Book 2 — FLICKERINGS. (continued 2)

Daphne had half expected to find her husband waiting for her at the house, for the Parliamentary recess was over and she knew he was almost certain to be in town. Instead, she was received by an overwhelmingly polite individual named Hibbins, from the house-furnishers. Mr Hibbins' appearance and deportment proved a sore trial to the composure of Nicky, who exploded at frequent and unexpected intervals throughout the afternoon, lamely alleging the fantastic design of some very ordinary wallpaper or the shortness of Stiffy's Sunday trousers in excuse.

It was essentially a masculine house, furnished in accordance with the man's ideas of solidity and comfort. The high oak panelling and dark-green frieze in the dining-room pleased Daphne, who recognised that glass and silver, well-illuminated, would show up bravely in such a setting. The drawing-room was perhaps a little too severe in its scheme of decoration: Daphne would have preferred something more feminine. "But that comes," she reflected characteristically, "of leaving the declaration to your partner!" There was a billiard-room in which Nicky declared it would be a sin to place a billiard-table, so perfectly was it adapted for waltzing after dinner.

Opening out of the billiard-room was a plainly furnished but attractive little set of apartments—"the bachelor suite" Mr Hibbins designated it—consisting of a snug study with an apartment adjoining, containing a small camp-bed and a large bath. Daphne's own rooms consisted of a bedroom and boudoir on the first floor, with wide bow-windows.

The nursery came last. It was a large irregular-shaped room at the top of the house, full of unexpected corners and curious alcoves such as children love, affording convenient caves for robbers and eligible lairs for wild beasts, fabulous or authentic. In addition to the regulation nursery furniture there was a miniature set, in green-stained wood—a table barely eighteen inches high, a tiny arm-chair, and a pigmy sofa upon which Master Brian's friends might recline when they came to drink tea, or its equivalent. Round the whole room ran a brightly coloured dado covered with life-size figures of all the people we love when we are young—Jack the Giant-Killer, Old King Cole, Cinderella, and the Three Bears. Even Peter Pan, with residence and following, was there. The spectacle of Doctor Johnson taking a walk down Fleet Street would pale to insignificance compared with that of Master Brian Vereker Carr enjoying a constitutional along his own dado, encountering a new friend round every corner.

Daphne suddenly realised that here was yet another aspect of this strange, impenetrable husband of hers. The room in its way was a work of genius—the genius that understands children.

As they departed to catch the afternoon train to Snayling the obsequious Mr Hibbins produced a letter.

Sir John Carr, he explained, had called at the head office of their firm that morning—in person, Mr Hibbins added with a gratified smile—and requested that this letter should be handed to her ladyship in the afternoon. Sir John had also instructed Mr Hibbins to inform her ladyship that any improvements or alterations which she desired had only to be mentioned to be carried out.

Mr Hibbins having handed them into a cab and bidden them an unctuous farewell, they drove away to the station, Nicky atoning for previous aloofness by hanging out of the window and waving her handkerchief until they turned the corner.

III.

The journey from London to Snayling, involving as it does a run of forty miles by main line, a wait of indefinite duration at a junction furnished with no other facilities for recreation than a weighing-machine and a printed and detailed record of the fate which awaits persons who compass the awe-inspiring but cumbrous crime of travelling-by-a-class-superior-to-that-to-which-the-ticket-in-their-possession-entitles-them, and concluding with an interminable crawl along a branch line, is not at first sight an enterprise that promises much joyous adventure; but Nicky and Stiffy, who usually contrived to keep ennui at arm's-length, had a very tolerable time of it.

Their efforts at first were directed to securing an apartment to themselves—an achievement which, when you come to think of it, fairly epitomises the Englishman's outlook on life in general.

"Hang your face out of the window, Stiffy, my lad," commanded Nicky, returning from an unsuccessful attempt to wheedle the guard into labelling their carriage "engaged," "and play at Horatius Cocles till the train starts. That ought to do the trick."

But no. At the last moment a crusty-looking old gentleman wrenched the door open, nearly precipitating Horatius Cocles (and face) on to the platform, and sat down with great determination in the corner seat. He glared ferociously at the demure-looking pair before him, in a manner which intimated plainly that he was too old a customer to be kept out of his usual compartment by tricks of that kind. After this he produced The Westminster Gazette from a handbag and began to read it.

