brooding tempestuously on the world. 

"Miss Vivian is on my side, I see. I'll leave her to do the fighting. "

And he left her. 

Rhoda's first movement was to capture Miss Quincey's hand as it wildlyreconnoitred for a pocket handkerchief among the pillows. 

"Don't worry about it, " she said, "I'll speak to Miss Cursiter. "

Dr. Cautley, enduring a perfunctory five minutes with Mrs. Moon, couldhear Miss Vivian running downstairs and the front door opening andclosing upon her. With a little haste and discretion he managed toovertake her before she had gone very far. He stopped to give his verdicton her friend. 

She had expected him. 

"Well, " she asked, "it _is_ overwork, isn't it?"

"Very much overwork; and no wonder. I knew she was a St. Sidwell's womanas soon as I saw her. "

"That was clever of you. And do you always know a St. Sidwell's womanwhen you see one?"

"I do; they all go like this, more or less. It seems to me that St. Sidwell's sacrifices its women to its girls, and its girls to itself. Idon't imagine you've much to do with the place, so you won't mind mysaying so. "

Rhoda smiled a little maliciously. 

"You seem to take a great deal for granted. As it happens I am ClassicalMistress there. "

Dr. Cautley looked at her and bit his lip. He was annoyed with himselffor his blunder and with her for being anything but Rhoda Vivian--pureand simple. 

Rhoda laughed frankly at his confusion. 

"Never mind. Appearances are deceitful. I'm glad I don't look like it. "

"You certainly do not. Still, Miss Quincey is a warning to anybody. "

"She? She was never fit for the life. "

"No. Your race is to the swift and your battle to the strong. "

He was still looking at her as he spoke. She was looking straight beforeher, her nostrils slightly distended, her grey eyes wide, as if shesniffed the battle, saw the goal. 

"We must make her strong, " said he. 

She had quickened her pace as if under a renewed impulse of energy andwill. Suddenly at the door of the College she stopped and held out herhand. 

"You will look after her well, will you not?" Her voice was resonant onthe note of appeal. 

Now you could withstand Rhoda in her domineering mood if you were strongenough and cool enough; but when she looked straight through your eyes inthat way she was irresistible. Cautley did not attempt to resist her. 

He went on his way thinking how intolerable the question might have beenin some one else's mouth; how suggestive of impertinent coquetry, thebeautiful woman's assumption that he would do for her what he would notdo for insignificant Miss Quincey. She had taken it for granted that hisinterest in Miss Quincey was supreme. 

CHAPTER V

Healers and Regenerators

Rhoda had spoken to Miss Cursiter. Nobody ever knew what she said toher, but the next day Miss Cursiter's secretary had the pleasure toinform Miss Quincey that she would have leave of absence for threemonths, and that her place would be kept for her. 

Miss Quincey had become a person of importance. Old Martha fumbled about, unnaturally attentive, even Mrs. Moon acknowledged Juliana's right to beill if her foolish mind were set on it. There was nothing active orspontaneous in the Old Lady's dislike of her niece, it was simply a habitshe had got. 

An agreeable sense of her dignity stole in on the little woman of noaccount. She knew and everybody knew that hers was no vulgar illness. It was brain exhaustion; altogether a noble and transcendentalaffair; Miss Quincey was a victim of the intellectual life. In all thefive-and-twenty years she had worked there St. Sidwell's had never heardso much about Miss Quincey's brain. And on her part Miss Quincey wassurprised to find that she had so many friends. Day after day theteachers left their cards and sympathy; the girls sent flowers with love;there were even messages of inquiry from Miss Cursiter. And not onlyflowers and sympathy, but more solid testimonials poured in from St. Sidwell's, parcels which by some curious coincidence contained everythingthat Dr. Cautley had suggested and Miss Quincey refused on the groundsthat she "couldn't fancy it. " For a long time Miss Quincey was supremelyhappy in the belief that these delicacies were sent by the Head; and shesaid to herself that one had only to be laid aside a little while forone's worth to be appreciated. It was as if a veil of blessed illusionhad been spread between her and her world; and nobody knew whose fingershad been busy in weaving it so close and fine. 

Dr. Cautley came every day and always at the same time. At first he waspretty sure to find Miss Vivian, sitting with Miss Quincey or drinkingtea in perilous intimacy with Mrs. Moon. Then came a long spell when, time it as he would, he never saw her at all. Rhoda had taken it into herhead to choose six o'clock for her visits, and at six he was bound to beat home for consultations. But Rhoda or no Rhoda, he kept his promise. Hewas looking well after Miss Quincey. He would have done that as a matterof course; for his worst enemies--and he had several--could not say thatCautley ever neglected his poorer patients. Only he concentrated ordissipated himself according to the nature of the case, giving fiveminutes to one and twenty to another. When he could he gave half-hours toMiss Quincey. He was absorbed, excited; he battled by her bedside; hisspirits went up and down with every fluctuation of her pulse; you wouldhave thought that Miss Quincey's case was one of exquisite interest, rarity and charm, and that Cautley had staked his reputation on herrecovery. When he said to her in his emphatic way, "We _must_ get youwell, Miss Quincey, " his manner implied that it would be a very seriousthing for the universe if Miss Quincey did not get well. When he lookedat her his eyes seemed to be taking her in, taking her in, seeing nothingin all the world but her. 

As it happened, sooner than anybody expected Miss Quincey did get well. Mrs. Moon was the first to notice that. She hailed Juliana's recovery asa sign of grace, of returning allegiance to the memory of TollingtonMoon. 

"Now, " said the Old Lady, "I hope we've seen the last of Dr. Cautley. "

"Of course we have, " said Miss Quincey. She said it irritably, buteverybody knows that a little temper is the surest symptom of returninghealth. "What should he come for?"

"To run up his little bill, my dear. You don't imagine he comes for thepleasure of seeing _you_?"

"I never imagine anything, " said the little arithmetic teacher with sometruth. 

But they had by no means seen the last of him. If the Old Lady's theorywas correct, Cautley must have been the most grossly avaricious of youngmen. The length of his visits was infamous, their frequency appalling. Hekept on coming long after Miss Quincey was officially and obviously well;and on the most trivial, the most ridiculous pretexts. It was "just tosee how she was getting on, " or "because he happened to be passing, " or"to bring that book he told her about. " He had prescribed a course oflight literature for Miss Quincey and seemed to think it necessary tosupply his own drugs. To be sure he brought a great many medicines thatyou cannot get made up at the chemist's, insight, understanding, sympathy, the tonic of his own virile youth; and Heaven only knows ifthese things were not the most expensive. 

All the time Miss Quincey was trying to keep up with the new standardimposed on the staff. Hitherto she had laboured under obviousdisadvantages; now, in her leisurely convalescence, sated as she was withtime, she wallowed openly and wantonly in General Culture. And it seemedthat the doctor had gone in for General Culture too. He could talk to herfor ever about Shakespeare, Tennyson and Browning. Miss Quincey wasalways dipping into those poets now, always drawing water from the wellsof literature. By the way, she was head over heels in debt to _Sordello_, and was working double time to pay him off. She reported her progresswith glee. It was "only a hundred and thirty-eight more pages, Dr. Cautley. In forty-six days I shall have finished _Sordello_. "

"Then you will have done what I never did in my whole life. "

It amused Cautley to talk to Miss Quincey. She wore such an air ofadventure; she was so fresh and innocent in her excursions into therealms of gold; and when she sat handling her little bits of Tennysonand Browning as if they had been rare nuggets recently dug up there, whatcould he do but feign astonishment and interest? He had travelledextensively in the realms of gold. He was acquainted with all the poetsand intimate with most; he knew some of them so well as to be able tomake jokes at their expense. He was at home in their society. Beside hislight-hearted intimacy Miss Cursiter's academic manner showed like thepunctilious advances of an outsider. But he was terribly modern thisyoung man. He served strange gods, healers and regenerators whose nameshad never penetrated to St. Sidwell's. Some days he was really dreadful;he shook his head over the _Idylls of the King_, made no secret of hisunbelief in _The Princess_, and shamelessly declared that a great deal of_In Memoriam_ would go where Mendelssohn and the old crinolines havegone. 

Then something very much worse than that happened; Miss Quincey gave hima copy of the "Address to the Students and Teachers of St. Sidwell's, "and it made him laugh. She pointed out the bit about the healers andregenerators, and refreshing yourself at the wells of literature. "Thatis a beautiful passage, " said Miss Quincey. 

He laughed more than ever. 

"Oh yes, beautiful, beautiful. They're to do it in their evenings, arethey? And when they're faint and weary with their day's work?" And helaughed again quite loud, laughed till Mrs. Moon woke out of a doze andstarted as if this world had come to an end and another one had begun. Hewas very sorry, and he begged a thousand pardons; but, really, thatpassage was unspeakably funny. He didn't know that Miss Cursiter had sucha rich vein of humour in her. For the life of her Miss Quincey could notsee what there was to laugh at, nor why she should be teased aboutTennyson and bantered on the subject of Browning; but she enjoyed it allthe same. He was so young; he was like a big schoolboy throwing stonesinto the living wells of literature and watching for the splash; it didher good to look at him. So she looked, smiling her starved smile andsnatching a fearful joy from his profane conversation. 

There were moments when she asked herself how he came to be there at all;he was so out-of-place somehow. The Moons and Quinceys denounced him as astranger and intruder; the very chairs and tables had memories, associations that rejected him; everything in the room suggested the samemystic antagonism; it was as if Mrs. Moon and all her household gods werein league against him. Oddly enough this attitude of theirs heightenedher sense of intimacy with him, made him hers and no one else's for thetime. The pleasure she took in his society had some of the peculiarprivate ecstasy of sin. 

And Mrs. Moon wondered what the young man was going to charge for thatlittle visit; and what the total of his account would be. She said thatif Juliana didn't give him a hint, she would be obliged to speak to himherself; and at that Juliana looked frightened and begged that Mrs. Moonwould do nothing of the kind. "There will be no charge for friendlyvisits, " said she; and she made a rapid calculation in the top of herhead. Nineteen visits at, say, seven-and-six a visit, would come toexactly nine pounds nine and sixpence. And she smiled; possibly shethought it was worth it. 

And really those friendly visits had sometimes an ambiguous character; hedragged his profession into them by the head and shoulders. He had leftoff scribbling prescriptions, but he would tell her what to take in alight and literary way, as if it was just part of their very interestingconversation. Browning was bitter and bracing, he was like iron andquinine, and by the way she had better take a little of both. Then whenhe met her again he would ask, "Have you been taking any more Browning, Miss Quincey?" and while Miss Quincey owned with a blush that she had, hewould look at her and say she wanted a change--a little Tennyson and alighter tonic; strychnine and arsenic was the thing. 

And Mrs. Moon still wondered. "I never saw anything like the indelicacyof that young man, " said she. "You're running up a pretty long bill, Ican tell you. "

Oh, yes, a long, long bill; for we pay heavily for our pleasures in thissad world, Juliana!

CHAPTER VI

Spring Fashions

Winter had come and gone, and spring found Miss Quincey back again at St. Sidwell's, the place of illumination; a place that knew rather less ofher than it had known before. After five-and-twenty years of constantattendance she had only to be away three months to be forgotten. The newstaff was not greatly concerned with Miss Quincey; it was always busy. Asfor the girls, they were wholly given over to the new worship of RhodaVivian; impossible to rouse them to the faintest interest in MissQuincey. 

Her place had been kept for her by Rhoda. Rhoda had put out the strongyoung arm that she was so proud of, and held back for a little while MissQuincey's fate; and now at all costs she was determined to stand betweenher and the truth. So Miss Quincey never knew that it was Rhoda who wasresponsible for the delicate attentions she had received during herillness; Rhoda who had bought and sent off the presents from St. Sidwell's; Rhoda who had conceived that pretty little idea of flowers"with love"; and Rhoda who had inspired the affectionate messages of thestaff. (The Classical Mistress had to draw most extravagantly on herpopularity in order to work that fraud. ) Rhoda had taken her place, andit was not in Rhoda's power to give it back to her. But Miss Quinceynever saw it; for a subtler web than that of Rhoda's spinning was wovenabout her eyes. 

