Front matter (continued 2)

"Yes, do, Gertie! You go," Lilian seconded the instruction. Then: "What's the matter, Gertie? What on earth's the matter?"

The paragon had suddenly blanched and she seemed to shiver: first sign of acute emotion that Lilian had ever observed in the placid creature.

"It's nothing. I'm only---- It's really nothing."

And Gertie, who had not taken off her street-things, rose resolutely from her chair. She, who a little earlier had seemed quite energetic and fairly fresh after her night's work, now looked genuinely ill.

"You go along," Mr. Grig urged her, ruthlessly ignoring the symptoms which had startled Lilian. "And mind how you do it, there's a good creature. I'll get downstairs first." And he stepped out of the room.

The door opening showed tall, thin Millicent returning to her own work. Mr. Grig pushed past her on tiptoe. As soon as Gertie had disappeared on her mission into the principals' room, Lilian told Millicent, not without an air of superiority, as of an Under-secretary of State to a common member of Parliament, what was occurring. Millicent, who loved "incidents," bit her lips in a kind of cruel pleasure. (She had a long, straight, absolutely regular nose, and was born to accomplish the domestic infelicity of some male clerk.) She made an excuse to revisit the large room in order to spread the thrilling news.

Lilian stood just behind the still open door of the small room. A long time elapsed. Then the door of the principals' room opened, and Lilian, discreetly peeping, saw the backs of Miss Grig and Gertie Jackson. They seemed to be supporting each other in their progress towards the outer door. She wondered what the expressions on their faces might be; she had no clue to the tenor of the scene which had ended in Gertie's success, for neither of the pair spoke a word. How had Gertie managed to beat the old fanatic?

After a little pause she went to the window and opened it and looked out at the pavement below. The taxi was there. Two foreshortened figures emerged from the building. Mr. Grig emerged from the taxi. Miss Grig was induced into the vehicle, and to Lilian's astonishment Gertie followed her. Mr. Grig entered last. As the taxi swerved away, a little outcry of voices drew Lilian's attention to the fact that both windows of the large room were open and full of clusters of heads. The entire office, thanks to that lath, Millicent, was disorganized. Lilian whipped in her own head like lightning.

At three o'clock she was summoned to the telephone. Mr. Grig was speaking from a call-office.

"Miss Jackson's got influenza, the doctor says," he announced grimly. "So she has to stay here. A nice handful for me. You'd better carry on. I'll try to come up later. Miss Grig said something about some accounts--I don't know."

Lilian, quite unable to check a feeling of intense, excited happiness, replied with soothing, eager sympathy and allegiance, and went with dignity into the principals' room, now for the moment lawfully at her mercy. The accounts of the establishment were always done by Miss Grig, and there was evidence on the desk that she had been obdurately at work on bills when Gertie Jackson enticed her away. In the evening Lilian, after a day's urgent toil at her machine, was sitting in Miss Grig's chair in the principals' room, at grips with the day-book, the night-book, the ledger and some bill-forms. Although experiencing some of the sensations of a traveller lost in a forest (of which the trees were numerals), she was saturated with bliss. She had dismissed the rest of the staff at the usual hour, firmly refusing to let anybody remain with her. Almost as a favour Millicent had been permitted to purchase a night's food for her.

Just as the clock of St. George's struck eight, it occurred to her that to allow herself to be found by Mr. Grig in the occupation of Miss Grig's place might amount to a grave failure in tact; and hastily--for he might arrive at any moment---she removed all the essential paraphernalia to the small room. She had heard nothing further from Mr. Grig, who, moreover, had not definitely promised to come, but she was positive that he would come. However late the hour might be, he would come. She would hear the outer door open; she would hear his steps; she would see him; and he would see her, faithfully labouring all alone for him, and eager to take a whole night-watch for the second time in a week. For this hour she had made a special toilette, with much attention to her magnificent hair. She looked spick-and-span and enchanting.

Nor was she mistaken. Hardly had she arranged matters in her own room when the outer door did open, and she did hear his steps. The divine moment had arrived. He appeared in the doorway of the room. Rather to her regret he was not in evening dress. (But how could he be?) Still, he had a marvellous charm and his expression was less worried. He was almost too good to be true. She greeted him with a smile that combined sorrow and sympathy and welcome, fidelity and womanly comprehension, the expert assistant and the beautiful young Eve. She was so discomposed by the happiness of realization that at first she scarcely knew what either of them was saying, and then she seemed to come to herself and she caught Mr. Grig's voice clearly in the middle of a sentence:'

"... with a temperature of 104. The doctor said it would be madness to send her to Islington. This sort of influenza takes you like this, it appears. I shall have it myself next.... What are you supposed to be doing? Bills, eh?"

He looked hard at her, and her eyes dropped before his experienced masculine gaze. She liked him to be wrinkled and grey, to be thirty years older than herself, to be perhaps even depraved. She liked to contrast her innocent freshness with his worn maturity. She liked it that he had not shown the slightest appreciation of her loyalty. He spoke only vaguely of Miss Grig's condition; it was not a topic meet for discussion between them, and with a few murmured monosyllables she let it drop.

"I do hope you aren't thinking of staying, Mr. Grig," she said next. "I shall be perfectly all right by myself, and the bills will occupy me till something comes in."

"I'm not going to stay. Neither are you," replied Mr. Grig curtly. "We'll shut the place up."

Her face fell.

"But----"

"We'll shut up for to-night."

"But we're supposed to be always open! Supposing some work does come in! It always does----"

"No doubt. But we're going to shut up the place--at once." There was fatigue in his voice.

Tears came into Lilian's eyes. She had expected him, in answer to her appeal to him to depart, to insist on staying with her. She had been waiting for heaven to unfold. And now he had decided to break the sacred tradition and close the office. She could not master her tears.

"Don't worry," he said in tones suddenly charged with tenderness and sympathetic understanding. "It can't be helped. I know just how you feel, and don't you imagine I don't. You've been splendid. But I had to promise Isabel I'd shut the office to-night. She's in a very bad state, and I did it to soothe her. You know she hates me to be here at nights--thinks I'm not strong enough for it."

"That's not her reason to-night," said Lilian to herself. "I know her reason to-night well enough!"

But she gave Mr. Grig a look grateful for his exquisite compassion, which had raised him in her sight to primacy among men.

Obediently she let herself be dismissed first, leaving him behind, but in the street she looked up at her window. The words "Open day and night" on the blind were no longer silhouetted against a light within. The tradition was broken. On the way to the Dover Street Tube she did not once glance behind her to see if he was following.

IV

The Vizier

Late in the afternoon of the following day Mr. Grig put his head inside the small room.

"Just come here, Miss Share," he began, and then, seeing that Millicent was not at her desk, he appeared to decide that he might as well speak with Lilian where she was.

He had been away from the office most of the day, and even during his presences had seemingly taken no part in its conduct. Much work had been received, some of it urgent, and Lilian, typing at her best speed, had the air of stopping with reluctance to listen to whatever the useless and wandering man might have to say. He merely said:

"We shall close to-night, like last night."

"Oh, but, Mr. Grig," Lilian protested--and there was no sign of a tear this time--"we can't possibly keep on closing. We had one complaint this morning about being closed last night. I didn't tell you because I didn't want to worry you."

"Now listen to me," Mr. Grig protested in his turn, petulantly. "Nothing worries me more than the idea that people are keeping things from me in order that I shan't be worried. My sister was always doing that; she was incurable, but I'm not going to have it from anyone else. If you hide things, why are you silly enough to let out afterwards that you were hiding them and why you were hiding them? That's what I can't understand."

"Sorry, Mr. Grig," Lilian apologized briefly and with sham humility, humouring the male in such a manner that he must know he was being humoured.

His petulancy charmed her. It gave him youth, and gave her age and wisdom. He had good excuse for it--Miss Grig had been moved into a nursing home preparatory to an operation, and Gertie was stated to be very ill in his house--and she enjoyed excusing him. It was implicit in every tone of his voice that they were now definitely not on terms of employer and employee.

"That's all right! That's all right!" he said, mollified by her discreet smile. "But close at six. I'm off."

"I really don't think we ought to close," she insisted, with firmness in her voice followed by persuasion in her features, and she brushed back her hair with a gesture of girlishness that could not be ineffective. He hesitated, frowning. She went on: "If it gets about that we're closing night after night, we're bound to lose a lot of customers. I can perfectly well stay here."

"Yes! And be no use at all to-morrow!"

"I should be here to-morrow just the same. If other girls can do it, why can't I?" (A touch of harshness in the question.) "Oh, Milly!" she exclaimed, neglecting to call Milly Miss Merrislate, according to the custom by which in talking to the principals everybody referred to everybody else as "Miss." "Oh, Milly!"--Millicent appeared behind Mr. Grig at the door and he nervously made way for her--"here's Mr. Grig wants to close again to-night! I'm sure we really oughtn't to. I've told Mr. Grig I'll stay--and be here to-morrow too. Don't you agree we mustn't close?"

Millicent was flattered by the frank appeal as an equal from one whom she was already with annoyance beginning to regard as a superior. From timidity in Mr. Grig's presence she looked down her too straight nose, but she nodded affirmatively her narrow head, and as soon as she had recovered from the disturbing novelty of deliberately opposing the policy of an employer she said to Lilian:

"I'll stay with you if you like. There's plenty to do, goodness knows!"

"You are a dear!" Lilian exclaimed, just as if they had been alone together in the room.