Nicky gave him five minutes. Then, turning to her brother and scrutinising his freckled countenance, she observed in clear and measured tones—

"I think they have let you out rather soon, John."

Stiffy, realising that he was the person addressed and that some fresh game was afoot, looked as intelligent as possible, and waited. Daphne, in the far corner of the carriage, hurriedly opened her husband's letter and began to read it.

"The marks aren't all gone yet," continued Nicky, inspecting her brother anxiously. "Are you still peeling?"

"Yes—I think so," said Stiffy, groping for his cue.

"Ah!" Nicky nodded her head judicially. "We must give you a carbolic bath when we get you home."

The Westminster Gazette emitted a perceptible crackle.

"It will never do," pursued Nicky, getting into her stride, "to have you disfigured for life."

Stiffy, who was impervious to all reflections upon his personal appearance, grinned faintly. Opposite, a scared and bulging eye slid cautiously round the edge of The Westminster Gazette, and embarked upon a minute and apprehensive inspection of the plague-stricken youth. Nicky saw, and thrilled with gratification. She was on the point of continuing when the train dived into a tunnel. Having no desire that her schemes should go awry in the din, she waited.

The train came to a sudden and unexplained stop. Deathlike silence reigned, broken only by murmurs of conversation from next door. Presently in the gross darkness Nicky's voice was once more uplifted.

"By the way, is it infectious, or merely contagious? I meant to ask when I called for you at the Institute"—she was rather proud of that inspiration: an Institute sounded more terrifying and mysterious than a Hospital—"but in the excitement of that last fainting-fit of yours I forgot. Which is it?"

"Both, I think," said Stiffy, anxious to help.

"Ah! I feared as much. Still, things might be worse," commented Nicky philosophically. "So many of these complaints are infectious in the early stages, when no one suspects any trouble. Mumps, for instance, or scarlet fever. But others, like yours, are only dangerous in the convalescent stage, and then of course one knows exactly where one is."

There was a crumpling of paper in the darkness, accompanied by a shuffling of feet and a vibratory motion of the seat-cushions—all indicative of the presence of one who knows exactly where he is, and regrets the fact exceedingly.

"The air is very close in here," resumed Nicky's voice. "I wonder——" she whispered a sentence into Stiffy's ear, the only distinguishable word in which was "germs." "Of course, I have had it—slightly," she added in a relieved tone.

Something moved again in the darkness opposite to them, and then came a sound as of a window being cautiously slid open.

"Still, I think," replied Stiffy solicitously—as usual he was warming up to the game slowly but surely—"that it would be wiser for you to keep your mouth closed and breathe through your nose. One cannot be too careful."

"All right," said Nicky.

Once again silence reigned. But presently there fell upon the ears of the conspirators, rendered almost incredulous by joy, an unmistakable and stertorous sound, as of some heavy and asthmatic body taking in air through unaccustomed channels.

Five minutes later the train, groaning arthritically, resumed its way and crawled out of the tunnel into a station. Nicky and Stiffy, blinking in the sudden daylight, beheld the reward of their labours. A corpulent and rapidly ageing citizen, shrinking apprehensively into a corner of the compartment and holding a small handbag upon his knees as if with a view to instant departure, sat glaring malignantly upon them. His face was mottled, his mouth was firmly closed, and he breathed perseveringly through his nostrils.

Next moment he had flung open the door and was out upon the platform, inhaling great gulps of vernal air and looking for the station-master.

"Stiffy, you darling! I'll never call you a fat-head again!" declared Nicky, enthusiastically embracing her complacent accomplice. "That notion of yours was simply It! Daph, wasn't it splen—Hallo! Bless me, Stiffy, if Daph isn't breathing through her nose too! Look!"

Certainly Daphne's lips were tightly compressed, but she turned to her companions and smiled faintly.

"It's all right, kids," she said; "I think this carriage is overheated or something. I shall be all right in a minute. Keep that window open, Stiffy dear."

She was very white, but on emphatically declining Nicky's offer of first aid she was left to herself, while her brother and sister discussed the course to be followed in the event of another invasion of the carriage. Like true artists, they scorned to achieve the same effect by the same means twice running.