Possibly in some impressive and inapparent way her unhappy littlefavourite Laura Lazarus may have been glad to see her back again, thoughthe two queer creatures exchanged no greeting more intimate than anembarrassed smile. In this rapidly-advancing world the Mad Hatter aloneremained where Miss Quincey had left her. She explained at some lengthhow the figures twisted themselves round in her head and would never staythe same for a minute together. Miss Quincey listened patiently to thisexplanation; she was more indulgent, less persistent than before. 

Under that veil of illusion she herself had become communicative. Shewent up and down between the classes and poured out her soul as to anaudience all interest, all sympathy. There was a certain monotony abouther conversation since the epoch of her illness. It was, "Oh yes, I amquite well now, thank you. Dr. Cautley is so very clever. Dr. Cautley hastaken splendid care of me. Dr. Cautley has been so very kind andattentive, I think it would be ungrateful of me if I had not got well. Dr. Cautley--" Perhaps it was just as well for Miss Quincey that thestaff were too busy to attend to her. The most they noticed was that inthe matter of obstruction Miss Quincey was not quite so precipitate asshe had been. She offended less by violent contact and rebound than bydrifting absently into the processions and getting mixed up with them. 

Rhoda saw a change in her; Rhoda was never too busy to spare a thoughtfor Miss Quincey. "Yes, " she said, "you _are_ better. Your eyes arebrighter. "

"That, " said Miss Quincey, with simple pride "is the arsenic. Dr. Cautleyis giving me arsenic. "

Now arsenic (like happiness) has some curious properties. It looks mostinnocently like sugar, which it is not. A little of it goes a long wayand undoubtedly acts as a tonic; a little more may undermine the stoutestconstitution, and a little too much of it is a deadly poison and killsyou. As yet Miss Quincey had only taken it in microscopic doses. Something had changed her; it may have been happiness, it may have beenillusion; whatever it was Miss Quincey thought it was the arsenic--if itwas not the weather, the very remarkable weather. For that year Springcame with a burst. 

Indeed there is seldom anything shy and tentative, anything obscure andgradual about the approaches of the London Spring. Spring is always in ahurry there, for she knows that she has but a short time before her; shehas to make an impression and make it at once; so she works careless ofdelicacies and shades, relying on broad telling strokes, on strongoutlines and stinging contrasts. She is like a clever artist handicappedwith her materials. Only a patch of grass, a few trees and the sky; butyou wake one morning and the boughs are drawn black and bold against theblue; and leaves are sharp as emeralds against the black; and the grassin the squares and the shrubs in the gardens repeat the same brilliantextravaganza; and it is all very eccentric and beautiful and daring. Thatis the way of a Cockney Spring, and when you are used to it the charm isundeniable. 

One day Miss Quincey walked in Camden Town and noted the singularcaprices of the Spring. Strange longings, freaks of the blood and brain, stirred within her at this bursting of the leaf. They led her into CamdenRoad, into the High Street, to the great shops where the virginal youngfashions and the artificial flowers are. At this season Hunter's windowblooms out in blouses of every imaginable colour and texture and form. There was one, a silk one, of so discreet and modest a mauve that youcould have called it lavender. To say that it caught Miss Quincey's eyewould be to wrong that maidenly garment. There was nothing blatant, nothing importunate in its behaviour. Gently, imperceptibly, it stoleinto the field of vision and stood there, delicately alluring. It couldafford to wait. It had not even any pattern to speak of, only anindefinable white something, a dice, a diaper, a sprig. It was the sprigthat touched her, tempted her. 

Amongst the poorer ranks of Miss Quincey's profession the sumptuary lawsare exceptionally severe. It is a crime, a treachery, to spend money onmere personal adornment. You are clothed, not for beauty's sake, butbecause the rigour of the climate and of custom equally require it. MissQuincey's conscience pricked her all the time that she stood looking inat Hunter's window. Never before had she suffered so terrible asolicitation of the senses. It was as if all those dim and germinaldesires had burst and blossomed in this sinful passion for a blouse. Sheresisted, faltered, resisted; turned away and turned back again. Theblouse sat immovable on its wooden bust, absolute in its policy ofreticence. Miss Quincey had just decided that it had a thought too muchmauve in it, and was most successfully routing desire by depreciation ofits object when a shopman stepped on to the stage, treading airily amongthe gauzes and the flowers. There was no artifice about the young man; itwas in the dreamiest abstraction that he clasped that fair form round thecollar and turned it to the light. It shuddered like a living thing; itsviolent mauve vanished in silver grey. The effect was irresistible. MissQuincey was tempted beyond all endurance; and she fell. Once inpossession of the blouse, its price, a guinea, paid over the counter, Miss Quincey was all discretion. She carried her treasure home in apasteboard box concealed under her cape; lest its shameless arrival inHunter's van should excite scandal and remark. 

That night, behind a locked door, Miss Quincey sat up wrestling andbattling with her blouse. To Miss Quincey in the watches of the night itseemed that a spirit of obstinate malevolence lurked in that deceitfulgarment. Like all the things in Hunter's shop, it was designed forconventional well-rounded womanhood. It repudiated the very idea of MissQuincey; in every fold it expressed its contempt for her person; itscollar was stiff with an invincible repugnance. Miss Quincey had to takeit in where it went out, and let it out where it went in, to pinch, pull, humour and propitiate it before it would consent to cling to herdiminished figure. When all was done she wrapped it in tissue paper andhid it away in a drawer out of sight, for the very thought of itfrightened her. But when next she went to look at it she hardly knew itagain. The malignity seemed all smoothed out of it; it lay there with itsmeek sleeves folded, the very picture of injured innocence and reproach. Miss Quincey thought she might get reconciled to it in time. A day mighteven come when she would be brave enough to wear it. 

Not many days after, Miss Quincey might have been seen coming out of St. Sidwell's with a reserved and secret smile playing about her face; sosecret and so reserved, that nobody, not even Miss Quincey, could tellwhat it was playing at. 

Miss Quincey was meditating an audacity. 

That night she took pen and paper up to her bedroom and sat down to writea little note. Sat down to write it and got up again; wrote it and toreit up, and sat down to write another. This she left open for suchemendations and improvements as should occur to her in the night. Perhapsnone did occur; perhaps she realized that a literary work loses its forceand spontaneity in conscious elaboration; anyhow the note was put up justas it was and posted first thing in the morning at the pillar-box on herway to St. Sidwell's. 

Old Martha was cleaning the steps as Miss Quincey went out; but MissQuincey carefully avoided looking Martha's way. Like the ostrich shesupposed that if she did not see Martha, Martha could not see her. ButMartha had seen her. She saw everything. She had seen the note open onMiss Juliana's table by the window in the bedroom when she was drawing upthe blind; she had seen the silk blouse lying in its tissue paper whenshe was tidying Miss Juliana's drawer; and that very afternoon shediscovered a certain cake deposited by Miss Juliana in the dining-roomcupboard with every circumstance of secrecy and disguise. 

And Martha shook her old head and put that and that together, the blouse, the cake and the letter; though what connection there could possibly bebetween the three was more than Miss Juliana could have told her. Even toMartha the association was so singular that it pointed to some painfulaberration of intellect on Miss Juliana's part. 

As in duty bound, Martha brought up her latest discovery and laid itbefore Mrs. Moon. Beyond that she said nothing, indeed there was nothingto be said. The cake (it was of the expensive pound variety, crowned witha sugar turret and surrounded with almond fortifications) spoke foritself, though in an unknown language. 

"What does that mean, Martha?"

"Miss Juliana, m'm, I suppose. "

Martha pursed up her lips, suppressing the impertinence of her ownprivate opinion and awaiting her mistress's with respect. 

No doubt she would have heard it but that Miss Juliana happened to comein at that moment, and Mrs. Moon's attention was distracted by the reallyamazing spectacle presented by her niece. And Miss Juliana, who forfive-and-twenty years had never appeared in anything but frowsy drab ordingy grey, Miss Juliana flaunting in silk at four o'clock in theafternoon, Miss Juliana, all shining and shimmering like a silver andmauve chameleon, was a sight to take anybody's breath away. Martha dearlyloved a scene, for to be admitted to a scene was to be admitted to hermistress's confidence; but the excellent woman knew her place, and beforethat flagrant apparition she withdrew as she would have withdrawn from afamily scandal. 

Miss Quincey advanced timidly, for of course she knew that she had tocross that room under fire of criticism; but on the whole she was lessabject than she might have been, for at the moment she was thinking ofDr. Cautley. He had actually accepted her kind invitation, and that factexplained and justified her; besides, she carried her Browning in herhand, and it made her feel decidedly more natural. 

Mrs. Moon restrained her feelings until her niece had moved about a bit, and sat down by her enemy the cabinet, and presented herself in everypossible aspect. The Old Lady's eyes lost no movement of the curiousfigure; when she had taken it in, grasped it in all its details, shebegan. 

"Well, I declare, Juliana"--(five-and-twenty years ago she used to callher "Jooley, " keeping the full name to mark disapproval or displeasure. Now it was always Juliana, so that Mrs. Moon seemed to be permanentlydispleased)--"whatever possessed you to make such an exhibition ofyourself? (And will you draw your chair back--you're incommoding thecabinet. ) I never saw anything so unsuitable and unbecoming in _my_life--at this hour of the day too. Why, you're just like a whirligig outof a pantomime. If you think you can carry off that kind of thing you'revery much mistaken. "

That did seem to be Miss Quincey's idea--to carry it off; to brazen itout; to sit down and read Browning as if there was nothing at allremarkable in her personal appearance. 

"And to choose lilac of all things in the world! You never could standthat shade at the best of times. Lilac! Why, I declare if it isn'tmauve-pink. "

"Mauve-pink!" She had given voice to the fear that lay hidden in MissQuincey's heart. A sensitive culprit caught in humiliating guilt couldnot look more cowed with self-consciousness than Miss Quincey at thatword. Criminal and crime, Miss Quincey and her blouse, seemed linked inan awful bond of mutual abhorrence. The blouse shivered as Miss Quinceytrembled in nervous agitation; as she went red and yellow by turns itpaled and flushed its painful pink. They were blushing for each other. For it _was_ mauve-pink; she could see that well enough now. 

"Turn round!"

Miss Quincey turned round. 

"Much too young for you! Why, bless me, if it doesn't throw up every bitof yellow in your face! If you don't believe me, look in the glass. "

Miss Quincey looked in the glass. 

It _did_ throw up the yellow tints. It threw everything up to her. If shehad owned to a little fear of it before, it affected her now withpositive terror. The thing was young, much too young; and it was brutaland violent in its youth. It was possessed by a perfect demon ofjuvenility; it clashed and fought with every object in the room; it madethem all look old, ever so old, and shabby. And as Miss Quincey stoodwith it before the looking glass, it flared up and told her to her facethat she was forty-five--forty-five, and looked fifty. 

"Louisa, " murmured the Old Lady, "was the only one of our family whocould stand pink. "

"I will give it to Louisa, " cried Miss Quincey with a touch of passion. 

"Tchee--tchee!" At that idea the Old Lady chuckled in supreme derision. "Capers and nonsense! Louisa indeed! Much good it'll do Louisa whenyou've been and nipped all the shape out of it to suit yourself. Howeveryou came to be so skimpy and flat-chested is a mystery to me. All theQuinceys were tall, your uncle Tollington was tall, your father, he wastall; and your sister, well; I will say this for Louisa, she's as tall asany of 'em, and she has a _bust_. "

"Yes, I daresay it would have been very becoming to Louisa, " said MissQuincey humbly. "I--I thought it was lavender. "

"Lavender or no lavender, I'm surprised at you--throwing money away on athing like that. "

"I can afford it, " said Miss Quincey with the pathetic dignity of theturning worm. 

Now it was not worm-like subtlety that suggested that reply. It waspositive inspiration. By those simple words Juliana had done something toremove the slur she was always casting on a certain character. TollingtonMoon had not managed his nieces' affairs so badly after all if one ofthem could afford herself extravagances of that sort. The blousetherefore might be taken as a sign and symbol of his innermost integrity. So Mrs. Moon was content with but one more parting shot. 