"Oh, well, have it as you like!" Mr. Grig rasped, and left, defeated.

"Is he vexed?" Milly demanded after he had gone.

"Of course not! He's very pleased, really. But he has to save his face."

Milly gave Lilian a scarcely conscious glance of admiration, as a woman better versed than herself in the mysteries of men, and also as a woman of unsuspected courage. And she behaved like an angel through the whole industrious night--so much so that Lilian was nearly ready to admit to an uncharitable premature misjudgment of the girl.

"And now what are you going to do about keeping open?" inquired Mr. Grig, with bland, grim triumph the next afternoon to the exhausted Lilian and the exhausted Millicent. "I thought I'd let you have your own way last night. But you can't see any further than your noses, either of you. You're both dead."

"I can easily stay up another night," said Lilian desperately, but Millicent said nothing.

"No doubt!" Mr. Grig sneered. "You look as if you could! And supposing you do, what about to-morrow night? The whole office is upset, and, of course, people must go and choose just this time to choke us with work!"

"Well, anyhow, we can't close," Lilian stoutly insisted.

"No!" Mr. Grig unexpectedly agreed. "Miss Merrislate, you know most about the large room. You'd better pick two of 'em out of there, and tell 'em they must stay and do the best they can by themselves. But that won't carry us through. I certainly shan't sit up, and I won't have you two sitting up every second night in turn. There's only one thing to do. I must engage two new typists at once--that's clear. We may as well face the situation. Where do we get 'em from?"

But neither Lilian nor Milly knew just how Miss Grig was in the habit of finding recruits to the staff. Each of them had been taken on through private connexions. Gertie Jackson would probably have known how to proceed, but Gertie was down with influenza.

"I'll tell you what I shall do," said Mr. Grig at last. "I'll get an advertisement into to-morrow's Daily Chronicle. That ought to do the trick. This affair's got to be handled quickly. When the applicants come you'd better deal with 'em, Miss Share--in my room. I shan't be here to-morrow."

He spoke scornfully, and would not listen to offers of help in the matter of the advertisement. He would see to it himself, and wanted no assistance, indeed objected to assistance as being merely troublesome. The next day was the day of Miss Grig's operation, and the apprehension of it maddened this affectionate and cantankerous brother. Millicent left the small room to bestow upon two chosen members of the rabble in the large room the inexpressible glory of missing a night's sleep.

On the following morning, when Lilian, refreshed, arrived zealously at the office half an hour earlier than usual, she found three aspirants waiting to apply for the vacant posts. The advertisement had been drawn up and printed; the newspaper had been distributed and read, and the applicants, pitifully eager, had already begun to arrive from the ends of London. Sitting in Miss Grig's chair, Lilian nervously interviewed and examined them. One of the three gave her age as thirty-nine, and produced yellowed testimonials. By ten o'clock twenty-three suitors had come, and Lilian, frightened by her responsibilities, had impulsively engaged a couple, who took off hats and jackets and began to work at once. She had asked Millicent to approve of the final choice, but Millicent, intensely jealous and no longer comparable to even the lowest rank of angel, curtly declined.

"You're in charge," Millicent said acidly. "Don't you try to push it on to me, Miss Lilian Share."

Aspirants continued to arrive. Lilian had the clever idea of sticking a notice on the outer door: "All situations filled. No typists required." But aspirants continued to enter, and all of them averred positively that they had not seen the notice on the door. Lilian told a junior to paste four sheets of typing paper together, and she inscribed the notice on the big sheet in enormous characters. But aspirants continued to enter, and all of them averred positively that they had not seen the notice on the door. It was dreadful, it was appalling, because Lilian was saying to herself: "I may be like them one day." Millicent, on the other hand, disdained the entire procession, and seized the agreeable rôle of dismissing applicants as fast as they came.

In the evening Mr. Grig appeared. The operation had been a success. Gertie Jackson was, if anything, a little worse; but the doctor anticipated an improvement. Mr. Grig showed not the least interest in his business. Lilian took the night duty alone.

Thenceforward the office settled gradually into its new grooves, and, though there was much less efficiency than under Miss Grig, there was little friction. Everybody except Millicent regarded Lilian as the grand vizier, and Millicent's demeanour towards Lilian was by turns fantastically polite and fantastically indifferent.

A fortnight passed. The two patients were going on well, and it was stated that there was a possibility of them being sent together to Felixstowe for convalescence. Mr. Grig's attendance grew more regular, but he did little except keep the books and make out the bills; in which matter he displayed a facility that amazed Lilian, who really was not a bit arithmetical.

One day, entering the large room after hours, Lilian saw Millicent typing on a machine not her own. As she passed she read the words: "My darling Gertie. I simply can't tell you how glad I was to get your lovely letter." And it flashed across her that Millicent would relate all the office doings to Gertie, who would relate them to Miss Grig. She had a spasm of fear, divining that Millicent would misrepresent her. In what phrases had Millicent told that Lilian had sat in Miss Grig's chair and interviewed applicants for situations! Was it not strange that Gertie had not written to her, Lilian, nor she even thought of writing to Gertie? Too late now for her to write to Gertie! A few days later Mr. Grig said to Lilian in the small room:'

"You're very crowded here, aren't you?"

The two new-comers had been put into the small room, being of a superior sort and not fitted to join the rabble.

"Oh, no!" said Lilian. "We're quite comfortable, thank you."

"You don't seem to be very comfortable. It occurs to me it would be better in every way if you brought your machine into my room."

An impulse, and an error of judgment, on Felix's part! But he was always capricious.

"I should prefer to stay where I am," Lilian answered, not smiling. What a letter Millicent would have written in order to describe Lilian's promotion to the principals' room!

Often, having made a mistake, Felix would persist in it from obstinacy.

"Oh! As you like!" he muttered huffily, instead of recognizing by his tone that Lilian was right. But the next moment he repeated, very softly and kindly: "As you like! It's for you to decide." He had not once shown the least appreciation of, or gratitude for, Lilian's zeal. On the contrary, he had been in the main querulous and censorious. But she did not mind. She was richly rewarded by a single benevolent inflection of that stirring voice. She seemed to have forgotten that she was born for pleasure, luxury, empire. Work fully satisfied her, but it was work for him. The mere suggestion that she should sit in his room filled her with deep joy.

V

The Martyr

Miss Grig came back to the office on a Thursday, and somewhat mysteriously. Millicent, no doubt from information received through Gertie Jackson, had been hinting for several days that the return would not be long delayed; but Mr. Grig had said not one word about the matter until the Wednesday evening, when he told Lilian, with apparent casualness, as she was leaving for the night, that his sister might be expected the next morning. As for Miss Jackson, she would resume her duties only on the Monday, having family affairs to transact at Islington. Miss Jackson, it seemed, had developed into the trusted companion and intimate--almost ally, if the term were not presumptuous--of the soul and dynamo of the business. Miss Grig and she had suffered together, they had solaced and strengthened each other; and Gertie, for all her natural humility, was henceforth to play in the office a rôle superior to that of a senior employee. She had already been endowed with special privileges, and among these was the privilege of putting the interests of Islington before the interests of Clifford Street.

The advent of Miss Grig, of course, considerably agitated the office and in particular the small room, two of whose occupants had never seen the principal of whose capacity for sustained effort they had heard such wonderful and frightening tales.

At nine-thirty that Thursday morning it was reported in both rooms that Miss Grig had re-entered her fortress. Nobody had seen her, but ears had heard her, and, moreover, it was mystically known by certain signs, as, for example, the reversal of a doormat which had been out of position for a week, that a higher presence was immanent in the place and that the presence could be none other than Miss Grig. Everybody became an exemplar of assiduity, amiability, and entire conscientiousness. Everybody prepared a smile; and there was a universal wish for the day to be over.

Shortly after ten o'clock Miss Grig visited the small room, shook hands with Lilian and Millicent, and permitted the two new typists to be presented to her. Millicent spoke first and was so effusive in the expression of the delight induced in her by the spectacle of Miss Grig and of her sympathy for the past and hope for the future of Miss Grig's health, that Lilian, who nevertheless did her best to be winning, could not possibly compete with her. Miss Grig had a purified and chastened air, as of one detached by suffering from the grossness and folly of the world, and existing henceforth in the world solely from a cold, passionate sense of duty. Her hair was greyer, her mild equable voice more soft, and her burning eyes had a brighter and more unearthly lustre. She said that she was perfectly restored, let fall that Mr. Grig had gone away at her request for a short, much-needed holiday, and then passed smoothly on to the large room.

After a while a little flapper of a beginner came to tell Millicent that Miss Grig wanted her. Millicent, who had had charge of the petty cash during the interregnum, was absent for forty minutes. When she returned, flushed but smiling, to her expectant colleagues, she informed Lilian that Miss Grig desired to see her at twelve o'clock.

"I notice there's an account here under the name of Lord Mackworth," Miss Grig began, having allowed Lilian to stand for a few seconds before looking up from the ledger and other books in which she was apparently absorbed. She spoke with the utmost gentleness, and fixed her oppressive deep eyes on Lilian's.

"Yes, Miss Grig?"

"It hasn't been paid."

"Oh!" Lilian against an intense volition began to blush.

"Didn't you know?"

"I didn't," said Lilian.

"But you've been having something to do with the books during my absence."

"I did a little at first," Lilian admitted. "Then Mr. Grig saw to them."

"Miss Merrislate tells me that you had quite a lot to do with them, and I see your handwriting in a number of places here."