Meanwhile Daphne re-read her husband's letter.

"... I have waited six months, and as you display no inclination to look facts in the face, I am compelled to take the initiative myself. As far as I can gather from your attitude, you seem to consider that things are very well as they are. On this point I beg to differ from you. The present situation must end. We must either come together again or part for good on some definitely arranged terms.

"... As you have exhibited no desire to reconcile yourself to me—your letter indicates that your sole object in returning home is to play with your latest toy, the new house—I conclude that you wish to remain your own mistress. I therefore place the new house entirely at your disposal. You can draw money as you require it from Coutts', and I will see to it that there is always an adequate balance. I think, if you have no objection, that it would be as well if I occasionally came to the house, and occupied the bachelor suite off the billiard-room; but I shall come and go without troubling you. We ought to make this concession to appearances.

"I should not like your father, for instance, to be made unhappy by the knowledge that his daughter and her husband found it better to go their several ways.

"... As for the custody of the boy——"

A long, slow shudder rippled down Daphne's spine. Custody! There was a horrible legal, end-of-all-things, divorce-court flavour about the word.

"I think it would be a good scheme, Stiffy dear," broke in Nicky's cheerful voice, "for you to pretend this time that you have just been discharged from an asylum. I will be taking you home, and ..." Her voice faded.

" ... You will naturally like to have him with you while he is a mere child. I will therefore leave him in your hands for the present. Later, when he goes to a public school and University, I think I should like him to be with me during his holidays. When he grows up altogether, he must please himself about——."

Public School! University! Daphne turned sick and faint. Were the provisions of this merciless letter to cover all eternity? What had she done to deserve this?

"It would be a bright thought," continued Nicky's voice, returning from a great distance, "to roll up your handkerchief into a ball and put it right into your mouth. Then do something to attract their attention, and when they are all looking, pull it right out with a jerk, and mop and mow. Can you mop and mow, Stiffy? Mop, anyhow! Just before a station, you know, so that they can get out. If that doesn't work, roll about on the cushions, and——."

Daphne detached her gaze from the flying landscape, and finished the letter.

"Forgive me if I appear to have resorted to extreme or harsh measures. I suppose I am a hard man: at any rate, I am not pliable. I dare say if I had been differently built I might have played the part of the modern husband with fair success, and you could have picked your companions at will. Unfortunately, I would rather die than permit you to impose such a régime upon me, as you seem prepared to do. The thing is degrading. To my mind there can be no compromise, no half-measures, between man and wife. It must be all in all, or not at all....

"Lastly, Daphne, let me say how sorry I am that things have come to this pass. I realise that it is my fault. I should not have asked a young and inexperienced girl to marry me. You could not be expected to know better: I might and should. And it is because I realise and admit that the fault is mine, that I refrain from "attaching any blame to you or uttering any reproaches. All I can do is to say that I am sorry, and make it possible for you to go your way, unhampered as far as may be by the ties of a marriage which should never have taken place.

"If I can at any time be of service to you, command me. I can never forget that we have had our happy hours together."

Daphne folded up the letter with mechanical deliberation. The first numbness was over. Her brain was clear again, and thoughts were crowding in upon her. But two things overtopped all the others for the moment.

The first was the realisation of the truth of her husband's words. The old situation had been impossible—as impossible as the new one was inevitable. She saw that—at last. "All in all, or not at all," he had said, and he was right.

The second was a sudden awakening to the knowledge that we never begin really to want a thing in this world until we find we cannot have it.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

INTERVENTION.

"Madame," announced the major-domo of the Hôtel Magnifique with a superb gesture, "the post from England!"

"Thank you, Thémistocle," said Mrs Carfrae. "But you are over-generous: one of these letters is not for me."

She handed back an envelope.

Thémistocle, needless to remark, was desolated at his own carelessness, and said so. But the old lady cut him short.

"Don't distress yourself unduly, Thémistocle. It is a mistake even an English body might have made. There is not much difference between Carfrae and Carthew."

The punctilious Thémistocle refused to be comforted.

"But no, madame," he persisted; "I should have observed that the letter addressed itself to a monsieur, and not a madame. Doubtless it is intended for one of the English party who arrive this afternoon."

"An English party? Is my seclusion to be disturbed by the disciples of the good Monsieur Cook?"

