THE LOWEST RUNG

Together with The Hand onthe Latch, St. Luke's Summerand The Understudy

by

MARY CHOLMONDELEY

Author of "Red Pottage"

LondonJohn Murray, Albemarle Street, W. 1908

Copyright, 1908, in theUnited States of America

 TO HOWARD STURGIS

CONTENTS

 PAGE

 THE LOWEST RUNG 33

 THE HAND ON THE LATCH 82

 SAINT LUKE'S SUMMER 107

 THE UNDERSTUDY 156

PREFACE

I have been writing books for five-and-twenty years, novels of which Ibelieve myself to be the author, in spite of the fact that I have beenassured over and over again that they are not my own work. When I haveon several occasions ventured to claim them, I have seldom beenbelieved, which seems the more odd as, when others have claimed them, they have been believed at once. Before I put my name to them they wereinvariably considered to be, and reviewed as, the work of a man; and foryears after I had put my name to them various men have been mentioned tome as the real author. 

I remember once, when I was very young and shy, how at one of my firstLondon dinner-parties a charming elderly man discussed one of myearliest books with such appreciation that I at last remarked that I hadwritten it myself. If I had looked for a surprised flash of delight atthe fact that so much talent was palpitating in white muslin beside him, I was doomed to be disappointed. He gravely and gently said, "I knowthat to be untrue, " and the conversation was turned to other subjects. 

One man did indeed actually announce himself to be the author of "RedPottage, " in the presence of a large number of people, including thelate Mr. William Sharp, who related the occurrence to me. But theincident ended uncomfortably for the claimant, which one would havethought he might have foreseen. 

But whether my books are mine or not, still whenever one of them appearsthe same thing happens. I am pressed to own that such-and-such acharacter "is taken from So-and-so. " I have not yet yielded to theseexhortations to confession, partly, no doubt, because it would be veryawkward for me afterwards if I owned that thirty different persons werethe one and only original of "So-and-so. "

My character for uprightness (if I ever had one) has never survived mytacit, or in some cases emphatic, refusal to be squeezed through the"clefts of confession. "

It is perhaps impossible for those who do not write fiction to form anyconception how easily an erroneous idea gains credence that some one hasbeen "put in a book"; or, if the idea has once been entertained, howimpossible it is to eradicate it. 

Looking back over a string of incidents of this kind in my own personalexperience, covering the last five-and-twenty years, I feel doubtfulwhether I shall be believed if I instance some of them. They seem now, after the lapse of years, frankly incredible, and yet they were realenough to give me not a little pain at the time. It is the fashionnowadays, if one says anything about oneself, to preface it by thepontifical remark that what one writes is penned for the sake of others, to save them, to cheer them, etc. , etc. This, of course, now I come tothink of it, must be my reason also for my lapse into autobiography. Isee now that I only do it out of tenderness for the next generation. Therefore, young writers of the future, now on the playing-fields ofEton, take notice that my heart yearns over you. If, later on, you areharrowed as I have been harrowed, remember

 _J'ai passé par là. _

Observe the prints of my goloshes on the steep ascent, and take courage. And if you are perturbed, as I have been perturbed, let me whisper toyou the exhortation of the bankrupt to the terrestrial globe:

 Never _you_ mind. Roll on. 

When I first took a pen into my youthful hand, I lived in a verysecluded part of the Midlands, and perhaps, my little world being whatit was, it was inevitable that the originals of my characters, especially the tiresome ones, should be immediately identified with thekindly neighbours within a five-mile radius of my paternal Rectory. Fivemiles was about the utmost our little pony could do. It was thereforeobviously impossible that I could be acquainted with any one beyond thatdistance. And from first to last, from that day to this, no one leadinga secluded life has been so fatuous as to believe that my characterswere evolved out of my inner consciousness. "After all, you must own youtook them from _some one_, " is a phrase which has long lost its noveltyfor me. I remember even now my shocked astonishment when a furiousneighbour walked up to me and said, "We all recognised Mrs. Alwynn atonce as Mrs. ----, _and we all say it is not in the least like her_. "

It was not, indeed. There was no shadow of resemblance. Did Mrs. ----, who had been so kind to me from a child, ever hear that report, Iwonder? It gave me many a miserable hour, just when I was expanding inthe sunshine of my first favourable reviews. 

When I was still quite a beginner, Mrs. Clifford published her beautifuland touching book, "Aunt Anne. "

There was, I am willing to believe--it is my duty to believe_something_--a faint resemblance between her "Aunt Anne" and an oldgreat-aunt of mine, "Aunt Anna Maria, " long since dead, whom I had onlyseen once or twice when I was a small child. 

The fact that I could not have known my departed relation did notprevent two of my cousins, elderly maiden ladies who had had thatprivilege, from writing to me in great indignation at my having venturedto travesty my old aunt. They had found me out (I am always being foundout), and the vials of their wrath were poured out over me. 

In my whilom ignorance, in my lamblike innocence of the darker side ofhuman nature, I actually thought that a disclaimer would settle thematter. 

When has a disclaimer ever been of any use? When has it ever achievedanything except to add untruthfulness to my other crimes? Why have Iever written one, after that first disastrous essay, in which I civillypointed out that not I, but Mrs. Clifford, the well-known writer, wasthe author of "Aunt Anne?"

They replied at once to say that this was untrue, because I, and Ialone, _could_ have written it. 

I showed my father the letter. 

The two infuriated ladies were attached to my father, and had known himfor many years as a clergyman and a rural dean of unblemished character. He wrote to them himself to assure them that they had made a mistake, that I was not the author of the obnoxious work. 

But the only effect his letter had on their minds was a pained uprootalof their respect and long affection for him. And they both died someyears later, and (presumably) went up to heaven, convinced of my guilt, in spite of the unscrupulous parental ruridiaconal effort to whitewashme. 

Long afterwards I mentioned this incident to Mrs. Clifford, but it didnot cause her surprise. She had had her own experiences. She told methat when "Aunt Anne" appeared, she had many letters from persons withwhom she was unacquainted, reproaching her for having portrayed theiraunt. 

The reverse of the medal ought perhaps to be mentioned. So primitive wasthe circle in which my youth was passed that an adverse review, if seenby one of the community, was at once put down to a disaffected andtotally uneducated person in our village. 

A witty but unfavourable criticism in _Punch_ of my first story wasalways believed by two ladies in the parish to have been penned by oneof the village tradesmen. It was in vain I assured them that the personin question could not by any possibility be on the staff of _Punch_. They only shook their heads, and repeated mysteriously that they "hadreasons for _knowing_ he had written it. "

When we moved to London, I hoped I might fare better. But evidently Ihad been born under an unlucky star. The "Aunt Anne" incident proved tobe only the first playful ripple which heralded the incoming of the

 Breakers of the boundless deep. 

After the publication of "Red Pottage" a storm burst respecting one ofthe characters--Mr. Gresley--which even now I have not forgotten. Thepersonal note was struck once more with vigour, but this time by theclerical arm. I was denounced by name from a London pulpit. A Churchnewspaper which shall be nameless suggested that my portrait of Mr. Gresley was merely a piece of spite on my part, as I had probably beenjilted by a clergyman. I will not pretend that the turmoil gave meunmixed pain. If it had, I should have been without literary vanity. Butwhen a witty bishop wrote to me that he had enjoined on his clergy thestudy of Mr. Gresley as a Lenten penance, it was not possible for me toremain permanently depressed. 

The character was the outcome of long, close observation of largenumbers of clergymen, but not of one particular parson. Why, then, wasit so exactly like individual clergymen that I received excited orenthusiastic letters from the parishioners of I dare not say how manyparishes, affirming that their vicar (whom I had never beheld), and healone, could have been the prototype of Mr. Gresley? I was frequentlyimplored to go down and "see for myself. " Their most adorable platitudeswere chronicled and sent up to me, till I wrung my hands because it wastoo late to insert them in "Red Pottage. "[1] For they all fitted Mr. Gresley like a glove, and I should certainly have used them if it hadbeen possible. For, as has been well said, "There is no copyright inplatitudes. " They are part of our goodly heritage. And though peoplelike Mr. Gresley and my academic prig Wentworth have in one sense made aparticular field of platitude their own, by exercising themselvescontinually upon it, nevertheless we cannot allow them to warn us off astrespassers, or permit them to annex or enclose common land, theproperty and birthright of the race. 

Young men fresh from public schools also informed me that Mr. Gresleywas the facsimile of their tutor, and of no one else. I was at that timeunacquainted with any schoolmasters, being cut off from socialadvantages. But that fact did me no good. The dispassionate statement ofit had no more effect on my young friends than my father's denial had onmy elderly relations. 

I am ashamed to say that once again, as in the case of "Aunt Anne, " Iendeavoured to exculpate myself in order to pacify two old maidenladies. Why is it always the acutely unmarried who are made miserable bymy books? Is it because--odious thought, avaunt!--married persons do notopen them? These two ladies did not, indeed, think that I had been"paying out" some particular clergyman, as suggested in their favouritepaper, _The Guardian_, [2] but they were shocked by the profanity of thebook. Soon afterwards the Bishop of Stepney (now Bishop of London)preached on "Red Pottage" in St. Paul's. I sent them a newspaper whichreprinted the sermon _verbatim_, with a note saying that I trusted thisexpression of opinion on the part of their idolised preacher mightmitigate their condemnation of the book. 

But when have my attempts at making an effect ever come off? My fireworknever lights up properly like that of others! It only splutters and goesout. I received in due course a dignified answer that they had both beendeeply distressed by my information, as it would prevent them ever goingto hear the Bishop of Stepney again. 

My own experience, especially as to "Red Pottage" and "Prisoners, "struck me as so direful, I seemed so peculiarly outside the protectionof Providence, like the celebrated plot of ground on which "no rain norno dew never fell, " that I consulted several other brother and sisternovelists as to how they had fared in this delicate matter. It is notfor me to reveal the interesting skeletons concealed in cupboards not myown, but I have almost invariably returned from these interviewscheered, chuckling, and consoled by the comfortable realisation thatothers had writhed on a hotter gridiron than I. 

Georges Sand, when she was accused of lampooning a certain _abbé_, saidthat to draw one character of that kind one must know a thousand. Shehas, I think, put her finger on the truth which is not easy to find--atleast, I never found it until I read those words of hers. 

It is necessary to know a very large number of persons of a certainkind before one can evolve a type. Each he or she contributes a twig, and the author weaves them into a nest. I have no doubt that I must havetaken such a twig from nearly every clergyman I met who had a _soupçon_of Mr. Gresley in him. 

But if an author takes one tiny trait, one saying, one sentiment, directfrom a person, there is always the danger that the contributor willrecognise the theft, and, if of a self-regarding temperament, willinstantly conclude that the _whole_ character is drawn from himself. There is, for instance, no more universal trait, of what has beenunkindly called "the old-maid temperament" in either sex, than theassertion that it is always busy. But when such a trait is noted in abook, how many sensitive readers assume that it is a cruel personality. If people could but perceive that what they think to be character inthemselves is often only sex, or sexlessness; if they could but believein the universality of what they hold to be their individuality! And yethow easily they believe in it when it is pleasant to do so, when theywrite books about themselves, and thousands of grateful readers bombardthe gifted authoress with letters to tell her that they also have "feltjust like that, " and have "been helped" by her exquisite sentiments, which are the exact replicas of their own!

The worst of it is that with the academic or clerical prig, when themind has long been permitted to run in a deep, platitudinous groove fromwhich it is at last powerless to escape, the resemblance to a prig infiction is sometimes more than fanciful. It is real. For there is nodoubt that prigs have a horrid family likeness to each other, whether inbooks or in real life. I have sometimes felt as the puzzled mother ofsome long-lost Tichborne might feel. Each claimant to the estates inturn seems to acquire a look of the original because he _is_ a claimant. Has not this one my lost Willy's eyes? But no! that one has Willy'shands. True, but the last-comer snuffles exactly as my lost Willysnuffled. How many men have begun suddenly and indubitably in my eyes toresemble one of the adored prigs of my novels, merely because theyinsisted on the likeness themselves. 

The most obnoxious accident which has yet befallen me, the most wantonblow below the belt which Fate has ever dealt me, is buried beneath thesnows of twenty years. But even now I cannot recall it without ashudder. And if a carping critic ventures to point out that blows belowthe belt are not often buried beneath snow, then all I can say is thatwhen I have made my meaning clear, I see no reason for a servileconformity to academic rules of composition. 

I was writing "Diana Tempest. " One of the characters, a very worldlyreligious young female prig, was much in my mind. I know many such. Imay as well mention here that I do not bless the hour on which I firstsaw the light. I have not found life an ardent feast of tumultuous joy. But I do realise that it has been embellished by the acquaintance of alarger number of delightful prigs than falls to the lot of most. I havemuch to be thankful for. Having got hold of the character of this lady, I piloted her through courtship and marriage. I gleefully invented _all_her sayings on these momentous occasions, and described the wedding andthe abhorrent bridegroom with great minuteness. In short, I gloated overit. 

The book was finished, sold, finally corrected, and in the press whenone of the young women who had unconsciously contributed a trait to thecharacter became affianced. She immediately began throwing off withgreat dignity, as if by clock-work, all the best things which I hadevolved out of my own brain and had put into the mouth of my femaleprig. At first I was delighted with my own cleverness, but gradually Ibecame more and more uneasy, and when I attended the wedding my heartfailed me altogether. In "Diana Tempest" I had described the rich, elderly, stout, and gouty bridegroom whom the lady had captured. Therehe was before my panic-stricken eyes! The wedding was exactly as I hadalready described it. It took place in London, just as I had said. Theremembrance that the book had passed beyond my own control, theirrevocability of certain ghastly sentences, came over me in a flash, together with the certainty that, however earnestly I might deny, swear, take solemn oaths on family Bibles, nothing, nothing, not even a voicefrom heaven, much less that of a rural dean still on earth, could makemy innocence credible. 

I may add that no voice from heaven sounded, and that I never made anyattempt at self-exculpation, or invited my father to sacrifice himself asecond time. 

As I heard "The Voice that breathed o'er Eden" and saw the bride oftwenty-five advance up the aisle to meet the bridegroom of forty-fiveawaiting her deeply flushed, in a distorted white waistcoat--I hadmercilessly alluded to his white waistcoat as an error of judgment--Igave myself up for lost; _and I was lost_. 

But all this time, while I have been giving a free rein to myautobiographic instincts, the question still remains unanswered, Why ishuman nature so prone to think it has been travestied that it becomesimpervious to reason on the subject the moment the idea has entered themind? Once lodged, I have never known such an idea dislodged, howeverfantastic. Why is it that if, like Mrs. Clifford, one has the goodfortune to evolve a type, no one can believe it is not an individual?Why does not the outraged friend console himself with the remembrancethat if he is one of many others who are feeling equally harrowed, hecannot really be the object of a malignant spite, carefully disguisedtill then under the apparel of a cheerful friendship?

I think an answer--a partial answer--to the latter question may be foundin the fact that balm was never yet poured on a wounded spirit by theassurance that there are thousands of others exactly like itself. We canall endure to be lampooned. (I have even known a man who was deeplydisappointed when he was forced to believe that he had not beenvictimised. ) But to be told we are one of a herd! This flesh and bloodcannot tolerate. It is unthinkable; a living death. That we who "lookbefore and after, " and "whose sincerest laughter with some pain isfraught"; that _we_, lonely, superb, pining for what is not, misunderstood by our nearest and dearest, who don't know, and never_can_ know

 Half the reasons why we smile or sigh

(unless, indeed, we are autobiographists: then they know _all_ thereasons)--that WE should be confused with the vast mob of foolish, sentimental spinsters, or pedantic clerics, or egotistic old bachelors!

Away!--away! The reeling mind stops its ears against these obscenesuggestions. 

The only alternative which remains is that an unscrupulous novelist has_heard_ of us--nothing more likely--without being actually acquaintedwith us, and has listened to garbled accounts of us from our so-calledfriends; or has actually met us at a bazaar or a funeral, though ofcourse he professes to have forgotten the meeting; has been impressedwith our subtle personality--nothing more likely--has felt an enviousadmiration of what we ourselves value but little--our social charm--andhas yielded--nothing more likely--to the ignoble temptation ofcaricaturing qualities which he cannot emulate. Or perhaps he has knownus for years, and has shown a mysterious indifference to our society, animpatience of our deeper utterances, which we can now, _at last_, traceto its true source, a guilty consciousness of premeditated treacherywhich has led him to strike us in a dastardly manner, which we canindeed afford--being what we are--to forgive, but which we shall neverforget. And if an opportunity offers later on, it is possible that anunprejudiced and judicial mind may feel called upon to indicate what itthinks of such conduct. 

Perhaps only those whose temperament leads them to believe themselvesridiculed in a book know the rankling smart, the exquisite pain, thesense of treachery of such an experience. It is probably the mostoffensive slight that can be offered to a sensitive nature. 

And if the author realises this, even while he knows himself to beguiltless in the matter, it is probable, if he also is somewhatsensitive--and some authors are--that a great deal of the delight he mayderive from a successful novel may be dimmed by the realisation that hehas unwittingly pained a stranger, or, worse still, an acquaintance, or, immeasurably worst of all, an old friend. 

FOOTNOTES:

[1] One of these unknown correspondents wrote that their vicar had thatSunday begun--he would have said _commenced_--his sermon with the words, "God is Love, as the Archbishop of Canterbury remarked last week inWestminster Abbey. "

[2] _The Guardian_, April 11, 1900: "Truth to tell, when I appreciated, with much amusement, the light in which one was expected to regard Mr. Gresley, I came to the conclusion that the authoress was paying out someparticular High Church parson, who had perhaps snubbed her or got thebetter of her, by 'putting him into a book. ' The poor, feeble creatureis described with appetite, so to speak, and when this is the case (witha lady writer) one is pretty safe in being sure one has come across thepersonal. Mr. Gresleys certainly exist, but only a woman in a (perhapswholly justified) tantrum would speak of them as a type of the clergy ingeneral. "--THOS. J. BALL. 

THE LOWEST RUNG

 We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung. RUDYARD KIPLING. 

The sudden splendour of the afternoon made me lay down my pen, andtempted me afield. It had been a day of storm and great racingcloud-wracks, after a night of hurricane and lashing rain. But in theafternoon the sun had broken through, and I struggled across thewater-meadows, the hurrying, turbid water nearly up to the single planksacross the ditches, and climbed to the heathery uplands, battling my wayinch by inch against a tearing wind. 

My art had driven me forth from my warm fireside, as it is her wont todrive her votaries, and the call of my art I have never disobeyed. 