"I've had nothing to do with them for about three weeks--I should think at least three weeks, and--and of course I expected the bill would be paid by this time."

"But you never asked?"

"No. It never occurred to me."

This statement was inaccurate. Lilian had often wondered whether Lord Mackworth had paid his bill, but, from some obscurely caused self-consciousness, she had not dared to make any inquiry. She felt herself to be somehow "mixed up" with Lord Mackworth, and had absurdly feared that if she mentioned the name there might appear on the face or in the voice of the detestable Milly some sinister innuendo.

"Miss Merrislate tells me that she didn't trouble about the account as she supposed it was your affair."

"My affair!" exclaimed Lilian impulsively. "It's no more my affair than anybody else's." She surmised in the situation some ingenious malevolence of the flat-breasted mischief-maker.

"But you did the work?"

"Yes. It came in while I was on duty that night, and I did it at once. There was no one else to do it."

"Who brought it in?"

"Lord Mackworth."

"Did you know him?"

"Certainly not. I didn't know him from Adam."

"Never mind Adam, Miss Share," observed Miss Grig genially. "Has Lord Mackworth been in since?"

"If he has I've not seen him," Lilian answered defiantly.

Miss Grig's geniality exasperated her because it did not deceive her.

"I'm only asking for information," Miss Grig said with a placatory smile. "I see the copies were delivered at six-thirty in the morning. Who delivered the job?"

"I did."

"Where?"

"At his address. I dropped it into the letter-box on my way home after my night's work. I stayed here because somebody had to stay, and I did the best I could."

"I'm quite sure of that," Miss Grig agreed. "And, of course, you've been paid for all overtime--and there's been quite a good deal. We all do the best we can. At least, I hope so.... And you've never seen Lord Mackworth since?"

"No."

"And you simply dropped the envelope into the letter-box?"

"Yes."

"Didn't see Lord Mackworth that morning?"

"Certainly not."

By this time Lilian was convinced that Miss Grig's intention was to provoke her to open resentment. She guessed also that Milly must have deliberately kept silence to her, Lilian, about the Mackworth account in the hope of trouble on Miss Grig's return, and that Milly had done everything she could that morning to ensure trouble. The pot had been simmering in secret for weeks; now it was boiling over. She felt helpless and furious.

"You know," Miss Grig proceeded, "there's a rule in this office that night-work must only be delivered by hand by the day-staff the next day. If it's wanted urgently before the day-staff arrives the customer must fetch it."

"Excuse me, Miss Grig, I never heard of that rule."

Miss Grig smiled again: "Well, at any rate, it was your business to have heard of it, my dear. Everybody else knows about it."

"I told Mr. Grig I was going to deliver it myself, and he didn't say anything."

"Please don't attempt to lay the blame on my brother. He is far too good-natured." Miss Grig's gaze burned into Lilian's face as, with an enigmatic intonation, she uttered these words. "You did wrong. And I suppose you've never heard either of the rule that new customers must always pay on or before delivery?"

"Yes, I have. But I couldn't ask for the money at half-past six in the morning, could I? And I couldn't tell him how much it would be before I'd typed it."

"Yes, you could, my dear, and you ought to have done. You could have estimated it and left a margin for errors. That was the proper course. And if you know anything about Lord Mackworth you must know that his debts are notorious. I believe he's one of the fastest young men about town, and it's more than possible that that account's a bad debt."

"But can't we send in the account again?" Lilian weakly suggested; she was overthrown by the charge of fast-living against Lord Mackworth, yet she had always in her heart assumed that he was a fast liver.

"I've just telephoned to 6a St. James's Street, and I needn't say that Lord Mackworth is no longer there, and they don't know where he is. You see what comes of disobeying rules."

Lilian lifted her head: "Well, Miss Grig, the bill isn't so very big, and if you'll please deduct it from my wages on Saturday I hope that will be the end of that."

It was plain that the bewildered creature had but an excessively imperfect notion of how to be an employee. She had taken to the vocation too late in life.

Miss Grig put her hand to the support of her forehead, and paused.

"I can tolerate many things," said she, with great benignity, "but not insolence."

"I didn't mean to be insolent."

"You did. And I think you had better accept a week's notice from Saturday. No. On second thoughts, I'll pay your wages up to Saturday week now and you can go at once." She smiled kindly. "That will give you time to turn round."

"Oh! Very well, if it's like that!"

Miss Grig unlocked a drawer; and while she was counting the money Lilian thought despairingly that if Mr. Grig, or even if the nice Gertie, had been in the office, the disaster could not have occurred.

Miss Grig shook hands with her and wished her well.

"Where are you going to? It's not one o'clock yet," asked Millicent in the small room as Lilian silently unhooked her hat and jacket from the clothes-cupboard.

"Out."

"What for?"

"For Miss G., if you want to know."

And she left. Except her clothes, not a thing in the office belonged to her. She had no lien, no attachment. The departure was as simple and complete as leaving a Tube train. No word! No good-bye! Merely a disappearance.

VI

The Invitation

She walked a mile eastwards along Oxford Street before entering a teashop, in order to avoid meeting any of the girls, all of whom, except the very youngest and the very stingiest, distributed themselves among the neighbouring establishments for the absurdly insufficient snack called lunch. Every place was full just after one o'clock, and crammed at one-fifteen. She asked for a whole meat pie instead of a half, for she felt quite unusually hungry. A plot! That was what it was! A plot against her, matured by Miss G. in a few minutes out of Milly's innuendoes written to Gertie and spoken to Miss G. herself. And the reason of the plot was Miss G.'s spinsterish, passionate fear of a friendship between Felix Grig and Lilian! Lilian was ready to believe that Miss G. had engineered the absence of both her brother and Gertie so as to be free to work her will without the possibility of complications. If Miss G. hated her, she hated Miss G. with at least an equal fierceness--the fierceness of an unarmed victim. The injustice of the world staggered her. She thought that something ought to be done about it. Even Lord Mackworth was gravely to blame, for not having paid his bill. Still, that detail had not much importance, because Miss G., deprived of one pretext, would soon have found another. After all that she, Lilian, had done for the office, to be turned off at a moment's notice, and without a character--for Miss G. would never give a reference, and Lilian would never ask for a reference! Never! Nor would she nor could she approach Felix Grig; nor Gertie either. Perhaps Felix Grig might communicate with her. He certainly ought to do so. But then, he was very casual, forgetful and unconsciously cruel.

All the men and girls in the packed tea-shop had work behind them and work in front of them. They knew where they were; they had a function on the earth. She, Lilian, had nothing, save a couple of weeks' wages and perhaps a hundred pounds in the Post Office Savings Bank. Resentment against her father flickered up anew from its ashes in her heart.

How could she occupy herself after lunch? Unthinkable for her to go to her lodging until the customary hour, unless she could pretend to be ill; and if she feigned illness the well-disposed slavey would be after her and would see through the trick at once, and it would be all over the house that something had happened to Miss Share. The afternoon was an enormous trackless expanse which had to be somehow traversed by a weary and terribly discouraged wayfarer. Her father had been in the habit of conducting his family on ceremonial visits to the public art galleries. She went to the Wallace Collection, and saw how millionaires lived in the 'seventies, and how the unchaste and lovely ladies were dressed for whom entire populations were sacrificed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thence to a cinema near the Marble Arch, and saw how virtue infallibly wins after all.

When, after travelling countless leagues of time and ennui, she reached home she received a note from Mr. Pladda inviting her to the Hammersmith Palais de Danse for the following night. Mr. Pladda was the star lodger in the house--a man of forty-five, legally separated from his wife but of impeccable respectability and decorum. His illusion was that he could dance rather well. Mr. Pladda was evidently coming on.

The next morning, which was very fine, Lilian spent in Hyde Park, marshalling her resources. Beyond her trifling capital she had none. Especially she had no real friends. She had unwisely cut loose from her parents' acquaintances, and she could not run after them now that she was in misfortune. Her former colleagues? Out of the question! Gertie might prove a friend, but Gertie must begin; Lilian could not begin. Lord Mackworth? Silly idea! She still thought of Lord Mackworth romantically. He was an unattainable hero at about the same level as before in her mind, for while his debts had lowered him his advertised dissoluteness had mysteriously raised him. (Yet in these hours and days Mr. Pladda himself was not more absolutely respectable and decorous, in mind and demeanour, than Lilian.) She went to two cinemas in the afternoon, and, safe in the darkness of the second one, cried silently.

But with Mr. Pladda at the Palais de Danse she was admirably cheerful, and Mr. Pladda was exceedingly proud of his companion, who added refined manners to startling beauty. She delicately praised his dancing, whereupon he ordered lemon squashes and tomato sandwiches. At the little table she told him calmly that she was leaving her present situation and taking another.

Back in her room she laughed with horrid derision. And as soon as she was in bed the clockwork mice started to run round and round in her head. A plot! A plot! What a burning shame! What a burning shame! ... A few weeks earlier she had actually been bestowing situations on pitiful applicants. Now she herself had no situation and no prospect of any. She had never had to apply for a situation. She had not been educated to applying for situations. She could not imagine herself ever applying for a situation. She had not the least idea how to begin to try to get a situation. She passed the greater part of Sunday in bed, and in the evening went to church and felt serious and good.

