PART II

I

The European war affected Elsie Williams as much, or as little, as it affected many other young women. She had been married a little over a year in August 1914.

She was vaguely alarmed, vaguely thrilled, moved to a great display of emotional enthusiasm at the sight of a khaki uniform and at the sound of a military band.

Later on, she sang and hummed “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” “Tipperary,” and “We Don’t Want to Lose You, but we Think you Ought to Go,” and was voluble and indignant about the difficulties presented by sugar rations and meat coupons. She resented the air raids over London, and devoured the newspaper accounts of the damage done by them; she listened to, and eagerly retailed, anecdotes such as that of the Angels of Mons, or that of the Belgian child whose hands had been cut off by German soldiers; and after a period in which she declared that “everybody” would be ruined, she found herself in possession of more money than ever before.

Never before had so many clients presented themselves to Messrs. Williams and Cleaver, and never before had there been so much money about. Elsie bought herself a fur coat and a great many other things, and went very often to the cinema, and sometimes to the theatre. She very soon found, however, that Williams, when he could not take her out himself, disliked her going with anybody else.

He was willing enough that she should take Irene with her, or her sister Geraldine, but if she went out with any man, Williams became coldly, caustically angry, and sooner or later always found an opportunity for quarrelling with him.

Elsie was bored and angry, contemptuous of his jealousy, but far too much afraid of him to rebel openly.

She was more and more conscious of having made a mistake in her marriage, but her regrets were resentful rather than profound, and her facile nature found consolation in her own social advancement, her comfortable suburban home, and her tyrannical dominion over a capped and aproned maid.

She very seldom went to Hillbourne Terrace, and had quarrelled with her mother when Mrs. Palmer had suggested that it was time she had a baby.

Elsie did not want to have a baby at all. She feared pain and discomfort almost as much as she did the temporary eclipse of her good looks, and the thought of a child that should be Horace Williams’s as well as hers filled her with disgust.

She only spoke of this openly to Irene, and Irene undertook the purchase of certain drugs which she declared would render impossible the calamity dreaded by her friend. Elsie thankfully accepted the offer, and trusted implicitly to the efficacy of the bottles and packages that Irene bought.

Sometimes Horace declared that he wanted a son, and as time went on his taunts became less veiled, but Elsie cared little for them so long as she remained immune from the trial of motherhood.

She spent her days idly, doing very little housework, sometimes making or mending her own clothes, and often poring for a whole afternoon over a novel from the circulating library, or an illustrated paper, whilst she ate innumerable sweets out of little paper bags. She never remembered anything about the books that she read thus, and sometimes read the same one a second time without perceiving that she was doing so until she had nearly finished it.

After a time, Elsie became rather envious of the money that Irene was making as a munitions worker, and the “good time” that Geraldine enjoyed in the Government office where she had found a job. Elsie seriously told her husband that she felt she must go and do some “war work.”

“You are not in the same position as an unmarried girl, Elsie. You have other duties. These war jobs are for young women who have nothing else to do.”

“I don’t see that I’ve got so much to do.”

“If you had children, you would understand that a woman’s sphere is in her own home.”

“But I haven’t got children,” said Elsie, half under her breath.

“It’s early days to talk like that,” Williams retorted, and his glance at her was malevolent. “One of these days you’ll have a baby, I hope, like every other healthy married woman, and neither you nor I nor anybody else can say how soon that day may come.”

“Well, I suppose till it does come—if it ever does-you’ve no objection to me doing my bit in regard to this war?”

“I don’t know. What is it you propose to do?”

“Oh, get a job of some kind. Ireen says they’re asking for shorthand-typists all over the place, and willing to pay for them, too. I could get into one of these Government shows easily, or I could go in the V.A.D.s or something, and take a job in a hospital.”

“No,” said Williams decidedly. “No. Out of the question.”

Elsie, who at home had, as a matter of course, surreptitiously disobeyed every order or prohibition of her mother’s that ran counter to her own wishes, knew already that she would not disobey her husband.

She was afraid of him.

On the rare occasions when she saw any of her own family, Elsie always made a great display of her own grandeur and independence. She was really proud of her little suburban villa, her white-and-gold china, fumed oak “suite” of drawing-room furniture, “ruby” glasses and plated cake basket. She was also proud of being Mrs. Williams, and of wearing a wedding-ring.

Geraldine came to see her once or twice, and then declared herself too busy at the office to take the long tram journey, and as Elsie hardly ever went to Hillbourne Terrace, they seldom met. But Irene Tidmarsh came often to see Elsie.

She came in the daytime, when Williams was at the office, and very often she and Elsie went to the cinema together in the afternoon. Irene seemed able to get free time whenever she liked, and she explained this to Elsie by telling her that the superintendent at the works was a great friend of hers.

Elsie perfectly understood what this meant, and realised presently that Irene was never available on Saturdays and Sundays.

The war went on, and Mr. Williams made more and more money, and was fairly generous to Elsie, although he never gave her an independent income, but only occasional presents of cash, and instructions that all her bills should be sent in to him.

He did not rescind his command that she should not attempt any war work, although, as the months lengthened into years, it seemed fairly certain that there was to be no family to give Elsie occupation at home.

At twenty-five, Elsie Williams, from sheer boredom, had lost a great deal of the vitality that had characterised Elsie Palmer, and with it a certain amount of her remarkable animal magnetism. She was still attractive to men, but her own susceptibilities had become strangely blunted and no casual promiscuity would now have power to stir her.

She was aware that life had become uninteresting to her, and accepted the fact with dull, bewildered, entirely unanalytical resentment.

“I s’pose I’m growing middle-aged,” she said to Irene, giggling without conviction.

One day, more than a year after the Armistice in November 1918, Irene Tidmarsh came to Elsie full of excitement.

She had heard of a wonderful crystal-gazer, and wanted to visit her with Elsie.

Elsie was quite as much excited as Irene. “I’d better take off my wedding-ring,” she said importantly. “They say they’ll get hold of any clue, don’t they?”

“This woman isn’t like that,” Irene declared. “She’s what they call a psychic, really she is. This girl that told me about her, she said it quite frightened her, the things the woman knew. All sorts of things about her past, too.”

“I’m not sure I’d like that,” said Elsie, giggling. “I know quite enough about my past without wanting help. But I must say I’d like to know what she’s got to say about the future. You know, I mean what’s going to happen to me.”

“Oh, well, you’re married, my dear. There’s not much else she can tell you, except whether you’ll have boys or girls.”

“Thank you!” Elsie exclaimed, tossing her head. “None of that truck for me, thank you. Losing one’s figure and all!”

“You’re right. Anyway, let’s come on, shall we?”

“Come on. I say, Ireen, she’ll see us both together, won’t she?”

“I hope so. I wouldn’t go in to her alone for anything. Swear you won’t ever repeat anything she says about me, though.”

“I swear. And you won’t either?”

“No.”

The crystal-gazer lived in a street off King’s Road, Chelsea, a long way down.

A little hunch-backed girl opened the door and asked them to go into the waiting-room. This was a small, curtained recess off the tiny hall, and contained two chairs and a rickety table covered with thin, cheap-looking publications. There were several copies of a psychic paper and various pamphlets that purported to deal with the occult.

“I’m a bit nervous, aren’t you?” whispered Elsie. She fiddled with her wedding-ring, and finally took it off and put it in her purse. When the hunch-backed child appeared at the curtains, both girls screamed slightly.

“Madame Clara is ready for you,” announced the little girl, in a harsh, monotonous voice.

She led them up to the first floor, into a room that was carefully darkened with blue curtains drawn across the windows. They could just discern a black figure, stout and very upright, sitting on a large chair in the middle of the room. A round stand set on a single slender leg was beside her.

Elsie clutched at Irene’s hand in a nervous spasm.

The black figure bowed from the waist without rising. “Do you wish me to see you both together, ladies?” Her voice was harsh and rather raucous in tone.

“Yes, please,” said Irene boldly.

“You quite understand that the charge will be the same as for two separate interviews?”

“Yes.”

The little girl advanced with a small beaded bag. “The fee is payable in advance, if you please.”

Elsie fumbled in her purse, and pulled out two ten-shilling notes.

“Half a guinea each, if you please, ladies.”

“Irene, have you got two sixpences?” Elsie whispered, agitated.

Irene, by far the more collected of the two, produced a shilling, and the little girl with the bag went away.

“Will you two ladies be seated? One on either side of the table, please—not next to one another.”

Elsie made a despairing clutch at Irene’s hand again, but her friend shook her head, and firmly took her place on the other side of Madame Clara.

Elsie sank into the remaining chair, and felt that she was trembling violently. Her nervousness was partly pleasurable excitement, and partly involuntary reaction to the atmosphere diffused by the dim, shaded room and the autocratic solemnity of Madame Clara.

A sweet, rather sickly smell was discernible.

The silence affected Elsie so that she wanted to scream.

Her eyes were by this time accustomed to the semi-darkness, and she could see that Madame Clara was leaning forward, her loose sleeves falling away from her fat, bare arms, her elbows resting on the little table, and her hands over her eyes.

Suddenly the woman drew herself upright, and turned towards Irene.

“You, first. You have a stronger personality than your friend. It was you who brought her here. Do you wish me to look into the crystal for you?”

“Yes, I do,” gasped Irene.

Elsie wondered from where the crystal would appear, and then she noticed the faint outline of a globe in front of the seer, on the little stand.

A thrill of superstitious awe ran through her.

“Make your mind a blank as far as possible, please ... do not think of the past, the present, or the future ... relax ... relax ... relax....”

Madame Clara’s voice deepened, and she began to speak very slowly and distinctly, leaning back in her chair, the crystal ball before her eyes.

“Time is an arbitrary division made by man—the crystal will not always show what is past and what is to come. For instance, I see illness here—bodily suffering—but I do not know if it has visited you or is still to come. It may even be the suffering of one near to you....”