For no artist must look at one side of life only. We must study it as awhole, gleaning rich and varied sheaves as we go. My forthcoming bookof deep religious experiences, intertwined with descriptions of scenery, needed a little contrast. I had had abundance of summer mornings anddewy evenings, almost too many dewy evenings. And I thought adescription of a storm would be in keeping with the chapter on which Iwas at that moment engaged, in which I dealt with the stress of my ownillness of the previous spring, and the mystery of pain, which hadnecessitated a significant change in my life--a visit to Cromer. Thechapter dealing with Cromer, and the insurgent doubts of convalescence, wandering on its poppy-strewn cliffs, as to the beneficence of theDeity, was already done, and one of the finest I had ever written. 

But I was dissatisfied with the preceding chapter, and, as usual, wentfor inspiration to Nature. 

It was late by the time I reached the upland, but I was rewarded for myclimb. 

Far away under the flaring sunset the long lines of tidal river and seastretched tawny and sinister, like drawn swords in firelight, betweenthe distant woods and cornfields. The death-like stillness andsmallness of the low-lying rigid landscape made the contrast with therushing enormity and turmoil of the heavens almost terrific. 

Great clouds shouldered up out of the sea, blotting out the low sun, darkening the already darkened earth, and then towered up the sky, releasing the struggling sun only to extinguish it once more, in a newflying cohort. 

I do not know how long I stood there, spellbound, the woman lost in theartist, scribbling frantically in my notebook, when an onslaught of rainbrought me to my senses and I looked round for shelter. 

Then I became aware that I had not been watching alone. Adesolate-looking figure, crouching at a little distance, half hidden bya gorse-bush, was watching too, watching intently. She got up as Iturned and came towards me, her uncouth garments whipped against her bythe wind. 

The rain plunged down upon us, enveloping us both as in a whirlwind. 

"There is an empty cottage under the down, " I shouted to her, and Ibegan to run towards it. It was a tumbledown place, but "any port insuch a storm. "

"It is not safe, " she shouted back; "the roof is falling in. "

The squall of rain whirled past as suddenly as it had come, leaving megasping. She seemed to take no notice of it. 

"I spent last night there, " she said. "The ceiling came down in the nextroom. Besides, " she added, "though possibly that may not deter you, there are two policemen there. "

I saw now that it had been the cottage which she had been watching. Andsure enough, in a broken shaft of sunshine which straggled out for amoment, I saw two dark figures steal towards the cottage under cover ofthe wall. 

"Why are they there?" I said, gaping at such a strange sight. For I hadbeen many months at Rufford, and I had never seen a policeman. 

"They are lying in wait for some one, " she said. 

It flashed back across my mind how at luncheon that day the vicar hadsaid that a female convict had escaped from Ipswich gaol, and had beentraced to Bealings, and, it was conjectured, was lurking in theneighbourhood of Woodbridge. 

I took sudden note of my companion's peculiar dark bluish clothes andshawl, and the blood rushed to my head. I knew what those garmentsmeant. She pushed back her grizzled hair from her lined, walnut-colouredface, and we looked hard at each other. 

There was no fear in her eyes, but a certain curiosity as to what I wasgoing to do. 

"If I told you they were not looking for me, " she said, "I could not, under the circumstances, expect you to believe it. "

I am too highly strung for this workaday world. I know it to my cost. The artistic temperament has its penalties. My doctor at Cromer oftentold me that I vibrated like a harp at the slightest touch. I vibratednow. Indeed, I almost sat down in the sodden track. 

But unlike many of my brothers and sisters of the pen, I am capable ofimpulsive, even quixotic action, and I ought, in justice to myself, tomention here that I had not then read that noble book "The Treasure ofHeaven, " in which it will be remembered that a generous-souled womantakes in from the storm, and nurses back to health in her lowlycottage, an aged tramp who turns out to be a millionaire, and leaves herhis vast fortune. I did not get the idea of acting as I am about torelate from Marie Corelli, the head of our profession, or indeed fromany other writer. But I have so often been accused of taking otherpeople's plots and ideas and sentiments, that I owe it to myself to makethis clear before I go on. 

"You poor soul, " I said, "whatever you are, and whatever you've done, Iwill shelter you and help you to escape. "

I felt I really could not take her into the house, so I added, "I have alittle stable in the garden, quite private, with nice dry hay in it. Follow me. "

I suppose she saw at a glance that she could trust me, for she nodded, and I sped down the hill, she following at a little distance, with theshrieking, denouncing wind behind us. I walked as quickly as I could, but when I got as far as the water-meadows my strength and breath gaveway. I was never robust, and always foolishly prone to overtax my smallstore of strength. I was obliged to stop and lean my head on my armsagainst a stile. 

"There is no need for such hurry, " she said tranquilly. She had come upnoiselessly behind me. "There is not a soul in sight. Besides, look whatyou are missing. "

She pointed to the familiar fields before me which we had yet to cross, with the Dieben winding through them under his low, red-brick bridges, and beyond the little clustered village with its grey church spirestanding shoulder high above the poplars. 

The sun had just set and there was no colour in the west, but over allthe homely, wind-swept landscape a solemn and unearthly light shone andslowly passed, shone and slowly passed. 

"Look up, " said my companion, turning a face of flame towards me. 

I looked up into the sky, as into an enormous furnace. Gigantic rollingclouds of flame were sweeping before the roaring wind like some vastprairie fire across the firmament. As they passed overhead, thereflection of the lurid light on them was smitten earthwards, and passedwith them, making everything it traversed clear as noon--the lion on theswinging sign of the public-house just across the water, the delicatetracery of the church windows, the virginia creeper on my cottage porch. 

"I have only seen an afterglow like that once in my life, " my companionsaid, "and that was in Teneriffe. "

A few moments more, and the sky paled to grey. The darkness came downwith tropical suddenness. I made a movement forwards. 

"Shall I not be seen if I follow you through the village in these weirdclothes?" she said civilly, as one who hesitates to make a suggestion. "Where is your house?"

"My cot--it is not a house--is just at the end of those trees, " I said. "It is the only one close to the park gates. It has virginia creeperover the porch, and a white gate. "

"It sounds charming. "

"But how on earth are we to get there?" I groaned. "And some one maycome along this path at any moment. "

The dusk was falling rapidly. Candles were beginning to twinkle inlatticed windows. A yellow light from the public-house made animpassable streak across the road. Cheerful voices were coming along themeadow path behind us. What was to be done?

"Go home, " she said steadily. "I will find my own way. "

"But my servant?"

"Make your mind easy. She will not see me. I shall not ring the bell. Have you a dog?"

"No. My dear little Lindo----"

"It's going to be a black night. I shall be in the porch half an hourafter dark. "

She went swiftly from me, and as the voices drew near I saw her pick herway noiselessly into one of the great ditches, and stand motionless inthe water, obliterated against a pollard willow. 

I hurried home. My feet were quite wet, and even my stockings--a thingthat had not happened to me for years. I changed at once, and took fivedrops of camphor on a lump of sugar. It would be extraordinarilyinconvenient if I were to take cold, with my tendency to bronchialcatarrh. I have no time to be ill in my busy life. Was not "Broodingsbeside the Dieben" being finished in hot haste for an eager publisher?And had I not promised to give away the Sunday-school prizes atForlinghorn a fortnight hence?

It was half-past six. My garden boy was pumping in the scullery. He kepthis tools in the stable, and it was his duty to lock it up and hang thekey on the nail inside the scullery door. 

Supposing he forgot to hang it up to-night of all nights! Supposing hetook it away with him by mistake! I went into the scullery directly hehad gone. I made a pretext of throwing away some flowers, though I hadnever thought of needing a pretext for going there before. The stablekey was on its nail all right. I looked into the kitchen, where mylittle maid-servant was preparing my evening meal. When her back wasturned, I snatched the key from the nail, dropped it noisily on thebrick floor, caught it up, withdrew to the parlour, and sank down in myarmchair shaking from head to foot. My doctor was right indeed when hesaid I vibrated like a harp. 

The life of contemplation and meditation is more suited to my highlystrung nature than that of adventure and intrigue. 

My servant brought in the lamp, and I hurriedly sat on the key while shedid so. Then she drew the curtains in the little houseplace, locked theouter door, and went back to the kitchen. 

There are two doors to my cottage--the front door with the porch leadingto the lane, and the back door out of the scullery which opens into mylittle slip of garden. At the bottom of the garden is a disused stable, utilised by me to store wood in, and old boxes. The gate to the back wayto the stable from the lane had been permanently closed till the dayshould come when I could afford a pony and cart. But in these daysnovels of not too refined a type are the only form of literature (ifthey can be called literature) for which the public is eager. It willdevour and extol anything, however coarse, which panders to its love ofexcitement, while grave books dealing with the spiritual side of life, books of thought and culture, are left unheeded on the shelf. Such hadbeen the fate of mine. 

The rain had ceased at last, and the wind was falling. My mind kept onmaking all sorts of uneasy suggestions to me as I sat in my armchair. What was I to do with the--the individual when I had got her safely intothe stable, if I ever did get her safely there? How about food, howabout dry clothes, how about a light, how about everything? Supposingshe overslept herself, and Tommy found her there in the morning when hewent for his tools? Supposing my landlord, Mr. Ledbury, who was amagistrate, found out I had harboured a criminal, and gave me noticejust when I had repapered the parlour and put in a new back to thekitchen range? Such a calamity was unthinkable. What happened to peoplewho compounded felonies? Was I compounding one? Why was not I sittingdown? What was I doing standing in the middle of the parlour with thestable key in my hand, and, as I caught sight of myself in the glass, with my mouth wide open?

I sat down again resolutely, hiding the key under the cushion, andcalmer thoughts supervened. After all, it was most improbable, almostimpossible, that I should be found out. And once the adventure wassafely over, when I had successfully carried it through, whatinteresting accounts I should be able to give of it at luncheon partiesin London in the winter. My brothers would really believe at last that Icould act with energy and presence of mind. There was a rootedimpression in the minds of my own family that I was a flurried sort ofperson, easily thrown off my balance, making mountains out of molehills(this was especially irritating to me, as I have always taken a broad, sane view of life), who always twisted my ankle if it could be twisted, or lost my luggage, or caught childish ailments for the second time. Where there is but one gifted member in a large and commonplace family, an absurd idea of this kind is apt to grow from a joke into an _idèefixe_. 

It had obtained credence originally because I certainly had once in adreamy moment got my gown shut into the door in an empty railwaycompartment on the far side. And as the glass was up on the station sideI had been unable to attract any one's attention when I wanted toalight, and had had to go on to Portsmouth (where the train stopped forgood) before I could make my presence and my predicament known. Thistrivial incident had never been forgotten by my family--so much so, thatI had often regretted the hilarious spirit of pure comedy at my ownexpense which had prompted me to relate it to them. 

Now was the time to show what metal I was made of. My spirits rose as Ifelt I could rely on myself to be cautious, resourceful, bold. I sat on, outwardly composed, but inwardly excited, straining my ears for a signthat the fugitive was in the porch. I supposed I should presently hear alight tap on my parlour window, which was close to the outer door. 

But none came. More than an hour passed. It had long been perfectlydark. What could have happened? Had the poor creature been dogged andwaylaid by those two policemen after all? Was it possible that they hadseen us standing together at the stile, where she had so inconsideratelyjoined me for a moment? At last I became so nervous that I went to theouter door, opened it softly, and looked out. She was so near me that Ivery nearly screamed. 

"How long have you been here?" I whispered. 

"Close on an hour. "

"Why didn't you tap on the window or something? I was waiting to let youin. "

"I dared not do that. It might have been the kitchen window for all Iknew, and then your servant would have seen me. "

"But the kitchen is the other side. "

"Indeed! And where is the stable?"

"At the bottom of the garden, away from the road. "

"How are we going to get to it?"

"We can only get to it through the garden, now the back way is closed. Iclosed it because the village children----"

"Had not you better shut the door? If any one passed down the road, theywould see it was open. "

"It's as dark as pitch. "

"Yes, but there's a little light from within. I can see you from outsidequite plainly standing in the doorway. "

I led her indoors, and locked and bolted the door. 

"What is this room?"

"The houseplace. I have my meals here. I live very primitively. My ideais----"

"Then your servant may come in at any moment to lay your supper. "

I could not say that she seemed nervous or frightened, but the way shecut me short showed that she was so in reality. I was not offended, forI am the first to make allowance when rudeness is not intentional. I ledthe way hastily into the parlour. 

"She never comes in here, " I said reassuringly, "after she has oncebrought in the lamp. I am supposed to be working, and must not bedisturbed. "

"I'm not fit to come in, " she said. 

And in truth she was not. She was caked with mud and dirt from head tofoot, an appalling figure in the lamplight. The rain dripped from herhair, her sinister clothing, her whole person. She looked as if she musthave hidden in a wet ditch. I gazed horror-struck at my specklessmatting and pale Oriental rugs. I had never allowed a child or dog inthe house for fear of the matting, except of course my poor Lindo, whohad died a few months previously, and whom I had taught to wipe his feeton the mat. 

A ghost of a smile twitched her grey mouth. 

"Is not that the _Times_?" she said. "Spread it out four thick, and layit on the floor. "

I did so, and she stepped carefully on to it. 

"Now, " she said, standing on a great advertisement of a universalhistory--"now that I am not damaging the furniture, pull yourselftogether and _think_. How am I to get to the stable? I can't stop here. "

She could not indeed. I felt I might be absolutely powerless to get themuddy footprints out of the matting. And no doubt there were some in thehouseplace too. 

"If I go through the scullery, I may be seen, " she said, the waterpattering off her on to the newspaper. "So lucky you take in the_Times_; it's printed on such thick paper. Where does that window lookout?"

She pointed to the window at the farther end of the room. 

"On to the garden. "

"Capital! Then we can get out through it, of course, without goingthrough the scullery. "

I had not thought of that. I opened the window, and she was through itin two cautious strides. 

"Now, " she said, looking back at me, "I'm comparatively safe for themoment, and so is the matting. But before we do anything more, get aduster--a person like you is sure to have a duster in a drawer. Just so, there it is. Now wipe up the marks of my muddy feet in the room we firstcame into as well as this, and then see to the paint of the window. Ihave probably smirched it. Then roll up the _Times_ tight, and put itin the waste-paper basket. "

She watched me obey her. 

"Having obliterated all traces of crime, " she said when I had finished, "suppose we go on to the stable. Let me help you through the window. Iwill wipe my hands on the grass first. And would not you be wise to puton that little shawl I see on the sofa? It is getting cold. "

The window was only a yard from the ground, and I got out somehow, encumbered in my shawl, which a grateful reader had crocheted for me. She had, however, to help me in again directly I was out, for, betweenus, we had forgotten the stable key, which was underneath the cushion ofmy armchair. 

The rest was plain sailing. We stole down the garden path to the stable, and I unlocked the door and let her in. 

"Kindly lock me in and take away the key, " she said, vanishing past meinto the darkness, and I thought I detected a tone of relief in herbrisk, matter-of-fact voice. 

"I will bring some food as soon as I can, " I whispered. "If I knockthree times, you will know it's only me. "

"Don't knock at all, " she said; "it might be noticed. Why should youknock to go into your own stable?"

"I won't, then. And how about your wet things?"

"That's nothing. I'm accustomed to being wet. "

I crawled back to the cottage, and managed to scramble in by the parlourwindow, only to sink once more into my armchair in a state of collapse. I had always entered so acutely into the joys and sorrows of others, their love affairs, their difficulties, their bereavements (I had inthis way led such a full life), that I was surprised at this juncture tofind my nervous force so exhausted, until I remembered that ardentnatures who give out a great deal in the way of helpfulness and interestare bound to suffer when the reaction comes. The reaction had come forme now. I saw only too plainly the folly I had been guilty of inharbouring a total stranger, the trouble I should probably get into, thedifficulty that a nature naturally frank and open to a fault would findin keeping up a deception. I doubted my own powers, everything. Thetruth was--but I did not realise it till afterwards--that I had missedmy tea. 

I could hear my servant laying my evening meal in the houseplace. In afew minutes she tapped to tell me it was ready, and I rose mechanicallyto obey the summons. And then, to my horror, I found I was still inmorning dress. For the first time for years I had not dressed fordinner. What would she think if she saw me? But it was too late tochange now; I must just go in as I was. My whole life seemed dislocated, torn up by the roots. 

There was not much to eat. Half a very small cold chicken, a lettuce, and a little custard pudding, fortunately very nutritious, being madewith Eustace Miles's proteid. There were, however, a loaf and butter andplasmon biscuits on the sideboard. I cut up as much as I dared of thechicken, and put it between two very thick slices of buttered bread. Then I crept out again and took it to her. She got up out of the hay, and put out a gnarled brown hand for it. 

"I will bring you a cup of coffee later, " I said. I was beginning tofeel a kind of proprietorship in her. She would have starved but for me. 

My servant always left at nine o'clock, to sleep at her father'scottage, just over the way. I have a bell in the roof, which I can ringwith a cord in case of fire or thieves. 

To-night she was, of course, later than usual, but at last she broughtin the coffee, and then I heard her making her rounds, closing theshutters on the ground floor, and locking the front door--at least, trying to do so. I had already locked and bolted it. Then she locked thescullery door on the outside, abstracted the key, and I heard her stepon the brick path, and the click of the gate. _She was gone_. 

I always heated the coffee myself over the parlour fire. It was alreadybubbling on the hob. Directly she had left I went to the kitchen, andgot a second cup. I felt much better since I had had supper. And as Itook the cup from the shelf the fantastic idea came into my mind to askmy protégée to come in and drink her coffee by the fire in the parlour. I must frankly own it was foolhardy; it was rash, it was even dangerous. But there it is! One cannot help the way one is made, and I am afraid Iam not of those who invariably take the coldly prudent course and stickto it. 

I turned the idea over in my mind. I could put down sheets of brownpaper--I always have a store--from the door to the fire, and an oldmackintosh over the worst armchair, which was to be re-covered. Besides, I had not had a good look at her yet, or made out the real woman underthe prison garb. That she was a person of education and refinement mayappear hardly credible to my readers, but to one like myself, whose_métier_ it is to probe the secrets of my own heart and those ofothers--to _me_ it was sufficiently obvious from the first moment that, though I had to deal with a criminal, she was a very exceptional one, and belonging to my own class. I went out to the stable, and suggestedto her that she should come in. 

"How do you know that I am not a man in disguise?" came a voice from thedarkness; and it seemed to me, not for the first time, that she wasamused at something. "I'm tall enough. Just think how stupendous itwould be if, when I was inside and the door really locked, I proved tobe a wicked, devastating, burglarious male. "

"I wish you would not say things like that, " I said. "On your honour, _are_ you a man?"

She hesitated, and then said in a changed voice:

"I am not. I don't know what I am. I was a woman once, just as aderelict was a ship once. But whatever I am, I am not fit to come into aself-respecting house. I am one solid cake of mud. "

Something in her reluctance made me the more determined. Besides, one ofthe truths on which I have insisted most strongly in my "Veil of theTemple" is that if we show full trust and confidence in others, theywill prove worthy of that trust. Her coming indoors had now become amatter of principle, and I insisted. I even said I could lend her adressing-gown and slippers, so that her wet clothes might be dried bythe kitchen fire. 