"I don't say you can't afford the money, I say you can't afford thecolour--not at your time of life. "

Two tears that had gathered in Miss Quincey's eyes now fell on the silk, deepening the mauve-pink to a hideous magenta. 

"I was deceived in the colour, " she said as she turned from hertormentor. 

She toiled upstairs to the back bedroom and took it off. She could neverwear it. It was waste--sheer waste; for no other woman could wear iteither; certainly not Louisa; she had made it useless for Louisa byparing it down to her own ridiculous dimensions. Louisa was and alwayshad been a head and shoulders taller than she was; and she had a bust. 

So Miss Quincey came down meek and meagre in the old dress that sheserved her for so many seasons, and she looked for peace. But thatterrible old lady had not done with her yet, and the worst was still tocome. 

No longer having any grievance against the blouse, Mrs. Moon wasconcentrating her attention on that more mysterious witness to Juliana'sfoolishness--the Cake. 

"And now, " said she, pointing as she might have pointed to a monument, "will you kindly tell me the meaning of this?"

"I expect--perhaps--it is very likely--that Dr. Cautley will come in totea this afternoon. "

The Old Lady peered at Miss Quincey and her eyes were sharp as needles, needles that carried the thread of her thought pretty plainly too, but itwas too fine a thread for Miss Quincey to see. Besides she was lookingat the cake and almost regretting that she had bought it, lest he shouldthink that it was eating too many of such things that had made her ill. 

"And what put that notion into your head, I should like to know?"

"He has written to say so. "

"Juliana--you don't mean to tell me that he invited himself?"

"Well, no. That is--it was an answer to my invitation. "

"_Your_ invitation? You were not content to have that man poking his nosein here at all hours of the day and night, but you must go out of yourway to send him invitations?"

"Dr. Cautley has been most kind and attentive, and--I thought--it wastime we paid him some little attention. "

"Attention indeed! I should be very sorry to let any young man supposethat I paid any attention to him. I should have thought you'd have had alittle more maidenly reserve. Besides, you know perfectly well that Idon't enjoy my tea unless we have it by ourselves. "

Oh yes, she knew; they had been having it that way for five-and-twentyyears. 

"As for that cake, " continued the Old Lady, "it's ridiculous. Look at it. Why, you might just as well have ordered wedding cake at once. I tell youwhat it is, Juliana, you're getting quite flighty. "

Flighty? No mind but a feminine one, grown up and trained under theshadow of St. Sidwell's, could conceive the nature of Miss Quincey'sfeelings on being told that she was flighty. She herself made no attemptto express them. She sat down and gasped, clutching her Browning to giveherself a sense of moral support. All the rest was intelligible, she hadunderstood and accepted it; but to be told that she, a teacher in St. Sidwell's, was flighty--the charge was simply confusing to the intellect, and it left her dumb. 

Flighty? When Martha came in with the tea-tray and she had to order aknife for the cake and an extra cup for Dr. Cautley, she saw Mrs. Moonlooking at Martha, and Martha looking at Mrs. Moon, and they seemed to besaying to each other, "How flighty Miss Juliana is getting. "

Flighty? The idea afflicted her to such a degree that when Dr. Cautleycame she had not a word to say to him. 

For a whole week she had looked forward to this tea-drinking with tremorsof joyous expectancy and palpitations of alarm. It was to have been oneof those rare and solitary occasions that can only come once in a bluemoon. The lump sum of pleasure that other people get spread for them moreor less thickly over the surface of the years, she meant to take once forall, packed and pressed into one rapturous hour, one Saturday afternoonfrom four-thirty to five-thirty, the memory of it to be stored up andeconomised so as to last her life-time, thus justifying the originalexpense. She knew that success was doubtful, because of the uncertaintyof things in general and of the Old Lady's temper in particular. And thenshe had to stake everything on his coming; and the chances, allowing forthe inevitable claims on a doctor's time, were a thousand to one againstit. She had nothing to go upon but the delicate incalculable balance ofevents. And now, when the blue moon had risen, the impossible thinghappened, and the man had come, he might just as well, in fact a greatdeal better, have stayed away. The whole thing was a waste and failurefrom beginning to end. The tea was a waste and a failure, for Marthawould bring it in a quarter of an hour too soon; the cake was a wasteand a failure, for nobody ate any of it; and she was a waste and afailure--she hardly knew why. She cut her cake with trembling fingers andoffered it, blushing as the gash in its side revealed the thoroughlyunwholesome nature of its interior. She felt ashamed of its sugaryartifice, its treacherously festive air, and its embarrassing affinity tobride's-cake. No wonder that he had no appetite for cake, and that MissQuincey had no appetite for conversation. He tried to tempt her with bitsof Browning, but she refused them all. She had lost her interest inBrowning. 

He thought, "She is too tired to talk, " and left half an hour sooner thanhe had intended. 

She thought, "He is offended. Or else--he thinks me flighty. "

And that was all. 

CHAPTER VII

Under a Blue Moon

It was early on another Saturday evening, a fortnight after thatdisastrous one, and Miss Quincey was taking the air in Primrose HillPark. She was walking to keep herself warm, for the breeze was brisk andcool. There was a little stir and flutter in the trees and a little stirand flutter in her heart, for she had caught sight of Dr. Cautley in thedistance. He was coming round the corner of one of the intersectingwalks, coming at a frantic pace, with the tails of his frock-coat wavingin the wind. 

He pulled himself up as he neared her and held out a friendly hand. 

"That's right, Miss Quincey. I'm delighted to see you out. You really aregetting strong again, aren't you?"

"Yes, thank you--very well, very strong. "

Was it her fancy, or did his manner imply that he wanted to sink thathumiliating episode of the tea-party and begin again where they had leftoff? It might be so; his courtesy was so infinitely subtle. He hadactually turned and was walking her way now. 

"And how is _Sordello?_" he asked, the tone of his inquiry suggestingthat there was something seriously the matter with _Sordello_. 

"Getting on. Only fifty-six pages more. "

"You _are_ advancing, Miss Quincey--gaining on him by leaps and bounds. You're not overdoing it, I hope?"

"Oh no, I read a little in the evenings--I have to keep up to thestandard of the staff. Indeed, " she added, turning with a sudden suicidalpanic, "I ought to be at home and working now. "

"What? On a half-holiday? It _is_ a half-holiday?"

"For some people--not for me. "

His eyes--she could not be mistaken--were taking her in as they had donebefore. 

"And why not for you? Do you know, you're looking horribly tired. Supposewe sit down a bit. "

Miss Quincey admitted that it would be very nice. 

"Hadn't you better put your cape on--the wind's changing. "

She obeyed him. 

"That's hardly a thick enough wrap for this weather, is it?"

She assured him it was very warm, very comfortable. 

"Do you know what I would like to do with you, Miss Quincey?"

"No. "

"I should like to pack you off somewhere--anywhere--for another threemonths' holiday. "

"Another three months! What would my pupils do, and what would MissCursiter say?"

It was part of the illusion that she conceived herself to beindispensable to Miss Cursiter. 

"Confound Miss Cursiter!"

Evidently he felt strongly on the subject of Miss Cursiter. He confoundedher with such energy that the seat provided for them by the London CountyCouncil vibrated under it. He stared sulkily out over the park a moment;he gave his cuffs a hitch as if he were going to fight somebody, andthen--he let himself go. 

At a blind headlong pace, lashing himself up as he went, fallingfuriously on civilization, the social order, women's education andwomen's labour, the system that threw open all doors to them, and letthem be squeezed and trampled down together in the crush. He was ready totake the nineteenth century by the throat and strangle it; he squaredhimself against the universe. 

"What, " said Miss Quincey, "do you not believe in equal chances for menand women?" She was eager to redeem herself from the charge offlightiness. 

"Equal chances? I daresay. But not unequal work. The work must be unequalif the conditions are unequal. It's not the same machine. To turn a womanon to a man's work is like trying to run an express train by clock-work, with a pendulum for a piston, and a hairspring for steam. "

Miss Quincey timidly hinted that the question was a large one, that therewas another side to it. 

"Of course there is; there are fifty sides to it; but there are too manypeople looking at the other forty-nine for my taste. I loathe a crowd. "

Stirred by a faint _esprit de corps_ Miss Quincey asked him if he did notbelieve in the open door for women?

He said, "It would be kinder to shut it in their faces. "

She threw in a word about the women's labour market--the enormous demand. 

He said that only meant that women's labour could be bought cheap andsold dear. 

She sighed. 

"But women must do something--surely you see the necessity?"

He groaned. 

"Oh yes. It's just the necessity that I do see--the damnable necessity. Ionly protest against the preventable evil. If you must turn women into somany machines, for Heaven's sake treat them like machines. You don't workan engine when it's undergoing structural alterations--because, you know, you can't. Your precious system recognises no differences. It sets up thesame absurd standard for every woman, the brilliant genius and theaverage imbecile. Which is not only morally odious but physiologicallyfatuous. There must be one of two results--either the average imbecilesare sacrificed by thousands to a dozen or so of brilliant geniuses, orit's the other way about. "

"Whichever way it is, " said Miss Quincey, with her back, so to speak, tothe wall, "it's all part of civilization, of our intellectual progress. "

"They're not the same thing. And it isn't civilization, it's intellectualsavagery. It isn't progress either, it's a blind rush, an inhumanscrimmage--the very worst form of the struggle for existence. It doesn'teven mean survival of the intellectually fittest. It developsmonstrosities. It defeats its own ends by brutalising the intellectitself. And the worst enemies of women are women. I swear, if I were awoman, I'd rather do without an education than get it at that price. OrI'd educate myself. After all, that's the way of the fittest--the one ina thousand. "

"Do you not approve of educated women then?" Miss Quincey was quiteshaken by this cataclysmal outbreak, this overturning and shattering ofthe old beacons and landmarks. 

He stared into the distance. 

"Oh yes, I approve of them when they are really educated--not whenthey are like that. You won't get the flower of womanhood out of aforcing-house like St. Sidwell's; though I daresay it produces pumpkinsto perfection. "

What did he say to Miss Vivian then? Miss Quincey could not think badlyof a system that could produce women like Miss Vivian. 

A cloud came over his angry eyes as they stared into the distance. 

"That's it. It hasn't produced them. They have produced it. "

Miss Quincey smiled. Evidently consistency was not to be expected of thisyoung man. He was so young, and so irresponsible and passionate. Sheadmired him for it; and not only for that; she admired him--she could notsay exactly why, but she thought it was because he had such a beautiful, bumpy, intellectual forehead. And as she sat beside him and shook to thatvibrating passion of his, she felt as if the blue moon had risen againand was shining through the trees of the park; and she was happy, absolutely, indubitably happy and safe; for she felt that he was herfriend and her protector and the defender of her cause. It was for herthat he raged and maddened and behaved himself altogether sounreasonably. 

Now as it happened, Cautley did champion certain theories which MissCursiter, when she met them, denounced as physiologist's fads. But it wasnot they, nor yet Miss Quincey, that accounted for his display offeeling. He was angry because he wanted to come to a certainunderstanding with the Classical Mistress; to come to it at once; and thesystem kept him waiting. It was robbing him of Rhoda, and Rhoda of heryouth. Meanwhile Rhoda was superbly happy at St. Sidwell's, playing atbeing Pallas Athene; as for checking her midway in her brilliant career, that was not to be thought of for an instant. 

The flower of womanhood--it was the flower of life. He had never seen awoman so invincibly and superlatively alive. Cautley deified life; and inhis creed, which was simplicity itself, life and health were one; healththe sole source of strength, intelligence and beauty, of all divine andperfect possibilities. At least that was how he began. But three years'practice in London had somewhat strained the faith of the young devotee. He soon found himself in the painful position of a priest who no longerbelieves in his deity; overheard himself asking whether health was not anunattainable ideal; then declaring that life itself was all a matter ofcompromise; finally coming to the conclusion that the soul of things wasNeurosis. 