She paused for an instant, and Elsie just caught Irene’s smothered exclamation of “Father!”

“Hush, please,” said the seeress. “The shadow of sickness deepens—it deepens into the blackness of death. A man—an old man—he is dying. You will get money from him. Beware of those who seek to flatter you. You are impressionable, but clear-sighted; impulsive, yet self-controlled; reserved, but intensely passionate. I see marriage for you in the future, but with a man somewhat older than yourself. I see conflict....” She stopped again.

“Perhaps the conflict is already over. You have certainly known love—passion——”

Elsie, from mingled nervousness and embarrassment, suddenly giggled.

The clairvoyante raised an authoritative hand. “It is impossible for me to go on if there are resistances,” she said angrily, in the voice that she had used at first, ugly and rather hoarse.

“Shut up, Elsie!” came sharply from Irene.

Elsie ran her finger-nails into her palms in an endeavour to check the nervous, spasmodic laughter that threatened to overcome her.

“The current is broken,” said Madame Clara in an indignant voice.

There was a silence.

At last Elsie heard Irene say timidly:

“Won’t you go on, madame?”

“I’m exhausted,” said the medium in a fatigued voice. “You will have to return to me another day—alone. All that I can say to you now, I have said. Beware of opals, and of a red-haired man. Your lucky stone is the turquoise—you should wear light blue, claret colour, and all shades of yellow, and avoid pinks, reds and purple.”

She stopped.

Elsie, though awestruck, was also vaguely disappointed. It did not seem to her that she had learnt a great deal about Irene, and the warnings about colours and precious stones might have come out of any twopenny booklet off a railway bookstall, such as “What Month Were You Born In?” or “Character and Fortune Told by Handwriting.”

Then she remembered that she herself had made Madame Clara angry by laughing, and that the woman had said the current was broken.

“Probably she’s furious,” Elsie thought, “and she won’t tell me as much as she told Ireen. And she’s got our money, too. What a swindle!”

“What about my friend?” said Irene Tidmarsh. Her voice sounded rather sulky.

“Your friend is a sceptic,” said the clairvoyante coldly.

“No, really——” Elsie began.

The woman turned towards her so abruptly that she was startled.

She could discern an enormous pair of heavy-looking dark eyes gazing into hers.

“Make your mind a blank—relax,” said Madame Clara, her tone once more a commanding one.

Elsie moved uneasily in her chair and fixed her eyes on the crystal. She could only see it faintly, a glassy spot of uncertain outline.

The seeress bent forward, leaning over the transparent globe. After a moment or two she began to speak, with the same voice and intonation that she had made use of in speaking about Irene.

“The crystal reflects all things, but Time is an arbitrary division made by man—we do not always see what is past, and what is future.... In your case, there is very little past—how young you are!—and what there is, is all on one plane, the physical. You are magnetic, extraordinarily magnetic. You have known men—you are married, if not by man’s law, then by nature’s law—you will know other men. But you are not awake—your mind is asleep. Nothing is awake but your senses....”

Elsie’s mouth was dry. She longed to stop the woman but a horrible fascination kept her silent, tensely listening.

“Now you are bored—satiated. You have repeated the same experience again and again, young as you are, until it means nothing to you. You have no outside interests—and you are ceaselessly craving for a new emotion.”

Abruptly the sibyl dropped on to a dark note.

“It will come. I see love here—love that you have never known yet. There will be jealousy, intrigue—letters will pass—beware of the written word——Ah!”

The exclamation was so sudden and so piercing that Elsie uttered a stifled scream. But this time she was not rebuked.

Madame Clara, all at once, was calling out shrilly in a hard voice, an indescribable blend of horror and excitement in her tone:

“Oh, God—what is it? Look—look, there in the crystal—what have you done? There’s blood, and worse than blood! Oh, my God, what’s this? It’s all over England—you—they’re talking about you——”

Irene Tidmarsh screamed wildly, and Elsie realised that she had sprung to her feet. She herself was utterly unable to move, wave after wave of sick terror surging through her as the high, unrecognisable voice of the clairvoyante screeched and ranted, and then broke horribly.

“It’s blood! My God, get out of here! I won’t see any more—you’re all over blood!...”

A strange, strangled cry, that Elsie did not recognise as having come from her own lips, broke across the obscurity, the room surged round her, she tried to clutch at the table, and felt herself falling heavily.

Elsie Williams had fainted.

She came back to a dazed memory of physical nausea, bewilderment, and resentment, as she felt herself being unskilfully pulled into a sitting position.

“Let go,” she muttered, “let me go....”

“She’s coming round! For Heaven’s sake, Elsie ... here, try and get hold of her....”

She felt herself pulled and propelled to her feet, and even dragged a few steps by inadequate supporters.

Then she sank down again, invaded by a renewal of deadly sickness, but she was conscious that they had somehow got her outside the dark, scented room, and that the door had been slammed behind her.

Very slowly her perceptions cleared, and she realised that Irene was gripping her on one side, and the little hunch-backed girl holding a futile hand beneath her elbow on the other.

With an effort, Elsie raised her head.

“Look here, old girl, are you better?” said Irene, low and urgently. “I want to get out of here as quickly as possible. D’you think you can get downstairs?”

Elsie, without clearly knowing why, was conscious that she, too, wanted to get away.

She pulled herself to her feet, shuddering, and staggered down the stairs, leaning heavily on Irene.

“What happened?”

“Oh, you just turned queer. Don’t think about it. Look here, we’d better have a taxi, hadn’t we?”

“Yes. I couldn’t walk a step, that’s certain. Why, my knees are shaking under me.”

“Go and get a taxi,” Irene commanded the hunch-backed child, who went obediently away.

Elsie sat down on the lowest stair and wiped her wet, cold face with her handkerchief.

“What made me go off like that, Ireen? That woman said something beastly, didn’t she?”

“Oh she’s mad, that’s what she is. She suddenly started ranting, and you got frightened, I suppose—and no wonder. Never mind, you’ll soon be home now.”

It struck Elsie that Irene was looking at her in a strangely anxious way, and that she was talking almost at random, as though to obliterate the impression of what had passed at the séance.

Elsie herself could not remember clearly, but there was a lurking horror at the back of her mind.

“What did she say?” she persisted feebly.

“Here’s the taxi!” cried Irene, in intense relief. “Here, get in, Elsie. Thank you,” she added to the child. “Don’t wait, I’ll tell the man where to go.”

She gave the driver Elsie’s address after the little girl had entered the house again, and then climbed in beside her friend, drawing a long breath.

“Thank the Lord! We got away pretty quickly, didn’t we? Well, it’s the last time I’ll meddle with anything of that kind, I swear. I say, Elsie, had we better stop at a chemist’s and get you something?”

“Yes—no. I don’t care. Ireen, I want to know what that woman said. It was something awful about me, wasn’t it?”

“She had a—kind of fit, I think. I don’t believe she knew what she was saying—she just screamed out a pack of nonsense. And you gave a yell, and went down like a log. I can tell you, you’ve pretty nearly scared the life out of me, young Elsie.”

Irene was indeed oddly white-faced and jerky. Her manner was as unnatural as was her sudden volubility.

Elsie, still feeling weak and giddy, leant her head back and closed her eyes. She felt quite unable to make the effort of remembering what had happened at the clairvoyante’s house, and was moreover instinctively aware that the recollection, when it did come, would bring dismay and terror.

She and Irene Tidmarsh did not exchange a word until the taxi stopped.

“Here we are. You’d better pay him, Elsie. I’ll take the Tube from the corner, and get home in half an hour.”

“Aren’t you coming in with me?” said Elsie, surprised.

“I don’t think I will. I’d rather get straight home.”

“Oh, do!” urged Elsie, half crying. She felt very much shaken. “I’m all alone; Horace won’t be back till seven, and this has upset me properly. Besides, I know I shall remember what it was that awful woman said in a minute, and I’m frightened. You must come in, Ireen.”

“I can’t,” repeated Irene, inexorably. “I ... really, I’d rather not, Elsie.”

The door opened, and Irene turned rapidly and walked away down the street.

Elsie tottered into the house.

“I’m ill,” she said abruptly to the servant. “I fainted while I was out, and I feel like nothing on earth now. I shall go to bed.”

“Yes, ’m. Shall I go for a doctor, ’m?” said the girl zealously.

“No,” said Elsie sharply. “I don’t want a doctor. Telephone to Mr. Williams at the office, Emma, and ask him to come home early. Say I’m ill.”

“Yes, ’m.”

Elsie dragged herself upstairs and took off some of her clothes. She was shivering violently, and presently pulled her blue cotton kimono round her and slipped into bed. She lay there with closed eyes, shuddering from time to time, until Emma brought up a cup of strong tea. Elsie drank it avidly, lay down again and felt revived. Presently she dozed.

The opening of the door roused her. It was nearly dark, but she knew that it must be her husband, who never knocked before entering their joint bedroom.

“What’s all this, Elsie?”

“I felt rotten,” she said wearily. “Turn on the light, Horace.”

He did so, and advanced towards the bed. His face wore an expression of concern, and he walked on tiptoe.

“I fainted while I was out with Ireen,” Elsie explained, “and I was simply ages coming to. We came back in a cab, and I must say Ireen’s awfully selfish. She wouldn’t come in with me, though she must have seen I wasn’t fit to be left—just turned and walked off. I’m done with her, after this.”

“Where had you been?” enquired Williams quickly.

“Oh, just out.”

“Where to?”

“I suppose you’ll call me a fool, if I say it was to see one of those clairvoyante women, someone Ireen had heard of. It was all Ireen’s doing—she persuaded me to go.”

“Very silly of you both,” said the little solicitor coldly. “Did this person upset you?”

“Yes. She had a sort of fit, I think, and called out a whole lot of nonsense, only I can’t remember what it was.” Elsie moved uneasily.

“Where does she live?”

“Why?”