She murmured something about a good Samaritan, but still demurred, andasked if I had a bath-room. I said I had. 

That decided her. She seemed to have no difficulty in making up hermind. She did not see two sides to things, as I always do myself. 

She said that if I liked to allow her to go to the bath-room first, sheshould be happy to accept my kind invitation for an hour or so. If not, she would stay where she was. 

 * * * * *

Half an hour later she was sitting opposite me in the parlour, on theother side of the wood fire, sipping her coffee. I had not put down thebrown paper or the mackintosh. It was not necessary. Her close-cropped, curly grey hair, still damp from the bath, was parted, and brushedstiffly back over her ears. It must have been very beautiful hair once. Her thin hands and thinner face and neck looked more like brownparchment than ever, as she sat in the lamplight, my old bluedressing-gown folded negligently round her, and taking picturesque foldswhich it never did when I was inside it. Those long, gaunt limbs musthave been graceful once. Her feet were bare in her slippers--in myslippers, I mean. She looked rather like a well-bred Indian. 

It was obvious that she was a lady, but her speech had already told methat. What amazed me most where all amazed me was her self-possession. 

I wondered what her impression of me was, as we sat, such a strangelyassorted couple, one on each side of the fire. Did I indeed seem to herthe quixotic, impetuous, and yet withal dreamy creature which my booksshow me to be? But I have often been told by those who know me well thatI am much more than my books. 

"I have not sat by a fire for how many months?" she said, her black eyeson the logs. "Let me see, last time was in a lonely cottage on theCotswolds. It was a night like this, but colder, and a helpless oldcouple let me in, and allowed me to dry my clothes, and lie by theirfire all night. Very unwise of them, wasn't it? I might have murderedthem in their beds. "

I began to feel rather uncomfortable. 

"You are not undergoing a sentence for murder, are you?" I asked. 

She looked at me for a moment, and then said:

"The desperate creature who escaped from gaol three days ago, and whowas in for life for the murder of the man she lived with, and whoseconvict clothes I am wearing--whose clothes, I mean, are at this momentdrying before your kitchen fire--is not the same woman who is nowdrinking your excellent coffee. "

"Do you mean to tell me you have never been in prison?"

"Yes, for a year; but I served my time and finished it four years ago. "

I wrung my hands. I was deeply disappointed in her. Her transparentduplicity, which could impose on no one, not even so unsuspicious anature as mine, hurt me to the quick. 

"Oh! you poor soul, " I said, "don't lie to me. Indeed it isn'tnecessary. I will do all I can for you. I will help you to get away. Iwill give you other clothes, and money, and we will bury these--thesegarments of shame. But don't, for God's sake, don't lie to me. "

She looked gravely at me, as if she were measuring me, and seeing, nodoubt, that I was not deceived, a dusky red rose for a moment to herface and brow. 

"It is not easy to speak the truth to some people, " she said, her eyesdropping once more to the fire, "even when they are as compassionate andkind as you are. "

"Truthfulness is a habit that may be regained, " I said earnestly. "Imyself, without half your temptations, was untruthful once. "

To associate oneself with the sins of others, to show one's own scar, is not this sometimes the only way to comfort those overborne in thebattle of life? Had I not chronicled my own failing in the matter oftruthfulness when I foolishly and wickedly took blame on myself for thefault of one dear to me, in my first book, "With Broken Wing"? But I sawas I spoke that she had not read it, and did not realise to what I wasalluding. I have so steadily refused to be interviewed that possiblyalso she had not even yet guessed who I was. 

"I am sure--I am quite sure, " I went on after a moment, "that there is agreat deal of good in you, that you are by nature truthful. "

"Am I? I wonder. Perhaps I was so once, in the early, untroubled days. But I have told many lies since then. "

She drank her coffee slowly, looking steadfastly into the fire, as ifshe saw in the wavering flame some reflection of another fire on anotherhearthstone. 

"How good it is!" she said at last, putting her cup down. "Howdreadfully good it is--the coffee and the fire, and the quiet room, andto be dry and warm and clean! How good it all is! And how little Ithought of them when I had all these things!"

She got up and looked at a water-colour over the low mantelpiece. 

"Madeira, isn't it?" she said. "I seem to remember that peculiar effectof the vivid purple of the Bougainvillea against the dim, cloudy purpleof the hills behind. "

"It is Madeira, " I said. "I was there ten years ago. Perhaps you haveread my little book, 'Beside the Bougainvillea'?"

"My husband died there, " she said, looking fixedly at the drawing. "Hedied just before sunrise, and when it was over I remember looking outacross the sea, past the great English man-of-war in the harbour, tothose three little islands--I forget their names--and as the first levelrays touched them, the islands and the ship all seemed to melt intohalf-transparent amethyst in a sea of glass, beneath a sky of glass. Howcalm the sea was--hardly a ripple! I felt that even he, weak as he was, could walk upon it. It was like daybreak in heaven, not on earth. Andhis long martyrdom was over. It seemed as if we were both safe home atlast. "

"Had he been ill long?"

"A long time. He suffered terribly. And I gave him morphia under thedoctor's directions. And then, when he was gone--not at first, but aftera little bit--I took morphia myself, to numb my own anguish and to get alittle sleep. I thought I should go mad if I could not get any sleep. Ihad better have gone mad. But I took morphia instead, and sealed my owndoom. But how can you tell whether I am speaking the truth? Well, itdoesn't matter if you don't believe me. I am accustomed to it. I amnever believed now. And I don't care if I'm not. I don't deserve to be. But I suppose you can see that I was not always a tramp on the highway. And, at any rate, that is what I am now, and what I shall remain, unlessI drift into prison again, which God forbid, for I should suffocate in acell after the life in the open air which I am accustomed to. "

She shivered a little, as if she who seemed devoid of fear quailed atthe remembrance of her cell. 

"You are wondering how I have fallen so low, " she said. "Do you rememberKipling's lines--

 "We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung?

"Well, I have known what it is to drop down the ladder of life, clinging convulsively to each rung in turn, losing hold of it, and beingcaught back by compassionate hands, only to let go of it again; fightingdesperately to hold on to the next rung when I was thrust from the oneabove it; having my hands beaten from each rung, one after another, oneafter another, sinking lower and lower yet, cling as I would, pray as Iwould, repent as I would. "

"Who beat your hands from the rungs?" I said. 

"Morphia, " she replied. 

There was a long silence. 

"Morphia, that was the beginning and the middle and the end of mymisfortunes, " she said. "What did I do that gradually lost me myfriends?--and I had such good friends, even after my best friend mysister died. What did I do that ruined me by inches? In Australia I haveheard of evil men taken red-handed being left in the bush with food andwater by them, bound to a fallen tree which has been set on fire at oneend. And the fire smoulders and smoulders, and travels inch by inchalong the trunk, and they watch their slow, inevitable death comingtowards them day by day, until it at last destroys them also inch byinch. What had I done that I should find myself bound like those poorwretches? I cannot tell you. Morphia wipes out the memory as surely asdrink. I only know that I was in torment. Faces, familiar and strangefaces, some compassionate, some indignant, some horror-struck, come backto me sometimes, blurred as by smoke, but I see nothing clearly. I dimlyremember fragments of appeals that were made to me, fragments of divinemusic in cathedrals where I sobbed my heart out. Broken, splintered, devastating memories of promises made in bitter tears, and endless liesand subterfuges to conceal what I could not conceal. For morphia looksout of the eyes of its victim. I knew that, but I thought no one couldsee it in mine, that I could hide it. And I have one vivid recollectionof a quiet room with flowers in it, and latticed windows, but I don'tknow where it was or how I came there, or who were the people in it whospoke to me. There was a tall woman with grey parted hair in a lilacgown. I can see her now. And I swore before God that I had left off thedrug. And some one standing behind me took the little infernal machineout of my pocket, and I was confronted with it. And the tall woman wrungher hands and groaned. How I hated her! And in my madness I accused herof putting it there to ruin me. And some one (a man) said slowly, 'Sheis impossible!--quite impossible!' That one memory stands out like alittle oasis in a desert of mirage and shifting sand, and thirst. Ishould know the room again if I saw it. There was a window opening intoa little paved courtyard with a fountain in it, and doves drinking. ButI shall never see it again. And the drug became alive like a fiend, andpushed me lower and lower, down, always down, until I did somethingdreadful, I don't know now exactly what it was, though the prisonchaplain explained it to me. But it was about a cheque, and I wasconvicted and sent to prison. "

"Then you have been in prison _twice_?" I said, anxious to make it easyfor her to be entirely truthful, for I could not doubt the truth of muchof this earlier history. 

She did not seem to hear me. 

"There is no crime, " she went on, "however black, that I did not expiatethen. If suffering can wash out sins, I washed out mine. I, who thoughtI had so many enemies, have no enemy. No one has ever injured me. But ifI had the cruellest in the world, I would not condemn him, if he were amorphia maniac, to sudden enforced abstinence and prison life. And Icould not die. I am very strong by nature. I could neither die nor live. It was months before I saw light, months of hell, consumed in the flameof hell which is thirst. And slowly the power to live came back to me. Iwas saved in spite of myself. And slowly the power of thought returnedto me. I had time to think. My mind drifted and drifted, but I gotcontrol of it now and again, and then for longer intervals, as my poorbody reasserted itself from the slavery of the drug. And I thought--Ithought--I thought. And at last I made up my mind, my fierce, embitteredmind. And when I came out of prison, I took to the road. Even then therewere those who would have helped me, but I steeled my heart againstthem. There was a strange woman with a sweet face waiting at the prisondoor, who spoke kindly to me. But I distrusted her. I distrusted everyone. And I did not mean to be helped any more. I had been helped timeand time again. To be helped was to be put where I could get morphia, where I had something, if it was only my clothes, which I could sell toget it, where I could _steal_ things to sell to get it. If I had anypossessions, I knew that some day--not for a time perhaps, but someday--I should sell it and get morphia somehow. They say you can't buyit, but you can. I always could in the past, and I knew I always shouldin the future. But on the road, in rags, a tramp, down in the dust, inthe safe refuge of the dust--there it was not possible. There I was outof temptation. There I could not be burned in that flame again. That wasall I thought of, to creep away where the fire could not reach me. And Ifelt sure I should not live long. In my ignorance I thought the exposureto all weathers, and privation, and the first frost of winter wouldbring me my release quickly. But they did not. They gave me new lifeinstead. I came out in spring, and I begged my way to Abinger Forest, and nearly starved there; but I did not mind. Have you ever been inAbinger Forest in the spring when the wortleberry is out? Can theElysian fields of Asphodel be more beautiful? Perhaps to others theymight seem so; but not to me. My first glimpse of hope came to me in thewoods at Abinger in a windless, sunny week at Easter. The gipsies gaveme food once or twice. And I ate the scraps that the trippers left aftertheir picnics at the top of Leith Hill where the tower is. And I lay inthe sun by day and I slept in a stack of bracken by night, and mystrained life relaxed. And I, who had become so hard and bitter, saw atlast what endless love and compassion had been vainly lavished on me, and I was humbled. I had somehow got it rooted into my warped mind thatI had been cruelly treated, betrayed, abandoned by my friends, by everyone. I had tried hard to forgive them, but I could not. I saw at lastthat it was I who had been cruel, I who had betrayed, I who neededforgiveness; and I asked it of the only Friend I had left, the onlyFriend Who never forsakes us. And peace came back and the deep wound inmy life healed. It seemed as if Nature, who had forgotten me for solong, had pity on me, and took me again to her heart. For I had lovedher years ago, before my husband died. 

"When the weather broke, I took to the road, and the road has given meback my health, and much more than health. I can see beauty again now. And there is always beauty in the hedgerow; and wherever the road runsthere is beauty. In the open down, beside the tidal rivers with theirbrown sails creeping among the buttercups, everywhere there is beauty. And I can sleep again now. I learnt how to sleep at Abinger. I hadforgotten how it was done without morphia. O God! I can sleep, everynight, anywhere. It's worth being a tramp for that alone, to be able tosleep naturally, to know in the daytime that you will have it at night, and then to lie down and feel it stealing over you like the blessing ofGod. I used to wake myself at first for sheer joy when it was coming. And then to nestle down, and sink into it, down, down into it, till onereaches the great peace. And no more wakings in torment as the drugpasses off, waking as in some iron grave, unable to stir hand or foot, unable to beat back the suffocating horror and terror which lies cheekto cheek with us. No more wakings in hell. No more mornings like that. But instead, the cool, sweet waking in the crystal light in the openair. And to see the sun come up, and to lie still against the clean, fragrant haystack and let it warm you! And to watch the quiet, friendlybeasts rise up in the long meadows! And to wake hungry, instead of thatdreadful, maddening thirst! And to _like_ to eat--how good that is, evenif you go fasting half the day! But I never do. The poor will alwaysgive you enough to eat. It hurts them to see any one hungry. Yes, I havedropped down the ladder rung by rung, and now I have reached the lowestrung. And it is a good place, the only safe place for wastrels such asI, the only refuge from my enemy. There is peace on the lowest rung. Ican do no more harm there, and I have done so much. I was ambitiousonce, I was admired and clever once; but I found no abiding cityanywhere. Temptation lurked everywhere. I was driven like chaff beforethe wind. .. . But now I have the road. No one will take the road from mewhile I live, or the ditch beside it to die in when my time comes. I amprovided for at last. I lead a clean life at last. "

She sat silent, her dreamy eyes fixed, her thin hands folded one overthe other. I looked at her with an aching heart. What strange mixtureof truth and lies was all this! But I said nothing. What was the use?

And as we sat silent beside the dying fire the great inequality betweenus pressed hard upon me: I, by no special virtue of my own, God knows!on one of the uppermost rungs of life. She poor soul--poor soul--on thelowest. 

The clock on the mantelpiece chimed eleven. 

She started slightly, looked at it, and then at me, as if uncertain ofher surroundings, and the shrewd, sardonic look came back to her face. 

"I am keeping you up, " she said, rising. "I think your strong coffee hasgone to my head. This outburst of autobiography is a poor return for allyour kindness. I had no idea it was so late or that I could be sogarrulous, and I must make a very early start to-morrow. Shall I go intothe kitchen and put on my own clothes again? They must be quite dry bynow. "

"Oh! let me help you, " I said impulsively. "Let me get you into a Home, or help you to emigrate. Don't go back to this wandering, aimless life. Work for others, interest in others, that is what _you_ need, what _I_need, what we _all_ need to take us out of ourselves, to make us forgetour own misery. "

"I have half forgotten mine already, " she said. "To-night I rememberedit again. But I have long since put it from my mind. I think the momentfor a change of clothing in the kitchen has arrived. "

She spoke quietly, but as if her last word were final. I found itimpossible to continue the subject. 

"You will never escape in those clothes, " I said. "You haven't the ghostof a chance. If you will come into my room, I will see what I can findfor you. "

I had been willing to do much more than give her clothes, but Iinstinctively felt that my appeal to her better feelings had fallen ondeaf ears. 

She followed me to my bedroom, and I got out all my oldest clothes andspread them before her. But she would have none of them. 

"The worst look like an ultra-respectable district visitor, " she said, tossing aside one garment after another. It was the more curious thatshe should say that because my brother-in-law had always said I lookedlike one, and that my books even had a parochial flavour about them. Butthen he had never really studied them, or he would have seen theirlighter side. 

"I had no idea pockets were worn in a little slit in the front seam, "said my visitor. "It shows how long it is since I have been 'in theknow. ' No doubt front pockets came in with the bicycles. No. It is verykind of you. But, except for that old dyed moreen petticoat, the thingswon't do. I always was particular about dress, and I never was more sothan I am at this moment. You don't happen to have an old black ulsterwith all the buttons off, and a bit of mangy fur dropping off the neck?That's more my style. But of course you haven't. "

"I had one once of that kind; it was so bad that I could not even giveit away. So I put it in the dog's basket. Lindo used to sleep on it. Heloved it, poor dear! It may be there still. "

We went downstairs again, and I pulled Lindo's basket out from under thestairs. 

The old black wrap was still in it, but it was mildewy and stuck to thebasket. It tore as I released it. It reminded me painfully of my lostdarling. 

"The very thing!" she said, with enthusiasm, as the dilapidated travestyof a coat shook itself free. "Quiet and unobtrusive to the last degree. Parisian in colour and simplicity. And mole colour is so becoming. Canyou really spare it? Then with the moreen petticoat I am provided, equipped. "

We went back to the kitchen again. 

"What will you do with them?" I said, pointing to her convict clotheswhich had dried perfectly stiff, owing to the amount of mud on them. Howsuch quantities of mud could have got on to them was a mystery to me. 

"It certainly does not improve one's clothes, to hide in a wet ditch ina ploughed field, " she said meditatively. "I will dispose of them earlyto-morrow morning. I picked a place as I found my way here. "

"Not on _my_ premises?" I said anxiously. 

"Of course not. Do you take me for a monster of ingratitude? I'll managethat all right. "

I suddenly remembered that she must have food to take with her. I wentto the larder, and when I came back I looked at her with renewedamazement. 

My dressing-gown and slippers were laid carefully on a chair. Theastonishing woman was a tramp once more, squatting on the brick floor, drawing on to her bare feet the shapeless excuses for boots which hadbeen toasting before the fire. 

Then she leaned over the hearth, rubbed her hands in the ashes, andpassed them gently over her face, her neck, her wrists and ankles. Shedrew forward and tangled her hair before the kitchen glass. Then sherolled up her convict clothes into a compact bundle, wiped her righthand carefully on the kitchen towel, and held it out to me. 

"Remember, " I said gravely, taking it in both of mine and pressing it, "if ever you are in need of a friend, you know to whom to apply. MarionDalrymple, Rufford, will always find me. "

I thought I ought not to let her go away without letting her know who Iwas. But my name seemed to have no especial meaning for her. Perhaps shehad lived beyond the pale too long. 

"You have indeed been a friend to me, " she said. "God bless you, yougood Samaritan! May the world go well with you! Good-night, and thankyou, and good-bye. If you'll give me the stable key, I'll let myself in. It's a pity you should come out; its raining again. And I'll leave thestable locked when I go. And the key will be in the lavender bush at thedoor. Good-bye again. "

 * * * * *

I did not sleep that night, and in the morning I was so tired that Imade no attempt to work. I had, of course, stolen out before six toretrieve the stable key from the lavender bush, and hang it on itsaccustomed nail. I looked into the stable first. My guest had departed. 

I spent an idle morning musing on the events of the previous evening, iftime thus spent can be called idling. It may seem so to others, but inmy own experience these apparently profitless hours are often morefruitful than those spent in belabouring the brain to a forced activity. But then I have always preferred to remain, as the great Molinosadvises, a learner rather than a teacher in the school of life. Early inthe afternoon, as I was on my way to the post-office, my landlord, Mr. Ledbury, met me. He looked excited, an open telegram in his hand. 

