F.E. Mills Young (continued 4)

“I hope you are not going to give me cause to regret having written that letter,” she said seriously.

“I hope not,” he responded with equal gravity. “Why should you imagine anything of the sort? As I told you before, I only wish to be helpful to her.”

She turned the subject, and talked to him on other matters; but Dare, after a brief interval, brought the conversation back to the topic which most interested him. He got very little satisfaction from Mrs Carruthers. Carruthers was more communicative. From him Dare heard the whole story, embellished with details which Mrs Carruthers had not heard. Arnott was pretty freely discussed at the club, of which he and Carruthers were members. Carruthers had come round to believe in his wife’s theory that Arnott had eloped with the governess. The fact that she was touring with a musical troupe, was in his opinion merely a blind. When he tired of the girl, doubtless he would chuck it and come home.

“Well,” said Dare, “I’m glad you told me. But I don’t believe a word of it. He wasn’t with the girl in Johannesburg, save in the sense of being in the same town. I’m going to clear up this business for my own satisfaction. To-morrow I shall call on Mrs Arnott.”

“I supposed that was your object,” Carruthers answered. “But you won’t get much out of her. It’s my belief she is as ignorant as the rest of us. She’s feeling this, Dare. It makes me feel sloppily sentimental merely to look at her. The chap wants kicking. You be careful what you are doing, my boy. I am rather of Connie’s opinion that you’d be wiser to keep out of this. It’s the devil of a business to attempt comforting a pretty married woman. Stick to widows and spinsters, I say. What!”

“You’re an awful old ass, Dickie,” was all Dare said in response.

Dare experienced a curious exasperation in the knowledge that the Carruthers both doubted the disinterestedness of his purpose in seeking to be of use to Pamela. A man may befriend the woman he loves without any base thought in connection with her. In coming to Wynberg to see Pamela, Dare had no other intention than to be of service to her. The doubtful possibility of being able to serve a woman whose husband has presumably deserted her, did not strike him. Once in possession of the facts he would be in a position at least to advise her; might, if things were not as Carruthers represented them, assist in putting a stop to the scandal that was afloat. It was abominable to reflect that Pamela’s name was being bandied about at the clubs.

Pamela was in the garden when Dare called in the morning. The boy was asleep on a kaross spread under the trees, and she was seated in a chair near him, sewing, when Dare opened the gate and entered. The sound of his footsteps on the hard gravel caused her to look up; and an expression of quick alarm showed in her face as her eyes met his.

He advanced swiftly towards her; and, as he crossed the lawn, she rose and stood, flushed, embarrassed, painfully self-conscious, looking at him in a dismayed silence which she seemed unable to break. Dare spoke first.

“I’ve sprung a surprise on you,” he said, and took her proffered hand and held it firmly gripped in his. “I’m staying next door.”

“I didn’t know you were expected,” Pamela returned, recovering herself with an effort, and giving him a welcoming smile. “I haven’t seen Connie for days.”

“It was a surprise for her too,” he admitted. “I came self-invited. Are you busy? I should like to stay for a chat, if I may.”

“That’s my only business at present,” she said, and pointed towards the sleeping child. “I’m on guard.”

Dare looked down at the child.

“The little chap grows,” he remarked. “He was only a baby when last I saw him. How’s the girlie?”

“Oh! very well. If you stay you will see her later. She is out at present. Sit down, won’t you?”

He drew a chair forward facing hers on the side farthest away from the child, and sat down. It recalled, save for the boy’s unconscious presence, the afternoon when he had last sat there with her, and had wrung from her the promise which she had failed to keep.

“It is like old times, this,” he observed, and scrutinised her thoughtfully as he sat back in his seat. Despite the flush in her cheeks which the sight of him had brought there, he could not fail to detect traces of the trouble which had wrought such a marked change in her appearance that, had he needed assurance there was something in what Carruthers had told him, her face would have supplied the necessary proof. “I’m awfully glad to see you again. I came with that object,” he said.

“To see me!” Pamela looked puzzled.

“To see you,” he repeated. “Do you remember something I asked you to do in this garden, the last time we sat here?”