“She ought to be prosecuted for obtaining money under false pretences. I suppose you gave her money?”

“Oh yes.”

“You’d better give me her name and address and I’ll see that she is properly dealt with.”

“I’d rather not.”

Horace Williams shrugged his shoulders. “Well, you’d better get up and come down to supper, hadn’t you? There’s no reason for lying in bed if you’re not ill.”

“All right,” Elsie agreed sullenly.

Her husband never shouted at her or threatened her, but she was afraid of him, and of a certain sinister dryness that characterised his manner when he was displeased.

The dryness was there now.

Elsie spent the evening downstairs. Her husband read the newspaper, and she turned over the pages of a fashion magazine listlessly. Her thoughts, unwillingly enough, returned again and again to the scene in the clairvoyante’s room, but still she could not remember the actual words screamed out by Madame Clara before she had lost consciousness. But she remembered quite well other words, that had preceded them.

“You are magnetic ... extraordinarily magnetic.... You are not awake—your mind is asleep.... Now, you are bored, satiated. You are ceaselessly craving for a new emotion....”

Elsie reflected how true this was.

She glanced distastefully at her elderly husband.

The bald patch glistened on the top of his head, and he was breathing heavily as he read his newspaper.

He had always been rather distasteful to her physically, and although the continuous, degradingly inevitable proximity of married life in a small suburban villa had hardened her into indifference, Elsie was still averse from the more intimate aspects of marriage with him.

She wished that she could fall in love, remembering that Madame Clara had said: “I see love here—love that you have never known yet.”

“That’s bunkum,” thought Elsie. “I’ve been in love heaps of times—I was in love with that doctor fellow, Woolley. It doesn’t last, that’s all.”

She hardly ever met any men nowadays, as she resentfully reminded herself.

The husbands of her married friends were at work all day, and if she occasionally met them at their wives’ card-parties, they did not interest her very greatly. Most of the wives distrusted the husbands and gave them no opportunity for flirtation with other women. And Horace Williams himself was a jealous man, always suspicious, and never allowed his young wife to go anywhere with any man but himself.

Elsie had been for a long while in inward revolt against the dullness of her life. She remembered with longing the old days of her girlhood, when every walk had been the prelude to adventure, and the casual kisses of unknown, or scarcely known, men had roused her to rapture.

Nowadays, she knew very well that she would be less easily satisfied. The apathy that had been creeping over her ever since her marriage had to a certain extent lessened the force of the animal magnetism by which she had been able to lure the senses of almost every man she met, and for the first time she was beginning to have doubts of her own attractiveness.

Elsie gave a sigh that was almost a groan.

Williams neither stirred nor raised his eyes.

“I think I’ll retire to my little downy,” Elsie murmured, drearily facetious.

“It’s only a quarter past nine.”

“Oh, well, we lead such a deliriously exciting life that I’d better get some rest, hadn’t I?” she said ironically. “Just to make up for all the late nights we have.”

At last her husband put down the paper and looked coldly at her through his pince-nez. “What is it you want, Elsie? I work hard all day at the office, and you have plenty of time and money for amusing yourself in the daytime—and a strange use you seem to make of them, judging by to-day’s performance. What more do you want?”

“I don’t know. We might go to the pictures sometimes, or to a play. I hate not having anything to do.”

“That’s the complaint of every woman who hasn’t got children.”

“I can’t help it,” said Elsie angrily.

He said nothing, but continued to fix his eyes upon her, with his most disagreeable expression.

“Good-night, Horace.”

“I shall come up to bed before you’re asleep,” he said meaningly.

She went out of the room.

The thought crossed her mind, as it had often done before, that she had made a frightful mistake in marrying Horace Williams.

“I was only eighteen,” she thought, “I ought to have waited. Perhaps he’ll die.”

As she undressed, Elsie idly imagined a drama of which she herself would, of course, be the heroine.

Horace would be at the office, as usual, and a telephone message would come through to say that he was ill—very ill indeed—he was dead. Everyone would admire the young widow in her black, with her string of pearl beads.... Horace would leave her quite a lot of money. Elsie knew that he was rich, although he had never told her his income. She would stay on in the villa, but people would come and see her—she would go out and enjoy herself—enjoy life, once more....

Elsie sighed again as she got into bed.

Bored and exhausted, she fell asleep almost at once, to dream vividly.

In her dream, she stood outside a closed door, knowing that something unspeakably horrid lay beyond it. Terror paralysed her. At last she pushed at the door, but it would not yield more than an inch or two. Something was behind it. She looked down and saw a dark stain spreading round her feet, oozing from beneath the resistant door.

Screaming and sweating, Elsie woke up, and as she did so the remembrance came back to her in full of everything that the clairvoyante had said that morning.

II

“Hallo, Elsie!”

“Hallo, Geraldine!”

“You’re quite a stranger, aren’t you? I think it’s about a year since we had the honour of seeing your majesty last.”

“Well, now I have come, aren’t you going to take the trouble to invite me to come in?” asked Elsie good-humouredly.

“There’s a visitor of mine in the drawing-room.”

“Who is it? Aunt Ada?”

“No, not Aunt Ada, Miss Smarty. It’s a friend of mine, I tell you, who I knew at the office during the war.”

“Well, you can introduce me to her, I suppose,” said Elsie carelessly.

She noticed that Geraldine’s hair was not, as it generally was, in curling-pins, and that she was wearing a new dress, of an unbecoming shade of emerald green. Geraldine always went wrong over her clothes, Elsie reflected complacently. She herself wore a new black picture hat, and it was partly from the desire to show herself in it that she had come to her old home.

“Where’s mother?”

“Out.”

“What a mercy!”

Elsie walked into the familiar drawing-room, feeling glad that she no longer lived at Hillbourne Terrace, under her mother’s dominion, and forced to share a bedroom with the fretful Geraldine.

A young man of two- or three-and-twenty was sitting in the drawing-room, and rose to his feet as Elsie and Geraldine came in.

“This is my sister, Mrs. Horace Williams. Elsie, this is my friend, Mr. Morrison,” said Geraldine with pride.

Elsie was immediately conscious of a quickened interest. The young man was of a type that appealed strongly to her; dark and tall, with very brown eyes, and a wistful, ingenuous smile that was the more noticeable because he was clean-shaven.

When they shook hands, she was conscious of the slight, unmistakable thrill of mutual magnetism.

“I thought I was going to find a young lady in here, when Geraldine told me she had a friend!” Elsie exclaimed, laughing.

“Sorry I’m a disappointment,” Mr. Morrison replied, also laughing.

“Oh, I didn’t say that. Only my sister doesn’t have gentlemen friends as a rule,” Elsie declared innocently.

Geraldine’s sallow face flushed. “You don’t know much about it, do you, considering that we never see you nowadays. I’m not one for talking much about my own affairs, either, so far as I’m aware. It’s a misfortune, really, to be as reserved as I am. I often wish I wasn’t!”

It was unprecedented, in Elsie’s experience, to hear Geraldine setting forth a claim, however obliquely, to be considered interesting. Elsie looked at her in astonishment.

“She must be gone on this fellow,” she thought, and without the slightest compunction she immediately put forth all her own powers to attract Morrison’s notice and admiration to herself.

The task proved to be as easy as it was congenial. In a very little while, Elsie and young Morrison were talking and joking together, and it was only an occasional, spasmodic, and quite evidently conscientious effort from Morrison that from time to time caused Geraldine to be included in the conversation.

Morrison told Elsie that he travelled for a big firm of silk merchants in the City, and was very little in London.

“How did you and Geraldine meet, then? I thought you were in the same office as her during the war,” said Elsie sharply.

“Just for six months I was, and then I got this job in the place of a man who’d joined up. I was under age for joining up myself, worse luck,” said the youth.

Then he must be younger than she was herself, Elsie reflected, surprised. She felt oddly touched by the thought.

She looked at Morrison, and found that he was looking at her with admiration evident in his dark eyes.

Elsie allowed her eyes to dwell for a second on his before she broke the momentary silence. “What about tea, Geraldine?”

“All right,” said her sister sulkily. “Where’s the hurry?”

It was already half-past four, but Elsie guessed that Geraldine did not want to go and fetch the tea and leave her alone with Morrison.

“No hurry, I suppose,” she cried gaily, “but I’m a bit tired, that’s all, and I thought I’d like a nice cup of tea. It’s a good long way to come, and the Tube was pretty full.”

“Where did you come from?” Morrison asked eagerly.

She named the suburb. “You must come and look us up one day, Mr. Morrison. My husband is a solicitor, and he’s always at home on Saturdays and Sundays. The rest of the week I’m by myself and ever so lonely,” sighed Elsie.

“I’d love to come. I should—er—like to meet Mr. Williams,” said Morrison solemnly.

“Here’s Mother!” Geraldine announced sharply, as a door banged downstairs.

Mrs. Palmer came in, breathing heavily, her hands full of parcels.

“Elsie! Dear me, this is a surprise. Good afternoon, Mr. Morrison, how are you? Quite well, thank you, but for Anno Domini, that’s all that’s the matter with me.” She dropped into a chair.

“Where’s tea?”

“I’ll get it up,” said Geraldine.

“Go and give her a hand,” Mrs. Palmer calmly directed young Morrison. “My gurl is out. They’re all the same, nowadays—always out, never in.”

“I never have any trouble with servants,” Elsie murmured.

She was annoyed that her mother should thus dismiss Morrison, and that he should meekly prepare to obey her.

He opened the door for Geraldine and went out behind her, and Elsie heard her sister talking animatedly as they went downstairs.

“What’s come over Geraldine?” she coldly enquired.

“Why should anything have come over her, as you call it? Geraldine’s a gurl like you are, I’d have you remember, and a very much better one than you’ve ever been, to her widowed mother. You mind your own business, Elsie.”

“That’s a nice way to speak to me, when I haven’t been at home for I don’t know how long.”