"Assuredly no, madame. These are English milords from Marseilles. The Riviera season has been a failure: the mistral blows eternally. Therefore the party abandons Cannes and telegraphs for apartments at the Hôtel Magnifique."

"Are they from London? Possibly I may be acquainted with some of them. What are their names?"

Thémistocle would inquire. He departed amid a whirlwind of bows, leaving Mrs Carfrae to continue her déjeûner in the sunny verandah of her sitting-room. She came to Algiers every spring, and she came unattended save for a grim-faced Scottish maid of her own age. It was Mrs Carfrae's habit to assume that she and her wheeled chair were a drag upon the world; and she systematically declined invitations to join friends upon the Riviera. People, she explained, who would otherwise have been playing tennis at the Beau Site or roulette at the Casino would feel bound to relinquish these pursuits and entertain her. So she came to Algiers by herself, this proud, lonely old lady.

"Carthew?" she mused. "That is the name of Johnny Carr's familiar spirit. And that letter was in Johnny's handwriting. Well, Thémistocle, who are—stand still, man!"

Thémistocle reluctantly curtailed an elaborate obeisance, and came to attention. The leader of the expedition, he announced, was Milord the Right Hon. Sir Hilton Bart., with Milady Hilton Bart. The names of the other guests were not known, but there were eleven of them.

They arrived on the steamer that afternoon, and drove in an imposing procession up the long and dusty hill that leads to Mustapha Supérieur, leaving Algiers—that curious combination of Mauretanian antiquity and second-rate French provincialism—baking peacefully in the hot sunshine below. As Thémistocle had predicted, they came unshepherded by the good Mr Cook. They were of the breed and caste that has always found its own way about the world.

There was Sir Arthur Hilton, a slow-moving Briton of few words, with a pretty wife of complementary volubility. There were one or two soldiers on leave; there was a Cambridge don; there were three grass widows. There were two newly emancipated schoolgirls, gobbling life in indigestible but heavenly lumps. There was a tall and beautiful damosel, with a demeanour which her admirers—and they were many—described as regal, and which her detractors—and their name was legion—described as affected; and whom her chaperon, Lady Hilton, addressed as "Nina, dearest." And there was a squarely built, freckle-faced young man with whom we are already acquainted. His name was Jim Carthew.

Altogether they were a clean-bred, self-contained, easy-going band, unostentatious but quietly exclusive—thoroughly representative of the sanest and most reputable section of that variegated cosmos which represents what Gallic students of British sociology term "Le Higlif." Very few of them possessed much money: theirs was a stratum of society to which money was no passport. You could have money if you liked, they conceded, but you must have a good many other things first. Hence the absence from their midst of Hoggenheimer and Aspasia.

Jim Carthew had not meant to come. Juggernaut had given him six weeks' leave, for there had been an Autumn Session in town and an industrial upheaval in the country, and the squire had worked early and late by his knight's side. Consequently when the spring came Carthew was summarily bidden to go to Scotland and fish. Without quite knowing why, he went to Cannes instead, where Nina Tallentyre, attended by a zealous but mutually-distrustful guard-of-honour, was enjoying herself after her fashion under the inadequate wing of Lady Hilton. When the exodus to Algiers was mooted, Carthew labelled his portmanteau London. But he ultimately crossed the Mediterranean with the rest. He had never seen Africa, he explained to himself.

Daphne was of the party too. (Possibly the reader has already identified her as one of the three grass widows.) She had despatched Master Brian Vereker Carr to Belton for a season, and joined the Hiltons' party four weeks ago. The great new house in town stood empty. After her husband's bombshell in February, she had felt bound to do something to show her spirit. Another strike was brewing in the north, so doubtless her lord and master would soon be congenially occupied in starving his dependents into submission. Meanwhile her duty was to herself. Domestic ties were at an end. She would enjoy life.