Pamela did not immediately answer. That she followed his question he realised by the deepening of the flush in her cheeks. She lay back in her chair, very still and quiet, the long lashes drooping above her eyes, veiling the trouble in their depths. Dare sat forward now, regarding her steadily.

“What was that?” she asked presently; and he knew that she put the question merely to gain time. She understood perfectly to what he referred.

“You promised me that if ever you were in a position in which a friend might prove helpful, you would extend to me a friend’s privilege,” he said earnestly. “Have you kept that promise?”

“I have not been in that position,” Pamela replied without looking at him.

Dare laid a hand on her dress.

“Pamela,” he said quietly, “I think I deserve that you should be honest with me.”

She turned very white. How he had learnt of the trouble which she believed was known only to herself, she had no means of judging, but that he was in possession of certain information his manner assured her. She wondered how he had come by his knowledge,—how much he knew. Suddenly she experienced again the longing to confide in him, the intense desire for his sympathy and counsel which had moved her to the point of writing to him on the day when she had discovered the further proof of Arnott’s treachery. Since that day until now she had not thought of appealing to him.

“I did write,” she confessed in a low voice, “over a month ago; but I tore the letter up. Then something happened, and I felt I couldn’t write.”

He looked at her for a moment or so in silence. The flush had come back to her cheeks, and the blue of her eyes as they met his darkened almost, to black. The pathos, and the wistfulness of them wrung his heart.

“I’m glad you thought of writing,” he said; “that was something towards it anyway. I want you to go a little further and confide in me fully.”

“I’ve thought of doing that,—I’ve wanted to,” she said. “But—”

She glanced at her sleeping child, and from him back into the strong, sympathetic face of this man who sought to serve her, whose help she so sorely needed.

“If I only knew what to do!” she cried.

“I’m telling you what to do,” he answered. “It seems to me perfectly simple. Whatever the difficulty is it can’t make it easier hugging it to yourself; and if it lies within the scope of human power to help you, you know I’ll do anything for you.” He leaned towards her suddenly and grasped her hand. “Pamela, don’t you trust me?”

“Yes,” she said, troubled and hesitating... “Yes. But I can’t talk to you here.”

“No,” he said. “But later...”

“When Maggie comes for the child,” she answered in a whisper, “we will go indoors... I—will trust you...”

Chapter Twenty One.

No matter how great a control a man exercises over himself in ordinary circumstances, brought face to face with the painfully unexpected it is frequently the self-contained man who loses the grip on his emotions, and with it his more extended outlook in favour of an immense concentration upon the personal factor created by the new development. The story which Pamela unfolded produced some such effect on Dare. The emotions which moved him while listening to the sordid, pitiful tale were varied. The story of Arnott’s bigamous marriage enraged him. The personal factor crept into that. The man had not only cheated the girl, he had cheated him,—robbed him of the only woman he had ever wished to marry. He had stolen her from him, having no right to her. This thought filled him with a bitter sense of personal loss, of personal injury. The element of self threw his imagination out of focus for the time. He had a very strong feeling that he wanted to, that he had to, punish Arnott for that mean deception. He would have enjoyed coming to grips with the man.

Then he became acutely aware that Pamela was still talking, telling him other things of an equally painful nature. With an effort he brought his mind back to the subject.

This part of the story was more difficult to tell. Pamela told it in short fragmentary sentences. She concealed nothing. She spoke of her enlightenment, of the difficult choice offered her, and her inability to choose the right course, in low strained tones and with downcast eyes. She did not look at Dare while she spoke. He was standing in front of the window, with his back to the opening, watching her with grave intent face which betrayed little of what he was feeling as he listened to the difficult recital. He was endeavouring, despite the disappointment her confession caused him, to excuse, even to defend, her choice. As she urged, there had been the child to consider, and at that time she loved the man.

Then she spoke of the waning of Arnott’s love, of his frequent unkindness, and her own increasing indifference. Again Dare was conscious of his personal interest in this part of the story. The self-confessed decrease in her love for the man who was not her husband, affected him directly. He felt glad that she had told him that.

She passed on to Arnott’s infatuation for the girl, who was her children’s governess, of their disappearance on the same day, and the inevitable conclusion which, against her own will, she had arrived at in connection with that circumstance, and the fact that he had not written, nor sent any explanation of his absence.