“And whose fault has that been?” enquired Mrs. Palmer. “Not but what I’m always pleased to see you, Elsie, as I’ve told you time and time again, and Mr. Williams too—Horace, I should say—if he cares to come. But don’t you go interfering with Geraldine’s friends.”

“Is this fellow a friend of hers?”

“Of course he is. They’ve been going together for some time now.”

“I suppose she’s not engaged?”

“No, she’s not engaged,” Mrs. Palmer reluctantly conceded. “But I’m free to confess that I hope she will be. This Leslie Morrison is a nice fellow, as steady as can be.”

Elsie reflected that Leslie was a lovely name.

“Now, Elsie,” said her mother warningly, “I know what you are, and I give you fair notice that I won’t have any of your goings-on. You’ll remember that you’re a married woman, if you please, and just behave yourself. Any of your old tricks, my lady, and I shall drop the hint to Horace. Him and me knew one another before ever he set eyes on you.”

“All the more reason for not making mischief between us now. He’s jealous enough as it is, making a fuss of anyone so much as looks the same side of the room as I happen to be.”

“I don’t blame him,” said Mrs. Palmer curtly. “You’re a caution, you are, and always have been. I don’t mind telling you that I never was more thankful in my life than to get you safely married. And don’t you go casting sheep’s eyes at poor Geraldine’s fellow, for I tell you I won’t have it.”

Elsie laughed scornfully. She was secretly flattered at the alarm that was conveyed by Mrs. Palmer’s reiterated cautions.

“What should I want with a boy like him? He must be six years younger than Geraldine, at the very least.”

“Nothing of the kind. And if he was, it wouldn’t matter. It’s the first time anyone has looked like business, where Geraldine’s concerned, and with you off my hands I can afford to make things a bit easy for her. She’s been a good daughter to me, has Geraldine,” said Mrs. Palmer with a significant emphasis.

“Well, I’m sure I don’t want to stand in her way,” Elsie declared contemptuously.

“Anyone less selfish than you are, Elsie, would offer to help things on a bit. I can’t be for ever asking him here, and he’s not got the money to take her out a great deal. Why don’t you get them to meet at your place?”

“Perhaps I will,” said Elsie slowly.

She was rather silent during tea, mentally reviewing her mother’s suggestion from various angles.

Leslie Morrison definitely attracted her. She asked him how long he was to remain in London.

“Not long, Mrs. Williams. I’m doing Bristol and Gloucestershire next week, and then I’m taking my holiday.”

“Where are you going for that?” Mrs. Palmer enquired.

“I haven’t made up my mind. Anywhere near the sea is good enough for me.”

“My husband and I are thinking of Torquay,” Elsie said. “We’ve been wondering if you’d care to come along, Geraldine. I suppose Mother wants to stew on in London, as per usual.”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Palmer assented complacently. She looked at her younger daughter with approval. It was the first time, actually, that Elsie had ever invited Geraldine to spend a holiday with her.

“Torquay is a first-rate place,” declared Leslie Morrison enthusiastically. “I was there once on business, and I quite made up my mind to return one day.”

“Thanks very much, Elsie,” Geraldine said rather coldly. “It’s a long journey, isn’t it, and I’m a wretched traveller, as you know.”

“Please yourself. Horace wants a thorough change, and we’re sick of Wales. We’ve been there every year ever since we were married.”

“Come, I don’t suppose that makes much of a total, does it?” Morrison gallantly remarked, looking at Elsie.

“More than you’d think for, perhaps. I was caught young—eighteen, if you want to know.”

“Elsie,” said her mother abruptly, “have you been to see your aunties lately?”

She directed the conversation so that no more personalities were possible, until Elsie rose and said good-bye.

“Allow me,” said Morrison, as he helped her to put on her coat.

Elsie fumbled for the sleeve-hole until she felt the guiding pressure of his fingers on her arm.

“Thanks ever so much. Well, good-bye, Mr. Morrison. Let me know if you come up our way any time.”

“I ... I hope you’re going to let me see you to your ’bus,” he said rather awkwardly.

“Really, there’s no need—I couldn’t think of troubling you.”

Elsie took no pains to hide that her protest was a purely conventional one.

“Put on your hat, Geraldine, and go with them. A walk’ll do you good,” urged Mrs. Palmer.

But Geraldine, as she frequently did, had turned sulky. “I’ve got something to do upstairs,” she muttered, and disappeared.

It was exactly like Geraldine, Elsie thought, to cut off her nose just to spite her face. Not that it could have made any difference if she had succeeded in preventing that brief walk taken by Leslie Morrison and Elsie Williams.

Elsie knew, beyond any possibility of mistake, the very first moment at which a spark from her own personality had lit the flame destined to burn more or less fiercely in that of another.

But this time she experienced an odd excitement that held in it something new.

She wondered, rather wistfully, whether this was because it was such a long while since she had had any opportunity of talking to a man other than her husband or one of his elderly married acquaintances. Her conversation with Morrison did no more than skirt the edge of personalities that were implied, rather than spoken. Yet when they parted Elsie knew, and knew that Morrison knew, that each was determined to see the other again. She travelled home in a dream, and hardly heard her husband’s vexed enquiry as to the reason of her lateness.

Williams had always shown a very strong conviction that it was a wife’s duty invariably to be at home in time to welcome her husband’s return from business.

“I’ve been to Hillbourne Terrace.”

“H’m. You’ve made yourself very smart. That hat suits you, Elsie.”

He so seldom paid a compliment that Elsie was astonished, and ran to look at herself in the mirror over the dining-room sideboard.

It was the hat, was it?

Her full face was softly flushed, and her eyes looked bigger and darker than usual. Elsie saw her own closed mouth break into an involuntary smile as she gazed at her reflection. She went up to her room singing softly.

Two days later Leslie Morrison came to see her.

“I hope you won’t think I’m taking a liberty. Knowing your people so well, it seemed quite natural, like, to take advantage of your kind invitation.”

“That’s right,” Elsie encouraged him.

She hardly knew what she was saying, but already their intercourse seemed to be on a plane where conventional interchanges of words were unnecessary.

Although it was only the second time they had met, Morrison told her a great deal about himself, and Elsie listened, with a growing, tremulous tenderness.

He went away before her husband came in, and Elsie underwent a momentary, essentially superficial, reaction.

“I’m getting soppy about that boy—that’s what I’m doing! Just because he’s got a pair of eyes like—like I don’t know what. Him and Geraldine! It’s too ridiculous. Why, he’s younger even than me.”

She reflected that if Morrison, indeed, had been a year or two older, he would certainly have kissed her by this time. But it was quite evident to her that such an idea had never even crossed his mind. He viewed her with obvious admiration, and with great respect.

The next day Elsie bought a book of poems, about which Morrison had told her. She read some of them, and it seemed to her that she had a new understanding of a form of expression which had never made the least appeal to her before.

“I’m a fool!” Elsie told herself in astonishment, but with an ominous sensation of strange, new emotions, softer than any she had yet known, taking possession of her life. She felt that she would like to give the book to Morrison as a present, but they had made no definite arrangement for meeting again, and she could not bring herself to send it by post. Restlessness possessed her.

It was a relief when one evening her husband began to speak of their summer holiday.

“We can start on Tuesday, like we planned. Cleaver gets back on Monday morning, and the sooner we get to the sea in this weather, the better. It won’t last.”

“It might. September can be a ripping month sometimes,” said Elsie dreamily.

“That’s your experience, is it? Well, it’s not mine. I only hope we shan’t have a rainy spell as we did last year, and sit in an everlasting sitting-room without so much as a book to look at.”

Elsie shuddered at the recollection. She and Horace had quarrelled incessantly throughout their last holiday.

“Is your sister coming with us?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’ll be better than nobody. She’ll be somebody for you to go with to those picture-houses that you’re so fond of. But it’s a pity that girl hasn’t got a sensible husband. We might get a decent game of bridge, then.”

“It’s a pity you haven’t got any men friends,” Elsie retorted. “I never knew anybody like you for that.”

Williams did not answer, but he turned upon his wife a look, peculiar to himself, that always vaguely frightened her. It held not only utter contempt, but something of quiet, unspecified menace.

She hastily spoke again. “Geraldine’s got a—a young fellow that she thinks is going with her now. A boy called Morrison.”

“Is he coming to Torquay?”

It was Horace Williams’ own matter-of-course tone in making the suggestion that suddenly filled Elsie with a frantic determination to see it carried out.

“Yes, most likely he is. So you’ll get your bridge, I daresay, and there’ll be somebody to take us to the pictures of an evening.”

As Elsie said the words, her heart seemed to herself suddenly to leap against her side, as though in anticipation of a joy almost too great to be borne.

She lay awake most of that night, revolving schemes by which Leslie Morrison could be brought to Torquay without letting Williams know that it was Elsie who had originated the idea.

Although formerly she had been as much flattered as irritated by her husband’s suspicious jealousy, it seemed to Elsie now to be of the utmost importance that he should not look upon Morrison in any other light than that of Geraldine’s friend. She wondered if she could induce Geraldine herself to suggest that Morrison should come to Torquay, but decided that it was unlikely. Finally, after a great deal of deliberation, Elsie next day wrote a note to the young man:

“Dear Mr. Morrison,

“If not otherwise engaged, we shall be pleased if you will come to tea on Saturday afternoon. It will be the last time for some weeks we shall be at home, as we go to Torquay on the Tuesday. My sister, Miss Palmer, is coming with us. Why not join the party, as you say you would like to visit Torquay again?!!!

“Yours sincerely, “E. Williams.”

Elsie thought about this note incessantly after it was written and posted, and awaited the reply with proportionate excitement.

It came by return of post:

“My Dear Mrs. Williams,

“Very many thanks indeed for your most kind invitation to tea. Unfortunately I am not able to avail myself of it, as am already engaged to go to Hillbourne Terrace. The suggestion about me going to Torquay is simply great—that is, if you really meant it! I intend talking it over with your sister when we meet on Saturday.