"Have you heard about the escaped convict?" he said. "She has beentaken. She was traced to Bronsal Heath yesterday, and run to earth thismorning at Framlingham. "

He turned and walked with me. He was too much taken up with the news tonotice how I started and how my colour changed. But indeed I flush andturn pale at nothing. All my life it has been a vexation to me that achance word or allusion should bring the colour to my cheek. 

"Poor soul!" he said. "I could almost wish she had made good her escape. She got out, Heaven alone knows how, to see her child, which she hadheard was ill. But the ground she must have covered in the time! She wasabsolutely dead beat when she was taken. And she was not in her prisonclothes. That is so inexplicable. How she got others she alone knows. Some one must have befriended her, and given them to her--some one verypoor, for she was miserably clad, and the extraordinary thing is thatthough she was traced to the deserted cottage on the heath yesterday, and taken at Framlingham to-day, her prison clothes were found hidden inmy wood-yard, _here_ in my wood-yard, by Zack when he went to his work. And this place is not on the way to Framlingham. How in the name offortune could she have hidden her clothes _here_?"

"She must have wandered here in the dark, " I suggested. 

"I don't understand it, " he said, turning in at his own gate. "Butanyhow, the poor thing has been caught. "

 * * * * *

My story should end here. Indeed, to my mind it does end here. And if Ihave been persuaded by my family to add a few more lines on the subject, it is sorely against the grain and against my artistic sense. And I amconscious that I have been unwise in allowing myself to be over-ruled bythose who have not given their lives to literature as I have done, andwho therefore cannot judge as I can when a story should be brought to aclose. 

I need hardly say that I often thought of my unhappy visitant, oftenwondered how she was getting on. A year later I was staying with afriend in Ipswich who was a visitor at the prison there, and Iremembered how it was to Ipswich she had been brought back, and I askedto see her. My friend knew her, and told me that she had made no furtherattempt to escape, and that she believed the child was dead. It had beenan old promise that she would one day take me over the prison. I claimedit, and begged that I might be allowed to have a few words with thatparticular inmate. It was not according to the regulations, but myfriend was a privileged person. That afternoon I passed with her underthat dreary portal, and after walking along interminable white-washedpassages, and past how many locked and numbered doors, my friendwhispered to a warder, who motioned me to a cell. 

A woman was sitting on her bed with her head in her hands. 

"You have not forgotten me, I hope, " I said gently. It may be weak, butI have never been able to speak ungently to any one in trouble, whateverthe cause may be. I have known too much trouble myself. 

She raised her head slowly, pushed back her hair, and looked at me. 

I had never seen her before. 

I could only stare helplessly at her. 

"But you are not the woman who escaped last October?" I stammered atlast. 

"Yes, " she said pathetically, "I am. Who else should I be? What do youwant with me?"

But I was speechless. It was all so unexpected, so inexplicable. I haveoften thought since how much stranger fact is than fiction. The moreinterested one is in life and in one's fellow-creatures the moresurprises there are in store for one. With every year I live my sense ofwonder increases, and with it my realisation of my own ignorance. As Istared amazedly at her, a change came over her face. She looked at mealmost with eagerness. 

"You didn't take me for 'er, did you?" she said hurriedly. "'Er as'elped me. Did you know 'er? She ain't copped, is she? Don't tell me asshe's copped too. "

"I thought you _were_ her, " I said. "I don't know what I thought. Idon't understand it. "

"She found me on a dirty night, " she said, "in a tumbledown cottage. I'dnever seen her afore. But she crep' in and found me, and tole me therewas a watch kep' for me at Woodbridge. And she changed clothes with me, so as to give me a bit of a chance. Mine was fair stiff with mud, forI'd laid in a wet ditch till night, but they showed the blasted colourfor all that. And she give me all she had on her--her clothes, and abite of bread and bacon, and two pence. And it wasn't as if we was pals. I'd never seen her afore. She stuck at nothing, and she only larfed atthe risk, for they'd have shut her up for certain if they'd caught her. She said she'd manage some'ow. And she 'eartened me up, and put me onthe road for Wickham, and she said she'd dror away the pursoot by hidingthe prison clothes somewhere in the opsit direction where they could befound easy by the first fool. "

"She did it, " I said. 

"And how did she spare 'em? She'd nuthin' but them. "

"I gave her some more. If she had been my own sister I could not havedone more for her. "

"And she worn't caught, wor she?"

"Not that I know of. No, I feel sure she never was. I helped her to getaway. "

"I was took in spite of all, " said the woman, "and by my own silliness. But I seed my little Nan alive fust, and that was all I wanted. And Idon't know who she was, nor what she was. She tole me she was a outcastand a tramp and a good-for-nothing. But there's never been anybody yet, be they who they may, as done for me what she done. She'd have give methe skin orf her back if she could 'ave took it orf. And it worn't as ifI knowed her. I'd never set eyes on 'er afore, nor never shall again. "

I have never seen her again, either. 

THE HAND ON THE LATCH

 There came a man across the moor, Fell and foul of face was he, He left the path by the cross-roads three, And stood in the shadow of the door. 

 MARY COLERIDGE. 

She stood at her low window with its uneven, wavering glass, and lookedout across the prairie. A little snow had fallen, not much, only enoughto add a sense of desolation to the boundless plain, the infinite plainoutside the four cramped walls of her log hut. The log hut was like atiny boat moored in some vast, tideless, impassable sea. The immensityof the prairie had crushed her in the earlier years of her married life;but gradually she had become accustomed to it, then reconciled to it, atlast almost a part of it. The grey had come early to her thick hair, acertain fixity to the quiet courage of her eyes. Her calm, steadfastface showed that she was not given to depression, but nevertheless thisevening, as she stood watching for her husband's return, for the firstdistant speck of him where the cart-rut vanished into the plain, a senseof impending misfortune enfolded her with the dusk. Was it because thefirst snow had fallen? Ah me! how much it meant. It was as significantfor her as the grey pallor that falls on a sick man's face. It meant theendless winter, the greater isolation instead of the lesser, thepowerlessness to move hand or foot in that all-enveloping shroud; thestruggle, not for existence--with him beside her that was assured--notfor luxury, she had ceased to care for it, though he had not ceased tocare for her sake, but for life in any but its narrowest sense. Books, letters, human speech, through the long months these would be almostentirely denied her. The sudden remembrance of the larger needs of lifeflooded her soul, touching to momentary semblance of movement manythings long cherished, but long since dead, like delicate sea-plantsbeyond high-water mark, that cannot exist between the long droughts whenthe spring tide does not come. She had known what she was doing when, against the wishes of her family, she of the South had married him ofthe North, when she left the busy city life she knew, and clave to herhusband, following him over the rim of the world, as women will followwhile they have feet to follow with. She was his superior in birth, cultivation, refinement, but she had never regretted what she had done. The regrets were his for her, for the poverty to which he had broughther, and to which she had not been accustomed. She had only one regret, if such a thin strip of a word as regret can be used to describe herpassionate, controlled desolation, immense as the prairie, because shehad no child. Perhaps if they had had children the walls of the log hutin the waste might have closed in on them less rigidly. It might havebecome more of a home. 

Her mind had taken its old mechanical bent, the trend of long habit, asshe looked out from that low window. How often she had stood there andthought "If only we might have had a child!" And now, by sheer force ofhabit, she thought it yet again. And then a slow rapture took possessionof her whole being, mounted, mounted till she leaned against the windowstill faint with joy. She was to have a child after all. She had hardlydared believe it at first; but as time had gone on a vague hope quicklysuppressed as unbearable had turned to suspense, suspense had alternatedwith the fierce despair that precedes certainty. Certainty had come atlast, clear and calm and exquisite as dawn. She would have a child inthe spring. What was the winter to her now! Nothing but a step towardsjoy. The world was all broken up and made new. The prairie, its greatloneliness, its death-like solitude, were gone out of her life. She wasto have a child in the spring. She had not dared to tell her husbandtill she was sure. But she would tell him this evening, when they weresitting together over the fire. 

She stood motionless in the deepening dusk, trying to be calm. And atlast in the far distance she saw a speck arise as it were out of acrease in the level earth. Her husband on his horse. How many hundredsof times she had seen him appear over the rim of the world, just as hewas appearing now. She lit the lamp and put it in the window. She blewthe log fire to a blaze. The firelight danced on the wooden walls, crowded with cheap pictures, and on the few precious daguerreotypes thatreminded her she too had brothers and sisters and kin of her own, faraway in one of those southern cities where the war was still smoulderinggrimly on. 

Her husband took his horse round and stalled him. Presently he came in. They stood a moment together in silence as their custom was, and sheleaned her forehead against his shoulder. Then she busied herself withhis supper, and he sat down heavily at the little table. 

"Had you any difficulty this time in getting the money together?" sheasked. 

Her husband was a tax collector. 

"None, " he said abstractedly; "at least--yes--a little. But I have itall, and the arrears as well. It makes a large sum. "

He was evidently thinking of something else. She did not speak again. She saw something was troubling him. 

"I heard news to-day at Philip's, " he said at last, "which I don't like. If I had heard in time, and if I could have borrowed a fresh horse, Iwould have ridden straight on to ----. But it was too late in the dayto be safe, and you would have been anxious what had become of me if Ihad been out all night with all this money on me. I shall go to-morrowas soon as it is light. "

They discussed the business which took him to the nearest town thirtymiles away, where their small savings were invested, somewhatprecariously, as it turned out. What was safe, who was safe, while theinvisible war between North and South smouldered on and on? It had notcome near them, but as an earthquake which is engulfing cities in onepart of Europe will rattle a tea-cup without oversetting it on a cottageshelf half a continent away, so the civil war had reached them at last. 

"I take a hopeful view, " he said, but his face was overcast. "I don'tsee why we should lose the little we have. It has been hard enough toscrape it together, God knows. Promptitude and joint action withReynolds will probably save it. But I must be prompt. " He still spokeabstractedly, as if even now he were thinking of something else. 

He began to take out of the leathern satchel various bags of money. 

"Shall I help you to count it?"

She often did so. 

They counted the flimsy dirty paper-money together, and put it all backinto the various labelled bags. 

"It comes right, " he said. 

Suddenly she said, "But you can't pay it into the bank to-morrow if yougo to ----. "

"I know, " he said looking at her; "that is what I have been thinking ofever since I heard Philip's news. I don't like leaving you with all thismoney in the house; but I must. "

She was silent. She was not frightened for herself, but it was Statemoney, not their own. She was not nervous as he was, but she had alwaysshared with him a certain dread of those bulging bags, and had alwaysbeen thankful to see him return safe--he never went twice by the sametrack--after paying the money in. In those wild days, when men wentarmed, with their lives in their hands, it was not well to be known tohave large sums about you. 

He looked at the bags, frowning. 

"I am not afraid, " she said. 

"There is no real need to be, " he said after a moment. "When I leaveto-morrow morning, it will be thought I have gone to pay it in. Still----"

He did not finish his sentence, but she knew what was in his mind: thegreat loneliness of the prairie. Out in the white night came the short, sharp yap of a wolf. 

"I am not afraid, " she said again. 

"I shall be gone only one night, " he said. 

"I have often been a night alone. "

"I know, " he said; "but somehow it's worse leaving you with so muchmoney in the house. "

"No one knows it will be there. "

"That is true, except that every one knows I have been collecting largesums. "

"They will think you have gone to pay it in as usual. "

"Yes, " he said with an effort. 

Then he got up, and went to his tool-box. She watched him open it, seeing him in a new light which encompassed him with even greater love. "If I tell him to-night, " she thought, "it will make him still moreanxious about leaving me. Perhaps he would refuse to go, and he must go. I will not tell him till he comes back. "

The resolution not to speak was like taking hold of a piece of iron infrost. She had not known it would hurt so much. A new tremulousness, sweet and strange, passed over her--not cowardice, not fear, not of theheart nor of the mind, but a sort of emotion of the whole being. 

"I will not tell him, " she said again. 

Her husband got out his tools, took up a plank from the floor, and putthe money into a hole beneath it, beside their small valuables, such asthey were, in a biscuit tin. Then he replaced the plank, screwed itdown, and she drew back a small fur mat over the place. He put away thetools and then came and stood in front of her. He was not conscious ofher transfiguration, and she dropped her eyes for fear of showing it. 

"I shall start early, " he said, "as soon as it is light, and I shall beback before sundown the day after to-morrow. I know it is unreasonable, but I shall go easier in my mind if you will promise me one thing. "

"What is it?"

"Not to go out of the house, or to let any one else come in on anypretence whatever, while I am away, " he said. "Bar everything, and stayinside. "

"I shan't want to go out. "

He made an impatient movement. 

"Promise me that, come what will, you will let no one in during myabsence, " he said. 

"I promise. "

"Swear it. "

She hesitated. 

"Swear it, to please me, " he said. 

"I swear that I will let no one into the house, on any pretext whatever, until you come back, " she said, smiling at him. 

He sighed and relapsed into his chair, and gave way to the great fatiguethat possessed him. 

The next morning he started soon after daybreak, but not until he hadbrought her in sufficient fuel to last several days. There had been moresnow in the night, fine snow like salt, but not enough to maketravelling difficult. She watched him ride away, and silenced the voicewithin her which always said as she saw him go, "You will never see himagain; you have heard his voice for the last time. " Perhaps, after all, the difference between the brave and the cowardly lies in how they dealwith that voice. Both hear it. She silenced it instantly. It spokeagain, more insistently, "You have heard his voice, felt his kiss, forthe last time. He will never see the face of his child. " She silenced itagain, and went about her work. 

The day passed as countless other days had passed. She was accustomed tobe much alone. She had work to do, enough and to spare, within thelittle home which was to become a real home, please God, in the spring. The evening fell almost before she expected it. She locked and barredthe doors, and closed the shutters of the windows. She made all secure, as she had done many a time before. 

And then, putting aside her work, she took down the newest of herwell-worn books, lately sent her from New Orleans, and began to read. 

 Oui, sans doute, tout meurt: ce monde est un grand rêve, Et le peu de bonheur qui nous vient en chemin, Nous n'avons pas plus tôt ce roseau dans la main, Que le vent nous l'enlève. 

"Que le vent nous l'enlève. " She repeated the last words to herself. Ahno! the wind could not take her happiness out of her hand. 

A wandering wind had risen at nightfall, and it came softly across thesnow, and tried the doors and windows as with a furtive hand. She couldhear it coming as from an immense distance, passing with a sigh, returning plaintive, homeless, forlorn, to whisper round the house. 

 J'ai vu sous le soleil tomber bien d'autres choses Que les feuilles des bois, et l'écume des eaux, Bien d'autres s'en aller que le parfum des roses Et le chant des oiseaux. 

That wind meant more snow. Involuntarily she laid down her book andlistened to it. 

How like the sound of the wind was to wandering footsteps, slowlydrawing near, creeping round the house. She could almost have fanciedthat a hand touched the shutters, was even now trying to raise the latchof the door. 

A moment of intense silence, in which the wind seemed to hold its breathand listen without, while she listened within. And then a low, distinctknock upon the door. 

She did not move. 

"It is the wind, " she said to herself; but she knew it was not. 

The knock came again, low, urgent, not to be denied. 

She had become very cold. She had supposed fear was an emotion of themind. She had not reckoned for this slow paralysis of the body. 

She managed to creep to the window and unbar the shutter an inch or two. By pressing her face against the extreme corner of the pane she couldjust discern in the snowlight part of a man's figure, wrapped in a longcloak. 

She barred the window once more. She was not surprised. She knew nowthat she had known it always. She had pretended to herself that thethief would not come; but she was expecting him when he knocked. And hestood there, outside. Presently he would be inside. 

He knocked yet again, this time more loudly. What need was there forsilence when for miles and miles round there was no ear to hear savethat of a chance prairie dog?

She laid hold upon her courage, seeing that it was her only refuge, andwent to the door. 

"Who is there?" she said through a chink. 

A man's voice, low and feeble, replied, "Let me in. "

"I cannot let you in. "

There was a short silence. 

"I pray you, let me in, " he said again. 

"I have told you I cannot. Who are you?"

"I am a soldier, wounded. I'm trying to get back to my friends at ----. "He mentioned a settlement about fifty miles north. "I have missed myway, and I can't drag myself any farther. "

Her heart swung violently between suspicion and compassion. 

"I am alone in the house, " she said. "My husband is away, and he made mepromise not to let any one in on any pretence whatever during hisabsence. "

"Then I shall die on your doorstep, " said the voice. "I can't dragmyself any farther. "

There was another silence. 

"It is beginning to snow, " he said. 

"I know, " she said, and he heard the trouble in her voice. 

"Open the door and look at me, " he said, "and see if I can do you anyharm. "

She opened the door, and stood on the threshold, barring the way. He wasleaning against the doorpost with his head against it, as she had oftenseen her husband lean when he was talking to her on a summer evening. Something in his attitude, so like her husband's, touched her strangely. Supposing he were in need, and pleaded for help in vain!

The man turned his face towards her. It was sunk and hollow, ravagedwith pain, an evil-looking face. His right arm was in a sling under histattered military cloak. He seemed to have made his final effort, andnow stood staring dumbly at her. 

"My husband will never forgive me, " she said, with a sort of sob. 

He said nothing more. He seemed at the last point of exhaustion. Throughthe dim white night a few flakes of snow fell upon his harsh, repellentface and on his bandaged arm. 

A sudden wave of pity carried all before it. 

She beckoned him into the house, and locked and barred the door. She puthim in her husband's chair by the fire. He hardly noticed anything. Heseemed stupefied. He sat staring alternately at the fire and at her. When she asked him to which regiment he belonged, he did not answer. 

She set before him the supper she had prepared for herself, and chafedhis hard, emaciated, dirty hand till the warmth returned to it. Then heate, with difficulty at first, then with slow voracity, all she had putbefore him. 

A semblance of life returned gradually to him. 

"I was pretty near done up when I knocked, " he said several times. 

She dressed his wound, which did not appear very deep, wrapped it infresh bandages, and readjusted his sling. He took it all as a matter ofcourse. 

She made up a little bed of rugs and blankets for him in the backkitchen. When she came back to the living-room, she found he had draggedhimself to his feet, and was looking vacantly at a little picture ofPresident Lincoln on the mantelshelf. She showed him the bed and toldhim to lie down on it. He obeyed her implicitly, like a child. She lefthim, and presently heard him cast himself down. A few minutes later shewent to the door and listened. His heavy, regular breathing told her hewas asleep. 

She went back to the kitchen, and sat down by the fire. 

Was he really asleep? Was it all feigned, the wound, the story, theexhaustion? Had she been trapped? Oh! what had she done? What had shedone?