Beyond that he refused to commit himself to any theory of the universe. He even made himself unpleasant. A clerical patient would approach himwith conciliatory breadth, and say: "I envy you, Cautley; I envy yourmarvellous experience. Your opportunities are greater than mine. Andsometimes, do you know, I think you see deeper into the work of theMaker. " And Cautley would shrug his shoulders and smile in the good man'sface, and say, "The Maker! I can only tell you I'm tired of mending thework of the Maker. " Yet the more he doubted the harder he worked; thoughhis world spun round and round, shrieking like a clock running down, andhe had persuaded himself that all he could do was to wind up the crazywheels for another year or so. Which all meant that Cautley was working alittle too hard and running down himself. He had begun to specialize ingynecology and it increased his scepticism. 

Then suddenly, one evening, when he least looked for it, least wanted it, he saw his divinity incarnate. Rhoda had appealed to him as the supremeexpression of Nature's will to live. That was the instantaneous andvisible effect of her. Rhoda was the red flower on the tree of life. 

At St. Sidwell's, that great forcing-house, they might grow somevegetables to perfection; whether it was orchids or pumpkins he neitherknew nor cared; but he defied them to produce anything like that. He wassorry for the vegetables, the orchids and the pumpkins; and he was sorryfor Miss Quincey, who was neither a pumpkin nor an orchid, but only aharmless little withered leaf. Not a pleasant leaf, the sort that goesdancing along, all crisp and curly, in the arms of the rollicking wind;but the sort that the same wind kicks into a corner, to lie there till itrots and comes in handy as leaf mould for the forcing-house. Rhoda'sfriend was not like Rhoda; yet because the leaf may distantly suggest therose, he liked to sit and talk to her and think about the most beautifulwoman in the world. To any other man conversation with Miss Quincey wouldhave been impossible; for Miss Quincey in normal health was uninterestingwhen she was not absurd. But to Cautley at all times she was simplyheart-rending. 

For this young man with the irritable nerves and blasphemous temper hadafter all a divine patience at the service of women, even the foolish andhysterical; because like their Maker he knew whereof they were made. Thisvery minute the queer meta-physical thought had come to him that somehow, in the infinite entanglement of things, such women as Miss Quincey wereperpetually being sacrificed to such women as Rhoda Vivian. It struck himthat Nature had made up for any little extra outlay in one direction bycruel pinching in another. It was part of her rigid economy. She was notgoing to have any bills running up against her at the other end of theuniverse. Nature had indulged in Rhoda Vivian and she was making MissQuincey pay. 

He wondered if that notion had struck Rhoda Vivian too, and if she weretrying to make up for it. He had noticed that Miss Quincey had the power(if you could predicate power of such a person), a power denied to him, of drawing out the woman-hood of the most beautiful woman in the world;some infinite tenderness in Rhoda answered to the infinite absurdity inher. He was not sure that her attitude to Miss Quincey was not the mostbeautiful thing about her. He had begun by thinking about the colour ofRhoda's eyes. He could not for the life of him remember whether they wereblue or green, till something (Miss Quincey's eyes perhaps) reminded himthat they were grey, pure grey, without a taint of green or a shadow ofblue in them. That was what his mind was running on as he looked into thedistance and Miss Quincey imagined that his bumpy intellectual foreheadwas bulging with great thoughts. And now Miss Quincey supplied aconvenient pivot for the wild gyrations of his wrath. He got up and withhis hands behind his back he seemed to be lashing himself into a furywith his coat-tail. 

"The whole thing is one-sided and artificial and absurd. Bad enough formen, but fatal for women. Any system that unfits them for their properfunctions--"

"And do we know--have we decided--yet--what they are?" Miss Quincey wasanxious to sustain her part in the dialogue with credit. 

He stared, not at the distance but at her. 

"Why, surely, " he said more gently, "to be women first--to be wives andmothers. "

She drew her cape a little closer round her and turned from him withhalf-shut eyes. She seemed at once to be protecting herself againsthis theory and blinding her sight to her own perishing and thwartedwoman-hood. 

"All Nature is against it, " he said. 

"Nature?" she repeated feebly. 

"Yes, Nature; and she'll go her own way in spite of all the systems thatever were. Don't you know---you are a teacher, so you ought to know--thatoverstrain of the higher faculties is sometimes followed by astonishingdemonstrations on the part of Nature?"

Miss Quincey replied that no cases of the kind had come under _her_notice. 

"Well--your profession ought to go hand-in-hand with mine. If you onlysaw the half of what we see--But you only see the process; we get theresults. By the way I must go and look at some of them. "

His words echoed madly in a feverish little brain, "Ought togo--hand-in-hand--hand-in-hand with mine. "

"Nature can be very cruel, " said she. 

Something in her tone recalled him from his flight. He stood looking downat her, thoughtful and pitiful. "And Nature can be very kind; kinder thanwe are. You are a case in point. Nature is trying to make you wellagainst your will. A little more rest--a little more exercise--a littlemore air--"

She smiled. Yes, a little more of all the things she wanted and had neverhad. That was what her smile said in its soft and deprecating bitterness. 

He held out his hand, and she too rose, shivering a little in her thindress. 

She was the first to hurry away. 

He looked after her small figure, noted her nervous gait and the agitatedmovement of her hand as the streamers on her poor cape flapped andfluttered, the sport of the unfeeling wind. 

CHAPTER VIII

A Painful Misunderstanding

And now, on early evenings and Saturday afternoons when the weather wasfine, Miss Quincey was to be found in Primrose Hill Park. Not thatanybody ever came to look for Miss Quincey. Nevertheless, whether she waswalking up and down the paths or sitting on a bench, Miss Quincey had acertain expectant air, as if at any moment Dr. Cautley might come tearinground the corner with his coat-tails flying, or as if she might look upand find him sitting beside her and talking to her. But he did not come. There are some histories that never repeat themselves. 

And he had never called since that day--Miss Quincey remembered it well;it was Saturday the thirteenth of March. April and May went by; she hadnot seen him now for more than two months; and she began to think theremust be a reason for it. 

At last she saw him; she saw him twice running. Once in the park wherethey had sat together, and once in the forked road that leads past thatpart of St. Sidwell's where Miss Cursiter and Miss Vivian lived in state. Each time he was walking very fast as usual, and he looked at her, but henever raised his hat; she spoke, but he passed her without a word. Andyet he had recognised her; there could be no possible doubt of it. 

Depend upon it there was a reason for _that_. Miss Quincey was one ofthose innocent people who believe that every variety of human behaviourmust have a reason (as if only two months ago she had not been favouredwith the spectacle of an absolutely unreasonable young man). To be sureit was not easy to find one for conduct so strange and unprecedented, andin any case Miss Quincey's knowledge of masculine motives was but small. Taken by itself it might have passed without any reason, as an oversight, a momentary lapse; but coupled with his complete abandonment of CamdenStreet North it looked ominous indeed. Not that her faith in BastianCautley wavered for an instant. Because Bastian Cautley was what he was, he could never be guilty of spontaneous discourtesy; on the other hand, she had seen that he could be fierce enough on provocation; therefore, she argued, he had some obscure ground of offence against her. 

Miss Quincey passed a sleepless night reasoning about the reason, apalpitating never-ending night, without a doze or a dream in it or somuch as the winking of an eyelid. She reasoned about it for a weekbetween the classes, and in her spare time (when she had any) in theevening (thus running into debt to _Sordello_ again). At the end of theweek Miss Quincey's mind seemed to have become remarkably lucid; everythought in it ground to excessive subtlety in the mill of her logic. Shesaw it all clearly. There had been some misunderstanding, some terriblemistake. She had forfeited his friendship through a blunder nameless butirrevocable. Once or twice she wondered if Mrs. Moon could be at thebottom of it--or Martha. Had her aunt carried out her dreadful threat ofgiving him a hint to send in his account? And had the hint implied thatfor the future all accounts with him were closed? Had he called on Mrs. Moon and been received with crushing hostility? Or had Martha permittedherself to say that she, Miss Quincey, was out when perhaps he knew for apositive fact that she was in? But she soon dismissed these conjecturesas inadequate and fell back on her original hypothesis. 

And all the time the Old Lady's eyes, and her voice too, were sharperthan ever; from the corner where she dreamed she watched Miss Quinceyincessantly between the dreams. At times the Old Lady was shaken withterrible and mysterious mirth. Bastian Cautley began to figurefantastically in her conversation. Her ideas travelled by slow trains ofassociation that started from nowhere but always arrived at BastianCautley as a terminus. If Juliana had a headache Mrs. Moon supposed thatshe wanted that young man to be dancing attendance on her again; ifJuliana sighed she declared that Dr. Cautley was a faithless swain whohad forsaken Juliana; if Martha brought in the tea-tray she wondered whenDr. Cautley was coming back for another slice of Juliana's wedding-cake. Mrs. Moon referred to a certain abominable piece of confectionery nowcrumbling away on a shelf in the sideboard, where, with a breach in itsside and its sugar turret in ruins, it seemed to nod at Miss Quincey withall sorts of satirical suggestions. And when Louisa sent her accounts ofTeenie who lisped in German, Alexander who wrote Latin letters to hisfather, and Mildred who refused to read the New Testament in anything butGreek, and Miss Quincey remarked that if she had children she wouldn'tbring them up so, the Old Lady laughed--"Tchee--Tchee! We all know aboutold maids' children. " Miss Quincey said nothing to that; but she hardenedher heart against Louisa's children, and against Louisa's husband andLouisa. She couldn't think how Louisa could have married such a dreadfullittle man as Andrew Mackinnon, with his unmistakable accent andproblematical linen. The gentle creature who had never said a harsh wordto anybody in her life became mysteriously cross and captious. Shehardened her heart even to little Laura Lazarus. 

And one morning when she came upon the Mad Hatter in her corner of theclass-room, and found her adding two familiar columns of figures togetherand adding them all wrong, Miss Quincey was very cross and very captiousindeed. The Mad Hatter explained at more length than ever that thefigures twisted themselves about; they wouldn't stay still a minute sothat she could hold them; they were always going on and on, turning overand over, and growing, growing, till there were millions, billions, trillions of them; oh, they were wonderful things those figures; youcould go on watching them for ever if you were sharp enough; you couldeven--here Laura lowered her voice in awe of her own conception, forLaura was a mystic, a seer, a metaphysician, what you will--you couldeven think with them, if you knew how; in short you could do anythingwith them but turn them into sums. And as all this was very confusing tothe intellect Miss Quincey became crosser than ever. And while MissQuincey quivered all over with irritability, the Mad Hatter paid no heedwhatever to her instructions, but thrust forward a small yellow face thatwas all nose and eyes, and gazed at Miss Quincey like one possessed by aspirit of divination. 

"Have you got a headache, Miss Quincey?" she inquired on hearing herselfaddressed for the third time as "Stupid child!"

Miss Quincey relied tartly that no, she had not got a headache. The MadHatter appeared to be absorbed in tracing rude verses on her roughnotebook with a paralytic pencil. 

"I'm sorry; because then you must be unhappy. When people are cross, " shecontinued, "it means one of two things. Either their heads ache or theyare unhappy. You must be very unhappy. I know all about it. " Theparalytic pencil wavered and came to a full stop. "You like somebody, andso somebody has made you unhappy. "

But for the shame of it, Miss Quincey could have put her head down on thedesk and cried as she had seen the Mad Hatter cry over her sums, and forthe same reason; because she could not put two and two together. 

And what Mrs. Moon saw, what Martha saw, what the Mad Hatter divined withher feverish, precocious brain, Rhoda Vivian could not fail to see. Itwas Dr. Cautley's business to look after Miss Quincey in her illness, andit was Rhoda's to keep an eye on her in her recovery, and instantlyreport the slightest threatening of a break-down. Miss Quincey's somewhateccentric behaviour filled her with misgivings; and in order toinvestigate her case at leisure, she chose the first afternoon when MissCursiter was not at home to ask the little arithmetic teacher to lunch. 