“Believe me, with kind regards,

“Yours very sincerely, “Leslie M. Morrison.”

Elsie came downstairs earlier than usual in order to conceal her letter before Williams should ask to see it, as he invariably did with his wife’s correspondence.

She put it in her pocket, and kept it there all day. On Saturday she wanted very much to go to Hillbourne Terrace, but Williams was at home, and on such occasions he never expected his wife to go out except with him. They spent the afternoon drearily enough, Williams reading the newspaper, and Elsie pretending to sew, and in reality wholly occupied with speculations as to how Geraldine would receive Leslie Morrison’s suggestion.

She felt pretty certain that Mrs. Palmer, at all events, would be in favour of it. “If only he has the sense to make it sound as if it came from him, and not from me!” thought Elsie.

She had felt confident of receiving another letter from Morrison before starting for Torquay, but to her dismay there was no word, either from him or from Geraldine, and on the eve of departure she still did not know whether or not her scheme had succeeded. For the first time, she heartily wished that there had been a telephone in her mother’s house.

On the morning of their journey the weather changed and became suddenly sultry. The train was crowded and unbearably hot.

Geraldine was to meet them at the station, and the fact that she arrived late made Horace Williams angry, in his own unpleasant, silent way. There was only one empty seat in the railway carriage, which Elsie at once took, and Williams and Geraldine were forced to stand in the corridor, already strewn with hand baggage and full of heated, perspiring people.

The train ran from London to Taunton without a stop, and at the end of two hours Williams forced his way into the carriage and spoke quietly to his wife.

“Here, Elsie, give me your place for a little while. One of my boots is hurting, and I can’t stand any longer. Go and take your turn for a bit.”

Elsie joined Geraldine in the corridor without demur. There were certain tones in Horace Williams’ voice that she had learnt to obey. Geraldine, her face pallid and shiny with heat, her tight blue cloth dress looking as though it constricted even her narrow chest and shoulders, was sitting in an uncomfortable, crouching position on a roll of rugs.

Both she and Elsie had removed their hats, and while Elsie’s hair dropped naturally into soft, flattened curls and rings, Geraldine’s clung damply in straight, short wisps to her neck and forehead, and she constantly raised her hand to push away, quite ineffectually, a straggling end that immediately fell down again.

“Hell, I call this,” she remarked shortly, as Elsie, stumbling over bags and packages and the feet of other passengers, reached her side and propped herself up against the side of the swaying train.

“You’re a nice one to take on a holiday, I must say,” Elsie retorted, but without acrimony. She felt that nothing would really matter if she could once get the assurance that she craved.

“Horace is in a foul temper. He never can stand the hot weather. I’m sure I hope it’ll be cooler at the sea than what it is here. Have you brought a new bathing costume, Geraldine?”

“M’m. A blue one, with a decent skirt—not one of those horrible skin-tight things you see in the picture papers. Improper, I call them.”

“You couldn’t be improper if you tried,” said Elsie cryptically. “Besides, there’ll be nobody to go in the water with you except me. Horace never bathes—makes him turn green, or something.”

She eyed her sister carefully as she spoke. Something in the wariness of Geraldine’s return glance gave her a rising hope.

“I’m sure I wish we were going to have someone we knew there. Horace would be much easier to keep in a decent temper if he had another man to go with sometimes.”

Then Geraldine spoke. “That boy Leslie Morrison said something about coming down one day this week, and spending part of his holiday at Torquay. He was awfully keen I should go and stay with his mother, near Bristol, too.”

“Was he? Well, you could do that later,” said Elsie. She was nearly breathless with triumph, but strove to make her voice sound matter-of-fact. “But I hope to goodness he will come to Torquay. It’ll make all the difference to Horace.”

Geraldine sneered. “I daresay you think it’ll make all the difference to you, too. It’s anything in trousers with you, old girl, whether the fellow belongs to another girl or not. But I’m not afraid of anything of that sort while Horace is about. He knows how to keep you in order, as Mother said.”

“I’ll thank you, and Mother too, to keep your opinion of me till it’s asked for.” Elsie, however, spoke mechanically.

She had immediately become obsessed by visions of herself and Morrison, walking, swimming, sitting beside one another on the sands, or in the intimate closeness and darkness of the picture palace....

“I’ll just tell you this, young Elsie. Leslie Morrison isn’t the sort of fellow you’ve been used to—not like Johnnie Osborne, and that truck. And as for carrying on with a married woman—why, he’d be ashamed to think of such a thing.”

Elsie smiled, and said nothing. She hardly heard what her sister was saying.

A hand laid upon her shoulder made her jump violently.

“Are you in the moon, Elsie? I’ve been making signs to you for ten minutes, I should think. It’s more than time we had our sandwiches,” said Horace Williams querulously.

“Oh, all right.”

By tugging and pulling at piled-up packages, they succeeded in getting hold of the basket in which Elsie had packed ham sandwiches, seed-cake, and bananas.

The train sped onwards....

III

The Williamses and Geraldine stayed in a boarding-house that proudly advertised itself as being situated “right on the front,” and young Morrison had a room in an apartment house, much cheaper and more remote, half-way up one of Torquay’s steepest hills. He arranged to have all his meals except breakfast at the boarding-house.

The weather was very hot, and sunny, and breathless.

Elsie felt as though she had never lived before. Every morning she came downstairs, her face sunburnt and glowing, but never unbecomingly freckled, her open-necked, short-sleeved blouses and jumpers indefinably smart and well put on, her undependable and essentially variable good looks seeming always to increase.

She was greatly admired in the boarding-house, and Williams for the first time did not appear to resent this.

He had suddenly become absorbed in a new and obscure digestive complaint, and would discuss the subject endlessly with his neighbours at meal-times. An elderly widow without any companion took a fancy to Geraldine, and as she sometimes gave her presents of clothes, or took her for a drive, Geraldine always sat next to her at the long table in the dining-room, and listened to her with a fair pretence of amiability.

Breakfast was a long, hot, abundant meal. The boarding-house knew its clientèle and catered for it according to the views of business men who never allowed themselves to eat as much as they would have liked on week-day mornings during all the rest of the year. Tea and coffee, eggs and bacon, and fish and sausages were provided, toast and jam and marmalade and potted meat.

Elsie, who never ate anything but bread-and-butter with jam, and drank innumerable cups of tea, at her own home, enjoyed the novel fare because it was novel, and because she had not bought and ordered it herself, and because she was living in a haze of happiness that made everything enjoyable.

The prophecy of the clairvoyante had come true. Elsie knew the love that she had never yet known.

Every morning they went down to the sands and met Leslie Morrison there. They sat in deck chairs, and ate fruit from paper bags, and listened to a pierrot entertainment. At midday Elsie and Geraldine ran back to the boarding-house, undressed, and put on their bathing-suits, and came back to find Morrison already in the water and Horace Williams asleep in his deck-chair behind a newspaper.

Elsie’s bathing-dress was blue, trimmed with white braid, and she wore a rubber cap with a blue-and-red handkerchief knotted over it. Her bare legs and arms and neck had tanned very slightly; Geraldine’s showed scarlet patches of sunburn.

As they joined Morrison in the water, both girls always screamed, clinging to one another’s hands. But once the water was high above their waists, Elsie, a naturally strong swimmer, struck out boldly, consciously enjoying the cold water and the exercise of her muscles. Geraldine, of poor physique and defective circulation, only bobbed up and down in the shallows, still uttering staccato shrieks.

At first, Elsie and Morrison would keep near her, swimming short distances, and then returning, or splashing beside her in shallow water, but sooner or later they would both strike out, swimming side by side. They spoke very little.

“I say, you swim simply splendidly, Mrs. Williams. Why, I’ve never seen a girl swim as well as you do.”

“D’you think so? It’s nice, isn’t it?”

“It’s ripping. I’ve never had a holiday like this one—I mean, one that I’ve enjoyed so much.”

“Neither have I.”

“I hadn’t looked forward to my holiday a bit this year. I never thought it would be anything like this. I didn’t know that anything in the world——”

It was always Elsie who suggested that it was time to go back.

“Geraldine’s gone out already. She turns a funny colour if she stays in too long.”

Once, when they were rather further out than usual, Elsie said that she was getting tired.

“Put your hand on my shoulder—I’ll help you. Yes, do.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t.”

“Yes, you must.”

“Well, if you are sure you don’t mind....”

“Mind!”

His voice was very eloquent, and Elsie was abundantly satisfied.

She laid her hand upon his shoulder, and kept it there after her feet touched the sandy bottom once more and they were almost out of the water.

They raced to the bath-towel cloak that she had left under the wall, and as she put it round her Elsie said, without looking at him and in a peculiar tone:

“Did you enjoy it?”

“I loved it,” Morrison replied very low, and after a moment he added:

“Better than any of our other bathes.”

Elsie had never before conducted any one of her numerous love-affairs in a key so reticent, and the very novelty of the experience rendered it strange and precious.

Subconsciously, they might both be waiting for the spoken word, but on the surface each was supremely contented in the present.

The presence of Geraldine did not disturb Elsie in the least. Geraldine had been jealous of her intermittently ever since the days of their earliest childhood, and her manifestations of temper were always latent, rather than active. Elsie was used to them, and indifferent to them.

Besides, Leslie Morrison was always very nice to Geraldine. He sat between the sisters at the entertainments to which they went frequently, he gave chocolates and sweets to Geraldine oftener than to Elsie, and he was always ready to talk of Geraldine’s favourite topic, the old days in the office.

Only his dark eyes sought Elsie’s face with increasing frequency, his pleasant young voice altered slightly and indescribably when he found himself alone with her.

It seemed part of the magic of those enchanted days that Geraldine should make no scene, Horace Williams appear to perceive nothing.

On Sunday evening a band played in the public gardens. They decided to go and hear it.