Then came the most difficult part of the whole narrative. Pamela had fetched the cablegram, which she had found in Arnott’s desk and transferred to the safe, and this she placed in Dare’s hand as the simplest way of explaining the duplicity she found impossible to put into words.

“You see,” she said, “that cablegram is a year old. He received that ten months before he left home... And he never told me. I found it after he had gone. He did not intend to take advantage of that knowledge... He didn’t care.”

Tears, the first she had shed, came into her eyes. She wiped them away quietly.

“He doesn’t care,” she said, “what becomes of me and the children.”

Dare, as he held in his hands the cablegram which assured him that the man who had tricked this woman to whom he was not lawfully married, was now free to fulfil his obligation, realised perfectly that of all people calculated to be of service to her in the present crisis he was the worst chosen. He was only conscious of a feeling of regret that the barrier had been removed. It swamped for the time the more chivalrous emotion of pity for Pamela in her helpless position. He stared at the cablegram for a long while without speaking. Then he said, still without looking at her—

“I am afraid there isn’t any reason for doubting the correctness of your deduction in this instance. The evidence is damning.” He lifted his eyes from the paper suddenly and fixed them upon her. “This matter wants thinking over carefully,” he said. “I wasn’t prepared for this. It’s worse than anything I had anticipated.”

The sight of her distressed face, of the slow tears raining over her cheeks, unnerved him, and at the same time called forth his better qualities. He forgot himself in the more worthy emotion of compassion for her in her affliction.

“I hadn’t any idea that things were as bad as this,” he said. “Thank God! you told me. I’ll have to think out what’s best to be done. I’m unprepared, you see... But we’ve got to straighten the muddle somehow.”

He had in his mind a plan, which had presented itself when she confessed to the bogus nature of her marriage, whereby the muddle could be straightened in, what seemed to him in the circumstances, the simplest way; but in view of her present distress he hesitated to speak of that now. The knowledge of the death of Arnott’s wife complicated things.

“Oh!” she cried, with soft vehemence. “The comfort of having some one to confide in,—some one I can trust! I’ve been eating my heart out these last two months. The Carruthers are very kind,—but I couldn’t tell them what I have told you. And Mr Carruthers wouldn’t be able to advise me. He would wish me to consult a lawyer.” She clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “I couldn’t have all these intimate, disgraceful details publicly exposed.”

“No,” he said reassuringly; “of course not.”

But he did not see how without publicity the matter could possibly be satisfactorily arranged. She might, he decided, have to agree to that later. But he refrained from troubling her at the present stage with any such alternative.

“It appears to me,” he said slowly, “that the first thing to be done is to find Arnott. Until I have seen him it is impossible to come to any decision... Have I your permission to let him know that I am in full possession of the facts you have related?”

She looked a little frightened.

“Oh!” she said. “Must you tell him that? He will never forgive me.”

“Do you think that matters?” He tapped the cablegram he still held. “In face of this, I don’t think you have much to expect from him save what is gained through compulsion. We shall be forced to use our knowledge.”

She gazed up at him, faintly perplexed.

“What do you mean to do?” she asked.

“What do you want me to do?”

Pamela hesitated. Any love which had remained from the wreckage of the past had died with the finding of the cablegram after Arnott’s desertion. It seemed to her that all sense of feeling had died with it, except only the jealous maternal love, which gathered strength with the decline of the rest.

“I want only one thing from him,” she answered presently, her eyes evading his without however falling... “I’ve a right to that—his name. Don’t you think I am within my right in demanding that?”

“Yes,” he agreed, “but—”

Pamela glanced at him swiftly.

“You think he won’t consent?” she asked.

“I wasn’t thinking that. I imagine if it came to the point, we could oblige him to consent. But are you quite sure that course would be wise? Wouldn’t it, perhaps, entail fresh suffering on you?”

“I was not considering myself,” she said. “It doesn’t seem to matter much what becomes of me.”

He approached her, and stood over her, all the love that was in his heart revealed in his earnest eyes. He had not intended to speak of his love then; the time occurred to him as ill chosen; but while she discussed in such calm, dispassionate tones the only solution which presented itself to her mind, it seemed to him, if he delayed showing her another way out of her present trouble, the opportunity might not offer itself again.