She seemed like two people. One self, silent, alert, experienced, fearless, knew that she had allowed herself to be deluded, in spite ofbeing warned; knew that her feelings had been played upon, made use of, not even dexterously made use of; knew that she had disobeyed herhusband, broken her solemn oath to him, plunged him with herself intodisgrace if the money were stolen. And in the eyes of that self it wasalready stolen. It was still under the plank beneath her feet, but itwas already stolen. 

The other self, tremulous, inconsequent, full of irresistible tendernessfor suffering and weakness even in its uncouthest garb, saidincessantly, "I could do no less. If I die for it, still I could do noless. Somebody brought him into the world. Some woman cried for joy andanguish when he was born. He would have died if I had not taken him in. I could do no less. "

Through the long hours she sat by the fire, unable to reconcile herselfto going upstairs to her own room and to bed. 

Once she got up and noiselessly took down her husband's revolver fromthe mantelshelf, and examined it. He had taken its fellow with him, andapparently, contrary to his custom, he had taken the powder-flask withhim too, for it was gone from its nail. The revolvers were always keptloaded, but--by some evil chance--the one that remained was unloaded. She could have sworn she had seen her husband load it two days ago. Whywas this numbness creeping over her again? She got out powder andbullets from a small store she had of her own, loaded and primed it, andlaid it on the table beside her. 

The night had become very still. Her hearing seemed to reach out tillshe felt she could have heard a coyote move in its hole miles away. Thelog fire creaked and shifted. The tall clock in the corner ticked, catching its chain now and then as its manner was. The wooden wallsshrunk and groaned a little. The small home-like sounds only accentuatedthe enormous silence without. Suddenly in the midst of them a real soundfell upon her ear--very low, but different, not like the fragmentaryinadvertent murmur of the hut; a small, purposeful, stealthy, sound, aware of itself. She listened, as she had listened before, withoutmoving. It was not louder than the whittling of a mouse behind thewainscot, hardly louder than the scraping of a mole's thin hand in thesoil. It continued. Then it stopped. It was only her foolish fancy afterall. There it was again. Where did it come from?

_The man in the next room?_

She took up the lamp and crept down the narrow passage to the door ofthe back kitchen. His loud, even breathing sounded distinctly throughthe crannies of the ill-fitting door. Surely it was overloud. Shelistened to it. She could hear nothing else. Was his breathing apretence? She opened the door noiselessly, and went in, shading thelight with her hand. 

She bent over the sleeping man. At the first glance her heart sank, forhe had not taken off his boots. But as she looked hard at him hersuspicions died within her. He lay on his back with his coarse, emaciated face towards her, his mouth open, showing his broken teeth. The sleep of utter exhaustion was upon him. She could have killed himas he lay. He was not acting. He was really asleep. 

She crept out of the room again, leaving the door ajar, and went back tothe kitchen. 

Hardly had she sat down when she heard the sound again. It was too faintto reach her except when she was in the kitchen. She knew now where itcame from--_the door_. Some one was picking the lock. 

The instant the sleeping man was out of her sight she suspected himagain. 

Was he really asleep after all? He had not taken off his boots. When shecame back from making his bed she had found him standing by themantelshelf. Had he unloaded the pistol in her absence? Would hepresently get up, and open the door to his confederates?

Her mind rose clear and cold and unflinching. She took up the pistol, and then laid it down again. She wanted a more noiseless weapon. She gotout her husband's great clasp-knife from the open tool-box, took thelamp, and crept back to the man's bedside. She should be able to killhim--certainly she should be able to kill him; and then she should havethe pistol for the other one. 

But he still slept heavily. When she saw him again, again hersuspicions fell from her. She _knew_ he was asleep. 

She shook him by the shoulder, noiselessly, but with increasingviolence, until he opened his eyes with a groan. Then only sheremembered that she was shaking his wounded arm. He saw the knife in herhand, and raised his left arm as if to ward off the blow. 

"Listen, " she whispered, close to his ear. "Don't speak. There is a mantrying to break into the house. You must get up and help me. "

He stared at her, vaguely at first, but with growing intelligence. Thefood and sleep had restored him somewhat to himself. He sat up on thecouch. 

"Take off my boots, " he whispered; "I tried, and could not. "

Her last suspicion of him vanished. She cut the laces with her knife, and dragged his boots off. They stuck to his feet, and bits of thewoollen socks came off with them. They had evidently not been taken offfor weeks. While she did it, he whispered, "Why should any one bewanting to break in? There's nothing here to take. "

"Yes, there is, " she said. "There's a lot of money. "

"Good Lord! Where?"

"Under the floor in the kitchen. "

"Then it's the kitchen they'll make for. You bet they know where themoney is, if they know it's here. Are there many of 'em?"

"I don't know. "

"Well, we shall know soon enough, " said the man. He had become alert, keen. "Have you any pistols?"

"Yes, one. "

"Fetch it, but don't make a sound, mind. "

She stole away, and returned with the pistol. She would have put it intohis hand, but he pushed it away. 

"It's no use to me, " he said, "with my arm in a sling. I will see what Ican do with my left hand and the knife. Can you shoot?"

"Yes. "

"Can you hit anything?"

"Yes. "

"To be depended on?"

"Yes. "

"Well, it's darned lucky. How long will that door hold?"

They were both in the little passage by now, pressed close together, listening to the furtive pick, pick, of some one at the lock. 

"I don't think it will hold more than a minute. "

"Now, look here, " he said, "I shall go and stand at the foot of thestair, and knife the second man, if there is a second. The first manI'll leave to you. There's a bit of light outside from the snow. He'lllet in enough light to see him by as he opens the door. Don't wait. Fireat him as he comes in, and don't stop; go on firing at him till hedrops. You've got six bullets. Don't you make any mistake and shoot me. I've had enough of that already. Now, you look carefully where I'm goingto stand and when I'm there you put out the lamp. "

He spoke to her as a man does to his comrade. 

That she could be frightened did not seem to enter his calculations. Hemoved with cat-like stealth to the foot of the tiny staircase, andflattened himself against the wall. Then he stretched his left arm onceor twice as if to make sure of it, licked the haft of the knife, andnodded at her. 

She instantly put out the lamp. 

All was dark save for a faint thread of light which outlined the door. Across the thread something moved once--twice. The sound of pickingceased. Then another sound succeeded it, a new one, unlike the last, asif something was being gently prized open, wrenched. 

"The bar will hold, " she said to herself; and then remembered for thefirst time that the rung into which the bar slid had been loose thesemany days. It was giving now. 

It had given!

The door opened silently, and a man came in. 

For a moment she saw him clear with the accomplice snowlight behind him. She did not hesitate. She shot once and again. He fell, and struggledviolently up, and she shot again. He fell, and dragged himself to hisknees, and she shot again. Then he sank gently and slowly down, as iftired, with his face against the wall, and moved no more. 

The man on the stairs rushed out and looked through the open door. 

"By G----! he was single-handed, " he said. 

Then he stooped over the prostrate man, and turned him over on hisback. 

"Dead!" he said, chuckling. "Well done, missus! Stone dead!"

He was masked. 

The dirty left hand tore the mask callously off the grey face. 

The woman had drawn near, and looked over his shoulder. 

"Do you know him?" said the man. 

For a moment she did not answer, and the pistol which had done its workso well dropped noisily out of her palsied hand. 

"He is a stranger to me, " she said, looking fixedly at her husband'sfading face. 

SAINT LUKE'S SUMMER

_IN TWO PARTS_

PART I

 When the world's asleep, I awake and weep, Deeply sighing, say, "Come, O break of day, Lead my feet in my beloved's way. "

 MARGARET L. WOODS. 

When first I knew Aunt Emmy I suppose she was about twenty-eight. I wasten, and I thought her old, but still an agreeable companion, infinitelypleasanter than her father and her brother, with whom she lived. She wasnot my real aunt, but her father was my great-uncle, and I always calledher Aunt Emmy. Great-uncle Thomas and Uncle Tom were persons to beavoided, stout, heavy, bullet-headed, bull-necked, throat-clearing men, loud nose-blowers, loud soup-eaters, who reeked of tobacco when it wasmy horrid duty to kiss them, and who addressed me in jocular terms whenthey remembered my existence, of which I was always loth to remind them. With these two horrors, whom she loved, Aunt Emmy lived. She was wrappedup in them. I have actually seen her kiss Uncle Thomas when it was notnecessary, when he was asleep; and she admired Uncle Tom very much too, though she seldom kissed him, I believe by his wish. He used to saysomething about sister's kisses being like cold veal. I don't suppose heinvented that himself. He was always picking up things like that out ofa rose-coloured paper, and firing them off as his own. Uncle Tom wastall and portly, and a wag out of office hours, with a moustache that, in spite of all his efforts, would not turn up, but insisted on making amelancholy inner semicircle just a size smaller than the rubicund circleof his face. How I hated kindly, vulgar Uncle Tom! I used to pray thathe might die before the holidays. But he never did. I see now that UncleTom was far, far worse than Uncle Thomas, who had had a stroke, and wasa kind of furious invalid who could not speak clearly, or eat anythingexcept things that were bad for him. But when I was a child, and firstbegan to spend my holidays in Pembridge Square, I regarded them bothwith the same repulsion. 

Aunt Emmy was different. I know now that she must have been a remarkablypretty woman, but I did not notice that at the time. But a faint, indefinable fragrance seemed to envelop her. I loved to stroke her softwhite hand, and to turn the emerald ring on her third finger, and tolean against her soft shoulder. Aunt Emmy's cheek was very soft too, andso was her full, silky hair, which she wore parted all her life, thoughit was never the fashion to do so that I can remember, though I am toldit is now the _dernier cri_ among the _débutantes_. Aunt Emmy had abeautifully shaped head, and the whitest brow and neck that I have everseen. And she had a low voice, and was very dignified. I do not thinkthat she was a very wise woman, or that she had ever wrestled with thedeeper problems of life, or that the mystery of pain had ever caused herfaith to totter. But she was very good to live with. She devotedherself. 

She never had her own way in anything that I can remember. The housenever represented her. The furniture was leathern and velvet andstout-looking, the kind of furniture which seems to aim at being more orless exact moulds of the forms of middle-aged men. The armchairs werelike commodious hip-baths in plush. Aunt Emmy and I were lost in them. Iremember once walking as a child through the wilderness of armchairs atMaple's and thinking they all looked like Uncle Tom. A good deal ofUtrecht velvet had gone to the upholstering of that house in PembridgeSquare. It was comfortable, airless, flowerless, with gravy-colouredwalls. As I grew older I wondered why it was all so ugly and dreary. ButI found there were less means than I had supposed, and though thecooking remained excellent, flowers and new chintzes were dispensed withas unnecessary. Aunt Emmy opened a window surreptitiously now and then, but Uncle Thomas and Uncle Tom hated draughts, and they did not get offto sleep so quickly after dinner if the drawing-room had been airedduring the meal. The dining-room windows were never opened at all, except when Uncle Thomas was too unwell to come in and Uncle Tom wasaway. 

Many men had wished to marry Aunt Emmy; not only sedentary professionalmen in long frock-coats, full to the brim of the best food, like UncleTom; but nice, lean, hungry-looking, open-air men who were majors, orcountry squires, or something interesting of that kind, whose clothessat well on them, and who drew up in the Row on little skittish, curveting polo-ponies when Aunt Emmy and I walked there. I once askedher, after a certain good-looking Major Stoddart had ridden on, why shedid not marry, but she only said reprovingly, with great dignity:

"You don't understand such matters, my dear, or you would know that Icould not possibly leave your Uncle Thomas. "

I was silenced. I felt with bitterness that this could not be her wholereason for celibacy, but that, owing to the purely superficial fact thatmy hair was still in a pigtail, she supposed I was unable to comprehend"lots of things" that I felt I understood perfectly, and on which mymind was already working with an energy which would have surprised herhad she guessed it. 

By this time I worshipped Aunt Emmy, who represented in my somewhatcolourless orphaned existence the beautiful and romantic side of life. Aunt Emmy looked romantic, and the contrast between her refined, gentleself-effacement and the commonplace egotism of her two men was of theglaring nature which appeals to a young girl's imagination. 

I never forgot Major Stoddart, and when I was eighteen, and had leftschool and was living in Pembridge Square, I had the good fortune tocome in for the remains of a scene between Aunt Emmy and Uncle Tom--thevery day after I had turned up my hair. 

It was at luncheon, to which I came in late. Uncle Thomas was in bedwith gout, and Uncle Tom did not consider me of enough consequence tomatter. He had not realised even _now_ that I was a grown-up woman. Looking back after all these years, I am not sure that he was not astuteenough to hope that I might prove an ally. 

"What you have got to do, Emmy, is to think of the future, " he wassaying, scooping all the visible eggs out of an aspic pie. "It's nomanner of use living only in the present. You think this comfortablehome will go on for ever, where you have lived in luxury. It won't. Itcan't. It's not in the nature of things. I saw Blackett yesterday(Blackett was the doctor), and he told me that if the governor's goutrises--and nothing he can do can keep it down--he won't last more than ayear at longest. In the nature of things, " Uncle Tom continued, boltinghalf an egg, "I shall then marry. In fact--in short----"

"Has Miss Collett accepted you?" said Aunt Emmy tremulously. 

Miss Collett was a person of means, and of somewhat bulged attractionsfor those who admire size, of whom Uncle Tom had often spoken as adeuced fine woman. 

"She has, " said Uncle Tom. "I made pretty sure of that before I saidanything myself. Nothing immediate, you understand; but eventually--whenthe old governor goes--I don't want to hurry him, Lord knows; but whenthe old man does pop off, I shall--bring her here. "

I looked round the room. I had seen Miss Collett, and the mahogany andormolu dining-room, with its great gilt mirrors, seemed a fittingbackground for her. 

"I am very glad, dear Tom, " said Aunt Emmy. "I think you and she will bevery well suited, and I am sure she is very lucky, though I suppose Ishould never think any one _quite_ good enough. "

"Oh! that's all right, " said Uncle Tom. "And as for the luck, it's allon my side. "

He did not really think this, I knew, but it was the right thing to say, so he said it. 

"But I am not thinking only of myself, " he continued. "There is you tobe considered. "

Aunt Emmy dropped her eyes. 

"You mean, where I shall live, " she said faintly. 

"Just so. Just so. You speak like a sensible woman. We must not forgetyou. " Uncle Tom was becoming visibly uneasy. "And I may as well tell younow, old girl--prepare your mind beforehand, don't you know--that thegovernor has not been able to leave you as much as he wished, as we_both_ wished. The truth is, what with one thing and another, and nearlyall his capital tied up in the business, and this house on a long leaseand expensive to keep up, with the best will in the world the poor oldpater _can't_ do much for you. "

"It will be enough, " said Aunt Emmy. 

"It will be the interest of seven thousand pounds at three and a halfper cent. , " said Uncle Tom brutally, because he was uncomfortable, "about two hundred and thirty pounds a year. "

"It will be ample, " said Aunt Emmy. I knew by the faint colour in hercheeks that the conversation was odious to her. "Dear Tom, let us talkof something else. "

"We will, " said Uncle Tom, with unexpected mental agility, and with theobvious relief of a man who has got safely round a difficult corner. "Wewill. Now, how about Colonel Stoddart?"

My heart beat suddenly. I was beginning to see life--at last. 

"There is nothing to say about him, " said Aunt Emmy. 

"A good chap, and a gentlemanly chap, " said Uncle Tom urbanely, leaningback in his chair. "Eton, the 'varsity, and all that sort of thing. Quite one of ourselves. Old family, and a warm man. And suitable in age. _My_ age. Thirty-nine. (Uncle Tom was really forty-one. ) You're nochicken yourself, you know, Emmy. Thirty-eight, though I own you don'tlook it, my dear. Well, what's the matter with Colonel Stoddart, Ishould like to know?"

"Nothing. "

"Well, I'm glad to hear it, for he tells me you refused him again onlylast week. Now, look here. One moment, please. Don't speak. I call itProvidence, downright Providence, " and Uncle Tom rapped the table with athick finger. "And yet you won't look at him. I don't say marry him outof hand. Of course, " Uncle Tom added hurriedly, "you can't leave the oldpater while he is above ground. There's no question of that. But I _do_say, Give the fellow a chance. He's been dangling after you for years. Tell him that some day----"

Aunt Emmy rose from the table, and laid down her napkin. 

"Now, look here, old girl, " said Uncle Tom, not unkindly, "don't getyour feathers up with me. Think better of it. You know this sort offirst-class opportunity may not occur again. It really may not. If itisn't Providence, I'm sure I don't know what it is. And I believe youronly reason for refusing him is because of Bob Kingston. Now, don't flyin the face of Providence just out of a bit of rotten sentiment whichyou ought to be ashamed of at your age. "

My brain reeled. I had never heard of Bob Kingston. I said "Good God!"to myself, not because it was natural to me to use such an expression, but because I felt it was suitable to the occasion and to a person whosehair was done up. 

"Tom, " said Aunt Emmy, her soft eyes blazing, "I desire that you willnever allude to Mr. Kingston again. "

She left the room, and I did the same, with what I hope was a witheringglance at the open-mouthed Uncle Tom, who for days afterwardsinterlarded his conversation with the refrain that he was blessed if hecould understand women. 

But I dared not follow Aunt Emmy to her little sitting-room at the topof the house. She who was almost never alone, clung, I knew, to thattiny refuge, and it was an understood thing between us that I mightcreep in and sit with her a little after tea, but not before. 

So I raged up and down the empty gilded and mirrored drawing-room, finding myself quite unable to reconcile the situation with my faith ina beneficent Deity; and then consoled myself by chronicling my totteringfaith in my diary. I wrote a diary until I married. Then, I suppose, Ibecame more interested in life than in recording my own feelings. Atany rate, I discontinued it. 

At last, when Aunt Emmy did not come down for tea, I took her a cup. 

She was sitting in a low chair with her back to the light. I could seethat she had been crying, but she was quite calm. She had a suspiciouslyclean pocket-handkerchief in her hand. Her sitting-room was a smallnorth chamber under the roof, but it was the place I liked best in thehouse. On her rare expeditions abroad, before Uncle Thomas had becometoo ill to be left, she had picked up some quaint pieces of pottery anda few old Italian mirrors. The little white room with its pale bluelinen coverings had an atmosphere and a refinement of its own. It wasspring, and there was a bunch of daffodils near the open window in ablue-and-white oil-jar with _Ole Scorpio_ on it. 

Aunt Emmy drank some tea, and remarked that I made it better than shedid. 

"Your Uncle Tom has a very kind heart, " she said, looking a littlepugnaciously at me. "It is so like him, just when he might naturally betaken up with his own affairs, to be anxious about me. "

We each knew the other was not deceived. 

I longed to say, "Why not marry Colonel Stoddart?"