Then Williams developed his mysterious symptoms, and refused to come out.

“You girls can go with Morrison. I shall take a glass of boiling water with peppermint,” he declared, “and go to bed. I’m in agony.”

“Would you like me to stay with you?” Elsie asked, her heart sinking.

“No, no, go and enjoy yourself.”

“Perhaps you’ll feel better in a bit, and come and join us,” she suggested, and thankfully made her escape.

The gardens were lit with Japanese lanterns and crowded with holiday-makers. Pale frocks and scarves flickered oddly in and out of the shadows and beyond the bright circle of glaring white light thrown out from the raised and roofed circular platform of the bandstand.

“No hope of chairs, I suppose,” said Geraldine disconsolately. “We’re late, thanks to Horace. Just look at the people.”

Morrison volunteered to try and find a seat, and they watched his tall figure disappear into the throng of people.

“I shall be sick if I have to stand for long, that’s certain,” declared Geraldine. “I believe the sun was too hot for me this afternoon. My head’s splitting.”

“Take off your hat, why don’t you?”

Elsie’s own hair was only covered with a blue motor veil, knotted at either ear, and with floating ends.

“My hair would be all over the place. I like to look tidy, thank you.”

“Please yourself,” said Elsie indifferently. She was absorbed in watching for the first glimpse of Morrison returning to them.

When she caught sight of him, elbowing his way through the crowd, it actually seemed to her as though the heart in her body leaped forward to meet him.

As usual, his eyes sought Elsie’s and held them for an instant before he turned to Geraldine.

“There’s one chair there. I’ve taken it, and a fellow is kindly keeping it for me. I thought you and your sister could take it in turns to sit down.”

“I don’t know....” Geraldine began ungraciously.

“It’s quite a good place, and nice-looking people on either side. The chap that’s keeping it for us seemed very decent.”

“Oh, go on, Geraldine!” said Elsie. “Hark, they are beginning again.”

The band had struck into a selection from a popular musical comedy.

Leslie Morrison put his arm beneath the girl’s elbow, and they moved away, Geraldine still grumbling sub-audibly.

Elsie, motionless, waited.

Never before in her life had she known this ecstasy of anticipation, so poignant as to be almost indistinguishable from pain.

When Leslie came back to her, she thought that she must fall, and instinctively caught at his arm for support.

Without speaking, he drew her away from the ring of light, into the deep shadow of a clump of trees. She stumbled against something in the sudden obscurity, and discerned the low railing that separated the ornamental shrubs and flower-beds from the crowded gravel paths.

“Come,” said Leslie’s voice in her ear, hoarsely. They stepped together over the little railing on to the grass. Another few steps, and they were in an isolation as complete as though a curtain had fallen between them and the seething mass of talking, laughing, swaying people in the gardens.

Even the sound of the band only reached them faintly as though from a great distance.

Leslie Morrison halted abruptly, and they faced one another, their eyes already accustomed to the semi-darkness.

By an impulse as inevitable as it was irresistible, they were in one another’s arms.

Neither spoke a word whilst that long throbbing embrace endured.

Through Elsie’s whole being flashed the wordless conviction: “This is what I’ve been waiting for....”

“Elsie,” whispered the man. “Elsie ... Elsie ... Elsie ... I love you!”

“I love you,” she whispered back again.

They stood clinging to one another, entwined, the hot summer darkness encompassing them.

“What shall we do?” Morrison murmured at last. “I have no right to say a word to you, Elsie—I never meant to.”

“What does it matter?” said Elsie recklessly. “Horace and I have never been happy together. I ought never to have married him. It’s you I belong to.”

“My darling ... my sweetheart.”

They kissed passionately, again and again.

“What are we going to do?”

Elsie pressed closer and closer against him. “Forget everything, as long as this holiday lasts, except that we can be together. It’s been so heavenly, Leslie! We can settle—something—later on, when it’s all over.”

“I can’t let you go back to that man again. It would drive me mad.”

“Take me away with you,” she whispered.

“Oh, if I could ... if I only could, little girl!”

They spoke as lovers talk, ardently, and tenderly, and with long silences.

A sudden surging movement, and the distant sound of the National Anthem, penetrated at last to them through the darkness.

“It’s all over!” Morrison cried, aghast. “Your sister?...”

“I’ll manage her,” said Elsie. “Leslie ... once more....”

Her mouth found his, and then she tore herself out of his arms.

“Come with me.”

Rapidly Elsie found her way to the little pay-desk outside the enclosure, in which the lights were already being extinguished.

“She’s bound to come out this way.”

They waited, Elsie’s eyes at first dazzled, striving to find her sister’s form in the crowd. Every fibre of her being was acutely aware of the presence of Leslie Morrison, standing just behind her, so that her shoulder touched his breast.

Without turning her head she put out her hand, and felt it clasped in his and held tightly.

Her senses swam, and it was Geraldine’s own voice that first warned her of her sister’s approach.

To her relief, Geraldine was talking to a strange young man.

“Good-night,” she said amiably.

“Good-night, and thanks so much for a pleasant evening,” he returned, raising his soft hat.

Elsie compelled herself to speak. “Have you met a friend?” she enquired, with simulated interest.

“Hallo! Where have you been, I should like to know? Isn’t it funny?—that’s a fellow who was at our place for nearly a month during the war. Belcher, his name is. He was the very one that kept the chair for me. Did you two get seats somewhere else?”

“Yes,” said Elsie swiftly.

“It was good, wasn’t it—the band I mean? Horace has missed something by staying at home.”

Geraldine was evidently, and contrary to her wont, in high good humour.

They walked back to the boarding-house, Leslie Morrison between the two girls, Geraldine openly hanging on to his arm. His other hand was out of sight in his pocket, Elsie’s warm, soft fingers locked in his.

At the door they parted.

“Good-night and sweet repose,” said Geraldine indifferently, but she waited for her sister to precede her into the lighted house.

Elsie moved in a dream. It startled her when Geraldine, looking curiously at her under the glare of the electric light in the hall, said suddenly:

“What’s the matter with you, Elsie? You look moon-struck, and your hair’s all over the place, half down your back.”

“Is it?” Elsie put up her hands and pushed up the soft, loose mass under her veil again. “I’m going to bed,” she said, in a voice that sounded oddly in her own ears. “Tell Horace, will you? I’ve a splitting head.”

She felt an unutterable longing to be in the dark, and alone with her new and overwhelming bliss.

“You’re a nice one, I must say, leaving me alone all the evening, and then dashing off upstairs the minute we get in. I should think Horace would find something to say to you——”

Elsie neither heard nor heeded.

She ran upstairs and into the small double bedroom. It contained two beds, and for the first time since their marriage she and Horace had occupied separate ones.

To-night Elsie felt that she could never be thankful enough for the comparative solitude that would enable her to feel herself free again.

She tore off her thin summer clothes, shook down her cloud of hair, ran across the room in her nightdress to snap off the light, and then almost threw herself into bed.

In the blessed darkness, Elsie lay with hands clasped over her throbbing heart, and relived every instant of the evening, thrilling to a happiness so intense that she felt as though she must die of it.

She was perfectly incapable just then of looking beyond the immediate present and the glorious certainty of seeing Leslie Morrison again in the morning.

Although Elsie had been attracted, in a sensual and superficial manner, by a number of men, she had never in her life loved before, and the passion for Morrison that had suddenly swept into her life held all the force of a long repressed element violently and unexpectedly liberated.

Body, soul and spirit, she was obsessed almost to madness by this young man, several years her junior, whom she had not known a month.

When Horace Williams came up to bed it was nearly midnight, and Elsie, her face half buried under the sheet, pretended to be asleep.

IV

The love-affair of Elsie Williams and Leslie Morrison swept on its course, and in the early days of their madness neither of them paused for an instant to count its possible cost.

It seemed, indeed, as though Fate were deliberately simplifying their way.

Horace Williams appeared unable to give his attention to anything beyond his newly-discovered digestive trouble, and remained constantly indoors through the hottest and finest of the summer days, experimenting upon himself with drugs, and studying tables of dietetic values. He questioned Elsie very little as to her movements, taking it for granted that she, Morrison, and Geraldine formed a trio.

In point of fact, the youth whom Geraldine had met at the Sunday evening concert, and whom she spoke of as Percy Belcher, now almost always made a fourth in the party.

Geraldine monopolised him eagerly, and openly showed her triumph at feeling that she could now afford to relinquish Leslie Morrison.

Elsie and Morrison went swimming together, and lay on the hot, crowded sands, and dropped behind the others when they all went for walks, and sat with locked hands and her cheek against his shoulder in the stifling, thrilling darkness of the picture theatre, watching together the representation of a love that was never anything but the reflection of their own, the eternal triumph of a Man and a Woman, pale representatives on the screen of Elsie Williams and Leslie Morrison.

The golden fortnight drew to its close, and with the end of the Torquay holiday, it suddenly seemed to Elsie as though the end of the world must come.

“What are we to do, Leslie?” she gasped.

“I don’t know, darling,” he said miserably.

“You’re going to be in town for a bit?”

“For a little while. They’re sending me off again, pretty soon—abroad this time.”

“I can’t live without seeing you sometimes. Oh, Les, how can I go back to the old life with Horace after this?”

“Elsie,” said Morrison very low, “would he divorce you if——?”

“Not a hope. It costs money, and he’s too mean. Besides, he’d never do it if he thought I wanted it. He’s cruel, is Horace.”

“Not to you?”

“He doesn’t knock me about, if that’s what you mean—he knows I wouldn’t stand it—but of course he doesn’t care for me, or for anybody but himself. I was told he gave his first a rotten time—anyway, I know she used to look wretched enough. You know there was a first Mrs. Williams?”

“No, I didn’t. Of course, I saw he was much older than you. Oh, Elsie, whatever made you marry him?”