On Monday morning she visited the Post Office and filled up a withdrawal form for forty pounds. She had had a notion of becoming a companion to a rich lady, or private secretary to a member of Parliament. She would advertise. Good clothes, worn as she could wear them, would help her. (She could not face another situation in an office. No, she couldn't.) The notion of a simpleton, of course! But she was still a simpleton. The notion, however, was in reality only a pretext for obtaining some good clothes. All her life she had desired more than anything a smart dress. There was never a moment in her life when she was less entitled to indulge herself; but she felt desperate. She was taking to clothes as some take to brandy. On the Wednesday she received the money: a colossal, a marvellous sum. She ran off with it and nervously entered a big shop in Wigmore Street; the shop was a wise choice on her part, for it combined smartness with a discreet and characteristic Englishness. Impossible to have the dangerous air of an adventuress in a frock bought at that shop!

The next few days were spent in exactly fitting and adapting the purchases to her body. She had expended the forty pounds and drawn out eight more. Through the medium of the slavey she borrowed a mirror, and fixed it at an angle with her own so that she could see her back. She was so interested and absorbed that she now and then neglected to feel unhappy and persecuted. She neglected also to draw up an advertisement, postponing that difficult matter until the clothes should be finished. But the house gathered that Miss Share had got her new situation. One afternoon, early, returning home after a search for white elastic in Hammersmith, she saw Mr. Grig coming away from the house. She stood still, transfixed; she flushed hotly, and descried a beneficent and just God reigning in heaven. She knew she was saved; and the revulsion in her was nearly overwhelming. A miracle! And yet--not a miracle at all; for Mr. Grig was bound by every consideration of honour and decency to get into communication with her sooner or later. Her doubts of his integrity had been inexcusable.

"I've just left a note for you," he said, affecting carelessness. "I brought it down myself because I couldn't remember whether your number was 56 or 65, and I had to inquire. Moreover, it's urgent. I want to talk to you. Will you dine with me to-night at the Devonshire Restaurant, Jermyn Street? Eight o'clock. I shan't be able to dress, so you could wear a hat. Yes or no?..." He was gone again in a moment.

Lilian literally ran upstairs to her room in order to be alone with her ecstatic happiness. She hugged it, kissed it, smothered it; then read the wonderful note three times, and reviewed all her new clothes.

VII

The Avowal

As Lilian armed herself for the field she discovered that, after all her care, she had omitted to provide several small details, the absence of each of which seemed for a few moments in turn to be a disaster. But on the whole she was well satisfied with the total effectiveness. The slattern, who had been furtively summoned, and who was made to wash her hands before touching a hook-and-eye, expressed, in whispers, an admiring amazement which enheartened Lilian in spite of its uninformed quality. The girl, as if bewitched, followed the vision down to the front door.

"If it rains you're ruined, miss," said the girl anxiously, glancing up into the heavy darkness where not a star was to be seen. "You ought for to have an umbrella."

Lilian shook her head.

"It won't rain," she answered cheerfully.

But as soon as she was fairly away from the house she felt, or thought she felt, a drop of rain, and, seeing a taxi, she impulsively hailed it, wishing to heaven the next instant that she had not been so audacious. For although twice with her father and mother she had ridden in taxis on very great occasions, she had never in her life actually taken one by herself. Her voice failed and broke as she said to the driver: "Devonshire Restaurant, Jermyn Street"; but the driver was proficient in comprehension, and the Devonshire Restaurant in Jermyn Street seemed to be as familiar to him as Charing Cross Station.

In the taxi she collected herself. She thought she was all right except for her lips. She knew that her lips ought to have been slightly coloured, but she thought she also knew what was the best lip-stick and she had not been able to get it in Hammersmith. As for her nails, she was glad that it had been impossible for her to tint them. She must remember that she was a typist, and though typists, and even discharged typists, generally help their lips to be crimson on state-nights, they do not usually tint their nails--unless they have abandoned discretion.

Lilian was glad when justifying rain began to fall. While she paid the driver at her destination, a commissionaire held a vast umbrella over her fragile splendour.

Her legs literally shook as she entered the restaurant, exactly as once they had shaken in an air-raid. Within was a rich, tiny little waiting-room with a view of the dining-room beyond. She hesitated awkwardly, for owing to the taxi she was nearly a quarter of an hour too early. A respectful attendant said:

"Are you expecting anyone, madam?"

"Yes."

"What name, madam?"

"Mr. Grig."

"Oh yes, madam. His table is booked."

She had sat down. She could now inspect herself in half a dozen large mirrors, and she almost ceased to fear for her appearance. It was her deportment and demeanour that now troubled her. In this matter she was disturbingly aware that she had both to unlearn and to learn. She looked through the glass partition into the restaurant. It was small but sumptuous; and empty of diners save for a couple of women who were smoking and eating simultaneously. People, chiefly in couples, kept arriving and passing through the antechamber. She picked up a copy of What's On, pretending to study it but studying the arrivals. Then she felt a man come in and glimpsed the attendant pointing to herself. Mr. Grig could not entirely conceal his astonishment at the smartness of her appearance. He had in fact not immediately recognized her. His surprised pleasure and appreciation gave her both pleasure and confidence.

"I'm not late," he said, resuming rapidly his rather quizzical matter-of-factness.

"No. I was too early."

The attendant took Mr. Grig's overcoat like a sacred treasure; he was shown to be in a dark blue suit; and they passed to the restaurant.

Lilian thought:

"Anyway, he can't think I've bought these clothes specially for this affair, because he only asked me this afternoon."

The table reserved was in a corner. Lilian had a full view of the whole restaurant, while Mr. Grig had a full view of nothing but Lilian. For a girl in Lilian's situation he was an ideal host, for the reason that he talked just as naturally--and in particular curtly--as if they had been at the office together. When a waiter shackled in silver approached with the wine list, he asked:

"What wine do you prefer?"

"Whatever you prefer," she replied, with a prompt and delicious smile.

"Oh, no!" he protested. "That won't do at all. If a woman's given the choice she ought to choose. She must submit ideas, at any rate. Otherwise we shall go wandering all through the wine list and finally settle on something neither of us wants."

Lilian had learnt a little about wines (she had sipped often from the paternal glass), and also about good plain cooking.

"Burgundy," she said.

Without another word Mr. Grig turned to the Burgundy page, and while he was selecting Lilian took off her gloves and gazed timidly around. It was the silver table-lamps, each glowing under a canopy of orange, that impressed her more than anything else. She saw shoulders, bosoms, pearls, white shirt-fronts, black backs--the room was still filling--all repeated in gilt mirrors. The manner of the numerous waiters corresponded to her notion of court chamberlains. This was the first high-class restaurant she had ever seen, and despite her nervousness she felt more at home in it, more exultingly happy in it, than anywhere before in all her existence. She passionately loved it, and her beauty seemed to increase in radiance. She liked to think that it was extremely costly. Compare it to the Palais de Danse, Mr. Pladda, and the tomato sandwiches! Ah! It was the genuine article at last! She took surreptitious glances also at Mr. Grig's bent face; and the face was so strange to her, though just the same as of old, that she might have been seeing it for the first time. The greatness, the enormity of the occasion, frightened her. What were they doing there together? And what in the future would they do together? Was he really and seriously attracted by her? Was she in love with him? Or was it all a curious and dangerous deception? She had always understood that when one was in love one knew definitely that one was in love. Whereas she was sure of nothing whatever. Nevertheless she was uplifted into a beatific, irrational and reckless joy. Never had she felt as she felt while Mr. Grig was selecting the Burgundy.

"Now we'd better be getting to business," said he, when the hors d'oeuvre had been removed and the soup served. "I had a letter from my sister this morning. She wrote--wait a minute!" He pulled a letter from his pocket and read out: "'I'm sorry to say I've been compelled to get rid of poor Lilian Share. She's a nice enough girl in her way, but when you're not here I'm in charge of this office, and as she couldn't treat me with the respect due to me, I had to decide at once what to do, and I did decide. I treated her generously, and I hope she'll soon get another place. She will, of course, because she can be so very attractive when she likes'--underlined--'but I fear she isn't likely to keep it unless she changes her style of behaviour.'" He smacked the letter together and returned it to his pocket. "There, you see! I'm being remarkably frank with you. I came up from Brighton on purpose to tell you, and I'm going, back by the last train to-night. My sister is quite unaware of this escapade. In fact, at the moment I'm leading a double life. Now! I've given you one version of this mighty incident. Give me your version."

Lilian, troubled, looked at her mother's engagement ring on her finger--the sole jewel she carried--and smiled with acute restraint at her plate.

"Have you got another situation? I suppose not," Mr. Grig went on.

"No--not yet."

"Have you tried for one?"

"No."

"Then what are you about?"

"Oh! My father left me a little money--very little, but I'm not starving."

"So I should judge.... Well, tell me all about it."

"I didn't mean to be rude to her--really I didn't. It was about a small bill of Lord Mackworth's."

She related the episode in detail, repeating the conversation with marvellous exactitude, but with too many "she saids, she saids" and "I saids, I saids." Mr. Grig laughed when she came to the offer to pay the bill herself, and after a moment she gave a slight responsive smile. She was very careful not to make or even to imply the least charge against Miss Grig, and she accomplished the duplicity with much skill.

"I can promise you one thing," said Mr. Grig. "The moment I get back I'll see that Milly is sacked. I cannot stick that bag of bones."

"Please don't!"

"You don't want me to?"

Lilian shook her head slowly.