I had only seen him on horseback. I did not know how he looked on theground, but I would have married him myself in a second if he had askedme, partly no doubt because he was a little like Lord K----, the hero ofmy teens to whom I had never spoken, and partly because he was the exactopposite of Uncle Tom. How Miss Collett _could_! How anybody could! YetUncle Tom always talked as if he had only to choose among the flower ofEnglish womanhood, and the stouter and more repellent he grew the morecommunicative and conscientious he became about his fear of raisingexpectations in female bosoms which he might not be able to gratify. HowI scorned Uncle Tom when he talked like that, knowing as I did--butneither he nor Aunt Emmy knew I knew (it was always like that, theyalways thought I did not know things)--knowing as I did that Miss RoseDelaine and Miss Wright had both refused him. I did not realise in myintolerant youth that the anxiety of some middle-aged bachelors still toappear eligible, the way their minds hover round imaginary conquests, has its pathetic side. Looking back, I believe now that Miss Collett wasnot by any means poor Uncle Tom's first choice, but his last chance. Andperhaps he was her last chance too. 

"I know father is dying. I have known it some time, " said Aunt Emmy, andher face became convulsed. "He spoke so beautifully about it onlyyesterday. And I have known for a long time that Tom and Miss Collettwere likely to come to an arrangement. "

She had not a grain of irony in her, but no word could have been moreapplicable to Uncle Tom and Miss Collett than an arrangement. One feltthat each had measured the other by avoirdupois weight, and had foundthe balance even. 

"Is Uncle Thomas opposed to your marrying?" I ventured to say, with thetact of eighteen. 

"No, my dear; that is what is so wonderful. He was so dreadfully againstit long ago--once--indeed, until quite lately. But it's no use speakingof that. But now he is quite anxious for it, so long as I don't leavehim. He wants me to promise Colonel Stoddart, but to tell him that Icould not leave my father during his lifetime, which of course Icouldn't. "

"Won't Colonel Stoddart wait?" I said, waxing bolder. I had slipped downon the floor beside her and was stroking her white hand. I hoped I wassaying the right thing. I was adoringly fond of her, but I was alsoeighteen, and this was my first introduction to a real romance. I wasfeverishly anxious to rise to the occasion, to have nothing to regret inretrospect. 

"I daresay he would. I think he said something about it, " she saidapathetically. 

I remembered a beautiful sentence I had read in a novel aboutconfidences being mutual, and I said reproachfully, "Aunt Emmy, I havetold you _all_ about Lord K----; won't you tell me, just me, no oneelse--about Mr. Kingston?"

And she told me. I think it was a relief to speak to some one. I held mycheek against her hand all the time. It seemed that a sort of demigod ofthe name of Kingston had alighted in her life when she was nineteen (Ifelt with a pang that I had still a whole year to wait) and he wastwenty-one. Aunt Emmy waxed boldly eloquent in her description of hisunique and heroic character, shyly eloquent in her dispassionateindication of his almost terrifying beauty. 

I think Aunt Emmy became a girl in her teens again for a few minutes, carried away by her memory, and by the idolising sympathy of the othergirl in her teens at her feet in a seventh heaven at being a confidant. But in one sense, on the sentimental plane, she had never ceased to be agirl. She and I viewed the situation almost from the same standpoint. 

"Aunt Emmy, _was_ he tall?"

"He was, my love. "

"And slender?"

My whole life hung in the balance. I had all a young girl's repulsiontowards stout men. 

"He was thin and wiry, and very athletic, a great rider. "

I gave a sigh of relief. 

"Did his--it does not really matter" (I felt the essentials were allright and that I must not ask too much of life)--"but did his haircurl?"

Aunt Emmy drew out of her bosom a little locket, hanging by a thin goldchain, with a forget-me-not in blue enamel on it, and opened it. Insidewas a curl of chestnut hair. It was not tied in the shape of a curl. Itwas a real curl. 

I looked at it with awe. 

Aunt Emmy answered my highest expectations at every point. I had neverseen that enamel locket before. Yet I divined at once that she had wornit under her clothes--as indeed she had, day and night for how manyyears! I felt that I would not care how it ended, happily or unhappily, if only I might have a romance and a locket like that. 

"He gave it me when we parted eighteen years ago, " she said, her voicequivering a little. 

I knew well that lovers always did part. They invariably severed, "severed for years. " I was not the least surprised to hear he was gone, for I was already learning "In the Gloaming, " and trilled it forth in athin, throaty voice which Aunt Emmy said was remarkably like what hershad been at my age. 

"Why were you parted?" I asked. 

"He had not any money, and he had his way to make. And he had an uncleout there who wanted him to go to him. It was a good opening, though hewould not have taken it if it had not been for me, for though he was sofond of horses he was not the kind of person for that kind of life, sheep and things. He cared so much for books and poetry. And your UncleThomas was very much against my marrying at that time, in fact, hepositively forbade it. You see, mother was dead, and your Uncle Thomashad become more dependent on me than he was quite aware until there wasa question of my leaving him. Men are like that, my love. They need awoman all the time to look after them, and listen to their talk, andkeep vexatious things away. And he was always a most tender father. Hesaid he could not bear the thought of his only daughter roughing it inAustralia. He said he would withdraw his opposition if--if--Bob (Bob washis name) came home with a sufficient fortune to keep me in comfort inEngland. "

"And he never did?"

"He went out to try. I felt sure he would, and he felt sure he would. Attwenty-two it seems as if fortunes can be made if it is reallynecessary. And I promised to wait for him, and he was to work to winme. "

I could not refrain from shedding a tear. It was all so beautiful, sofar beyond anything I could have hoped. I pressed Aunt Emmy's hand insilence, and she went on:

"But there were bad seasons, and though he worked and worked, and thoughhe did get on, still, you could not call it a fortune. And after fiveyears had passed he wrote to say that he was making a living, and hisuncle had taken him into partnership, and could not I come out to him. He had built an extra room on purpose for me. Your Uncle Thomas wasterribly angry when the letter came, because he had always been againstmy emigrating, and he forbade any further correspondence. Men are veryhigh-handed, my love, when you come to live with them. We were notallowed to write after that. Do you know, my dear, I became sodistressed that I had thoughts--I actually contemplated running away toAustralia?"

"Oh! why didn't you?" I groaned. That, of course, was the obvioussolution of the difficulty. 

"Very soon after that your Uncle Thomas had his stroke, and after thatof course I could not leave him. "

"Could not we do it still?" I suggested. Of course I took for grantedthat I should be involved in the elopement, as the confidential friendwho carries a little reticule with jewels in it, and sustains throughoutthe spirits of the principal eloper. 

"_Now!_" said Aunt Emmy, and for a moment a violent emotion disfiguredher sweet face. "Now. Oh! my child, all this happened fifteen years ago, when you were a toddling baby. "

"I wish to Heaven I had been as old then as I am now, " I said withclenched hands. I felt that I could have vanquished Uncle Thomas andUncle Tom, and all this conspiracy against my darling Aunt Emmy'shappiness. 

"And is he still--still----?" I ventured. 

"I don't know whether he is still--free. I have not heard from him forfifteen years. Uncle Thomas was very firm about the correspondence. Heis a very decided character, especially since his stroke, and I haveceased to hear anything at all about him since his mother died twelveyears ago. "

To me twelve years ago was as in the time of Noah. Yet here was AuntEmmy, to whom it was all as fresh as yesterday. 

"When she died, " said Aunt Emmy, "she was ill for a long time before, and I used to go and sit with her. She was fond of me, but she neverquite did your Uncle Thomas justice. When she died she sent me thisring. " She touched the beautiful emerald ring she always wore. "She saidshe had left it to him, and he had asked that she would send it to me. It had been her own engagement ring. "

"Why don't you wear it on your engaged finger?"

"I did at first. It was a kind of comfort to me. But Uncle Tom wasconstantly vexed with me about it. He said it might keep things off. Heis a very practical person, Uncle Tom, a very shrewd man of business, I'm told. So, to please him, I wear it in the daytime on my right hand. "

By this time I was shedding tears of sheer sensibility. 

"I have thought of him day and night; there has not been a night I havenot remembered him in my prayers for nearly twenty years. It will betwenty years next April. How could I begin to think of any one else_now_, Colonel Stoddart or any one? Uncle Tom is very clever, and so isyour Uncle Thomas, but I don't think they have ever _quite_ understoodwhat I feel about Mr. Kingston. "

An electric bell in a little box over the door rang in a furious manner. 

Aunt Emmy was on her feet in a second, smoothing her fair hair at theVenetian mirror. 

"Your Uncle Thomas is awake, " she said, "and is ready to be read to. Henever likes being kept waiting. "

This seemed to be the case, for as she left the room the electric bellrang again more furiously than before, and I shook my fist at it. 

PART II

 If some star of heaven Led him by at even, If some magic fate Brought him, should I wait, Or fly within and bid them close the gate?

 MARGARET L. WOODS. 

The following year I suddenly married a soldier, the only young man Iknew, and I knew him very slightly, and went out to India with him. Idid not forget Aunt Emmy, we corresponded regularly; but I was youngand my life was a very full one. I had seen nothing of the world till Imarried. I had a child. The years rushed past, joyful, miserable, vivid, surprising, happy years, in spite of the fact that my husband was notremarkably like Lord K----in appearance, and not in the least like the"plaister saint" with whom I had hurried to the altar on such slightprovocation. 

During these years Uncle Thomas died, and Uncle Tom married, and AuntEmmy wrote to me that she had taken a little cottage in Abinger Forestagainst her brother's advice, and how, in spite of his opposition--howmuch it must have cost her to oppose him--he had forgiven her andpresented her with the most expensive mahogany bedstead and bedding thatMaple could supply--"so like him. "

I wondered vaguely once or twice whether there had been any question ofher marrying Mr. Kingston, but there was no mention of him in herletters, and I did not like to ask. I knew that she was very poor, butpresently my heart was gladdened by hearing from her that a distantrelation had left her a legacy, and that she was now comfortably off. 

Then suddenly our life was darkened. Our child died. I struggled withmy grief, became ill, and was sent home. Aunt Emmy urged me to gostraight to her. She and Uncle Tom were my only near relations inEngland. He also offered to take me in for a time. He wrote with realkindness. He had a child himself. And his wife wrote too. But I needhardly say that I took my sore heart and my broken health straight toAunt Emmy. 

It was late in August when I arrived. The honeysuckle was still in bloomon Aunt Emmy's white cottage, standing in its little orchard in aclearing in the forest. She was waiting for me in the porch, and I ranfeebly to her up the narrow brick path between the tall clumps ofhollyhocks and Michaelmas daisies; and she drew me into the littleparlour and held me closely to her. And the years rolled away, and I wasa child again, and she was comforting me for my broken doll. 

With the egotism of youth I fear I had not given a thought to AuntEmmy's new home until I entered it. I knew that she was happy in it, andthat it had once been a gamekeeper's cottage, but that was about all. Nowadays every one has a cottage--it is the fashion; and literary menand women, tired of adulatory crowds, weary of their own greatness, fleefrom the metropolis, and write exquisite articles about their gardens, and the peace that lurks under a thatched roof, and the simple life, lived far from shrilling crowds but near to nature, and _very_ near tothe Deity. Fortunate Deity!

But in the days of which I am writing cottages and their floral andspiritual appurtenances were not the rage. 

I never realised until I saw Aunt Emmy in a home of her own how muchtaste she possessed, or how pretty a cottage could be. It did not try tolook like a house. It was just a cottage, standing amid its apple-trees, now red with apples, with its old well half hidden in clumps oflavender. The little dwelling itself, with its low ceilings and long oakbeams and dim colouring and quaint furniture, had a certain austerecharm, a quiet dignity of its own. The sunny air came softly in throughwide-open latticed windows, bringing with it the scent of mignonette. There had never been a breath of air in the house in Pembridge Square. _Ole Scorpio_, that friend of my youth, looked peaceful and complacentin a little recess in which his soft colouring and perfect figure showedto great advantage against a white-washed wall in shadow. 

Aunt Emmy herself, in a gown of some dull white material, with a littlegrey in her rippling, parted hair, seemed at home for the first time inher life. She looked a shade older, a shade thinner in the face, hersweet eyes a little sunk inwards. But her tall figure had retained allits old soft dignity and beauty of line. Looking at her as she pouredout my tea for me, I suddenly felt years older than she. 

This bewildering impression deepened as the days went on, and aprotecting, wondering compassion became part of my affection for her. 

During the years I had spent in India I had seen a good deal of bothsides of that motley, amazing fabric which we call life. I had felt thethrobbing of its great loom. I had touched with my own shrinking handthe closeness of the texture, had marked the interweaving of the alienstrands, had marvelled and been dismayed, had marvelled and been awed, had seen the dye of my own blood on one dim thread, the gold of my ownjoy on another. The sheltered life had not been mine. 

But Aunt Emmy had not moved mentally by a hair's-breadth. All herexpansion, if expansion it could be called, had taken form in her houseand garden. I had not been a week under her roof before I found that Mr. Kingston occupied exactly the same position in her life as he had donein Pembridge Square. She had brought down her romance to adorn her newhome just as she had brought down _Ole Scorpio_, in cotton wool. Eachhad their niche. Perhaps it was unreasonable in me to expect to find herdifferent. I had not expected it. But I had become such a totallydifferent person myself that her attitude to life, which had appeared tome so romantic and natural when I was eighteen, now appearedirremediably pathetic, visionary, out of touch with reality. Perhaps, however, it was I who had become disillusioned and matter-of-fact. I sawwith a kind of pitying wonder that her youthful romance still suppliedto her, as it had done since she was nineteen, a certain atmosphere ofpensive, prayerful resignation, a background for ethereal day-dreams. Her peaceful days were passed in a kind of picturesque haze, like themist that, seeming in itself a rosy light, sometimes veils a tranquilSeptember sunset. 

She was evidently very happy, but it was equally evident that she didnot know it. From words she let drop now and then I saw that she stillimagined she was bearing the heavy cross of her mutilated youth. But tome it seemed as if some tender hand had lifted it from her shoulder. 

"Aunt Emmy, " I said, yielding to an ignoble curiosity in the second weekof my visit, as we were picking the lavender together, "when UncleThomas died, I had thought I should hear of your marrying Mr. Kingston. "

"I also hoped it, my dear, " said Aunt Emmy, snipping the lavender into alittle basket, held in a loose white-gloved hand. 

I dared not look at her. 

"Mr. Kingston has not written, " she said after a moment. 

"But did you write and tell him you were free, and still in the samemind?"

"I did not. I thought it might be awkward for him in case he were--afterall these years--contemplating some other possibility. I did not want toembarrass him. But your Uncle Thomas's death was in all the papers, andmany of his relations are acquainted with us. I have no doubt the newsreached him. "

Of course it had. I had felt that it was hardly to be expected that Mr. Kingston should have kept after twenty years, more than twenty years, the same vivid memory of his early love that she had done. His silenceproved that he had not done so. I looked at Aunt Emmy. How pretty andgraceful and remote she looked, and how young her face was under theshadow of her charming garden hat, tied with a soft black ribbon underher chin. As long as she was not confronted with any one really young, she had no look of age. It was difficult to believe that she wasforty-four. And he must be forty-six. It was too late. Middle-agedmarriages are risky affairs enough, when the Rubicon of forty is withinsight. But when it has been passed----!

As I looked at her I hoped with all my heart that he would not come backto disturb her peace of mind and dislocate her life afresh. 

But, astonishing to say, he did come back; and there was some adequatereason, I have forgotten exactly what, for his not coming earlier. Atany rate, it was adequate. 

When I came down to breakfast a few days later, Aunt Emmy held a lettertowards me with a shaking hand. Her lips trembled. She could notarticulate. 

"Am I really to read it?"

She nodded. 

It was a charming letter, written in a delicate, refined hand. Mr. Kingston had not heard of her father's death till the day before hewrote. He had been away up-country for a year, broken shoulder, etc. Hewas starting for England at once. He should travel almost as quickly ashis letter. He should present himself at Pembridge Square and learn heraddress directly he landed. His ship was the _Sultana_. 

I took up the morning paper. 

"The _Sultana_ arrived yesterday, " I said. 

I looked at the envelope. It was directed on from Pembridge Square. 

"Tom will give him my address, " said Aunt Emmy faintly. "I wonder how heknows I am not living there now. _He will--arrive here--to-day. _"

She looked straight in front of her through the open windows to thehollyhocks basking in the still September sunshine. A radiance lit upher face, like that which perhaps shone on Christian's when at lastacross the river he saw the pearl gates of the New Jerusalem. 

"At last!" she said. "After all these years! After all these dreadful, dreadful years!"

An unbearable pain went through me. It was not new to me. I had known itonce before, when I had seen my child sicken. Why did it return now?

The radiance passed. A pitiful trembling shook her like a leaf. Her eyesturned helplessly to mine, frightened and dimmed. 

"I forgot I am an old woman, " she said. 

I kissed her hand. I told her that she was handsomer than any one. Shewas very dignified and gentle. 

"You are very kind to me, my dear, and it is sweet of you to feel as youdo. I believe, as you say, that I am still nice-looking. But the factremains that it is nearly twenty-five years since we have seen eachother. I was nineteen then. And oh! I suppose I ought not to say it, butI _was_ pretty. People turned to look at me in the street. And now I amforty-four. "

"But he is older than you, isn't he?"

"Two years. What is two years! We were the same age when we were young. But a man of forty-six is younger than a woman of forty-four. "

I was silent. There was no contradicting that obvious fact. 

"He will probably come by the 4. 12 train, " said Aunt Emmy, rising. "Ifyou don't mind, as there are so many preparations to make, I will leaveyou to finish your breakfast. I have had mine. "

She left the room, and I stared at her empty plate. I was not hungryeither. I was frightened for my dear Aunt Emmy. 

And yet, she was so yielding, so selfless, so absolutely uncritical, that if any woman could marry late she was the woman. She could havelived with a monster of egotism without finding it out. Had she notdevoted herself to two such monsters most of her life? And perhaps Mr. Kingston was not a monster. Aunt Emmy arranged the flowers early as sheonly could arrange them. I was only allowed to fetch the water and cleanthe glasses. A certain pony-cart was sent to Muddington with the cook init to buy a tongue, and a Stilton cheese, and a little barrel ofanchovies, and various other condiments which Uncle Tom approved. UncleTom's tastes represented those of his whole sex for Aunt Emmy. 

I insisted on her eating some luncheon, but this was barely possible, asin the midst of it a telegram was brought in from Mr. Kingston to say heshould arrive by the 4. 12 train. 

After luncheon Aunt Emmy went to her room. I followed her there half anhour later to give her a note, and found her standing in the middle ofthe floor, looking at all her gowns laid out on chairs. 

"I am afraid you can only think me very silly, my dear, " she said, witha sort of humble dignity. "I wished to consult you, but I did not liketo; but as you _are_ here, and if you don't mind my asking you--arelation can often judge best what is advantageous--which gown _do_ youthink suits me best, the grey voile, or the lilac delaine, or the whiteserge?"