“Oh, I was a fool and I thought I’d like to be married, and get away from home. I didn’t know what it was going to be like, that’s certain. Oh, Les, fancy if I was still Elsie Palmer, and you and me could get married!” She gave a sob.

“Don’t, sweetheart! I’d have asked for your promise, fast enough, if you’d been free, but I couldn’t marry any girl till I’m earning a bit more.”

“Don’t you get a good screw, Leslie?”

“Rotten. But I’m jolly lucky to be in a job at all these days, I suppose.”

“Lucky!” Elsie echoed the word drearily. “You and I aren’t amongst the lucky ones, boy. I don’t see how things are ever going to come right for us, without a miracle happens.”

“He—Williams—may ... he may die.”

“Not he!” said Elsie bitterly. “There’s nothing the matter with him. All this talk about indigestion is stuff and nonsense—just fads he’s got into his head. There’s nothing wrong with Horace. And it’s always the ones who aren’t wanted that live on and on. But how am I going to bear it, after this wonderful time we’ve been having?” She began to cry.

“Elsie, don’t, darling! I’ll think of a way. There must be some way out.”

Leslie took her in his arms and she forgot everything else.

On the last evening they all went to the theatre together, and it was there, for the first time seeming awake to the situation, that Horace Williams, sitting at the end of the row of stalls, suddenly leaned across Geraldine and looked long and balefully at his wife.

She felt herself changing colour.

Morrison, however, observed nothing. He talked only to Elsie, looked only at her during the interval, and whilst the play was in progress and the lights in the theatre lowered, his hand sought and held hers.

“Elsie, we can’t part like this. How can I see you alone?”

“We can’t—not here. But Horace starts at the office again on Wednesday, and he’s there all day. Come to the house.”

“It means an age without seeing you. Elsie, can I write to you?”

“Yes ... no....” She was startled. “Oh, Les, darling, I’d love your letters!... But he’d see them. Wait a minute.”

She thought rapidly.

“Address them to the post-office—I’ll call there. He doesn’t know or care what I do all day, so long as I’m always there in the evenings when he gets back.”

But Elsie was to find herself mistaken. Her husband, after their return to the suburban villa, displayed a very unmistakable interest in her movements during the hours of his absence at work.

He obliged her to give him an account of her day, and took to ringing her up on the telephone for no acknowledged reason, and always at a different hour.

At first, Elsie cared little. She and Leslie Morrison met daily, and on one occasion spent the afternoon in the country together. Elsie recklessly telephoned to her own house at seven o’clock that evening, and said that she was with Irene Tidmarsh, and should not come home that night.

“You must,” said the hollow voice at the other end of the line.

“I can’t. Her father’s awfully ill, and she’s afraid of being left.”

“When shall you be home?”

“To-morrow.”

“I’ll come and fetch you.”

“All right,” said Elsie boldly. “What time?”

There was no answer. Williams had rung off.

Elsie knew, beyond the possibility of mistake, that her husband suspected her; but in the intense excitement that possessed her she was conscious of nothing so much as of relief that a crisis should be at hand.

She spent the night with Leslie Morrison at a tiny hotel in Essex.

Early next morning they travelled back to London, parting at Liverpool Street station.

“Let me know what happens directly you can, darling,” urged the man.

“I’ll telephone. Anyway, come round as soon as you can get away. He won’t be in before seven.”

“Good-bye, Elsie darling. I’ll never, never forget....”

He left her, joining a hurrying throng of other young men wearing soft hats and carrying little brown bags, nearly all of them hastening towards the City.

Elsie proceeded by train and tram to the house of Irene’s father.

Her friend opened the door to her. “Hullo! I thought I should see you. That hubby of yours is on the warpath.”

“What’s happened?”

“Oh, nothing, thanks to me! Come in, Elsie. Have you had breakfast?”

“I’ve had some tea; I don’t want anything else. Tell me about Horace.”

“Well, Horace, as you call him, saw fit to come round here at eleven o’clock p.m. last night, and got me out of my virtuous downy by ringing at the front door bell till I thought the house was on fire. He said he’d ‘come for’ his wife, if you please!”

“I know. I told him I was going to spend the night at your place,” said Elsie calmly. “I suppose you didn’t happen to tumble to it, Ireen?”

“I’ve not known you all these years for nothing, old girl,” said Irene, grinning. “What do you take me for? I told him you were in bed and asleep, and had been for hours.”

“You’re a real sport, Ireen! How did he take it?”

Irene pursed up her lips and shook her head. “He asked me to tell you to ring him up first thing this morning. If you ask me, you’re in for trouble. And p’r’aps now you’ll be so kind as to tell me what it all means, and why on earth you couldn’t have given me fair warning before saying you were here. It’s lucky for you I didn’t give the whole show away on the spot.”

Elsie, habitually ready to discuss any of her love-affairs with Irene, had told her nothing about Leslie Morrison. But she saw now that a degree of frankness was inevitable.

Irene listened, sitting on the kitchen table, her shrewd, cynical gaze fixed upon Elsie. “You’re for it, all right,” she observed dryly. “I thought directly I saw you after you’d got back from Torquay that there was something up. But I somehow didn’t think you’d go off the deep end like that, Elsie. Why, you’re dotty about him!”

“Yes,” said Elsie, “I am.”

“And what do you suppose is going to happen?”

Elsie groaned. “I wish to the Lord that Horace would do the decent thing, or go West—and let me have a chance of happiness.”

“He won’t,” said Irene. “Well, whatever you do, don’t make a fool of yourself and run off with this fellow. It simply isn’t worth it, when he hasn’t got a penny, and not very often when he has.”

“If I thought Horace would divorce me it’d be different,” Elsie said. She was not listening to Irene at all. “Though even then, I don’t know what we would live on. Leslie hasn’t anything except his salary, and that’s tiny, and I’m sure I couldn’t earn a penny if I tried. Mother wouldn’t help me, either, if I did a thing like that.”

“No more would anybody else. And surely to goodness, Elsie, you’d never be such a fool. Think what it would mean to be disgraced, and have a scandal.”

“I wouldn’t mind that with him.”

Irene groaned. “You are far gone! Well, the worse it is while it lasts, the sooner it’s over. You’ll see sense again one of these days, I suppose. Meanwhile, you’d better ’phone that husband of yours.”

Elsie’s conversation with Williams over the telephone was brief. She agreed to come home at midday, and neither made any reference to the visit of Williams at eleven o’clock on the previous night.

Elsie anticipated a scene with her husband, and felt indifferent to the prospect. She had not enough imagination to work herself up in advance, and, moreover, her faculties were entirely occupied with the blissful expectation of seeing Morrison again that afternoon.

He came some hours after she had arrived home.

Elsie had done some shopping in the morning. With her husband’s money she had bought a gold-nibbed fountain-pen for Leslie, and had paid for copies of a photograph of herself.

She had scarcely ever in her life before given anyone a present, and Leslie Morrison’s ardent thanks, and rapture over the photograph, caused her the most acute pleasure.

“Darling, it’s lovely, and it’s just you! I shall always carry it about with me, done up with your dear letters.”

“Don’t keep my letters, Leslie,” said Elsie suddenly.

“Why ever not?”

A sudden recollection had come to her ... “Beware of the written word....”

The medium to whom Irene had once taken her had said that. She had also said other things; had told Elsie that love would come to her.... Perhaps she really knew....

“I’d rather you didn’t, really,” she said feebly. “Suppose—suppose Horace ever got hold of them——”

“How could he? Besides, Elsie darling, he’s got to know about us some time. I wish you’d let me tell him now. I can’t go on like this; it’s a low-down game coming to a man’s house without his knowledge and—and making love to his wife.”

“His wife!” said Elsie angrily. “Don’t call me that. I may be his wife in law, but it’s you that I really belong to.”

“Well, let me have it out with him then,” said Morrison earnestly. “We don’t know, after all. He may be ready to do the decent thing, and set you free.”

“I don’t care if you do. I’m pretty sure he guesses.... Horace has always been jealous, though he’s never had any cause before.”

“He didn’t say anything at Torquay?”

“No, it’s since we got back. He asked me once if you were engaged to Geraldine, and I said no. And he asked if you meant to come and see us here, and I told him most likely you would. He didn’t say anything much, but he hates a man coming near the place, really.”

“I’d far rather have it out with him,” young Morrison repeated. His face was resolute, and he stood his ground when Elsie, starting violently, exclaimed:

“I believe that’s Horace now! I can hear his key in the door. He’s never in at this hour as a rule—the skunk, he’s come to spy on me!”

“Darling, it’s all right!” said Morrison.

He put the photograph away in his breast-pocket with hands that trembled slightly. Both fixed their eyes on the door as it opened upon the figure of the little elderly solicitor. His face wore a no more sardonic expression than was habitual with him, and Elsie could not deduce from it whether or not he was surprised to see Leslie Morrison.

Neither man made any movement towards shaking hands, but they greeted one another conventionally, and talked a little, as though indifferently, of the holiday at Torquay.

Leslie asked whether Mr. Williams was any better in health, and the solicitor replied coldly:

“No, I am no better. I daresay my case would be a very interesting one, from the point of view of a doctor. But I am not one to give up, and I have no doubt that a great many people do not realise there is anything the matter with me.”

He turned his eyes upon Elsie for a moment as he spoke.

At the same instant, the inevitable thought that had flashed through her mind at his words caused Elsie to cast a lightning glance towards Leslie Morrison.

It was that glance that her husband intercepted.

V

They had another evening together before the storm broke.

Morrison took Elsie to a dance.

He issued his invitation boldly, in the presence of Williams, and to Elsie’s secret astonishment, her husband made no objection to her acceptance.

She wanted terribly to buy a new dress for the dance, but dared not risk a reminder to her husband, for fear he should suddenly forbid her to go. Finally she decided to wear a black dress, covered with black net, and with black net shoulder-straps. It was not new, but she had seldom had any occasion for wearing it, and she had enough money in hand for the housekeeping to enable her to buy a pair of black artificial silk stockings and slim black satin shoes with high heels.