"All right, then. I won't. Now I'll tell you the whole business in a nutshell. My sister's a great woman. She's perfectly mad, but she's a great woman. Only where I'm concerned she's always most monstrously unscrupulous. I'm her religion--always was, but more than ever since I bought that amusing business. She was dying of boredom. It saved her. When I got myself divorced she was absolutely delighted. She had me to herself again. Her jealousy where I'm concerned is ferocious. She can't help it, but it's ferocious. Tigresses aren't in it with her. She was jealous of you, and she'd determined to clear you out. I've perceived that for a long time."

"But why should she be jealous of me? I'm sure I've never----"

"Well, she's damned clever, Isabel is, and she's seen that I'm in love with you. Gone--far gone!"

He spoke with strange detachment, as of another person.

The thud-thud of Lilian's heart appalled her. She blushed down to her neck. Her hand shook. The restaurant and all its inhabitants vanished in a cloud and then slowly reappeared. Her confusion of mind was terrible. She was shocked, outraged, by the negligently brutal candour of the avowal; and at the same time she was thinking: "I'd no idea that any man was as marvellous as this man is, and I don't think there can possibly be another man quite as marvellous anywhere. And his being in love with me is the most ravishing, lovely, tender--tender--tender thing that ever happened to any girl. And, of course, he is in love with me. He's not pretending. He would never pretend...."

She wanted to be unconscious for a little while. She did not know it, but her beautiful face was transfigured by the interplay of shyness, modesty, soft resentment, gratitude, ecstasy and determination. Her head was bowed and she could not raise it. Neither could she utter a single word. She looked divine, and thought she looked either silly or sulky. Mr. Grig glanced aside. A glimpse of paradise had dazzled the eternal youth in him. The waiter bore away the soup-plates.

"Perhaps that's enough about business for the present," said Mr. Grig at length. "Let's talk about something else. But before we start I must just tell you you're the most stylish creature in this restaurant. I was staggered when I came in and saw you. Staggered!"

She did raise her head.

"Why?" she asked with exquisite gentleness.

Mr. Grig, overwhelmed, offered no response.

As for her determination, it amounted to this: "I will be as marvellous as he is. I will be more marvellous. I will be queen, slave, everything. He doesn't guess what is in store for him." She did not think about the difference in their ages, nor about marriage; nor did she even consider whether or not she was in love with him. Chiefly, she was grateful. And what she saw in front of her was a sublime vocation. Her mood was ever so faintly tinged with regret because they were not both in evening dress.

VIII

Philosophy of the Grey-haired

The evening and all Lilian's emotions seemed to start afresh. The look of the restaurant was changed. The tables had been cleared of the grosser apparatus of eating, and showed white cloths with only white plates, fruit, small glasses, small cups, ash-trays. Most of the waiters had vanished; the remainder stood aside, moveless, inobtrusive, watchful. The diners had abandoned themselves to intimacy or the sweet coma of digestion. Some talked rather loudly, others in a murmur. Women leaned back, or put their elbows on the table, letting cigarette smoke float upwards across their eyes. A few tables were already deserted, and the purity of their emptiness seemed bafflingly to demonstrate that events may happen and leave behind absolutely no trace. Without consulting Lilian Mr. Grig gave an order and two small glasses were slowly filled to the brim with a green liquid. Lilian recognized it for the very symbol of delicate licence. She was afraid to sip, lest she might be disillusioned concerning it, and also lest the drinking of it might malignly hasten the moment of departure of the last train for Brighton.

Mr. Grig was of those who murmured. His wrists lay one over the other on the table and his face was over the table; and it seemed strange, so low and even was his speech, that Lilian could catch every word, as she did. The people at the next table could have heard nothing. All the animation and variety were in his features, none in his tone. He had been telling her about Brighton. He saw the town of Brighton as a living, developing whole, discussing it as a single organism, showing how its evolution was still in active process, and making the small group of men who were exploiting it and directing it appear like creative giants and the mass of inhabitants like midgets utterly unconscious of their own manipulation. And in his account of the vast affair there was no right and no wrong; there were merely the dark aims and the resolution of the giants determined to wax in power and to imprint themselves on the municipality. Lilian had never heard such revealing talk; she could not follow all of it, but she was fascinated, wonderstruck; profoundly impressed by the quality of the brain opposite to her and the contemptibleness of her own ignorance of life; amazed and enraptured that this brain could be interested in herself. Mr. Grig related the story of the middle-aged proprietor of one of the chief hotels who had married a young wife.

"He had broken up his family, and the family is the real unit of society--and there was no need for it! No need at all! But then, you see, he'd never had time in his existence to understand that a middle-aged man who has already had experience of marriage and marries a girl young enough to be his daughter is either a coward or a fool or without taste. He would only do it because he's mad for her, and that's the very reason for not doing it. When romance comes in that way it wants the sauce of secrecy and plotting--the double life, and so on. The feeling of naughtiness--naughtiness is simply a marvellous feeling; you must sometimes have guessed that, haven't you?--perversity, doing society in the eye. It's a continual excitement. Of course, it needs cleverness on both sides. You haven't got to be clumsy over it. The woman runs risks, but nothing to the risks she'd run in marriage. And if the thing dies out in her, and they haven't been clumsy, she's free as air to start again. She's got her experience gratis, and there's a mysterious flavour about her that's nearly the most enticing flavour on earth. Naturally people will talk. Let 'em. No harm in rumour. In fact, the more rumour the better." He went on with no pause. "You've not looked at me for about five hours. Look at me now and tell me you're disgusted. Tell me you're frightened."

She lifted her eyes and gazed at him for a few seconds, not smiling. Her skin tingled and crept. Then she sipped the crême de menthe and at first it tasted just like water.

"A woman wants making. Only a man can make a woman. She has to be formed. She can't do it herself. A young man may be able to do it, but he's like a teacher who swots up the night before what he has to teach the next day. And he's a fearful bungler, besides being cruel--unconsciously. Whereas an older man, a much older man--he knows! It's a unique chance for both of them. She has so much to give, and she has so much to learn. It's a fair bargain. Perhaps the woman has a little the best of it. Because after all she loses nothing that it isn't her business to lose--and the man may--well, he may kill himself. And the chance for a clever girl to be 'made' without any clumsiness! What a chance! ... Well, I won't say which of 'em has the best of it.... I'm speaking impartially. If you live to be as old as Ninon de l'Enclos you'll never meet a more honest man than I am."

Lilian felt intoxicated, but not with the Burgundy nor with the crême de menthe. Rather with sudden fresh air. She thought: "Be careful! Be careful! You aren't yourself. Something queer's come over you." She was not happy. She was alarmed. Once before she had been alarmed by herself, but this time she was really alarmed. She was glad that she had always despised boys of her own age. What did Mr. Grig mean by saying that a man might kill himself? She didn't know.... Yes, she knew.... She saw clearly that a woman must be formed by a man, and that until she was formed she would not be worthy of herself. She longed ardently to be formed. As she stood she was futile. She could exercise no initiative, make use of no opportunities; and her best wisdom was to remain negative--in order to avoid mistakes. Something that looked like a woman but wasn't one. She had the intelligence to realize how insipid she was. Ambition surged through her anew and with fresh power.

Mr. Grig drove her home, and the taxi was a little dark vibrating room in which they were alone together, and safe from all scrutiny. She was painfully constrained.

"Yes," said Mr. Grig, after an interminable silence. "My sister was quite right."

"What about?" Lilian asked in a child's voice.

"I'm in love. What are you going to do about it?" He turned his head impulsively towards her, gazed at her in the dim twilight of the taxi, and then kissed her. In spite of herself she yearned to give, and the yearning thrilled her.

"Please! Please!" she murmured in modest, gentle, passive protest.

Another pause.

"I shall write to you to-morrow," he said. "In the meantime, believe me, you're entirely marvellous." He was looking straight in front of him at the driver's shaggy shoulders. That was all that occurred, except the handshake.

When she let herself into the house the servant was just going upstairs to bed, after her usual sixteen-hour day.

"So you're back, miss."

"No!" thought Lilian. "It's somebody else that's come back. The girl you mean will never come back."

PART III

I

In the Hotel

Felix came quietly through the communicating door into Lilian's shuttered and close room. Between the two bedrooms was a bathroom. All the bedrooms in the hotel seemed to be designed on the same plan--too high, too long, too narrow, with the head of the bed behind the door and directly facing the window; a wardrobe, a dressing-table, a washstand, a writing-table, an easy chair (under the window), two cane chairs, a night-table, and two electric lights so devilishly arranged that they could not be persuaded to burn simultaneously; a carpet overgrown with huge, gorgeous flowers, and the walls overgrown with huge, gorgeous flowers of another but equally mirific plant. Outside the bedroom a bell rang at short intervals--all the guests in the neighbourhood performed, according to their idiosyncrasies, on the same bell--and slippered feet of servants rushing to and fro in the corridor shook the planks of Lilian's floor as they passed.

Amid the obscurity of the room Lilian's curved form, lying heaped on its side, and rather like a miniature mountain that sloped softly down towards the head and towards the feet, could be vaguely deciphered in the bed; and hillocks of attire, some pale, others coloured, some fragile and diaphanous, others resistant to the world's peering, lay dimly about on chairs and even on the writing-table. The air, exhausted by the night, had a faint and delicate odour that excited, but did not offend, Felix's nostrils.

"Is it time to get up?" Lilian murmured in the voice of a sleepy child.

"No."