“Won’t you,” he said very quietly, “take my name instead?”

He seated himself on the sofa beside her, and possessed himself of her hands, which he held in both his. Pamela made no attempt to withdraw them. White and distressed and manifestly disconcerted, she averted her gaze from his and stared past him out at the sunshine. Her sole reason for hesitating to write to Dare had resulted from the conviction that his regard for her was deeper than that of a friend. Her feeling for him did not bear analysis either. He was a man whom from the first she had liked and respected; the respect remained unaltered, but the liking had increased insensibly until it assumed an importance in her thoughts which she found it best to discourage. Not for a moment did it strike her that he made this offer out of pity for her. She knew that he loved her,—that he wanted her. His proposal filled her less with surprise than concern. She was sorry to know that her own broken life might embitter his.

“Won’t you,” he repeated in the same quiet voice as before, “accept my name? I think you know that I love you. I have loved you for a great many years. I shouldn’t speak of that now; only it seems to me such a tragic mistake you are making. The life you contemplate would be a wretched business. You will spoil the happiness of two lives—yours and mine—if you persist in it... I think I could make you happy, Pamela, if you would let me try.”

Deliberately she faced round and met his gaze with sad blue eyes which seemed to have lost entirely their old happy expression.

“I know you could,” she answered, her voice almost a whisper. “If it is any sort of satisfaction to you to hear it, I love you too. But I can’t do what you ask. For the sake of my children I must marry their father. Don’t you see the difference it makes to them?”

“I thought it might be that,” he said. “But consider, Pamela,—they are so young. Don’t you think they would be as happy and as safe under my guardianship?”

“That isn’t the point to consider,” she answered steadily. “When a woman has been circumstanced as I have been she realises the enormous difference these things make. I’ve felt the sting of it,—the dread of discovery,—the overwhelming sense of shame. I should be a selfish mother if I exposed my children to that. In whatever light you stood to them, you could never make good the position which they have a right to as their father’s children. Later, when they grow up, the world will make them feel that loss. If there were only myself to think of I wouldn’t hesitate. But we take upon ourselves a great responsibility when we bring a life into the world... It’s for the sake of the children... Oh! believe me, dear, it’s only for their sakes I refuse.”

The earnestness of her manner, the tears which dimmed her eyes and were with difficulty restrained, affected him deeply. He realised that the barrier which stood between them was insuperable as she saw it; but he was far from satisfied that she was right. Why in later years should the question of the children’s parentage arise? He would take them away from Africa, and adopt them legally. He endeavoured to explain this to her. Pamela listened quietly; but he felt that he failed in convincing her.

“It is dear of you,” she said, and pressed his hand. “But there is only one way in which I can hope to retrieve my mistake. I can’t help thinking that it is best for your sake that I cannot do what you ask. The past clings to a woman. She never succeeds in burying it. I love you for loving me. I love you for wanting to marry me in spite of all you know. It is difficult for me to refuse; but it is better so.”

“Oh! Pamela,” he said; “you are just racking me. My happiness is bound up in you. I’ve nursed my love for you hopelessly for years, until everything else has become subordinated to it. It’s part of myself. And now that you have it in your power to grant what I ask, you refuse. I want you, and you won’t come to me.”

“Don’t make it harder for me,” she pleaded. “It isn’t easy to refuse. Can’t you see, dear, I don’t belong to myself any longer? I belong to the man who took my life and threw it aside when he had no further use for it. He has had the best of me,—my youth—my love.” He winced. “Yes. I loved him once—passionately. I didn’t believe it possible that I could ever love any one as I loved him. But I love you... not in the same way.” She leaned towards him, and her eyes shone mistily, like sapphires gleaming in some translucent pool. “I was always a little afraid of him. Perfect love does not know fear. I wish I could marry you; but it isn’t possible... I belong to him—the father of my children. I’ve got to live for the children now. Their claim on me counts above every other consideration.”

He drew her nearer to him by the hands he still held clasped in his, and looked steadily into her face.

“And if he refuses?” he said hoarsely... “Pamela, if he refuses to agree to your demand?”