I decided on the white serge, and long before the dogcart ordered tomeet him could possibly arrive, Aunt Emmy was sitting, paler than I hadever seen her, beside a wood fire in the parlour in the soft white gownI loved her best in, pretending to read. She had lit the fire, thoughwe were not in the habit of having it till later in the day, because shethought Australians might feel chilly. 

"I don't know how it is, " she said at last, laying down the book, "but Iseem quite blind. I can't see the print. "

I could not see the needle-work I was bending over either. But that wasbecause senseless tears kept on rising to my eyes, do what I would. AuntEmmy's eyes had no tears in them. 

"It is very petty of me, I know, but I do hope he has not grown stout, "she said presently. "But of course it is to be expected, and if it is soI must try to bear it. It could not make any _real_ difference. YourUncle Tom is the same age, and of course he is not--he really is _not_as thin as he was. "

"Was he ever thin?"

"N-no. But Mr. Kingston was, at least, not thin, but very spare andagile-looking. "

At last the sound of wheels reached us. Aunt Emmy clasped the arms ofher chair convulsively. 

"I daresay he has not come, " she said almost inaudibly. 

The wheels stopped. I went into the tiny hall. 

A tall, spare, distinguished-looking man, with weather-beaten face andpeculiarly intent, hawklike eyes, was at the gate, and I went out togreet him. As he took off his cap his crisp hair showed a little grey init. He was delightful to look at. 

I don't know what I said, but I mumbled something as I shook hands withhim, and pointed to the parlour door. He nodded gravely and went in, hitting his tall head against the low lintel. Then he closed the doorgently. And I went to my room, and locked myself in. 

When I went into the parlour an hour later at tea-time I found themsitting one on each side of the fire. I wished with all my heart thatthey could have been sitting together at this moment after the marriageof their daughter. Both had cried a little, I could see. He certainlyhad. They got up when I came in, and stood together on the hearth, asplendid-looking couple, dwarfing the white room with its low ceiling. 

What they must have been in youth I could well imagine. 

I was reintroduced to him, and I am not sure, though they were bothsmiling at each other, that they were not relieved by my entrance withthe tea. He handed her her cup and waited on her with the deferentialawkwardness of a man who has not been in women's society for years. 

"I am a rough fellow, Emmy, " he said once or twice. But he was notrough. He was charming. He did not fit in at all with my preconceivedideas of "Colonials. " And it was quickly evident to me that his tenderadmiration of Aunt Emmy still survived. I was partly reassured. Perhaps, after all, he had brought happiness with him. 

 * * * * *

Saint Luke's summer was glorious that year, and it was nowhere morewonderful than in the forest. One still golden day followed another, thegossamer-threaded sunshine flooding the glades of yellowing and ambertrees, spilling itself headlong amid the rusting bracken, and losingitself in the tiny foliage of the whortleberry, which, all its littleoval leaves, ruddy as a robin's breast, was imitating the trees, like aminiature autumn forest underfoot. 

Aunt Emmy and Mr. Kingston walked daily in the marvel of the forest, andit seemed as if the autumn sun shone kindly on them. Sometimes on herreturn there was a bewildered look in her face which I did notunderstand, and I wondered whether indeed all was well; but I put thethought away, for his love for her was beyond the possibility of doubt, and had not her love for him coloured her whole life?

And yet--

Once I saw him take up _Ole Scorpio_ with a careful hand, and thenreplace it in its recess with its spout pointing towards the room. Presently, when he had gone, she gently moved it back to its formerposition, exactly _en profile_, and the senseless idea darted through mymind as I watched her do it that if her romance were moved from itsniche, she would instinctively wish to do the same, to readjust it tothe angle from which she had looked at it so long. 

As the days passed and the first shyness between them wore off, theprimitive life he had led for so many years showed itself in a certainslowness of speech, a disinclination to make acquaintance with theneighbours, and an increasing tendency to long, tranquil silences with apipe in the garden. But, wonderful to say, it had not apparentlyblunted him mentally. And he actually cared for books. Unfortunately, there were almost no books in the cottage. How he had kept it I cannotimagine, but he certainly had retained a quickness of apprehension whichmade him half-unconsciously adapt himself to Aunt Emmy and her littlehabits in a way that astonished me. It was she who showed herself lessperceptive as regarded him. But this she never divined. She had got itrooted into her small, graceful head that he would naturally wish toconverse principally about his farm. And, in spite of scantencouragement, she continually "showed an interest, " as she herselfexpressed it, in sheep, and water creeks, and snakes, and bush fires. Hewas always perfectly good-natured, and ready to answer; but I sometimeswondered how it was she did not realise that she asked the samequestions over and over again. 

"Uncle Bob does not seem to care to talk much about his farming, " Iventured one day. "Perhaps he wishes to forget it for a little while. "

"My dear, " said Aunt Emmy rebukingly, "when you are as old as I am, youwill know that the only thing men really care to talk of _is_ theirbusiness. My dear father always talked of stocks, and shares, and--andbonuses. He said I could not understand about them, as indeed I couldnot, but it interested me very much to listen. And your Uncle Tom, asyou may remember"--I did indeed--"did the same. It is natural that Mr. Kingston's mind should dwell on agricultural subjects. "

Presently wicked men began to mow the bracken with great scythes, and tocarry it away in carts which tilted and elbowed their way down themossy, heather-fringed tracks. Here and there the down-stretched arms ofthe firs caught the topmost fronds of bracken and swept them from theirmurdered brethren, and held them precariously suspended, only to dropthem when the first wind went by. 

I left the cottage for a week to visit my husband's relations, and whenI returned the forest was bare. An indefinable sadness seemed to broodover it, and to have reached Aunt Emmy as well. Mr. Kingston had alsobeen away to visit his relations, and had returned, and was staying atthe little inn on the edge of the forest, from which he could morereadily run up daily to town to have his shoulder massaged, which stilltroubled him. 

Aunt Emmy told me all this in her garden, where she was dividing herwhite pinks. I knew she intended to make a fresh border, but the actionfilled me with consternation. 

"But Aunt Emmy, " I said (the foolish words jolted out of me by suddenanxiety), "will you--will you be _here_ next spring?"

I could have struck myself the moment the words were out of my mouth. 

The trowel dropped from her hand. 

"Oh no!" she said confusedly. "Neither I shall. I was forgetting. Ishall be in Australia. "

She looked round the little garden which she had made with her ownhands, and back to the white cottage, up to its eyes in Michaelmasdaisies, which had become such an ideal home, and in which, poor dear!she had taken a deeper root than she knew, and a bewildered pain passedfor a moment over her face. It was as if she had been walking in hersleep, and had suddenly come in contact with some obstacle, and hadwaked up and was not for the first moment certain of her surroundings. 

"He is more to me than any cottage, " she said, recovering herselfwith a little gasp. "I had hoped perhaps he would have come and livedhere, and let me take care of him, after all his years of hard work. But it was a selfish idea. He has told me that he cannot leave hiswork or his uncle, who has been so kind to him, and who is very infirmnow--partially paralysed, and needing the greatest care. I shall--letthe cottage. "

"What is the place in Australia like?" I said with duplicity, for ofcourse I knew by this time exactly what it was like. But I wanted tochange her thoughts. 

She led the way indoors, and pointed to a sheaf of unmountedphotographs. I took them up, and examined them as if for the first time. My heart sank as I looked at the inoffensive figure of the poor olduncle in the verandah, whom Aunt Emmy was of course to nurse. The housewhich that hard-working old man had built himself stood nakedly upon apiece of naked ground. There was not a tree near it. Beyond were thegreat cattle-yards and farm buildings, and what looked like an endless, shrubless field. And on the right was the new two-windowed room, nolonger very new, which Mr. Kingston had built seventeen years ago forAunt Emmy. I knew how much labour that hideous addition meant, which wasa sort of degraded cousin many times removed from the pert villadrawing-rooms, peering over portugal laurels on the road to Muddington. I knew that Mr. Kingston had papered and painted that room with his ownhands. I knew also, but Aunt Emmy did not, that he had repapered andrepainted it several times while it waited for her. And yet by nowildest effort of the imagination could I picture Aunt Emmy livingthere, though her heart had been there all her life. 

A sudden rage rose within me against the deceased Uncle Thomas, andagainst this other decrepit uncle, waiting to be nursed. 

I laid down the photographs, and went a turn in the forest, leaving AuntEmmy sitting idle in her gardening gloves. My foolish words had stoppedher happy activity. I was angry with myself, with Fate, with Australia, with everything, and not least with Mr. Kingston. 

Everywhere in the bare glades little orphaned families of bracken heldtheir arched necks a few inches from the ground. Even in theirbereavement they too had remembered that it was autumn, and their tinycurled fronds protecting their downcast faces were golden and ruddy. AsI turned a corner I suddenly caught sight of Mr. Kingston a few pacesfrom me, looking earnestly at one of these little groups. I did not wantto meet him just then, and I half turned aside; but he had already seenme, and he gave a gesture of welcome, and I had to stop. 

My anger subsided somewhat as he came up. He looked harassed, and as ifhe had not slept. 

"And so you are back, " he said. "I was just wishing that you were at themoment I caught sight of you. If you think it possible that a word ortwo could be dragged out of such a silent enigmatical person asyourself, I should like to have a little talk with you. "

I could not help liking him. His keen eyes were kindly, though his facewas grave. 

"What do you want to talk about?" I said bluntly. 

"What an unnecessary question. What can I want to talk about exceptEmmy?"

I was silent. I felt more uncomfortable about the whole affair than Ihad done yet, and that was saying a good deal. 

Mr. Kingston led the way down a little track to a place where the treesgrew so close together that the murderous scythes had not been able toget in among them. Here the bracken had been unmolested, and was goingunharassed through all its most gorgeous pageant. Great fronds of ivorywhite, of palest gold, of brownest gold, of reddest gold uprearedthemselves among the purple waves of the heather, wearing the strayflecks of the sunshine like jewels on their breasts. We sat down on afallen tree round which the bracken had wrapped its splendour. 

"How extraordinarily beautiful it is!" he said, more to himself than tome, putting out his long, artistic hand, gnarled and hardened with work, and touching a pale frond with a reverent finger. "I am glad to haveseen it once more. It is twenty-five years since I have seen an Englishautumn. "

There was a moment's silence, and then he went on without any change oftone:

"And you are thinking, you sad-faced, downright little woman who are soafraid that I am going to make your dear Aunt Emmy unhappy, you arethinking that you did not take a precarious seat on this trunk in orderto hear a possible enemy descant on the beauties of nature. "

I was astonished at his penetration. My own experience, gleaned entirelyfrom the genial little egotist whose wife I was, had taught me that mennever noticed anything. I had had no idea that I had shown the fear ofhim which I felt. 

"And yet you are my only possible ally, " he went on, "my only helper, ifyou are willing to help me, in the somewhat difficult task which I havein hand. "

"You mean, marrying my aunt?" I said. 

"No, " he said, looking at me with a kindness which made me ready to sinkinto the ground with shame. "I can do _that_ without assistance. Emmy, God bless her! has been ready to marry me any time these twenty-fiveyears, and, poor soul, she is ready now. She has not the faintest ideawhat she would be in for if she did, but she is ready to risk it. "

I was silent. I was bewildered for one thing, and I did not want "to putmy foot in it" again immediately for another. And there was really noneed for me to speak, for he went on slowly, looking full at me:

"What I have to do, if I can, is to save Emmy's romance for her. "

I could only stare at him. 

"For twenty-five years, " he went on, "that dear woman has lived on herlove for me. It has coloured her whole life. I know what I know. It hasbeen her support in all the endless years she nursed that cruel oldegoist her father, who would not let her marry me, when we _could_ havemarried, seventeen years ago. But it is not _me_ that she wants now, though she did want me for many years; it is the thought of me--if youcan't understand without my saying it, I can't make you--it's herromance which is important to her, and which I want her to keep, at allcosts. "

"My darling Emmy, " he said, and there were tears in his hawk eyes, "themost unselfish and devoted, the sweetest, the humblest, and the mostbeautiful creature I have ever known. And she has given up everythingout of constancy to me, home, children, everything; no, not for meexactly, but for a dream, for an ideal, for something of which I was toher the symbol, but which I no more resemble than I resemble that frondof bracken. "

He turned his face away. 

"It would have been all right if they would have let us marry when wewere both still young, and I had got a home together, " he went on; "butnow it would be inhuman to root her out of her little home and drag heracross the world, and try to transplant her into my rough place. Howrough it is I see, now that I have been back in England. I did not knowit was so uncouth when I lived in it. It's the only life I'm accustomedto, the only life I'm fit for now, though it was sorely against thegrain at first. I don't think I could have stuck to it, except for thehope of marrying her some day. But I see now the only life I'm fit foris not fit for her. And I can't give it up. I can't desert my poor olduncle, who is growing infirm and depends on me entirely. "

"Why did you come back?" I groaned. 

"I came back, " he said, "because I have cared for her and worked for herall my life. And because I heard that her beast of a father had left heralmost penniless, and that fat Tom had married and turned her out. Anduntil I saw her again from day to day I did not realise the nature ofher feeling for me. I came back to offer her what I had, not that itwas much, hoping to marry her and take her back with me. .. . But that isnot what would make my Emmy happy _now_. What she needs is to go on inthis perfect little doll's house, this little haven, thinking of me, andpraying for me, and tending her flowers, and mourning like a dove in itstree because we are parted. "

It was exactly what Aunt Emmy needed. I could not have put it intowords, but this strange man had done so. 

"You will not speak, " he said, "but you agree with me for all that. Ihad to make sure you agreed. Your confirmation is all I wanted, and nowI have it. "

It was not that I would not speak. I could not speak. I was thinking ofthe room in that horrid wooden house which he had built for her. 

After a few minutes he went on quietly:

"I think the thing for me to do is to be ruined, only partially, ofcourse, not enough to make her miserable, and to hurry back to Australiawithout her at once for the time being, and from there to writeregularly by every mail, nice letters (they cannot be forbidden now);but never to come back any more. A bank has just failed in Australia inwhich I had money. The situation can be arranged. "

I looked away from him. 

"I owe it to her, " he said. 

THE UNDERSTUDY

 The only form of human love that atrophies the heart is the love of self. 

Marion Wright sat in the centre seat of the third row of the stalls, shivering in spite of her sables. It was the dress rehearsal of herfirst play, that play on which she had spent herself to the verge ofmental bankruptcy. 

The nauseating presentiment of failure, the distaste and scorn of herown work, were upon her, which the artist never escapes, which return asacutely after twenty successes as in the hours of suspense before thefirst essay. Marion's surroundings were not of a nature to reassure her. To her unaccustomed eyes the empty, dimly lit theatre, swathed andbandaged in dust-sheets, looked ominously dreary. Had any one everlaughed in this shrouded desert? The long lines of stalls huddled undertheir wrinkled coverings stretched before and behind her. The boxes wereshapeless holes of pallid grime. It was as if a London fog had trailedits dingy veil over everything. There was a fog outside as well, and thefew electric lights which had been turned up peered blurred and yellow. An immense ladder, three ladders tied together, reared itself from thestalls to the roof. Something was being done to the lights on theceiling. Tired-looking men in overcoats were creeping into theorchestra, thrusting white faces under screened lights, and rustlingpapers on stands. 

Marion had the theatre to herself except for a few whisperers in theback row of the stalls--her maid, an attendant, one or two actors ofminor parts who did not appear in the first act, and a few costumiers. 

It was fiercely cold, and she had not slept for several nights. Shewished she had never been born. 

A magnificent-looking woman, wearing her chin tilted slightly upwards, was squeezing herself and an immense fur coat towards her along thestalls, and sat down beside her. This was Lenore, the leading lady. 

She turned a colourless, beautifully shaped face and heavy eyes withbistred lashes towards Marion. 

"I suppose we shall have to wait about two hours for Mr. Montgomery, "she said apathetically. 

"Does he always keep people waiting?"

"Always, since he made his great hit in _The Deodars_. "

There was a moment's silence. 

"Mr. Montgomery does not like his part, " said the leading ladytentatively, hanging a hand in an interminable white glove over the backof the stall in front of her. 

Marion's face hardened. 

"It's not a sympathetic part, " she said, "but an artist ought not tothink of that. "

"No, it's not sympathetic, " acquiesced Lenore, turning up her furcollar. "It seems as if the principal man's part never _is_ sympatheticin a woman's play. If the central figure is a woman, the men groupedround her are generally prize specimens of worms. I wonder why. In yourplay, now, Maggie's everything! George does not count for much, as faras I can see. Even Maggie had not much use for him. "

"She loved him, " said the author, with asperity. 

"Did she? Sometimes when I'm playing Maggie to Montgomery's George Iwonder if she did. And I just wonder now and then if I would have thrownhim over as she did. I mean for good and all. It seems to me--if she'dcared for him, cared _really_, you know----"

"She did, " interposed Marion harshly. 

"Wouldn't she have quarrelled and made it up again? Would she have beenquite so hard on him?"

"Yes, she would. Think, just think what she must have suffered in thethird act, the scene at the Savoy, when, loving him as she did, trustinghim as she did, she saw him come in with----"

"Well, I expect you know best, " said Lenore, whose interest seemed toflag suddenly; "anyhow, she suffered, poor thing. Women like her alwaysdo, I think. " She rose slowly. "I may as well go and dress. I suppose weshall be here till midnight. "

The orchestra struck up. 

"Anyhow, she suffered. "

The violins caught up the words and dinned them over and over again intoMarion's ears. Women like Maggie, women with deep hearts likeherself--for was not Maggie herself?--they always suffered, alwayssuffered, always!--said the violins. 

The manager suddenly appeared in front of the curtain and walked swiftlyover the little bridge from the stage to the stalls. He was a small, sturdy, thin-lipped, choleric man, who looked as if he were made up ofenergy; energy distilled and bottled. Some one had said of him that hishat was really a glass stopper, which might fly off at any moment. 

It was off now. There had evidently been an explosion. He held a note inhis hand. 

"Montgomery has given up the part, " he said. "He was odd at rehearsalyesterday. I felt there was something wrong. He said he had no show. Nowhe says he's too ill to come--bronchitis. "

The sense of disaster which had been hanging over Marion all day slippedand engulfed her like an avalanche. She felt paralysed. 

"Then the play can't go on?" she said. 

"If it had to happen, better to-night than to-morrow night, " said themanager. "Montgomery is as slippery as an eel. I don't suppose he hasgot bronchitis; but I have no doubt if I rushed over there at thismoment, I should find him in bed with a steam-kettle. He would play thepart. "

"What will you do?" gasped Marion. 

"Do?" he said. "Do? There's only one thing to do. Go through with theplay! It will start in two minutes, and we shall see what the understudycan make of it. He's as clever as he can stick, and he's word perfect, at any rate. "

"Who is he?"