Her brain slowly came to life. Flitting in and out of her happiness there were transient apprehensions--not about the morality, but about the security, of her situation. They disappeared, all except one, as soon as she looked firmly at them, because she had the most perfect confidence in Felix's good faith. The unity of the pair had begun in London, under conditions provided by Felix, who, however, did not care for them, and who had decided that he would take her away for a holiday in order that they might both reflect upon and discuss at length the best method of organizing a definite secret existence.

It was during the preliminaries to the departure that she had been specially struck by his straightforwardness. He would have no wangling with passports. She must travel as herself. She could think of no acquaintance qualified to sign the application for her passport. It was Felix's suggestion that she should go to the Putney doctor who had attended her father and mother. The pair had travelled separately on the same train de luxe, for which, with Felix's money, she bought her own ticket. The cost of the ticket and the general expensiveness of the purchases which Felix insisted on her making had somewhat frightened her. He reassured her by preaching the relativity of all things. "You must alter your scale--it needs only an effort of the imagination," he had said; and explained to her his financial status. She learned that he had an independent income, and his sister another though much smaller independent income, and that the typewriting business was a diversion, though a remunerative one; also that an important cash bonus just received from an insurance policy enabled him to be profuse without straining his ordinary resources.

She had trembled at the reception office of the great hotel, but Felix, laughing at her fears, accomplished all formalities for her quite openly, and indeed the discreet incuriosity of the hotel officials fully confirmed the soundness of his attitude. Ignoring the description on the passport, he had told her to sign as "Madame," and he threw out negligently that she was his cousin. This was his sole guile. Before going upstairs he had written out a telegram and shown it to her. It was to his sister, to say that he had arrived safely and sent his love. "She has to be deceived," he murmured, "but she's got to be treated decently. It was all I could do to keep her from coming to see me off at Victoria!" He smiled. Lilian was impressed. When Lilian found that Felix's bedroom stood next to her bathroom her anxieties were renewed. Felix laughed again, and rang, for the door between the bathroom and his bedroom was locked. In a few minutes a dark and stoutish chambermaid entered with a pleasant, indulgent, comprehending gravity, and unlocked the door. "What is your name?" he asked. "Jacqueline, monsieur," she replied, and cordially accepted a twenty-franc note from him. It was all so simple, so natural, so un-English, so enheartening. In two hours they had settled down. All the embarrassing preludes to the closest intimacy had been amply achieved in London.

Lilian stretched herself voluptuously, murmured with a magnificent yawn, "Ah! How I have slept!" and, slipping out of bed, padded unshod up the room to Felix, who sat passive in the easy chair. She took the bearings of his shape in the gloom, and dropped lightly on to his knees.

"What am I sitting on?" she exclaimed, startled.

"My newspapers."

Touched by the fact that he had been waiting to read his beloved papers until she should be ready to rise, she threw her arms passionately round his neck and crushed her face into his. Daily it became clearer to her that he adored her; and yet she could scarcely believe it, because she felt so young--even childish--and so crude and insipid. She determined with a whole-souled resolve that renewed itself every hour to stop at nothing to please him.

"Do I make you happy?" she whispered almost inarticulately, her lips being buried in his cheek.

"You do."

After a moment she sprang up, seized her thin, loose, buttonless dressing-gown, and having somehow got into it, opened the window and violently pushed back the shutters. Strong sunlight rushed blazing into the room like an army into a city long besieged and at last fallen. Millions of buoyant motes were revealed, and all the minutest details of the chamber. Lilian looked out. There were the shady gardens of the hotel, the white promenade with strolling visitors in pale costumes, the calm ultramarine Mediterranean, the bandstand far to the right emitting inaudible music, the yellow casino, beyond the casino the jetty with its group of white yachts, and, distant on either side, noble and jagged mountains, some of them snow-capped. Incredible! She heard Felix moving within the room, and turned her head.

"Darling, what are you doing?"

"Ringing for your coffee."

"What time is it?"

"Haven't the least."

"But your watch?"

"Haven't got it on."

"But you're all dressed."

"Haven't put my things in my pockets."

She clasped his arm and led him silently through the bathroom into his own bedroom, and up to the night-table, the drawer of which she pulled open. All his "things" were arranged carefully therein.

"Oh! Men are funny!" she laughed.

The number and the variety of the articles they carried in their innumerable pockets!

"I will put your things in your pockets," she said, and began to do so.

"Wrong!" he would protest from time to time; but he would give no positive direction, and she had to discover the proper pocket by experiment. It was a most wonderful operation, and it deliciously illustrated the exotic, incomprehensible, exquisite curiousness of men. She was proud of having thought of it, and proud of the pleasure in his face. As she glanced at the watch her brow puckered.

"I shall be frightfully late!"

"It is impossible to be late where time does not exist."

"Is that Jacqueline with my coffee?" she said, listening, and ran back to her room, pulling him after her.

Yes, she admitted she was a perfect child, but she could not help it. While she drank the coffee he put on his eyeglasses and opened the newspapers, one English, one French. She went into the bathroom.

"Felix! Felix!" she called presently from the bathroom. "Bring me in that soft towel I've left on the chair by the writing-table."

Then she returned to the bedroom and did her abundant glossy chestnut hair, and by innumerable small stages dressed. He was reading his papers, but she knew that he was also watching her, and she loved him to watch her dress, from the first stage to the last. She was too young to have anything to conceal, and his pleasure, which he tried to mask, was so obvious. He dropped The Times and turned to the French paper.

"Felix, do you know what?"

"What?"

"I'm frightfully ashamed of not being able to speak French. If I could only speak it a quarter as well as you do."

"That's nothing. I couldn't say two words without a Frenchman knowing instantly that I wasn't French."

"But you can talk it so quickly. Couldn't I have someone in here every morning to teach me for an hour? People do. I could get up earlier."

"Certainly not," Felix replied. "If you did you'd have something to be late for. You'd bring time into existence and spoil everything. Besides, learning French is hard work. You wouldn't learn it by instinct, as you learn clothes. And you aren't here for hard work. Learn French by all means, but not in this place. London's the place for hard work. Exercise your sense of the fitness of things, my clever girl."

She did not fully understand this philosophy, but she accepted it admiringly.

"What dress would you like me to wear, darling?" She was at the wardrobe.

"That white one."

"Then I shall have to change my stockings."

"Well, the yellow one, then. It doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters," she said with earnestness, sitting down religiously, fanatically, to change her stockings. "Don't you know that I don't want anything in the world except to please you? I only wanted to learn French so you shouldn't have to be ashamed of me."

II

The Big Yacht

After lunching to music beneath a vast parasol in the hotel garden, which looked like a tented field, they were bowed away by servitors in black and white, and bowed into the hotel by servitors in blue and gold, and bowed along the central artery of the hotel by apprentice-servitors in scarlet, and bowed out of the hotel again on to the promenade by servitors in blue and gold. It was half-past two; the glorious sun was already slipping down; they had done absolutely nothing, and yet they had not wasted a moment; and on the faces of all the many-coloured servitors there was the smiling assurance that they had been admirably exerting themselves in full correctness, and had not a moment to waste if they honestly desired to pursue idleness as idleness ought to be pursued. Indeed, the winter day was too short for the truly conscientious.

"Your little fur?" exclaimed Felix, who was wearing his overcoat; he stopped.

"But, darling, I'm far too hot as it is!"

"In an hour the day will be gone," said he, and insisted on the treachery of the climate.

He frequently insisted on the treachery of the climate. If he happened to cough ever so slightly, he would say that the entire Riviera was bad for the throat and that a sore throat was the most dangerous complaint known to man. Lilian indulgently thought him fussy about her health and his own and the awful menaces of the exquisite climate; but she did not attribute his fussiness to his age; she regarded him as merely happening to be a bit fussy on certain matters. Nor did she regret the fussiness, for it gave her new occasions to please him and (in her heart) to condescend femininely towards him.

"I shan't need it----"

"Please! I'll fetch it, and I'll carry it. No! You stay there."

"But do you know where it is, Felix?"

"I know where it is." His voice had become very firm and somewhat tyrannic.

She stood on the pavement, put up her orange sunshade, and mused contentedly upon his prodigious care for her--proof of his passionate attachment. People were passing in both directions all the time on the broad digue beyond the roadway. Some strolled in complete possession of idleness; others hurried after it, with tools such as tennis rackets to help them. Nearly all, men and women, stared at her as they passed, until at length she turned round and faced the revolving door of the hotel.

"Oh! Thank you, dearest; you're spoiling me horribly. Do let me take it."

"I will not. Of course I am spoiling you. That is what you're here for. Your highest duty in life is to be spoiled. Let's go on the Mole."

They set off. A dark man, overdressed in striped flannels, nearly stood still at the sight of Lilian, gazing at her as though he had paid five francs for the right to do so.

"My goodness!" she muttered. "How they do stare here!"

"Why grudge them harmless enjoyment," Felix observed. "You're giving pleasure to every man that looks at you, and envy to most of the women. You're fulfilling a very valuable function in the world, If anyone is justified in objecting, I am, and I don't object. On the contrary, I'm as proud of the staring as if I'd created you. There's nothing to beat you on this coast, with your ingenuous English style of beauty, and half the pretty women here would sell their souls to look as innocent as you look, believe me!"

Lilian said nothing in reply. The fact was that the man simply could not open his mouth without giving her more to think about than she could manage.