After Rhoda's lunch, soothed with her sympathy and hidden, not to sayextinguished, in an enormous chair, Miss Quincey was easily worked intothe right mood for confidences; indeed she was in that state of mind whenthey rush out of their own accord in the utter exhaustion of the will. 

"Are you sure you are perfectly well?" so Rhoda began her inquiry. 

"Perfectly, perfectly--in myself, " said Miss Quincey, "I think, perhaps--that is, sometimes I'm a little afraid that taking so mucharsenic may have disagreed with me. You know it is a deadly poison. ButI've left it off lately, so I ought to be better--unless perhaps I'mfeeling the want of it. "

"You are not worrying about St. Sidwell's--about your work?"

"It's not that--not that. But to tell you the truth, I _am_ worried, Rhoda. For some reason or other, my own fault, no doubt, I have lost afriend. It's a hard thing, " said Miss Quincey, "to lose a friend. "

"Oh, I am sure--Do you mean Miss Cursiter?"

"No, I do not mean Miss Cursiter. "

"Do you mean--me then? Not me?"

"You, dear child? Never. To be plain--this is in confidence, Rhoda--I amspeaking of Dr. Cautley. "

"Dr. Cautley?"

"Yes. I do not know what I have done, or how I have offended him, but hehas not been near me for over two months. "

"Perhaps he has been busy--in fact, I know he has. "

"He has always been busy. It is not that. It is something--well, I hardlycare to speak of it, it has been so very painful. My dear"--MissQuincey's voice sank to an awful whisper--"he has cut me in the street. "

"Oh, I know--he _will_ do it; he has done it to all his patients. He isso dreadfully absent-minded. "

If Miss Quincey had not been as guileless as the little old maid she was, she would have recognised these indications of intimacy; as it was, shesaid with superior conviction, "My dear, I _know_ Dr. Cautley. He hasnever cut me before, and he would not do it now without a reason. Therehas been some awful mistake. If I only knew what I had done!"

"You've done nothing. I wouldn't worry if I were you. "

"I can't help worrying. You don't know, Rhoda. The bitter and terriblepart of this friendship is, and always has been, that I am underobligations to Dr. Cautley. I owe everything to him; I cannot tell youwhat he has done for me, and here I am, not allowed, and I never shall beallowed, to do anything for him. " A sob struggled in Miss Quincey'sthroat. 

Rhoda was silent. Did she know? Very dimly, with a mere intellectualperception, but still a great deal better than the little arithmeticteacher could have told her, she understood the desire of that innocentperson, not for love, not for happiness, but just for leave to lay downher life for this friend, this deity of hers, to be consumed insacrifice. And the bitter and terrible thing was that she was not allowedto do it. The friend had no use for the life, the deity no appetite forthe sacrifice. 

"Don't think about it, " she said; it seemed the best thing to say in thesingular circumstances. "It will all come right. "

By this time Miss Quincey had got the better of the sob in her throat. "It may, " she replied with dignity; "but I shall not be the first to makeadvances. "

"Advances? Rather not. But if I thought he was thinking things--he isn't, you know, he's not that sort; still, if I thought it I should have it outwith him. "

"How could you have it--'out with him'?"

"Oh I should just ask him what he thought of me; or better still, tellhim what I thought of him. "

Miss Quincey shrank visibly from the bold suggestion. 

"Would you? Oh, that would never do. You won't mind my saying so, but Ithink it would look a little indelicate. Of course it would be verydifferent if it were a woman; if it were you for instance. "

"I should do it any way. It's the straightest thing. "

"I daresay, dear, in your friendships it is. But I think you can hardlyjudge of this. You do not know Dr. Cautley as I do. "

"No, " said Rhoda meekly, "perhaps I don't. " Not for worlds would she havedestroyed that beautiful illusion. 

"It has been, " continued Miss Quincey, "a very peculiar, a veryinteresting relationship. Strange too--considering. If you had asked mesix months ago I should have told you that the thing was impossible, orrather, that in nine cases out of ten--I mean I should have said it washighly improbable that Dr. Cautley would take the faintest interest inme, let alone like me. "

"He does like you, dear Miss Quincey, I know he does. "

"How do you know?"

"He told me so. " (Miss Quincey quivered and a faint flush worked upthrough the sallow of her cheek. ) "And I'm sure he would be mostdistressed to think you were unhappy. "

"It is not unhappiness; certainly not unhappiness. On the contrary I havebeen happy, quite happy lately. And I think it has been bad for me. Iwasn't used to it. Perhaps, if it had happened five-and-twenty yearsago--Do not misunderstand me, I am merely speaking of friendship, dear;but it might--I mean I might--"

Far back in the chair and favoured by Rhoda's silence, Miss Quinceydropped into a dream. Presently she woke up as it were with a start. 

"What am I thinking of? Let us be reasonable; let us reduce it tofigures. Forty-five--thirty--he is thirty. Take twenty-five from thirtyand five remain. Why, Rhoda, he would have been--"

They looked at each other, but neither said: "He would have been fiveyears old. "

Miss Quincey seemed quite prostrated by the result of her calculations. To everything that Rhoda could urge to soothe her she answered steadily:

"You do not know him as I do. "

The voice was not Miss Quincey's voice; it was the monotonous, melancholyvoice of the Fixed Idea. 

Her knowledge of him. After all, nothing could take from her theexquisite privacy of that possession. 

 * * * * *

"_Eros anikate machan_, " said Rhoda. 

Miss Quincey was gone and the Classical Mistress was in school again, coaching a backward student through the "Antigone. "

"Oh Love, unconquered in fight. Love who--Love who fliest, who fliestabout among things, " said the student. And the teacher laughed. 

Laughed, for the entertaining blunder called up a vivid image of the godin Miss Quincey's drawing-room, fluttering about among the furniture anddoing terrific damage with his wings. 

"What's wrong?" asked the student. 

"Oh nothing; only a slight confusion between flying about and fallingupon. 'Oh Love who fallest on the prey'; please go on. "

"'Oh Love who fallest on the prey'--" The chorus mumbled and stumbled, and the student sighed heavily, for the Greek was hard. "He who has--hewho has--Oh dear, I can't see any sense in these old choruses; I do hatethem. "

"Still, " said Rhoda sweetly, "you mustn't murder them. 'He who has lovehas madness. '"

The chorus limped to its end and the student left the coach to somecurious reflections. 

"_Eros anikate machan_!"

"Oh Love, unconquered in fight!" It sang in her ears persistently, joyously, ironically--a wedding-song, a battle-song, a song of victory. 

Bastian Cautley was right when he said that the race was to the swift andthe battle to the strong. How eager she had been for the fight, how madfor the crowded course! She had rushed on, heat after heat, outstrippingall competitors and carrying off all the crowns and the judges'compliments at the end of the day. She loved the race for its own sake, this young athlete; and though she took the crowns and the complimentsvery much as a matter of course, she had come to look on life as nothingbut an endless round of Olympic games. And just as she forgot eachsuccessive event in the excitement of the next, she also had forgottenthe losers and those who were tumbled in the dust. Until she had seenMiss Quincey. 

Miss Quincey--so they had let her come to this among them all? They hadleft her so bare of happiness that the first man (it happened to be herdoctor) who spoke two kind words to her became necessary to herexistence. No, that was hardly the way to put it; it was underratingBastian Cautley. He was the sort of man that any woman--But who wouldhave thought it of Miss Quincey? And the really sad thing was that shedid not think it of herself; it showed how empty of humanity her life hadbeen. It was odd how these things happened. Miss Quincey was neitherbrilliant nor efficient, but she had made the most of herself; at leastshe had lived a life of grinding intellectual toil; the whole woman hadseemed absorbed in her miserable arithmetical function. And yet at fifty(she looked fifty) she had contrived to develop that particular form offoolishness which it was Miss Cursiter's business to exterminate. Therewere some of them who talked as if the thing was done; as if competitiveexaminations had superseded the primitive rivalry of sex. 

Bastian Cautley was right. You may go on building as high as you please, but you will never alter the original ground-plan of human nature. Andhow she had scoffed at his "man's view"; how indignantly she had repulsedhis suggestion that there was a side to the subject that her friends theidealists were much too ideal to see. 

Were they really, as Bastian Cautley put it, so engrossed in producing anew type that they had lost sight of the individual? Was the system sofar in accordance with Nature that it was careless of the single life?Which was the only life open to most of them, poor things. 

And she had blundered more grossly than the system itself. What, afterall, had she done for that innocent whom she had made her friend? She hadtaken everything from her. She had promised to keep her place for her atSt. Sidwell's and was monopolising it herself. Worse than that, she hadgiven her a friend with one hand and snatched him from her with theother. (If you came to think of it, it was hard that she who had so muchalready could have Bastian Cautley too, any day, to play with, or tokeep--for her very own. There was not a bit of him that could by anypossibility belong to Miss Quincey. ) She had tried to stand between herand her Fate, and she had become her Fate. Worse than all, she had keptfrom her the knowledge of the truth--the truth that might have cured her. Of course she had done that out of consideration for Bastian Cautley. 

There it seemed that Rhoda's regard for his feelings ended. Though sheadmitted ten times over that he was right, she was by no means moredisposed to come to an understanding with him on that account. On thecontrary, when she saw him the very next evening (poor Bastian had chosenhis moment indiscreetly) she endeavoured to repair her blunders byvisiting them on his irreproachable head, dealing to him a certainpainful, but not wholly unexpected back-hander in the face. 

She had done all she could for Miss Quincey. At any rate, she said toherself, she had spared her the final blow. 

CHAPTER IX

Through the Stethoscope

One morning the Mad Hatter was madder than ever. It was impossible tohold her attention. The black eyes blazed as they wandered, the paralyticpencil was hot in her burning fingers. When she laid it down towards theend of the morning and rested her head on her hands, Miss Quincey had notthe heart to urge her to the loathsome toil. She let her talk. 

"Miss Quincey, " said the Mad Hatter in a solemn whisper, "I'm going totell you a secret. Do you see _her_?" She indicated Miss Rhoda Vivianwith the point of her pencil. 

It was evident that Laura Lazarus did not adore the Classical Mistress, and Rhoda, sick of her worshippers, had found this attitude refreshing. Even now she bestowed a smile and a nod on the Mad Hatter that would havekept any other St. Sidwellite in a fortnight's ecstasy. 

"Laura, that is not the way to speak of your teachers. "

The child raised the Semitic arch of her eye-brows. Her face belonged tothe type formed from all eternity for the expression of contempt. 

"She's not my teacher, thank goodness. Do you know what I'm going to besome day, when she's married and gone away? I'm going to be what sheis--Classical Mistress. I shan't have to do any sums for that, you know. I shall only have to know Greek, and isn't it a shame, Miss Quincey, they won't let me learn it till I'm in the Fourth, and I never shall be. But--don't tell any one--they've stuck me here, behind her now, and whenshe's coaching that young idiot Susie Parker--"

"Laura, that is not the way to speak of your school-fellows. "

"I know it isn't, but she _is_, you know. I've bought the books, and Iget behind them and I listen hard, and I can read now. What's more, I'vedone a bit of a chorus. Look--" The pariah took a dirty bit of paper fromthe breast of her gown. "It goes, 'Oh Love unconquered in battle, ' andit's simply splend_if_erous. Miss Quincey--when you like anything verymuch--or any_body_--it doesn't matter which--do you turn red all over? Doyou have creeps all down your back? And do you feel it just here?" Thechild clapped her yellow claw to Miss Quincey's heart. "You _do_, you do, Miss Quincey; I can see it go thump, I can feel it go thud!"

She gazed into the teacher's face, and again the power of divination wasupon her. 

"Laura!" Miss Quincey gasped; for the Head had been looming in theirneighbourhood, a deadly peril, and now she was sweeping down on them, smiling a dangerous smile. 

"Miss Quincey, I hope you've been making that child work, " said she andpassed on. 

"I _say_! She didn't see my verses, did she? You _won't_ let on that Iwrote them?"

"You'll never write verses, " said Miss Quincey, deftly improving a badoccasion, "if you don't understand arithmetic. Why, it's the science ofnumbers. Come now, if ninety hogsheads--"

"Oh-h! I'm so tired of hogsheads; mayn't it be firkins this time?"