Pamela’s eyes lingered on his for a while, the doubt which his question aroused calling up a dread of numberless possibilities.

“Oh!” she said, and paused dismayed. “He can’t refuse,” she added in strained sharpened tones.

She turned her head aside, and quite suddenly, without premonition, she was weeping in a furtive, frightened fashion that was immensely disconcerting to Dare. Her tears stabbed him. He got up and wandered away to the window and stood with his back to her in an attitude of deep dejection. A tormenting remorse gripped him.

“He can’t refuse,” he said reassuringly. “That will be all right. He can’t on the face of things refuse...”

Chapter Twenty Two.

Dare lunched alone with Mrs Carruthers. He was a little unpunctual; but she waited for him, and they sat down as soon as he came in. She did not ply him with questions; she kept her curiosity within bounds until the meal was well advanced. He was strangely quiet and preoccupied. She did not know what to make of his dejected silence. Mysteries were worrying to Connie Carruthers’ practical nature. It was the flavour of mystery which clung about the happenings next door that caused her, despite the warmth of her affection for Pamela, to avoid the house of late. She had the keen dislike of a healthy minded person for anything in the way of concealment. Discreet reticence was praiseworthy, but furtive silence bred distrust. His visit next door had, it seemed to her, given George Dare the air of a conspirator. Whatever shadow hung over the house had enveloped him in its gloom. It was absurd in her opinion for a man to allow his feeling for a married woman to swamp him in this fashion; it betrayed a lack of dignity and self-respect.

Dare did not wait for her to question him; he looked across at her towards the finish of the meal, and plunged of his own accord into the subject.

“That man, Arnott, is a double-dyed scoundrel,” he said. “He has left that poor girl without a word. She doesn’t know where he is even. He doesn’t write to her.”

“I suppose,” Mrs Carruthers observed calmly, “if he has eloped with some one else he would be little likely to write to her. Why, in the name of commonsense, did she confide her troubles to you? You will become obsessed with the thought of the divorce court, and carry a ring in your waistcoat pocket in anticipation of the decree absolute. I wish I had eaten my pen before I wrote that letter to you.”

She became aware of the offence in Dare’s look, and was instantly contrite.

“George,” she said, “I didn’t mean to be an unfeeling beast. But you ought not to have come down. You ought not to mix yourself up in the Arnott’s affairs. You can’t do any good.”

“Some one’s got to see her through,” he said. “You haven’t done much in the way of helping.”

“She doesn’t confide in me,” Mrs Carruthers retorted drily.

“Perhaps you haven’t given her the opportunity,” he returned. “I don’t think you have shown a particularly friendly spirit. Why don’t you see more of her? She is moped to death.”

“My dear boy,” she replied, wholly unruffled, “it is bad form to push one’s self forward where one is obviously not wanted. Forcing confidences is not in my line.” She sipped her coffee, and regarded him with interest over the rim of the cup. “I have asked her in here repeatedly, but she invariably pleads the same excuse; she cannot leave the children. I am beginning to think with you that the possession of children is a qualified blessing.”

Dare made an unexpected exclamation.

“Oh, damn the children!”

He was so entirely sincere that he omitted to apologise. She smiled faintly, and continued her scrutiny of him and the sipping of her coffee.

“Smoke,” she said, “and give me a cigarette. It assists the reasoning faculties.”

He got up, and went round the table to her with his open case in his hand. When he had lighted her cigarette he returned to his seat.

“I don’t wish to appear inhospitable—” she began...

“I am leaving to-morrow,” he interrupted her shortly.

She blew a cloud of smoke and followed it as it curled upward with her eyes. Then she looked again at Dare. He was leaning with his elbows on the tablecloth, his expression gloomily abstracted, his sombre eyes as they met hers conveying a mute resentment. Her attitude struck him as peculiarly unsympathetic.

“You must not go in there again,” she said.

He stared in some surprise.

“I have no intention of doing so,” he answered. “I didn’t come down to fool about, but to gain information. I’ve learnt all I came to learn.”

“And what use are you going to make of your information?” she asked.