At the quay they examined all the yachts, big and little, that were moored, stern on, side by side. There were three large steam yachts, and the largest of the three, with two decks and a navigating deck, all white and gold and mahogany and bunting and flowers and fluttering awnings, overpoweringly dominated the port. Felix stopped and stared at the glinting enormity.

"Is that only a yacht?" Lilian cried. "Why! It's bigger than the Channel steamer!"

"No!" said Felix, "but she's the fourth largest yacht in the world. That's the celebrated Qita. Crew of eighty odd. She came in last night for stores, and she's leaving again to-night, going to Naples. And here are the stores, you may depend." A lorry loaded with cases of wine drove up.

"But it's all like a fairy tale," said Lilian.

"Yes, it is. And so are you. You see, the point is that she's just about the finest of her kind. And so are you. She costs more than you to run, of course. A machine like that can't be run on less than a thousand pounds a week. Come along. Who's staring now?"

"A thousand pounds a week!" Lilian murmured, aghast. Her imagination resembled that of a person who, on reaching a summit which he has taken for the top of the range, sees far higher peaks beyond. And the conviction that those distant peaks were unattainable saddened her for a moment. "It's absolutely awful."

"Why awful? If you have the finest you must pay for it. A thousand a week's nothing to that fellow. Moreover, he's a British citizen, and he did splendid service for his country in the war. Among other things, he owns two of the best brands of champagne. The War Office gave him a commission and a car; and he travelled all over Europe selling his own champagne at his own price to officers' messes. After all, officers couldn't be expected to fight without the drinks they're accustomed to, could they?"

Lilian obscurely divined irony. She often wished that she could be ironical and amusing, as Felix was; but she never could. She couldn't conceive how it was done.

They reached the Mole, which was quite deserted, being off the map of correctness, and surveyed the entire scene--ships, blue water, white hotels, casino, villas, green wooded slopes all faint in the haze, and rising sharply out of the haze the lofty line of snow. In the immediate foreground, almost under their feet, was a steel collier from the north. Along the whole length of the ship carts were drawn up and cranes were creaking, and grimy ragged men hurried sweating to drop basketfuls of coal into the carts, and full carts were always departing and empty carts always coming. The activity seemed breathless, feverish and without the possibility of end--so huge was the steamer and so small were the pair-horse carts.

Two yacht's officers passed in shiny blue with gilt buttons and facings. Growled one:

"Yes, and how the hell do they expect me to keep my ship clean with this thing between me and the weather?"

"Yes," agreed the other. "How in hell do they? Why they don't make 'em unload somewhere else beats me."

Then Felix and Lilian turned seawards and watched the everlasting patience of the fishers on the rocks below.

"Better put your fur on," said Felix suddenly.

She put it on.

Returning to the quay Lilian could not keep her eyes off the superb yacht. But in a moment she bent them suddenly and quickened her pace.

"You're feeling chilly," said Felix triumphantly. "The sun's got behind the fort."

On the lower deck of the yacht, under an awning and amid easy chairs and cushions, she had seen a tall man earnestly engaged in conversation with a young and pretty girl. She thought the man was Lord Mackworth. She felt sure it was Lord Mackworth. She wanted to turn her head and make certain, but she dared not lest he should see her. She was blushing. There was nothing whatever in the brief relations between Lord Mackworth and herself to which the slightest exception could be taken by the strictest moralist. Yet she was blushing. She blushed because of the dreams she had once had concerning him. Her old, forgotten thoughts, which nobody on earth could ever have guessed, made her into a kind of criminal. It was very strange. Perhaps also she feared a little what Lord Mackworth might think of her if he saw her in that place, in those clothes, with a man much older than herself. How inexpressibly fortunate that the yacht was leaving that night! Instead of looking over her shoulder at Lord Mackworth, she looked over her shoulder at Felix, to reassure herself about her deep fondness for him and about his reliability in even the greatest crises.

"I love him," she reflected, "because he is so marvellously clever and kind and dependable and just, and because he worships me--I don't know why."

But she was devoted to him because he had picked her out of a batch and opened her eyes to the apple on the tree and made her eat it, and because she had worked and watched and suffered for him in the office, and been cast out of the office for him, and because of a funny enigmatic look in his wrinkled eyes. She would have liked him just the same if he had been cruel and undependable and had not worshipped her. And she desired ardently to be still more and more beautiful and luxurious for him, and more and more to be stared at for him, and to render him still happier and happier. She was magnificently ready to kill him with bliss.

After several hundred yards she turned round and looked at the yacht. No figures were distinguishable now on the deck. She thought captiously:

"I wonder who that doll was and what they were talking about with their heads so close together."

III

The Casino

Lilian, in a negligé, was somnolently stretched out in the easy chair in her room when Felix peeped in. He looked at her enquiringly in silence for a moment, and she gave him a hazy smile.

"Oh!" he said. "Then you won't feel like going into the Casino to-night after all?"

"Nothing to stop me," she replied, with a peculiar intonation, light and yet anxious.

"Hurrah!" exclaimed Felix very gaily, almost boyishly. "Then we'll go."

The apprehension which now for two days had been eating like a furtive cancer into her mind suddenly grew and contaminated the whole of her consciousness; she could not understand his levity, for she had not concealed from him the sinister misgiving.

"Yes!" she murmured with a sort of charming and victimized protest. "That's all very well, but----" And she stopped, and the smile expired from her face.

He shrugged his shoulders, gave a short, affectionate, humouring laugh, and said with kind superiority, utterly positive:

"What have I told you? The thing's absolutely imposs!"

And just as suddenly she was quite reassured and the apprehension vanished away. It could not exist against his perfect certitude. She lit up a new smile.

"Look here," he went on, "we'll dine in the Casino if we can. Of course, every blessed table may be booked, but I'll have a try."

A quarter of an hour later, when she had begun to dress, he returned with the exciting information that, at precisely the right instant, somebody had telephoned to countermand an inside table and he had secured it.

They arrived very late in the Casino restaurant, yet more diners came after them than had come before, so that ultimately it would have been difficult to draw a straight line between dinner and supper. The stars in the arched firmament of the vast and lofty hall challenged the stars of heaven in number and splendour, and seemed to win easily. Light fell in glittering floods on the flowered tables and on the shoulders of the women. In the centre of the floor was an oblong parquet sacred to dancing. The band, in which Englishmen and varied dagoes were mingled, sat, clothed apparently in surplices, on a daïs in a mighty alcove. The drummer and the banjoist each procured an unnatural union of light and sound by electric illumination of their instruments from within. The leader wore a battered opera hat, and at the end of a piece he would exclaim grimly and scornfully, "So that's that!" or, "We are the goods!" or some such phrase. Now and then the band overflowed into song, and the wild chants of the Marquesas or the Fiji Islands rang riotously through the correctness of the restaurant, and Lilian caught fragments of significant verse, such as:

"The rich get rich,

And the poor get children,

Ain't we got fun?"

showing that one touch of nature makes the Southern archipelago the very sister and bride of Europe.

The primary mission of the band was to induce a general exultant gaiety; and the mission was accomplished, nobody understood how. Lilian exulted in the food, the wine, the glitter, the noise, the wise, humorous face of Felix, and the glances which assailed her on every hand. All care fell away from her. She forgot the future, and the whole of her vitality concentrated itself intensely in the moment. Most of the conversation at neighbouring tables was in English, and it was all about gambling, dancing, golf, lawn-tennis, polo, cards, racing, trains de luxe, clothes, hotels, prices, and women. Even in the incomprehensible French gabble that reached her she could distinguish words like "golf," and "bridge," and "picnic."

Then four elegant, waisted young men appeared mysteriously from nowhere and approached certain tables and bowed with an assured air, and instantly four elegant young women rose up, without being asked, and the professional couples began to display to the amateurs the true art of the dance. Lilian had never seen such dancing.

"Why are they all Spanish girls?" she innocently asked, struck by the rich, dark skin of the women.

"They're no more Spanish than you are," said Felix. "You perceive that one there. She's at our hotel, on our floor, and I've seen her as blonde as a Norwegian. The dark olive is the result of strange cosmetics, and a jolly fine result, too. Nothing finer has been invented for a century. It's so perverse. Don't you like it?"

"I think it's lovely!" she agreed with enthusiasm, also with a vague envy.

Later, when the senoritas had left their partners and resumed their interrupted meals, and the parquet was empty again, she said:

"I do really think it's awful, all this! It's so expensive, everything; and it's all for pleasure. The whole town's for pleasure." In the background she had a vision of her working life, with its discipline and cast-iron hours and wristlets and fatigue and privations and penury. The click of the typewriter, the green-shaded lamps, the Tube, the cold bedroom, the washing and sewing done in the cold bedroom! The blue working frock with its pathetic red line of clumsy embroidery!

"What about Margate?" Felix demanded quietly.

She was nonplussed.

"Oh! But that's different!"

"It is. It's not half as good. You must remember there's nothing new in all this. It's been going on in the Mediterranean for thousands of years, and it's likely to go on for thousands of years more. It's what human nature is. What are you going to do about it? Would you abolish luxury and pleasure? Not you. Do you imagine that God created the shores of the Mediterranean and this climate for anything else but this? What frightens you is the tremendous organization and concentration of the affair. Nothing else. And let me tell you that this town is the most interesting town on the coast just now. The fellow that's got the new concession for the casino is a bit of a genius. He's moulding the place into something fresh. It used to be the primmest place on earth. He discovered that the English don't want to be prim any more; he showed them to themselves. Do you suppose all these women began to come here on their own? They're pawns in his great game. He brought them; but no nice-minded person asks how, nor whether they really pay for their meals or their rooms, nor how they manage to encourage big gambling in the baccarat rooms. This fellow has put the wind up to the next town up the coast: it used to be the most corrupt town in the whole of Europe, that place used to be! And now the rival genius there is introducing large families of children and nurses there in the hope of persuading the English that they prefer to be prim and domestic after all. The fact is these two geniuses are gambling against one another for far bigger stakes than any of the baccarat maniacs. It's a battle for the command of the coast. That's what it is. You don't get the hang of it all at once; but you will in time. Let's dance."