She experienced no difficulty in the execution of this project. Every one seemed anxious to assist her. Despite precautions, the fact that all was not well in the house of Juggernaut was public property; and the usual distorted rumours on the subject had set out upon their rounds, going from strength to strength in the process. Daphne was soon made conscious that people were sorry for her. Frivolous but warm-hearted women were openly sympathetic. Large, clumsy men indicated by various awkward and furtive acts of kindness that they too understood the situation, but were too tactful to betray the fact. Altogether Daphne was in a fair way to becoming spoiled. With all her faults no one had ever yet been able or inclined to call her anything but unaffected and natural; but about this time she began to assume the virtuous and long-suffering demeanour of a femme incomprise. She was only twenty-four, and few of us are able to refuse a martyr's crown when it is pressed upon us.

Only her monosyllabic host—"The Silent Knight," his friends called him, denying him his baronetcy in their zest for the nickname—was unable to appreciate the extreme delicacy of the situation. He was a plain man, Arthur Hilton, and hated mysteries.

"Why isn't that girl at home, lookin' after her husband, Ethel?" he inquired of his wife one morning.

"I think she is happier with us, dear," replied Lady Hilton with immense solemnity.

The Silent Knight emitted a subdued rumble, indicative of a desire to argue the point, and continued—

"Happier—eh? Hasn't she got a baby, or somethin', somewhere? What the dev——"

"Yes, dear, she has a baby," replied his wife, rolling up her fine eyes to the ceiling; "but I fear she has not been very fortunate in her marriage. She was the daughter of a country clergyman—dreadfully poor, I understand—and wanted to improve the family fortunes. There were eight or nine of them, so she took this old man."

The Silent Knight's engine fairly raced.

"Old man be damned!" he observed with sudden heat. "Sorry, my dear! But Jack Carr can't be more than forty-six. I'm forty-eight. I'm an old man, too, I suppose! Back number—eh? One foot in the grave! You lookin' about for my successor, Ethel—what?"

It was useless to explain to this obtuse and uxorious critic that a young and sensitive girl cannot be expected to dwell continuously beneath the roof of a husband whose tastes are not her tastes, who has merely married her to keep house for him, and who neglects her into the bargain. Not that this prevented Lady Hilton from endeavouring to do so. When she had finished, her husband knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and remarked—

"Can't make you women out. Here's old Juggernaut—best man I ever came across, and as kind as they make 'em—marries this little fool of a girl and gives her everything she wants; and she goes off and leaves him slavin' at his work, while she comes trapesin' about here with a collection of middle-aged baby-snatchers and knock-kneed loafers. Next thing, she'll start flirting; then she'll fall in love with some bounder, and then there'll be the devil of a mess. Rotten, I call it! Don't know what wives are comin' to nowadays. Have you goin' off next, Ethel—leavin' me and the kids, and becomin' a Suffragette—what?"

After this unusual outburst the Silent Knight throttled himself down and said no more, all efforts on his wife's part to lure him into ground less favourable to his point of view proving fruitless. He merely smoked his pipe and emitted an obstinate purr.

"But what else can one expect, dearest," Ethel Hilton confided to a friend afterwards, "if one marries an internal combustion engine?"

II.

Neither was Mrs Carfrae satisfied to find her beloved Johnny Carr's lawful wife disporting herself in her present company. One afternoon she heckled Jim Carthew upon the subject, to the extreme embarrassment of that loyal youth. The rest of the party had gone off to explore Algiers, and were safely occupied for the present with the contemplation of the passing show—ghostlike Moors in snowy burnouses, baggy-trousered members of that last resort of broken men, La Légion Étrangère, and spectacled French officials playing at colonies.

Mrs Carfrae's chair had been wheeled into a corner of the open courtyard which occupied the middle of the Hôtel Magnifique, as far as possible from the base of operations of a pseudo-Tzigane orchestra which discoursed languorous melody twice daily; and its occupant was dispensing to Carthew what Thémistocle was accustomed to describe as "some five o'clock."

"So you are leaving us, Mr Carthew," observed the hostess.

"Yes, the day after to-morrow. There is a boat then. I must go. There is trouble brewing in the colliery districts again, and Sir John wants me."

"And you will take Lady Carr with you?"

"Oh no," said Carthew, flushing. "We are not together. I mean, it is not on her account that I am here."

"So I have noticed," said Mrs Carfrae dryly.

"I was invited here by the Hiltons," explained Carthew, and plunged into a sea of unnecessary corroborative details. "I was quite surprised to find Lady Carr here," he colluded. "I thought she was in London."