And, for fancy's sake, firkins Miss Quincey permitted it to be. 

Now Rhoda was responsible for much, but for what followed the Mad Hattermust, strictly speaking, be held accountable. 

Miss Quincey had never been greatly interested in the movements of herheart; but now that her attention had been drawn to them she admittedthat it was beating in a very extraordinary way; there was a decidedpalpitation, a flutter. 

That night she lay awake and listened to it. 

It was going diddledy, diddledy, like the triplets in a Beethoven sonata(only that it had no idea of time); then it suddenly left off till sheput her hand over it, when it gave a terrifying succession of runawayknocks. Then it pretended that it was going to stop altogether, and MissQuincey implicitly believed it and prepared to die. Then its tacticschanged; it seemed to have shifted its habitation; to be rising andrising, to be entangled with her collar-bone and struggling in herthroat. Then it sank suddenly and lay like a lump of lead, dragging herdown through the mattress, and through the bedstead, and through thefloor, down to the bottom of all things. Miss Quincey did not mind much;she had been so unhappy. And then it gave an alarming double-knock at herribs, and Miss Quincey came to life again as unhappy as ever. 

And of what it all meant Miss Quincey had no more idea than the man inthe moon, though even the Mad Hatter could have told her. Her heart wentthrough the same performance a second and a third night, and Miss Quinceysaid to herself that if it happened again she would have to send for Dr. Cautley. Nothing would have induced her to see him for a mere trifle, butpride was one thing and prudence was another. 

It did happen again, and she sent. 

She may have hoped that he would discover something wrong, being dimlyconscious that her chance lay there, that suffering constituted theincontestable claim on his sympathy; most distinctly she felt the desire(monstrous of course in a woman of no account) to wear the aureole ofpain for its own sake; to walk for a little while in the glory andglamour of death. She did not want or mean to give any trouble, to be asource of expense; she had saved a little money for the supreme luxury. But she had hardly entertained the idea for a moment when she dismissedit as selfish. It was her duty to live, for the sake of St. Sidwell's andof Mrs. Moon; and she was only calling Dr. Cautley in to help her to doit. But through it all the feeling uppermost was joy in the certaintythat she would see him on an honourable pretext, and would be able to setright that terrible misunderstanding. 

She hardly expected him till late in the day; so she was a littlestartled, when she came in after morning school, to find Mrs. Moonwaiting for her at the stairs, quivering with indignation that could havebut one cause. 

He had lost no time in answering her summons. 

The drawing-room door was ajar; the Old Lady closed it mysteriously, andpushed her niece into the bedroom behind. 

"Will you tell me the meaning of this? _That man_ has been cooling hisheels in there for the last ten minutes, and he says you sent for him. Isthat the case?"

Miss Quincey meekly admitted that it was, and entered upon a vaguedescription of her trouble. 

"It's all capers and nonsense, " said the Old Lady, "there's nothing thematter with your heart. You're just hysterical, and you just want--?"

"I want to _know_, and Dr. Cautley will tell me. "

"Oh ho! I daresay he'll find some mare's nest fast enough, if you tellhim where to look. "

Miss Quincey took off her hat and cape and laid them down with a sigh. She gave a terrified glance at the looking-glass and smoothed her thinhair with her hand. 

"Auntie--I must go. I can't keep him waiting any longer. "

"Go then--I won't stop you. "

She went trembling, followed so closely by Mrs. Moon that she looked likea prisoner conducted to the dock. 

"How will he receive me?" she wondered. 

He received her coldly and curtly. There was a hurry and abstraction inhis manner utterly unlike his former leisurely sympathy. Many causescontributed to this effect; he was still all bruised and bleeding fromthe blow dealt to him by Rhoda's strong young arm; an epidemic had kepthim on his legs all day and a great part of the night; his time had neverbeen so valuable, and he had been obliged to waste ten minutes of itcontemplating the furniture in that detestable drawing-room. He wasworried and overworked, and Miss Quincey thought he was still offended;his very appearance made her argue the worst. No hope to-day of clearingup that terrible misunderstanding. 

She tremulously obeyed his first brief order, one by one undoing thebuttons of her dress, laying bare her poor chest, all flat and formlessas a child's. A momentary gentleness came over him as he adjusted thetubes of his stethoscope and began the sounding, backwards and forwardsfrom heart to lungs, and from lungs to heart again; while the Old Ladylooked on as merry as Destiny, and nodded her head and smiled, as much tosay, "Tchee-tchee, what a farce it is!"

He put up the stethoscope with a click. 

"There is nothing the matter with you. "

Mrs. Moon gave out a subdued ironical chuckle. 

Miss Quincey looked anxiously into his face. "Do you not think theheart--the heart is a little--?"

He smiled and at the same time he sighed. "Heart's all right. But you'veleft off your tonic. "

She had, she was afraid that so much poison--

"Poison?" (He was not in the least offended. ) "Do you mean the arsenic?There are some poisons you can't live without; but you must take them inmoderation. "

"Will you--will you want to see me again?"

"It will not be necessary. "

At that Mrs. Moon's chuckle broke all bounds and burst into a triumphant"Tchee-tchee-chee!" He went away under cover of it. It was her way ofputting a pleasant face on the matter. 

She hardly waited till his back was turned before she delivered herselfof that which was working within her. 

"I tell you what it is, Juliana; you're a silly woman. "

Miss Quincey looked up with a faint premonitory fear. Her fingers begannervously buttoning and unbuttoning her dress bodice; while half-dressedand shivering she waited the attack. 

"And a pretty exhibition you've made of yourself this day. Anybody mighthave thought you _wanted_ to let that young man see what was the matterwith you. "

"So I did. He says there is nothing the matter with me. "

"Nothing the matter with you, indeed! _He_ knows well enough what's thematter with you. "

The victim was staring now, with terror in her tired eyes. Her mouthdropped open with the question her tongue refused to utter. 

"If you, " continued Mrs. Moon, "had wanted to tell him plainly that youwere in love with him, you couldn't have set about it better. I shouldhave thought you'd have been ashamed to look him in the face--at yourage. You're a disgrace to my family!"

The poor fingers ceased their labour of buttoning and unbuttoning; MissQuincey sat with her shoulders naked as it were to the lash. 

"There!" said Mrs. Moon with an air of drawing back the whip and puttingit by for the present. "If I were you I'd cover myself up, and not sitthere catching cold with my dress-body off. "

CHAPTER X

Miss Quincey Stands Back

As it happened on a Saturday morning she had plenty of time to thinkabout it. All the afternoon and the evening and the night lay before her;she was powerless to cope with Sunday and the night beyond that. 

The remarkable revelation made to her by Mrs. Moon was so great a shockthat her mind refused to realize it all at once. It was an outrage to allthe meek reticences and chastities of her spirit. But she owned itstruth; she saw it now, the thing they all had seen, that she only couldnot see. 

She had sinned the sin of sins, the sin of youth in middle-age. 

Now it was not imagination in Miss Quincey, so much as the tradition ofSt. Sidwell's, that gave her innocent affection the proportions of acrime. Miss Quincey had lived all her life in ignorance of her ownnature, having spent the best part of five-and-forty years in acquiringother knowledge. She had nothing to go upon, for she had never beenyoung; or rather she had treated her youth unkindly, she had fed it onsaw-dust and given it nothing but arithmetic books to play with, so thatits experiences were of no earthly use to her. 

And now, if they had only let her alone, she might have been none thewiser; her folly might have put on many quaint disguises, friendship, literary sympathy, intellectual esteem--there were a thousand delicatesubterfuges and innocent hypocrisies, and under any one of them it mighthave crept about unchallenged in the shadows and blind alleys of thought. As love pure and simple, if it came to that, there was no harm in it. Many an old maid, older than she, has just such a secret folded up andput away all sweet and pure; the poor lady does not call it love, butremembrance, which is so to speak love laid in lavender; and she--whoknows? She might have contrived a little shrine for it somewhere; she hadalways understood that love was a holy thing. 

Unfortunately, when a holy thing has been pulled about and dragged in themud, it may be as holy as ever but it will never look the same. In MissQuincey's case mortal passion had been shaken out of its sleep and forcedto look at itself before it had time to put on a shred of immortality. Inthe sudden glare it stood out monstrous, naked and ashamed; she herselfhad helped to deprive it of all the delicacies and amenities that made ittolerable to thought. With her own hands she had delivered it up to thestethoscope. 

He knew, he knew. In the mad rush of her ideas one sentence detacheditself from the torrent. "_He_ knows well enough what's the matter withyou. "

The nature of the crime was such that there was no possibility orexplanation or defence against the accuser whose condemnation weighedheaviest on her soul. He loomed before her, hovered over her, with thetubes of the heart-probing stethoscope in his ears (as a matter of factthey gave him a somewhat grotesque appearance, remotely suggestive of aHindoo idol; but Miss Quincey had not noticed that); his bumpy foreheadwas terrible with intelligence; his eyes were cold and comprehensive; thesmile of a foregone conclusion flickered on his lips. 

He must have known it all the time. There never had been anymisunderstanding. That was the clue to his conduct; that was the reasonwhy he had left off coming to the house; for he was the soul of delicacyand honour. And yet she had never said a word that might beinterpreted--He must have seen it in her face, then, --that day--whenshe allowed herself to sit with him in the park. She remembered--thingsthat he had said to her--did they mean that he had seen? She saw it allas he had seen it. "Delicacy" and "honour" indeed! Disgust and contemptwould be more likely feelings. 

She lay awake all Saturday night and all Sunday night, until four o'clockon Monday morning; always reviewing the situation, always going over thesame patch of ground in the desperate hope of finding some place whereher self-respect could rest, and discovering nothing but the traces ofher guilty feet. A subtler woman would have flourished lightly over theterritory, till she had whisked away every vestige of her trail; anotherwould have seen the humour of the situation and blown the whole thinginto the inane with a burst of healthy laughter; but subtlety and humourwere not Miss Quincey's strong points. She could do nothing but creepshivering to bed and lie there, face to face with her own enormity. 

On Monday morning and on many mornings after she crept out into thestreet stealthily, like a criminal seeking some shelter where she couldhide her head. She acquired a habit--odd enough to the casualonlooker--of slinking cautiously round every turning and rushing everycrossing in her abject terror of meeting Bastian Cautley. 

There was nobody to tell her that it would not matter if she did meethim; no cheerful woman of the world to smile in her frightened face andsay: "My dear Miss Quincey, there is nothing remarkable in this. We alldo it, sooner or later. Too late? Not a bit of it; better too late thannever, and if it's that Cautley man I'm sure I don't wonder. I'm in lovewith him myself. Lost your self-respect, have you? Self-respect, indeed, why bless your soul, you are all the nicer for it. As for hiding yourhead I never heard such rubbish in my life. Nobody is looking atyou--certainly not the Cautley man. In fact, to tell you the truth, at this moment he is particularly engaged in looking the other way. "

But Miss Quincey did not know that lady. She knew no one but Rhoda andMrs. Moon; and if Mrs. Moon was too old, Rhoda was too young to take thatview; besides, Mrs. Moon was not a woman of the world and no ridiculousdelicacy prompted her to look the other way. In any case Juliana's stateof mind, advertised as it was by her complexion and many eccentricitiesof behaviour, could not have escaped her notice. 

The Old Lady had reverted to her former humorous attitude, and was tryingwhether Juliana's state of mind would not yield to skilfully directedbanter. In these tactics she was not left unsupported. Louisa had writtena long letter about her husband and her children, with a postscript. 

"P. S. --I don't half like what you tell me about Juliana and Dr. C--. Forgoodness' sake don't encourage her in any of that nonsense. Sit on it. Laugh her out of it. I agree with you that it would be better if shecultivated her mind a little more. 

"P. P. S. --Andrew has just come in. He says we oughtn't to call herJuliana, but Fooliana. "

So laughed Louisa, the married woman. 

And Fooliana she was called. The joke was quite unworthy of the GreekProfessor's reputation, but for Mrs. Moon's purposes he could hardly havemade a better one. 