"A Mr. Delacour; at least, that's his stage name. He's been in Americafor the last five years. Clever enough, but a rolling stone. He's not tobe depended on, poor devil; but it's Hobson's choice--we've got todepend on him. "

The manager sat down beside her and clapped his hands. 

The lights suddenly burned up behind the curtain, the curtain rose andthe play began. 

Some plays, some books, some men and women, possess a mysterious forcewhich, for lack of a better word, we call vitality. Those who possess itnot call it by all manner of ugly names. But, nevertheless, it is thegreat gift, the power that overcomes, which makes life on a large scalepossible, which makes the soldier, the lover, the saint, possible. Mostof us are only half alive. Our work is half dead. We deal in creep-mousesentiment, and call it love. We write pathetically of our impotence tolive, and call it resignation. We who have never been young, comparenotes with each other on how to remain senile, and call it the art ofgrowing old. 

But others go through life, and spend themselves on it, piece by piece, with ardour as they go. These are the teachers--only they never teach. They know. If we want to learn anything, we can watch them. And some ofus, again--and this is the hardest fate of all--come into lifeinadequately equipped, not provisioned for a prolonged journey. Whatlittle we have, and what little there is of us, we expend on the firstpart of life, and having nothing left for middle age. 

Such a woman was Marion. She had talent, and she had, besides--as themanager beside her had divined--one live play in her. But he doubtedwhether she had more than one. She looked insolvent, a dweller in thepast, crippled by an acute memory. No doubt it was this self-regardingmemory which had resulted in the play. It was obviously a personalexperience, and as she was rich enough to share the risk of producingit, he was more than ready to put it on. It was full of faults; it wasmelodramatic, it was amateurish, but it was passionately alive. The pitand the gallery would love it; and if the stalls found it a littlecheap, what of that? He had considerable _flair_. He believed it wouldsucceed. 

He glanced once or twice furtively at the handsome, unhappy-looking, richly furred woman beside him--no longer young, "past youth, but notpast passion, " with much of the charm of youth lingering in her gracefulerectness, her pretty hair, her delicate pallor. 

She had told him feverishly that the only thing she cared for--had evercared for--was art, success, fame. He had heard something like it oftenbefore. 

He wished, with a half-sigh, that a little of that uneasy, egotisticambition might have been instilled into the heart of Lenore, for whomhe had a compassionate, bottled-up attachment of many years' standing. 

Poor Lenore! What an actress, and what a hopelessly womanly woman, stillmourning the providential demise of an impossible brother who had livedon her. 

She was on the stage now, looking about seventeen, all youth and gardenhat and white muslin. 

Marion's face twitched. She was living her own youth over again. 

There was a pause. Lenore picked a rose to gain time, and looked intothe wings. 

"Delacour!" roared the manager, bouncing up in his stall and thensitting down again. 

"We cut it here, " said Lenore, advancing to the footlights, "and hedoesn't know. It is not his fault. He's waiting for his cue. See, Mr. Delacour! Leave out that bit about the daisies, and come on at'happiness. '"

The understudy came on, and Marion's heart thrust suddenly at her like arapier, and left her for dead, staring in front of her. 

This was no understudy. This was the original George of the drama whenit was first acted. Marion saw the lover of her youth come on and kissLenore's hand, with the same gesture with which he had once kissedhers--in the sunshine, in a Kentish garden, beside a lavender bush, witha bumble bee in it, ten endless years ago. 

He was hardly changed--a little thinner, perhaps, but not a day older inhis paint; the same reckless, debonair creature whom Marion had loved, who had wounded her and grieved her, whom she had discarded at last withbitter anger, whom she had never forgotten, whom she remembered withanguish. 

The curtain was down before she recovered herself, and the conductor waswaving his baton. 

The manager turned to her with some excitement. 

"If only he can keep it up!" he said. "Delacour puts life into thelove-making. He makes love well, don't you think?"

"Admirably. "

"If only he can keep it up!" repeated the manager. 

Through the two acts which followed, the understudy kept it up. He didmore. He acted with an intensity that made the rest of the play somewhatcolourless. At the end of the scene at the Savoy, just before thecurtain fell, he added a sentence of his own. 

In a second, before she knew what she had done, Marion had sprung to herfeet, and had said in a harsh, loud voice:

"That last sentence is not in the part. "

The play stopped. The hurrying waiters with dishes stood stock still andgaped, as astonished as if the interruption had been in real life. Someof the supers at the little tables in the background got up to see whatwas happening. 

Delacour, wineglass in hand, came forward to the footlights, and theireyes met. 

"I beg your pardon, " he said. "You say it is not in the part. I thoughtit was. I will omit it in future. "

"You will do no such thing!" bawled the manager, leaping to his feet andshaking his fist at him. "Omit it! Why, Miss Wright, it's aninspiration. Gets him the whole sympathy just at the critical moment. And what a curtain! Good God! What a curtain!"

"Isn't it?" said Lenore. "Leave out my bit at the end altogether, andmake _that_ the curtain. Don't you agree, Miss Wright? And, look here, Mr. Delacour, take the front centre here. "

"Start again at 'falsehood, '" said the manager briskly to Lenore. "Now, then, everybody. Sit down at the back there. Now----"

The play started again. Marion, astonished at her own violence, ashamed, shattered by conflicting emotions, speechless, could only bow herapproval of the change, not that the manager cared a pin whether sheapproved or not. 

_Was Delacour acting?_ Marion knew that he was not. And as the playproceeded it changed in character. The words were the words she hadwritten. Many of them were the words he had used himself, but hispassion transformed them. They took on a new meaning. It was Maggie whowas becoming a mean figure in spite of her grandiloquence--perhapsbecause of it. Her rigid principles, her petty, egotistic pride, herfaultless demeanour jarred on the audience. Lenore, like a true artist, caught the novel side of the situation and emphasised it. Her Maggiedwindled, dwindled, until the man held the stage alone, dominated it. Marion had never before seen his side of the miserable drama in whichher happiness had made shipwreck, had never before seen her owncharacter in this light. It was as if he were saying the truth at last, defending himself at last--which he had never done in real life. 

Finally repulsed, silent under her scornful invective, Delacour gatheredhimself together and went off magnificent in defeat. 

The curtain fell for the last time. 

The tiny audience, strengthened by the rest of the cast who were notneeded in the final scene, broke into rapturous applause. The manager, excited and radiant, clapped with the rest. 

"He's immense. He's immense!" he kept on saying. "Delacour's the makingof it. He's immense! Hang Montgomery! He may have bronchitis till he'sblue. Delacour makes the play. I will fetch him!"

He disappeared behind the curtain, and in a few minutes reappeared, dragging Delacour with him to introduce him to Marion. 

"We have met before, " she said faintly, putting out her hand. 

"Did we ever really meet?" he said gently, taking it for a second inhis. 

He seemed quite exhausted. Now that she saw him close at hand, he lookedmuch older. And his face was grievously lined, deteriorated. 

She tried to thank him, to express her gratitude for the way he hadextricated them from a great difficulty; but her words were sohesitating and frigid that the manager broke in, shaking him warmly bythe hand. 

Delacour bowed his thanks, murmured something conventional, and wasgone. 

Every one was in a hurry to go, too. Marion remained a moment longertalking to the manager, and then they went together through the royalbox to the private entrance, where her brougham was waiting. Just asthey reached it, he was called away, and an attendant let her out. 

Waiting beside her brougham, in the rain, holding the door for her, wasDelacour, in a shabby overcoat, his hat in his hand. 

Again their eyes met in a long look. His, sombre, melancholy, humble, had a great appeal in them. 

She seemed encased in some steel armour, which made movement and speechwellnigh impossible. She thanked him inaudibly. 

He shut the door, said "Home" to the coachman, and turned away. 

The carriage drove off. 

Then something in Marion snapped. Her other self, the poor woman in herwhom she had denied and starved and brow-beaten, pounced upon her andcalled out suddenly, desperately:

"Forgive him. What is life without him? Think of the last ten years. Hasthere been one day in all those grinding years when you have not longedto see him? Has there ever been one day when you would not have given upyour ease and luxury for a cottage with him? And now he has come backinto your life. He still loves you. Are you going to lose him again? Youwere vindictive, and you know it. Go back now and kneel down in the wetstreet and ask him to forgive you. Quick! quick!--before it is toolate. "

The other woman in her, the woman who had discarded him, stopped herears. 

"No, no; I had good reasons for breaking with him. They hold as goodto-day as ten years ago. "

"Very well, " said the other scornfully. "Then never dare to tellyourself again that you ever loved him. Let that lie cease. Your lovewas only pretty words and pride and self-seeking, and a miserable streakof passion. What do you care what happens to him? Don't go back. Youdon't care for him. You never cared. Never, never. And he knows it. Heis telling himself so now--at this moment. "

She stopped the brougham. She trembled so much that she could hardlytell the man to drive back to the theatre. He turned slowly, the horseevidently reluctant, and in a few minutes she was once more at theprivate entrance. The door was closed. No one was to be seen in thelittle _cul de sac_. The lamp over the door was out. She got out andrang--once, twice, and yet again. Then she realised that every one elsehad hurried away as precipitately as she had done, for the dawn wasalready in the sky. She dragged herself back into her carriage and drovehome, shaking in every limb. 

After all, it did not matter. She would get his address from the managerfirst thing to-morrow, and go straight on and see him, and sacrifice herpride, and beseech him to take her back. She had been too proud. Shesaw that at last. She would say so. She saw at last that resentment isdisloyalty. She would say so. She was so sick of her present life thatshe would say anything. And he loved her still, thank God! And--thankGod, too--she was rich. And it was obvious that he was poor. She hadmuch to share with him. And she was still attractive. Other men stillwished to marry her. She was pretty, still. All that she had, all thatshe still was, she would give him. And this long nightmare of the lastten years would pass at last, as that other nightmare of her youth hadpassed--her wretched home, with a drunken father and a heartbrokenmother. That had passed, though at the time it had seemed as if it wouldendure for ever. Her parents had died, and her vulgar, kindly, rich aunthad adopted her. And now this second nightmare was at an end, too. Theache would go out of her life, the long daily hunger and thirst wouldcease. There would be no more dreadful homecomings after evenings ofamusement; no more sick recoil and despair at waking and seeing the palefinger of the dawn upon the blind. She would be happy at last. 

Marion cried herself to sleep that night. Next morning, as early as shedared, she was at the theatre. The manager was going through his usualparoxysm of anxiety and ill-temper which preceded a first night. Hecould hardly find time for a word with her. There was a hitch in thescenery of the last act; the lighting was not yet repaired; one of theactors of the minor parts was ill, for whom an understudy had not beenprovided; and the head scene-shifter had sprained his wrist. 

"I won't keep you, " said Marion, as he hurried up, fuming; "I only wantMr. Delacour's address. I should like to see him at once--to--to talk tohim about his part. There are a few points----"

"Delacour's address?" said the manager. "Don't know it. Oh, yes, ofcourse!" He tore a little notebook out of his pocket. Then he suddenlylooked up at her. "Don't go to him. Send for him, if you like, or seehim here. He'll be here in an hour--at least, he will be if Smith isworth his salt. I've bribed him to keep a lynx eye on him day and night, and bring him up to time. But don't go and see him. I suppose you knowhe----"

"He's married?" gasped Marion. 

The manager laughed scornfully. 

"He _drinks_, my dear lady. He drinks. He's only just out of aninebriates' home. But don't alarm yourself. If he's watched, I dare saywe shall manage all right. I hope to goodness we shall! Don't look soscared. Smith has charge of him, and he is accustomed to the job. He wasquite sober last night. I hear he always is after an outbreak. You'regoing home? Well, I think you're right. Yes, very cold here now. Quiteright not to stop. See you again later. "

Marion drove home and shut herself up in her room. There was no need tolock the door. She was alone in the world, alone in her handsome, emptyhouse, where she had always been alone, even before her aunt died andleft it to her. .. . She would always be alone now. Only yesterday she hadhoped--what had she not hoped! She had seen him there in imaginationchanging this weary house into a home, brilliant and faulty as ever, lovable as ever, beloved as ever, surrounded by her lavished adoration. She had seen their children running along its wide passages, playing inits empty hall. 

And now. 

_He drank. _

She shuddered. She had seen drink once. She knew. Never while she livedwould she forget what her home had been like. The past crowded back uponher with all its vileness and nausea, all its unspeakable degradationand violence, wrapped up with maudlin sentiment and cheap tears. Thesweat stood on her forehead. 

What an escape she had had! To think that if it had not been for thatchance word of the manager's she would by now have pledged herselfirrevocably to a drunkard, waded back into the slough from which she hademerged. Oh, what a merciful fate it had been, after all, which hadparted them! How faithless she had been all these years! How little shehad realised how the divine love and wisdom had watched over her, hadshielded her!

"Oh! thank God! Thank God!" she groaned. The other self in her, the poordying woman in her, arose on her deathbed and screamed to her, screamedinsane things. If a certain voice is too long ignored, its dictates seemat last insane. 

"Take him back all the same!" gasped the dying voice. "Marry him. Devote yourself to him, day and night. Cure him. Set him up. You lovehim. Love can do it, if anything can. "

"I can't do it, " groaned Marion. "Mother tried, but it was no good. "

"Then do as she did, try and fail. "

"I can't. He would break my heart. "

"Let him break it. "

Marion strangled the terrible, urgent voice with fury, and then cried asif her heart would indeed break. The silenced voice spoke no more. 

 * * * * *

The play was a great success. Delacour, who had recently returned fromAmerica, was the making of it. Lenore was the first to acknowledge it, though his success was at her expense. Her part seemed only as a foil tothe sombre splendour of his. 

The play ran and ran. 

Delacour made no further effort to speak to Marion. He avoided hersystematically. He, on his side, was watched, was spied on, wasprotected from himself, was never given a chance of yielding totemptation. His self-imposed gaoler loved him. He was very lovable. Themanager was enthusiastic. Ignorant people said he was reformed. Italmost seemed as if he might grasp the great position to which histalent entitled him. But how often before he had fallen just when he wasdoing well! No one could depend on him. His record in America graduallybecame known. It was a record of hideous outbreaks and cancelledengagements. 

By dint of the strenuous will of others, to which he yielded himself, hewas kept on his feet through the whole run of the play. 

And then, released from surveillance, exhausted in mind and body--hefell again. 

He blazed like a comet across the theatrical world, and then set assuddenly as he had risen. 

Marion heard of it and shuddered. She had had a narrow escape. 

 * * * * *

She never wrote another play--at least, she never wrote another thatpleased a manager. She said she had not time. In spite of her success, she felt a distaste for things theatrical. And perhaps she found thatsuccess is not as warm a garment for a shivering life as she hadexpected. There is a little fleecy wrap called affection, within thereach of all of us, which she might have donned. But, as she often said, there was, unfortunately, no one for whom she had much affection. Shewas alone in the world. Her interest in the theatre was graduallyreplaced by religion. Once she heard with real regret that Lenore hadlost her memory, and chloral was hinted at as the cause. She thought oftrying to save her, of making an earnest appeal to that better selfwhich, according to Marion, exists in all of us. But when she madefurther inquiries about her, with a view to rescuing her, she wasdaunted by the discovery that Lenore had been privately married toDelacour for some time past, and that her declension, which was reallydue to drink, dated from the time of the marriage. 

A year passed. Delacour began to make fitful reappearances, then morefrequent ones. He took and kept regular engagements. But his wifereturned no more. 

Presently Marion's own play was revived with success. It was one ofDelacour's greatest parts. And Marion went to see it, hidden behind thecurtains of her box. 

The years since she had last sat in that box had not dealt kindly withher. Her discontented face showed that she was one of the many victimsof arrested development, still hampered in middle age by the egotisticlongings of youth. In youth we all want to receive instead of to give, to be loved, to be served, to be admired. Middle age is the time toreverse engines, the time to love, to serve, to give rather than toreceive. Marion had not learned that elementary lesson of life. We allrecognise them at sight, the nervous, fretful faces of the middle-agedmen and women who want to be loved. And love knows them, too, and--fliesthem. 

The manager, somewhat pinched and grizzled, as from a long fast, came into see her between the acts, and growled out his disapproval of hisleading lady. 

"She's nothing to Lenore, " he said. 

"Is she too"--Marion sought for a charitable word--"too ill to act?"

"She is too ill to act, " said the manager. "She will never act any more. She is dying. "

There was a silence. 

"She is dying of drink, " he said; "and if there is such a place asheaven, she is very near it. And if there is such a person as God, Ihope she will say a word for me when she gets there. "

Marion did not speak. She was horrified. 

"She would marry Delacour, " said the manager. "I begged her to marry me. Over and over again I asked her. But she said I could do without her, and Delacour couldn't. They fell in love with each other at this veryplay when it was first put on. I saw it coming, and it spelt disasterfor her. But it was the real thing; and when the real thing comes, weall have to knock under to it. It doesn't come often. Most of us arequite incapable of it. I have only seen it once or twice. I dare say Ihave never felt it, though I should have liked to take care of Lenore, and not let her work so hard, and make a garden for her. She lovesflowers and running water. I made the garden just on the chance, but shehas never seen it. Down in Sussex it is, with a little old-world cottagein it. It is a pretty place. Pergola; small cascade with rustic bridge;fishpond, with green-tiled floor to show up the gold-fish. And a rosegarden. I should have liked her to see it. But she and Delacour! It waslike a thing in a book. They fell in love, and he behaved well. Hewouldn't marry her. He said he knew he couldn't cure himself ofdrink--that his will was too weak. But she was determined to marry him. She said her will was strong enough for both of them. I don't know abouther will. I think it was her love which was strong enough. He gave in atlast and married her. I know I shouldn't have held out as long as hedid. And for a little while things went well. He was at her feet. Hetold me it was the first time any woman had ever cared for him. For alittle while I almost hoped--and then, in spite of his love for her, inspite of everything, he began to drink again. Then she told him thatwhat he drank she should drink, and she stuck to it. If he drank, shedrank the same. If he 'nipped, ' she did the same. When he got drunk, shegot drunk. It was kill or cure. And he loved her. That was her hold overhim. It took time, but she broke him of it. He suffered too much seeingher kill herself for his sake, and it steadied him. He _had_ to give itup. "

"Then, now--why doesn't she give it up, too?"

"She can't, " said the manager, his face twitching. "She was too far goneby the time he was cured. She had not his physique. She was absolutelyplayed out. She is dying, and they both know it. But she does not mind. She has saved him. That was the point. She is perfectly happy. She doesnot care about anything else. He is a great actor. She has lived to seehim recognised. Some women wouldn't have risked it. But I suppose awoman will take any risk if she loves, at least, women like Lenorewill. "

"And does he--in spite of this--does he love her still?" said Marion, with dry lips. 

The manager was silent. 

"I did not think any one could care as much for Lenore as I did, " hesaid at last, "but Delacour does--he cares more. "

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