Round her thick, light hair she tied a black velvet band with a spray of forget-me-nots worked in blue silk across it, but instinct told her to leave her full, beautiful throat unadorned by any of the few cheap ornaments that she possessed. Her smooth skin showed a sort of golden glow that merged imperceptibly into the warm pallor of her round arms and the dimpled base of her neck.

Elsie looked for a long while at herself in the glass, rubbed lip-salve into her already scarlet mouth, and, despite the “Japanesey” effect of lids that seemed half-closed, wondered at the brilliant light in her own hazel-grey eyes.

Leslie Morrison came for her, and they left the house together before Williams arrived from the office.

To both of them it was an unforgettable evening.

Elsie, like all women of her type, was a born dancer. Nevertheless, before the evening was half over, they had left the crowded hall for a screened alcove in an upper gallery, where the reiterated refrain of syncopated airs, and the wistful rhythm of valse-times, reached them through the haze of ascending cigarette-smoke.

It was three o’clock when they exchanged a last close, passionate embrace and Elsie, pale, exhausted, with indescribably shining eyes, crept upstairs to her room, undressed, and lay down noiselessly by the side of her husband to relive the evening that she had spent with her lover.

Williams left the house next morning without waking her, but it was that evening that the inevitable crisis came.

The solicitor returned home nearly two hours before his usual time, and found Leslie Morrison just preparing to enter the house.

The two men went in together.

Elsie started violently at the sight of her husband, and then laughed artificially. “Hullo! It’s a case of Oh, what a surprise, isn’t it? You’re back early, Horace.”

“Yes,” said her husband.

“I hope you’re not too tired after last night,” Morrison began.

“Oh no, thanks! It was fine. Horace, I haven’t told you about the dance yet. It’s a shame you weren’t there.”

The moment she said the words, Elsie knew that she had made a mistake.

“Yes,” Williams remarked quietly, “you’d have liked me to be there, wouldn’t you? Well, let me inform you that you aren’t going to any more dances for the present.”

“Whatever do you mean, Horace?”

“Morrison knows what I mean all right, and so do you, you little ——” His low, snarling tone gave the effect of spitting the ugly word at her.

Leslie Morrison sprang to his feet. “Look here, sir——”

The solicitor held up his hand. “That’ll do. It’s not for you to adopt that tone in speaking to me, you know. Please to remember that I’m Elsie’s husband.”

“Look here,” Morrison began again, “I’m perfectly ready to make a clean breast of it. I do love Elsie. Her and me were just pals at first, and then I suppose I didn’t exactly realise where I was drifting. But I’m free to confess that I lost my head one—one evening a little while ago—and I told her I loved her.” He glanced at Elsie, as though for a further cue.

“And of course she told you that she was a pure woman, and a loving wife, and you must never speak like that again?” sneered Horace Williams.

“Elsie, don’t let him speak like that.... Tell him!” urged Morrison.

“I don’t need any telling,” Williams retorted smoothly. “She thinks she’s in love with you, of course.”

“I am in love with Leslie,” said Elsie suddenly. “And if you did the decent thing, Horace, you’d set me free to marry him. You and me have never been happy together. I didn’t ever ought to have married you, but I was a young fool.”

“Understand this, the pair of you,” said the little solicitor clearly and deliberately. “I shall never set you free, as you call it. You’ve married me, and you’ve got to stay with me. As for you,” he turned to Leslie Morrison, “you can leave my house. And understand clearly that I won’t have you inside it again. And if I catch you speaking to my wife again, or meeting her, or having anything whatsoever to do with her, it’ll be the worse for you.”

Morrison took a sudden step forward, his hands clenched, and Elsie screamed, but Horace Williams stood his ground.

“I’m well within my rights, and you know it,” he declared. “I could horsewhip you, in fact, and if you were fool enough to bring a case for assault it’d go against you. Clear out! That’s my last word to you.”

“Will you let Elsie have a divorce?”

“No, I won’t.”

“Will you let her have a legal separation, then? You’ve her own word for it that she’s not happy with you. I’m not thinking of myself, but you can’t have the cruelty to keep her tied to you when she’s miserable. Let her have her freedom.”

For all answer, Williams pointed to the door. The expression of his face had not altered by a hair’s-breadth.

Morrison turned to Elsie, white and tense. “Elsie, you hear what he says. What d’you want me to do?”

Elsie had lost her nerve. She began to cry hysterically. Instead of answering Morrison’s appeal, she turned to her husband.

“Why can’t you let us just be pals, Leslie and me?” she sobbed. “You bring your horrid, mean jealousy into everything. I s’pose you don’t grudge me having a friend of my own age, do you?”

Leslie Morrison instantly and loyally followed her lead. “If Elsie is kind enough to let me be her friend, and—and take her out every now and then, and that sort of thing, I’m willing to forget what’s just passed, and simply ask you as man to man if you’ve any objection to us being, as she says, just pals,” he said steadily enough.

“I have every objection. You young fool, Elsie has just said in so many words that she’s in love with you. Did you mean that, Elsie, or did you not?”

Elsie sobbed more and more violently, and her voice rose to an incoherent screech. “How do I know what I mean or don’t mean, when you make a row like this? But I’ll tell you this much, anyway, it’s true what he said; I’m wretched with you, and if you were half a man, you’d set me free.”

“There, that’s enough,” said Williams. “Going round and round in a circle won’t help any of us, and you ought to know by this time, Elsie, that I always mean what I say. You’ll please to remember what you were when I married you—a little fool of a typist, without a penny, whose mother kept a boarding-house and was only too glad of the money I gave her. It doesn’t take a genius to say what would have happened to you if you hadn’t found a man fool enough to marry you, either.”

“Stop that!” Morrison shouted.

The solicitor blinked at him quietly. “I’ve twice told you to get out of my house,” he observed. “Don’t make me say it a third time. It’ll be the worse, if you do—for Elsie.”

“Are you threatening her, you—you brute, you?”

“I object to your friendship with my wife. That’s all—and enough too. Now go.”

“Oh yes, go!” said Elsie suddenly, breaking into renewed sobs and tears. “I can’t stand this. You’d better go, Leslie boy, really you had. I shall do myself in, that’s all.”

“Don’t talk like that——” the youth began frantically, but Williams opened the door, and stood silently pointing to it.

There was something strangely inexorable in his little, trivial figure and sinister, passionless expression.

“Elsie,” said Morrison brokenly, “if ever you want me, send for me. I’ll come!”

He went out of the room, and they heard him go down the stairs and let himself out at the front door.

“That’s the end of that,” said Williams in a quiet, satisfied voice. “Stop that howling, Elsie. You didn’t really suppose that I didn’t know what was going on?”

She sobbed and would not answer.

There was a long silence, and at last Elsie, face downwards on the sofa, began to feel frightened and curious. She bore it as long as she could, and then looked up.

Her husband was gazing out of the window, in which a potted aspidistra stood upon a wicker stand between soiled white curtains.

At the slight movement that she made he turned his head. “Elsie, tell me. Did you really mean what you said, that you’re in love with that boy?”

To her incredulous surprise, his voice had become hoarse and almost maudlin.

“You only said it to make me angry, didn’t you?”

In a flash Elsie saw the wisdom of allowing him at least to pretend to such a belief. “Perhaps I did,” she said slowly. “Anyway, it’s true enough that we aren’t particularly happy together, and never have been. And I meant what I said about a separation, right enough, Horace.”

“You won’t get one,” said Williams, and his voice had become vicious-sounding once more. “And remember what I’ve said—that fellow is never to set foot in here again, and you and he are not to meet in future.”

The following morning Elsie went to the High Street post-office and found there the letter that she had expected.

“My Own Darling Girlie,

“What is to be done? I can’t tell you, darling, what a hound I felt to leave you all alone with that jealous brute yesterday and yet the awful thing is that he has the right to you and I have none. Oh, Elsie life is hard isn’t it darling? I wish I could take you away but that cannot be and it is you that have to bear the brunt of it all except that I am in hell knowing what you are going through all the time. Perhaps that is not an expression I ought to use to you but you must excuse it for I hardly know what I am writing.

“One of our chaps has gone sick, and they are sending me to the North instead of him which means we can’t meet again as I go off to-morrow. But write to me darling and tell me what it is best to do now. Would it simplify things if we were to be just friends and no more?

“Cheer up, Elsie perhaps some day things may come right for us—who knows? He may die; doesn’t he always say there is something wrong with him?

“A thousand kisses for you, dearie. I have your sweet photo with me and love to look at it and re-read your wonderful letters. Write and tell me everything, and what you think we had better do. Shall we be able to meet when I come back at the end of the month?

“No more at present, from

“Your own true lover, Leslie, “Boy.”

To Elsie, Leslie Morrison’s love-letters were wonderful.

She read and re-read this one, but when she had answered it, she burnt it.

Certain words of the clairvoyante, whom she had once visited with Irene Tidmarsh, she had never been able to forget, and of late they had haunted her anew.

“Beware of the written word....”

Elsie burnt all Morrison’s letters to her, and asked him to burn all those that she wrote him.

Gradually these letters that passed between them grew to be the most important factor in her life.

Elsie, who had detested writing, now desired nothing so much as to pour out her soul on paper, and the limitations that she found imposed upon her through lack of education and the power to express herself made her angry.

Again and again she asked Morrison in her letters to take her away, and after a time his steadfast refusals bred in her mind the first unbearable suspicion that her passion was the greater of the two. Her letters became wilder and wilder.

Sometimes she threatened suicide, or gave hysterical and entirely imaginary descriptions of scenes with her husband; sometimes she expressed a reckless desire for Horace’s death, or asked if she could “give him something” unspecified. These phrases, to a large extent, were meaningless, but Elsie frantically hoped by them to impress upon Morrison the extent of her love for him.

When he got back from the North of England they met surreptitiously.