Lilian was startled by the invitation, for they had not yet danced together. She remembered how, on that night when he first talked to her about herself, he had known that she was being deprived of an evening's dancing. They stood up as the chicken was being removed. She smiled at him with fresh admiration. He had impregnated her with new ideas; he had reassured her; he had justified her enjoyment; he was amazing; he was mad about her, in his restrained style; and now he would surprisingly dance with her.

Although they took the floor early in the dance, when only two other couples had begun to dance, it was impossible for her to be nervous within his arm. Half the room gazed at her, for she had attracted attention from the first. She knew that half the room was gazing at her, and she liked it. She guessed that half the room was saying: "Look at that fresh young creature who's with that middle-aged man--she must be really very young." And she liked it. She liked to show herself with the man who was more than old enough to be her father, worn by knowledge and experience and the corrupting of the world; to contrast her untried simplicity--the bloom of the virginal scarcely gone from it--with his grey hairs and his wrinkled, disillusioned, passive eyes. She was happy in the thought that everybody knew that she must have given herself to him, and that there was something strange, sinister, and even odious in her abandonment. He had used the word "perverse." She did not wholly understand the word, but it appealed to her, and for her it expressed her mood.

She had noticed, in the room, how the women no longer unquestionably young were more consciously and carefully charming towards their men, receiving adulation but rendering it back; whereas the unquestionably young were more negligent and far more egotistic. And so she behaved like one no longer unquestionably young. She glanced up at her partner with ravishing, ecstatic smiles; she publicly adored him. And she was glad that her green and gold frock with its long arm-holes was not of the Wigmore Street cut, but quite other in origin and spirit and in its effect upon the imagination.

The dancing had by this time become general, but the olive-tinted temptresses were still prominent in the throng, and sometimes she touched them in the curves of the dance. She knew where they beat her and where she beat them. And it was vouchsafed to her from the eyes of Felix that she was lovely and marvellous. She felt intensely, inexpressibly happy, and more than happy--triumphant. Her quiet, obstinate resentment against the domestic policy of her father died out, and she forgave him as she danced. She thought with a secret sigh almost painful in its relief:

"Thank God I have fulfilled myself and succeeded not too late!"

She had premonitions of power, a foretaste of dominion. Felix was hers. She could influence him. She could re-make him. And for the thousandth time she breathed to him in her soul: "I have made you happy, but I will make you more happy--infinitely more happy. You don't know yet what I am capable of." He danced very correctly and quite nicely,--rather stiff, of course, but with a certain clever abandonment of his body to the rhythm. She thought: "With what women did he learn to dance? He must have danced a lot. Never will I ask! Never!" The fox-trot ended.

As they were crossing the floor to their table she saw Lord Mackworth dining with a man older than himself at a table near the windows. She sat down to the sweet. He had caught sight of her and was looking at her fixedly. She stared at him for a moment with the casually interested stare of non-recognition, perfectly executed.

"The yacht hasn't left, then, after all," she reflected, and to Felix: "Did that big yacht leave to-night?"

"No," said Felix. "I heard they'd changed their minds." Felix had the faculty of hearing everything.

In spite of herself Lilian was disturbed.

IV

Chemin de Fer

When Felix said that of course they must visit the baccarat rooms she vaguely acquiesced. A mood of the old apprehension had mysteriously succeeded her exultation; she wanted to exorcise it and couldn't. She would have tried to dance the gloom away, but Felix did not suggest another dance; she understood that he had danced once because it was proper for an enlightened amateur of life to forgo no sensation, and that he would not dance again unless asked. She would not ask. He had given her a cigarette and a liqueur; she had accepted a second liqueur and then declined it, afraid of it and anxious for her reputation in his eyes. There were formalities to accomplish at the entrance to the baccarat rooms--forms to be filled up and money to be paid.

"They make a small charge for emptying your pockets," said Felix. "They pretend to be rather particular about their victims."

The select rooms were crowded. Every table in the blazing interior had round it a thick ring of sitters and standers, and many people were walking to and fro, disappointed or hopeful. By tiptoeing and supporting herself on Felix's shoulder Lilian could just see the green cloth of a table, like the floor of a pit whose walls were bodies elegant in evening dress; it was littered with white, rose, and green counters, banknotes, cards, ash-trays, cigarette cases, and vanity bags. More women were seated than men. A single croupier dominated and ruled the game. Cards and counters were thrown about from side to side.

"It seems frightfully exciting," murmured Lilian, scarcely audible, into the ear of Felix.

"It is," said Felix gruffly. "It's the real thing, you know, gambling is. When people lose they lose real money, and when they win, ditto. You can genuinely ruin yourself here. There's no sham about it. You may go out without even your fare home." He offered these remarks separately, between considerable pauses.

"Is baccarat easy to learn?"

"Very. But not here--and this isn't baccarat. This is chemin de fer--equally easy, though. I'll get a pack of cards at the hotel and teach you. It's chemin de fer at every table. I suppose that's why they call the rooms 'baccarat'?"

He was edging nearer the croupier. A stout, middle-aged woman whose flesh seemed to be insecurely and inadequately confined within frail silk rose from her chair, gathering up bag and cigarette case--all that remained to her.

"Sit down here and keep the chair for me," Felix said sharply, and pushed Lilian into the seat.

Everybody gazed at her, and her constraint showed the conviction that everybody guessed she had never sat at a gaming-table before. Felix had vanished, and she was thrown with her arresting, innocent beauty upon the envious and jealous world. He had gone to exchange notes for counters, but she did not know. After a moment that was an hour he returned and took the seat.

"You stand behind me and watch," said he. "And when you get bored walk about and see things for yourself, and when you need moral support again come and put your hand on my chair. I'll stop playing whenever you tell me." He spoke in a muttering voice, but three or four persons around could not fail to catch every word; this, however, appeared not to trouble him.

Lilian was in a state of high excitation, but she was also extremely confused, the game being a complete enigma to her. The croupier was continually raking cards to and fro and counters to and fro, continually tearing tickets out of a book, ripping them to pieces and throwing the pieces behind him, continually dropping cards into a big hole, and continually dropping counters into a little hole. An official opposite the croupier, with pockets full of counters, was continually, and with miraculous rapidity, exchanging rose counters for green and white counters for rose. The player next to Felix had a small table behind him furnished with champagne and sandwiches, which he consumed in hasty gulps and mouthfuls, as one who feels the dread hour at hand when no man may eat or drink. The players ejaculated short incomprehensible words, and at brief intervals Lilian seized a word that sounded like "baunco." She heard Felix utter the word, saw him turn up two cards, and then receive from the croupier's rake a large assortment of green and rose counters. He never looked at her to smile; she was ignored, but she guessed that he must be winning. Soon afterwards his piles of counters had strangely diminished.

The heat stifled her, and the odour of flesh and tobacco and scent nauseated. She held no key to the vast and splendid conundrum, unless by chance her fundamental commonsense was right in its casual suggestion that she was surrounded by lunatics. Yet how could persons so well-dressed, so sure of themselves, so restrained and stylish in manner, and seemingly so wealthy, be lunatics? Impossible! She grew profoundly and inexplicably sad.

At length she walked away, aimless. Felix did not notice her departure. She thought it almost certain that Lord Mackworth would be somewhere in the rooms; she desired above everything to avoid the danger incident to meeting him face to face; but she walked away. All the tables were the same as the table at which she had left Felix--crowded, entranced, self-concentrated and perfectly unintelligible; and at every table the croupier was continually dropping counters into a little hole, and tearing up tickets and throwing the fragments behind him on to the crimson carpet. The sole difference between the tables was that some held more banknotes than others. The heaps of blue thousand-franc notes piled about one table caused Lilian to halt and gaze.

"Some ready there!" said a very young man to a fierce old woman.

"Ah! But you should have seen it in the days of gold plaques before the war. You could call a hundred-franc gold piece 'ready,' then, if you like." The old woman sighed grimly.

Lilian passed on under their combined stare. She glimpsed herself in mirrors, as once she used to glimpse herself in the shop windows of Bond Street, and was satisfied with the vision. Her walk was as remarkable as her beauty. Yes, she knew how to put her feet on the ground and how to make her body float smoothly and evenly above the moving limbs. Her spirit rose as she began to suspect that no woman in the rooms was getting more notice than herself. Fancy Felix being absorbed in his gambling! She had forgotten Lord Mackworth; she had decided that he was not in the rooms; and then suddenly, sprung from nothingness like a ghost, he stood in her path between the wall and the end of a table. She was disposed to retreat; besides, his attention was fixed on the table and she might get by him unperceived. But just as she approached he turned. Although she might have ignored him, and in the circumstances was indeed entitled to do so, she did not because she could not. She blushed, only slightly, acknowledged their acquaintance with a faint smile, then stopped, but did not advance her hand to meet his.