"And why," inquired the old lady with sudden ferocity, "is she not at Belton, with her man?"

The faithful Carthew stiffened at once.

"I expect Sir John sent her out here to have a good time," he said. "He could not get away himself, so——"

Mrs Carfrae surveyed him for a moment over her glasses.

"You are a decent lad," she observed rather unexpectedly.

This testimonial had its desired effect of reducing Carthew to silence, and Mrs Carfrae continued—

"You have been with John Carr for some time now, have you not?"

"Yes; ever since I came down from Cambridge."

"How did you meet him? He does not take to young men readily as a rule, so I have heard."

"I had the luck," said Carthew, his eye kindling with historic reminiscence, "to meet him at dinner one night at the end of my third year, at my tutor's. Sir John was an old member of the College, staying there for the week-end. He told us at dinner that he had come up to find a good ignorant unlicked cub to help him with his work, who could be trusted to obey an order when he received one and act for himself when he did not. Those were his exact words, I remember."

"Ay, they would be. Go on."

"This unlicked cub was to come and be a sort of general factotum to him, and do his best to help him with his work, and so on. Marvyn (the tutor) and I sat trying to think of likely men, and finally we made a list of about six, whom Sir John said he would run his eye over next day. After that I went off to bed. I remember wishing to myself that I had taken a better degree and been a more prominent member of the College: then I might have had a shot for this berth, instead of going into a solicitor's office. But as things were, I hadn't the cheek. Well, do you know, Jug—Sir John came round to me next morning——"

"Before breakfast, I doubt."

"Yes, as a matter of fact I had just come in from a run and was sitting down to it. He asked if he might have some: and after that he offered me—ME!—this grand billet. Of course I jumped at it—who wouldn't, to be with a man like that?—and I have been with him ever since."

"Well," said Mrs Carfrae, "you should know more of the creature than most folk. What is your unbiassed opinion of him?"

"I think he is the greatest man that ever lived," said the boy simply.

"Hmph! As a matter of fact, he has less sense than anybody I ever knew," replied the old lady calmly. "Still, you are entitled to your opinion. I need not trouble you with an account of my first meeting with him: it occurred a long time ago. But—wheel me a little nearer the sun, laddie: this corner is a thing too shady—it may interest you to know that he would have been my son-in-law to-day, had it not been—" she paused for a moment, very slightly—"for the uncertainty of human life. And that is why I take something more than a passing interest in the doings of that slim-bodied, brown-eyed, tow-headed hempie that he married on. And that brings me to the point. Laddie, those two are getting over-far apart, and it must be stopped!"

"Yes, but how?" inquired Carthew dismally. "I understand that entering a lions' den just before dinner-time is wisdom itself compared with interfering between husband and wife."

A quiver passed through Elspeth Carfrae's frail body, and she straightened herself in her chair.

"I am a havering and doited old woman," she announced with great decision, "and no one takes any notice of what I say or do. But I tell you this. So long as my old heart beats and my old blood runs, I shall be perfectly willing to face every single lion in the Zoo, gin it will bring a moment's happiness to Johnny Carr. The lad deserves a good wife. Once he nearly got one—the best and fairest in all the world—but God decided otherwise. Now he has got another: I know her: she has the right stuff in her. And when I leave this hotel next week I am going to take her with me, in her right mind, and deliver her to her man!"

The old lady concluded her intimation with tremendous vigour. Carthew sat regarding her with a mixture of reverence and apprehension.

"You are going to—to speak to her about it?" he asked.

"I am," replied Mrs Carfrae, with vigour.

"I would do anything," said Carthew awkwardly, "to put things right between those two. But supposing you make your attempt, Mrs Carfrae, and—and fail, won't it make matters worse?"

"Much," said Mrs Carfrae calmly. "If I interfere, unsuccessfully, I doubt if either of them will ever speak to me again. That is the usual and proper fate of busybodies. But—I am going to risk it!... Run me back to my sitting-room now, and call Janet. I hear your friends yattering out there in the verandah. They will be through with Algiers."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

JIM CARTHEW.

But our two conspirators were fated, for all practical purposes, to exchange rôles.

The following evening Daphne and Carthew found themselves sitting together in the hotel garden after dinner. A great moon shone from a velvety African sky; the scented breeze rustled in the palms; and the music of the band drifted to their ears in intermittent waves.