Louisa had put a terrible weapon into the Old Lady's hands. It wasmany weapons in one. It could be turned on in all its broad robusthumour--"Fooliana!" Or refined away into a playful or delicatesuggestion, pointed with an uplifted finger--"Fooli!" Or cut down andcompressed into its essential meaning--"Fool!"

But whichever missile came handy, the effect was much the same. Juliana'scomplexion grew redder or grayer, but her state of mind remainedunchanged. Sometimes the Old Lady tried a graver method. 

"If you would cultivate your mind a little in the evenings you would haveno time for all this nonsense. "

But Juliana had abandoned the cultivation of her mind. She made noattempt to pay off that small outstanding debt to _Sordello. _ There wasan end of the intellectual life; for the living wells of literature weretainted; Browning had become a bitter memory and Tennyson a shame. 

But if Miss Quincey had no heart for General Culture, she was busier thanever in the discharge of her regular duties. At the end of the midsummerterm the pressure on the staff was heavy. Her work had grown with thegrowth of St. Sidwell's, and the pile of marble and granite copy-booksrose higher than ever; it was monumental, and Miss Quincey was gladenough to bury her grief under it for a time. Indeed it looked as if inSt. Sidwell's she had found the shelter where she could hide her head;and a very desirable shelter too, as long as Mrs. Moon continued in thatlively temper. Gradually she began to realize that of all those fivehundred pairs of eyes there was none that had discovered her secret; thatnot one of those busy brains was occupied with her affairs. It was arelief to lose herself among them all and be of no account again. In the corner behind Rhoda Vivian she and the Mad Hatter seemed to beclinging together more than ever in an ecstasy of isolation. 

After all, above the turmoil of emotion a little tremulous, attenuatedideal was trying to raise its head. Her duty. She dimly discerned apossibility of deliverance, of purification from her sin. Therefore sheclung more desperately than ever to her post. Seeing that she had servedthe system for five-and-twenty years, it was hard if she could not getfrom it a little protection against her own weakness, if she could notclaim the intellectual support it professed to give. It was the firsttime she had ever put it to the test. If she could only stay on anotheryear or two--

And now at the very end of the midsummer term it really looked as if St. Sidwell's was anxious to keep her. Everybody was curiously kind; thestaff cast friendly glances on her as she sat in her corner; Rhoda wasalmost passionate in her tenderness. Even Miss Cursiter seemed softened. She had left off saying "Stand back, Miss Quincey, if you please"; andMiss Quincey began to wonder what it all meant. 

She was soon to know. 

One night, the last of the term, the Classical Mistress was closeted withthe Head. Rhoda, elbow-deep in examination papers, had been criticallyconsidering seventy variously ingenious renderings of a certain chorus, when the sudden rapping of a pen on the table roused her from herlabours. 

"You must see for yourself, Rhoda, how we are placed. We must keep up toa certain standard of efficiency in the staff. Miss Quincey is gettingpast her work. "

(Rhoda became instantly absorbed in sharpening a pencil. )

"For the last two terms she has been constantly breaking down; and nowI'm very much afraid she is breaking-up. "

The Head remained solemnly unconscious of her own epigram. 

"No wonder, " said Rhoda to herself, "first love at fifty is new wine inold bottles; everybody knows what happens to the bottles. "

The flush and the frown on the Classical Mistress's face might have beenaccounted for by the sudden snapping of the pencil. 

"You see, " continued Miss Cursiter, as if defending herself from someaccusation conveyed by the frown, "as it is we have kept her on a longwhile for her sister's sake. "

(A murmur from the Classical Mistress. )

"Of course we must put it to her prettily, wrap it up--in tissue paper. "

(The Classical Mistress is still inarticulate. )

"You are not giving me your opinion. "

"It seems to me I've said a great deal more than I've any right to say. "

"Oh you. We know all about that. I asked for your opinion. "

"And when I gave it you told me I was under an influence. "

"What if I did? And what if it were so?"

"What indeed? You would get the benefit of two opinions instead of one. "

Now if Miss Cursiter were thinking of Dr. Cautley there was some point inwhat Rhoda said; for in the back of her mind the Head had a curiousrespect for masculine judgment. 

"There can be no two opinions about Miss Quincey. "

"I don't know. Miss Quincey, " said Rhoda thoughtfully to her pencil, "isa large subject. "

"Yes, if you mean that Miss Quincey is a terrible legacy from the past. The question for me is--how long am I to let her hamper our future?"

"The future? It strikes me that we're not within shouting distance of thefuture. We talk as if we could see the end, and we're nowhere near it, we're in all the muddle of the middle--that's why we're hampered withMiss Quincey and other interesting relics of the past. "

"We are slowly getting rid of them. "

At that Rhoda blazed up. She was young, and she was reckless, and she hadtoo many careers open to her to care much about consequences. MissCursiter had asked for her opinion and she should have it with avengeance. 

"It's not enough to get rid of them. We ought to provide for them. Who orwhat do we provide for, if it comes to that? We're always talking aboutspecialisation, and the fact is we haven't specialised enough. Don't wegive the same test papers to everybody?"

"I shall be happy to set separate papers for each girl if you'llundertake to correct them. "

The more Rhoda fired the more Miss Cursiter remained cold. 

"That's just it--we couldn't if we tried. We know nothing about eachgirl. That's where we shall have to specialise in the future if we're todo any good. We've specialised enough with our teachers and our subjects;chipped and chopped till we can't divide them any more; and we've takenour girls in the lump. We know less about them than they do themselves. As for the teachers--"

"Which by the way brings us back to Miss Quincey. "

"Everything brings us back to Miss Quincey. Miss Quincey will be alwayswith us. "

"We must put younger women in her place. "

Rhoda winced as though Miss Cursiter had struck her. 

"They will soon grow old. Our profession is a cruel one. It uses up thefinest and most perishable parts of a woman's nature. It takes the bestyears of her life--and throws the rest away. "

"Yet thousands of women are willing to take it up, and leave comfortablehomes to do it too. "

"Yes, " sighed Rhoda, "it's the rush for the open door. "

"My dear Rhoda, the women's labour market is the same as every other. Thebest policy is the policy of the open door. Don't you see that the remedyis to open it wider--wider!"

"And when we've opened all the doors as wide as ever they'll go, whatthen? Where are we going to?"

"I can't tell you. " Miss Cursiter looked keenly at her. "Do you mean thatyou'll go no further unless you know?"

Rhoda was silent. 

"There are faults in the system. I can see that as well as you, perhapsbetter. I am growing old too, Rhoda. But you are youth itself. It iswomen like you we want--to save us. Are you going to turn your back onus?"

Miss Cursiter bore down on her with her steady gaze, a gaze that was amenace and an appeal, and Rhoda gave a little gasp as if for breath. 

"I can't go any farther. "

"Do you realize what this means? You are not a deserter from the ranks. It is the second in command going over to the enemy. "

The words were cold, but there was a fiery court-martial in MissCursiter's eyes that accused and condemned her. If Rhoda had been dashingher head against the barrack walls her deliverance was at hand. It seemedthat she could never strike a blow for Miss Quincey without winning thebattle for herself. 

"I can't help it, " said she. "I hate it--I hate the system. "

"The system? Suppose you do away with it--do away with every woman'scollege in the kingdom--have you anything to put in its place?"

"No. I have nothing to put in its place. "

"Ah, " said Miss Cursiter, "you are older than I thought. "

Rhoda smiled. By this time, wrong or right, she was perfectly reckless. If everybody was right in rejecting Miss Quincey, there was rapture inbeing wildly and wilfully in the wrong. She had flung up the game. 

Miss Cursiter saw it. "I was right, " said she. "You are under aninfluence, and a dangerous one. "

"Perhaps--but, influence for influence" (here Rhoda returned MissCursiter's gaze intrepidly), "I'm not far wrong. I honestly think that ifwe persist in turning out these intellectual monstrosities we shall handover worse incompetents than Miss Quincey to the next generation. "

Rhoda was intrepid; all the same she reddened as she realized what amouthpiece she had become for Bastian Cautley's theories and temper. 

"My dear Rhoda, you're an intellectual monstrosity yourself. "

"I know. And in another twenty years' time they'll want to get rid of_me_. "

"Of me too, " thought the Head. Miss Cursiter felt curiously old and worn. She had invoked Rhoda's youth and it had risen up against her. Influencefor influence, her power was dead. 

Rhoda had talked at length in the hope of postponing judgment in MissQuincey's case; now she was anxious to get back to Miss Quincey, toescape judgment in her own. 

"And how about Miss Quincey?" she asked. 

Miss Cursiter had nothing to say about Miss Quincey. She had done withthat section of her subject. She understood that Rhoda had said ineffect, "If Miss Quincey goes, I go too. " Nevertheless her mind was madeup; in tissue paper, all ready for Miss Quincey. 

Unfortunately tissue paper is more or less transparent, and Miss Quinceyhad no difficulty in perceiving the grounds of her dismissal whenpresented to her in this neat way. Not even when Miss Cursiter said toher, at the close of the interview they had early the next morning, "For your own sake, dear Miss Quincey, I feel we must forego yourvaluable--most valuable services. "

Miss Cursiter hesitated, warned by something in the aspect of the tinywoman who had been a thorn in her side so long. Somehow, for thisoccasion, the most incompetent, most insignificant member of her staffhad contrived to clothe herself with a certain nobility. She wasundeniably the more dignified of the two. 

The Head, usually so eloquent at great moments, found actual difficultyin getting to the end of her next sentence. 

"What I was thinking of--really again entirely for your own sake--waswhether it would not be better for you to take a little longer holiday. Ido feel in your case the imperative necessity for rest. Indeed if youfound that you _wished_ to retire at the end of the holidays--of coursereceiving your salary for the term--"

Try as she would to speak as though she were conferring a benefit, theHead had the unmistakable air of asking a favour from her subordinate, ofimploring her help in a delicate situation, of putting it to her honour. 

Miss Quincey's honour was more than equal to the demand made on it. Shehad sunk so low in her own eyes lately that she was glad to gain somelittle foothold for her poor pride. She faced Miss Cursiter bravely withher innocent dim eyes as she answered: "I am ready to go, Miss Cursiter, whenever it is most convenient to you; but I cannot think of takingpayment for work I have not done. "

"My dear Miss Quincey, the rule is always a term's notice--or if--if anyother arrangement is agreed upon, a term's salary. There can be noquestion--you must really allow me--"

There Miss Cursiter's address failed her and her voice faltered. She hadextracted the thorn; but it had worked its way deeper than she knew, andthe operation was a painful one. A few compliments on the part of theHead, and the hope that St. Sidwell's would not lose sight of MissQuincey altogether, and the interview was closed. 

It was understood by the end of the morning that Miss Quincey had sent inher resignation. The news spread from class to class--"Miss Quincey isgoing"--and was received by pupils and teachers with cries ofincredulity. After all, Miss Quincey belonged to St. Sidwell's; she waspart and parcel of the place; her blood and bones had been built into itsvery walls, and her removal was not to be contemplated without dismay. Why, what would a procession be like without Miss Quincey to enliven it?

And so, as she went her last round, a score of hands that had neverclasped hers in friendship were stretched out over the desks in a wildleave-taking; three girls had tears in their eyes; one, more emotionalthan the rest, sobbed audibly without shame. The staff were unanimous intheir sympathy and regret. Rhoda withdrew hastily from the painful scene. Only the Mad Hatter in her corner made no sign. She seemed to take thenews of Miss Quincey's departure with a resigned philosophy. 

"Well, little Classical Mistress, " said Miss Quincey, "we must saygood-bye. You know I'm going. "

The child nodded her small head. "Of course you're going. I might haveknown it. I did know it all along. You were booked to go. "

"Why, Laura?" Miss Quincey was mystified and a little hurt. 