It was one of those nights which touch the imagination and stir the emotions—a night upon which human nature expands to its utmost limits. A night upon which passion awakes, and long-cherished secrets are whispered into suddenly receptive ears. Also a night upon which the devil stalks abroad. Dido resided a few miles from this spot. It was probably a night like this that made the Fourth Book of the Æneid worth writing.

If Dido failed to resist such environment, what of Daphne? She was young; she was intensely susceptible to such things as moonshine and soft music; and, disguise the fact from herself as she might, she was lonely. It is not altogether surprising that, as she surveyed this silent comely youth who lolled beside her eyeing the glittering Mediterranean in stolid abstraction, she should unconsciously have acquiesced in the first of the dismal prognostications of that splenetic but clear-sighted baronet, Sir Arthur Hilton. Jim Carthew had occupied Daphne's thoughts a good deal of late, and to-night she felt suddenly conscious of a desire to flirt with him.

"Cigarette, please!" she commanded.

Carthew silently handed her his case, and allowed her to select and light her own cigarette—a prodigal waste of opportunity, as any professional philanderer could have told her.

"A penny for your thoughts!" continued Daphne pertly.

Carthew, struck by a peculiar note in her voice, turned and looked at her. He was met by a provocative glance. There was a brief silence. Then he said gravely—

"I don't think you are quite cut out for that sort of thing, Lady Carr."

Daphne, feeling as if she had received a whip-lash in the face, stared at him, white with anger. Then she rose stiffly from her seat and moved towards the hotel. Carthew did not stir.

"Don't go," he said. "We may as well have this out."

Daphne stood irresolute. Then curiosity got the better of virtuous indignation, and she sat down again.

"Will you kindly tell me," she said, "what you mean by talking in that way?"

Carthew's honest eyes lingered on her face in a manner which she could not fathom. Did the man love her, or was he pitying her, or was he merely indulging in sarcastic reflections at her expense? Whatever his motives, he had a knack of compelling attention.

Presently he began to speak.

"I wonder," he said, as if talking to himself, "why men and women are made as they are? Why does A love B, while B worships C, who cares for no one in the world but himself? And why does D insist on confusing things still further by not quite knowing what he—she—wants? I wonder! They say there is enough money spent in charity every year to supply the needs of every poor person living, but so much is misapplied that many have to go without. I think it is the same with human affection. There is so much true love going about in this world—enough to keep all of us well-nourished and contented. But what a lot of it goes to waste! There is so much overlapping! Why, I wonder? It is a difficult business, Life, Daphne."

He had never called her Daphne before, but neither of them seemed to notice the familiarity.

"We're a contrary crew, we mortals," he continued presently. "Here we are, you and I, sitting in the moonshine inaugurating a flirtation, though neither of us cares a snap for the other—in that way. Why, I wonder? I think it is partly due to pride—wounded pride. You are angry with your husband——"

Daphne, who was methodically picking her cigarette to pieces, looked up indignantly.

"I'm not!" she said hotly.

"Oh yes, you are," replied Carthew. "You think you are not, but you are. You try to believe that you are merely indifferent to him, but you are not. As for me, I am angry too—piqued—furious—jealous—raging—I admit it—with a girl whom I dislike intensely. The more I see of her the more selfish, affected, shallow, unwomanly I see her to be. And yet—I love her! Why? Why? Why? People tell me she is heartless, soulless, sordid, greedy, vulgar—everything, in fact. Sometimes I feel they are right. Still—" he dropped his head into his hands and continued doggedly—"what difference does that make to me? I love her!... She cared for me once, too. She told me so—and she meant it! Perhaps if I had been a little more patient with her I might have kept her, and—and helped her a bit. Perhaps that was what I was sent into the world for—to make things easier for Nina. I could have done so much for her, too. I could have made a woman of her. She has her soft side: I know: I have seen it. No other man can say that. Meanwhile," he continued with a whimsical smile, "I am trying to solace myself by allowing you to flirt with me——"

Daphne drew her breath sharply.

"And you are not very good at it," concluded Carthew unexpectedly.

"You are very candid," said Daphne frigidly.