"Because"--a sinister convulsion passed over the ugly littlepariah face--"because"--the Mad Hatter had learnt the force ofunder-statement--"because I _like_ you. "

At that Miss Quincey broke down. "My dear little girl--I am going becauseI am too old to stay. "

"Write to me, dear, " she said at the last moment; "let me know how youare getting on. "

But she never knew. The Mad Hatter did not write. In fact she never wroteanything again, not even verses. She was handed over next term to MissQuincey's brilliant and efficient successor, who made her work hard, withthe result that the Mad Hatter got ill of a brain fever just before theChristmas holidays and was never fit for any more work; and never becameClassical Mistress or anything else in the least distinguished. But thisis by the way. 

As the College clock struck one, Miss Quincey walked home as usual andwent up into her bedroom without a word. She opened a drawer and tookfrom it her Post Office Savings Bank book and looked over her account. There stood to her credit the considerable sum of twenty-seven poundsfour shillings and eight pence. No, not quite that, for the blouse, theabominable blouse, had been paid for out of her savings and it had cost aguinea. Twenty-six pounds three shillings and eight pence was all thatshe had saved in five-and-twenty years. This, with the term's salarywhich Miss Cursiter had insisted on, was enough to keep her going for ayear. And a year is a long time. She came slowly downstairs to thedrawing-room where her aunt was dozing and dreaming in her chair. Therestill hung about her figure the indefinable dignity that had awed MissCursiter. If she was afraid of Mrs. Moon she was too proud to show herfear. 

"This morning, " she said simply, "I received my dismissal. "

The old lady looked up dazed, not with the news but with her dream. MissQuincey repeated her statement. 

"Do you mean you are not going back to that place there?" she askedmildly. 

"I am never going back. "

Still with dignity she waited for the burst of feeling she felt to bejustifiable in the circumstances. None came; neither anger, norindignation, nor contempt, not even surprise. In fact the Old Lady wassmiling placidly, as she was wont to smile under the spell of the dream. 

Slowly, very slowly, it was dawning upon her that the reproach had beentaken away from the memory of Tollington Moon. Henceforth his niece MissQuincey would be a gentlewoman at large. At the same time it struck herthat after all poor Juliana did not look so very old. 

"Very well then, " said she, "if I were you I should put on that nice silkblouse in the evenings. "

CHAPTER XI

Dr. Cautley Sends in his Bill

"I wonder, " Mrs. Moon observed suddenly one morning, "if that man isgoing to let his bill run on to the day of judgment?"

The Old Lady had not even distantly alluded to Dr. Cautley for asmany as ten months. After the great day of what she called Juliana's"resignation" she seemed to have tacitly agreed that since Juliana hadspared her dream she would spare Juliana's. Did she not know, she too, that the dream is the reality? As Miss Quincey, gentlewoman at large, Juliana had a perfect right to set up a dream of her own; as to whethershe was able to afford the luxury, Juliana was the best judge. Herpresent wonder, then, had no malignant reference; it was simply wrungfrom her by inexorable economy. Juliana's supplies were calculated tolast a year; as it was the winter season that they had lately weathered, she was rather more than three-quarters of the way through her slenderresources, and it behoved them to look out for bills ahead. And Mrs. Moon had always suspected that young man, not only of a passion formare's-nesting, but of deliberately and systematically keeping backhis accounts that he might revel in a larger haul. 

The remark, falling with a shock all the greater for a silence of tenmonths, had the effect of driving Juliana out of the room. Out of theroom and out of the house, down High Street, where Hunter's shop wasalready blossoming in another spring; up Park Street and past the longwall of St. Sidwell's, till she found herself alone in Primrose HillPark. 

The young day was so glorious that Miss Quincey had some thoughts ofclimbing Primrose Hill and sitting on the top; but after twenty yards orso of it she abandoned the attempt. For the last few months her heart hadbeen the seat of certain curious sensations, so remarkably like those shehad experienced in the summer that she took them for the same, andsternly resolved to suppress their existence by ignoring it. That, sheunderstood, was the right treatment for hysteria. 

But this morning Miss Quincey's heart protested so violently against hernotion of ascending Primrose Hill, threatening indeed to strangle her ifshe persisted in it, that Miss Quincey unwillingly gave in and contentedherself with a seat in one of the lower walks of the park. There sheleaned back and looked about her, but with no permanent interest in onething more than another. 

Presently, as she settled down to quieter breathing, there came to her astrange sensation, that grew till it became an unusually vivid perceptionof the outer world; a perception mingled with a still stranger doublevision, a sense that seemed to be born in the dark of the brain and tobe moving there to a foregone conclusion. And all the time her eyeswere busy, now with a bush of May in crimson blossom, now with themany-pointed leaves of a sycamore pricked against the blue; now with thestraight rectangular paths that made the park an immense mathematicaldiagram. From where she sat her eyes swept the length of the wide walkthat cuts the green from east to west. Far down at the west end was aseat, and she could see two people, a man and a woman, sitting on it;they must have been there a quarter of an hour or more; she had noticedthem ever since she came into the park. 

They had risen, and her gaze left everything else to follow them; orrather, it went to meet them, for they had turned and were coming slowlyeastward now. They had stopped; they were facing each other, and her gazerested with them, fascinated yet uncertain. And now she could see nothingelse; the park, with the regions beyond it and the sky above it, hadbecome merely a setting for one man and one woman; the avenue, freshstrewn with red golden gravel, led up to them and ended there at theirfeet; a young poplar trembled in the wind and shook its silver green fansabove them in delicate confusion. The next minute a light went up in thatobscure and prophetic background of her brain; and she saw Rhoda Vivianand Bastian Cautley coming towards her, greeting her, with their kindfaces shining. 

She rose, turned from them, and went slowly home. 

It was the last rent in the veil of illusion that Rhoda had spun so well. Up till then Miss Quincey had seen only half the truth. Now she had seenthe whole, with all that Rhoda had disguised and kept hidden from her;the truth that kills or cures. 

Miss Quincey did not go out again that day, but sat all afternoon silentin her chair. Towards evening she became talkative and stayed up laterthan had been her wont since she recovered her freedom. She seemed to betrying to make up to her aunt for a want of sociability in the past. 

At eleven she got up and stood before the Old Lady in the attitude of apenitent. Apparently she had been seized with a mysterious impulse ofconfession. 

"Aunt, " she said, "there's something I want to say to you. "

She paused, casting about in her mind for the sins she had committed. They were three in all. 

"I am afraid I have been very extravagant"--she was thinking of theblouse--"and--and very foolish"--she was thinking of BastianCautley--"and very selfish"--she was thinking of her momentary desire todie. 

"Juliana, if you're worrying about that money"--the Old Lady was thinkingof nothing else--"don't. I've plenty for us both. As long as we can keeptogether I don't care what I eat, nor what I drink, nor what I put on mypoor back. And if the worst comes to the worst I'll sell the furniture. "

It seemed to Miss Quincey that she had never known her aunt in all thosefive-and-twenty years; never known her until this minute. For perhaps, after all, being angry with Juliana was only Mrs. Moon's way of beingsorry for her. But how was Juliana to know that?

"Only, " continued the Old Lady, "I won't part with your uncle's picture. Don't ask me to part with your uncle's picture. "

"You won't have to part with anything. I'll--I'll get something to do. I'm not worrying. There's nothing to worry about. "

She stooped down and tenderly kissed the wrinkled forehead. 

A vague fear clutched at the Old Lady's heart. 

"Then, Juliana, you are not well. Hadn't you better see"--shehesitated--pausing with unwonted delicacy for her words--"a doctor?"

"I don't want to see a doctor. There is nothing the matter with me. " Andstill insisting that there was nothing the matter with her, she went tobed. 

And old Martha had come with her early morning croak to call MissJuliana; she had dumped down the hot-water can in the basin with a clash, pulled up the blind with a jerk, and drawn back the curtains with aclatter, before she noticed that Miss Juliana was up all the time. Up anddressed, and sitting in her chair by the hearth, warming her feet atan imaginary fire. 

She had been sitting up all night, for her bed was as Martha had left itthe night before. Martha approached cautiously, still feeling her way, though there was no need for it, the room being full of light. 

She groped like a blind woman for Miss Juliana's forehead, laying herhand there before she looked into her face. 

After some fumbling futile experiments with brandy, a looking-glass and afeather, old Martha hid these things carefully out of sight; shedisarranged the bed, turning back the clothes as they might have beenleft by one newly wakened and risen out of it; drew a shawl over the headand shoulders of the figure in the chair; pulled down the blind andclosed the curtains till the room was dark again. Then she groped her wayout and down the stairs to her mistress's door. There she stayed amoment, gathering her feeble wits together for the part she meant toplay. She had made up her mind what she would do. 

So she called the Old Lady as usual; said she was afraid there wassomething the matter with Miss Juliana; thought she might have got up abit too early and turned faint like. 

The Old Lady answered that she would come and see; and the two crept upthe stairs, and went groping their way in the dark of the curtained room. Old Martha fumbled a long time with the blind; she drew back the curtainslittle by little, with infinite precaution letting in the light upon thefearful thing. 

But the Old Lady approached it boldly. 

"Don't you know me, Jooley dear?" she said, peering into the strangeeyes. There was no recognition in them for all their staring. 

"Don't know _me_, m'm, " said Martha soothingly; "seems all of a whiteswoon, don't she?"

Martha was warming to her part. She made herself busy; she brought hotwater bottles and eau de cologne; she spent twenty minutes chafing thehands and forehead and laying warmth to the feet, that the Old Lady mighthave the comfort of knowing that everything had been done that could bedone. She shuffled off to find brandy, as if she had only thought of itthat instant; and she played out the play with the looking-glass and thefeather. 

The feather fluttered to the floor, and Martha ceased bending andpeering, and looked at her mistress. 

"She's gone, m'm, I do believe. "

The Old Lady sank by the chair, her arms clinging to those rigid knees. 

"Jooley--Jooley--don't you _know_ me?" she cried, as if in a passion ofaffront. 

CHAPTER XII

Epilogue. --The Man and the Woman

By daylight there is neither glamour nor beauty in the greatburying-ground of North London; you must go to it at evening, in thefirst fall of the summer dusk, to feel the fascination of that labyrinthof low graves, crosses and headstones, urns and sarcophagi, crowded inthe black-green of the grass; of marble columns, granite pyramids andobelisks, massed and reared and piled in the grey of the air. It isnothing if not fantastic. Even by day that same mad grouping and jostlingof monumental devices, gathered together from the ends of the world, gives to the place a cheerful half-pagan character; now, in its confusionand immensity, it might be some city of dreams, tossed up in cloud andfoam and frozen into marble; some aerial half-way limbo where life slipsa little from the living and death from the dead. 

For these have their own way here. No priest interferes with them, andwhatever secular power ordains these matters is indulgent to itschildren. If one of them would have his horse or his dog carved on histomb instead of an angel, or a pair of compasses instead of a cross, there is no one to thwart his fancy. He may even be humorous if he will. It is as if he implored us to laugh with him a little while though thejest be feeble, and not to chill him with so many tears. 

At twilight a man and a woman were threading their way through thiscemetery, and as they went they smiled faintly at the memorial capricesof the living and the still quainter originalities of the dead. But onthe whole they seemed to be trying not to look too happy. They saidnothing to each other till they came to a mound raised somewhere in theborderland that divides the graves of the rich from the paupers' ground. There was just room for them to stand together on the boards that roofedin the narrow pit dug ready for the next comer. 

"If I believed in a Creator" (it was the man who spoke), "I should wantto know what pleasure he found in creating that poor little woman. "

The woman did not answer as she looked at him. 

"Yet, " he went on, "I'm selfish enough to be glad that she lived. If Ihad not known Miss Quincey, I should not have known you. "

"And I, " said the woman, and her face was rosy under the touch of grief, "if I had not loved Miss Quincey, I could not have loved you. "

They seemed to think Miss Quincey had justified her existence. Perhapsshe had. 

And the woman took the roses that she wore in her belt and laid them onthe breast of the grave. She stood for a minute studying the effect witha shamefaced look, as if she had mocked the dead woman with flowers flungfrom her wedding-wreath of youth and joy. 

Then she turned to the man; the closing bell tolled, and they passedthrough the iron gates into the ways of the living. 

THE END