"Yes, but I speak truth. You are not good at it. Flirtation is a crooked business, and you are straight, mon amie. But wounded pride is not the only thing that has drawn us here together. Something else is responsible. We are both craving for sympathy. 'A fellow-feeling,' you know! I know all about you," he continued quickly, as Daphne's lips parted. "You are by way of being a neglected wife; and since Nina has informed me that she has told you all about me, I suppose you regard me as a bit of a derelict too. Well, we have forgathered. What is going to happen next?"

Daphne was silent. She certainly did not know what was going to happen next. Her ideas on all subjects were a little jumbled at this moment. Presently Carthew continued—

"We came together," he said gently, "just when each of us required a little companionship and sympathy; and we got it. I think our chance encounter on the highway of life has been a very profitable one. But it has served its turn. Our roads diverge again. We must part company, little comrade."

"Why?"

Daphne spoke this time in a tremulous whisper. A great wave of loneliness was surging up towards her.

"Because," said Carthew's deep voice, "it is the only thing to do. Think what may happen if we travel on together too far. At present we are safe. I love some one else, and so do—and you are angry with some one else, let us say. Supposing, since the girl I love does not love me any more—supposing I ceased to love her? It seems hopeless, incredible, I admit; but it might conceivably happen. And supposing you gave up being angry with—some one else, and became indifferent to him, where might we not find ourselves? Our sheet-anchor—our platonic sheet-anchor—would be gone. And sooner than send you adrift among cross-currents, little Daphne, I prefer to forgo the only friendship in this world that I really value. You are too delicate and too fragrant to be tarnished by common gossip, so I am going away to-morrow. Let us say good-bye now—you beautiful thing!"

Daphne looked up at him in amazement. But there was no passion in his face—only an infinite tenderness. To him she was simply a woman—one of the rarest and fairest of her sex, perhaps, but still simply a woman—whom to succour, without expectation or desire of reward, was the merest courtesy on the part of any knight worthy of the name. This was a man! Daphne bowed her head, wondering dimly and scornfully at the insensate folly of Nina Tallentyre.

"Shall we go back to the hotel?" asked Carthew at length.

There was no reply. Turning to note the cause, he saw something bright and glistening fall upon his companion's hand—then another. With innate loyalty and delicacy he averted his gaze, and surveyed the distant seascape with laborious intentness.

Meanwhile Daphne sat on, her head still bowed. Through the night air, from the hotel verandah, there came the refrain of a waltz. It was called Caressante, she thought. Carthew knew it too, and dug his teeth into his lower lip. Waltzes have an unfortunate habit of reviving the memories of yester year.

"Don't go in," said Daphne at length. "Don't leave me—I can't bear it!" Her voice broke.

Suddenly Carthew turned to her.

"Daphne"—his voice was low, but he spoke with intense earnestness—"you are lonely, I know, and sad; and you are too proud to own it. Shall I tell you who is more lonely and more sad, and too proud to own it too?"

"Do you mean—" were Jim Carthew's good resolutions crumbling?—"yourself?"

"No, no,—nothing of the kind. I mean—your husband!" Then he continued hurriedly—

"Daphne, if I thought I was leaving you to real loneliness and inevitable wretchedness, I—well, perhaps I shouldn't go away at all. But I—I am not needed. Little friend, you have the finest husband in all the world, waiting for you. For all his domineering ways, he is shy, and wants knowing. You have never discovered that. I don't believe you know him a bit. It all comes of having begun wrong. Go back and study him. Give him a fair chance! Give yourself a fair chance! You and I have always been friends: will you promise me this? Go back, and give yourself and Jack Carr another chance."

Half an hour ago Daphne would have smiled sceptically and indulgently upon such a suggestion. But this lonely, loyal spirit had touched her. She felt she would like to please him.

"Very well," she said. "I promise. No, I can't!" The memory of some ancient wrong suddenly surged up in her, swamping the generous impulse. "I can't!"

"Why?"

"Jack is so hard," she said. "Look at the way he treats those in his power. His workpeople, his——"

Carthew laughed, positively boisterously.

"Hard? Jack Carr hard? Listen," he said, "and I will tell you a secret."

When he had finished Daphne stood up, white and gleaming in the moonlight, and gave him her hand.

"All right," she said softly—"it's a bargain. I go home to-morrow."