She could not, despite the utmost caution, disguise her strong curiosity. That he would rest satisfied in the inactive rôle of sympathiser she did not for a moment believe. He would want to do things, want to concern himself actively in what was after all no business of his. These lean men generally had a reserve of energy which broke forth at awkward seasons, and manifested itself in disquieting ways.

He knocked the ash from his cigarette against the rim of a saucer, and refrained from looking at her as he replied.

“I don’t know yet I suppose the immediate thing is to find Arnott, and discover what the fellow is really up to... I wish he were dead.”

“That would certainly simplify matters,” she said. “But people don’t die merely to be obliging. You’ll find him very much alive, I expect.”

He nodded in gloomy acquiescence.

“And while you are ransacking the country for Arnott, what about your own affairs?” she inquired.

“Oh! that’s all right. I’m entitled to leave.” He emitted a short laugh. “I believe you regard me in the light of an irresponsible person.”

“I’ve met wiser people,” she allowed. “Quixotism is a form of benevolent insanity. Look at it how you will, your undertaking is quixotic in the last degree.”

“So long as it is only that,” he returned, “I don’t see why you need set your face against it.”

“It’s the futility of it,” she said, “that appeals to me. What you purpose doing is a job for the Supreme Court; and even the law cannot force a man to return to his wife against his will.”

Dare made no answer to this. Had the position of affairs been simply as she believed it to be, he would not be undertaking this quest. An act of plain desertion would, as she had stated, have been a matter for the law to deal with. But the Arnotts’ case had to be kept out of the courts if possible for Pamela’s sake. He was very clear on that point. Pamela’s mistake in continuing to live with Arnott after her discovery of the truth made secrecy vitally important. That was a point which Arnott had probably taken into consideration.

“You are a big fool, George,” she said; “but I love you for your folly. I suppose most women admire quixotic men. I am going to be amenable now. I’ll do my part, never fear. I’ll stick to Pamela like a limpet. There’s a difficult time ahead for her,—a storm of scandal to be faced; but we’ll win through. Thank heaven! no one has ever been able to fling any mud at her!”

He gave her a quick look; she met it with a little uncertain laugh, and a light of indulgent affection in her eyes.

“We are creatures of circumstance,” she added; “but we are not ruled by our passions,—not all of us.”

To which Dare had nothing to say. He was very conscious at the moment of the dominating quality of his own passion; that he was not ruled by it was due rather to circumstances being against him than to any particular self-restraint. Had Pamela been willing to accept his proposal, he would have allowed no consideration to bar the way to their immediate marriage. As the case stood, however, his love was sufficiently strong and unselfish to move him to act as a disinterested friend who had at heart only an earnest desire to be of service to her. He meant to find Arnott, and persuade the man if possible to fulfil his obligation.

The quickest means of discovering Arnott’s whereabouts, Carruthers suggested, and Dare considered the advice sound enough to follow, was to find Blanche Maitland, whose movements, if she were still in her professional capacity, would be easier to trace.

“Though what on earth he expects to do when he does run across them,” Carruthers remarked to his wife, “beats me. Old George is off his balance.”

“This business of sex is a big muddle,” he commented later, philosophising while he undressed, to his wife’s sleepy amusement. “Odd how it takes some fellows! ... Seems to knock the brains out of an average sensible chap. Never thought old George would go silly over somebody else’s wife. It’s in some fellows, that sort of thing.”

He fussed about at the glass, and got into difficulties with his tie.

“Jolly glad he didn’t develop a tender passion for you, old girl... Damn the thing!”

The tie came away in his hand and was flung into a drawer. He banged the drawer to with noisy impatience.

“It’s just giving rein to one’s feelings,” he said, “that is the cause of it. One can’t do that sort of thing,—it’s not decent. It’s like taking too much to drink because one enjoys the sensation of being drugged. We’ve got to observe the decencies of life; it’s a social obligation. Pretty mess we’d make of things, if every one yielded to his impulses.”

He approached the bed and seated himself on the side of it and stared at his wife with a perturbed expression on his usually good-humoured face. She blinked an eyelid open, and returned his gaze with a kind of one-sided attention, and a drowsy smile that mocked his serious mood. Dickie in the rôle of moralist was unfamiliar and mildly diverting.

“George isn’t yielding to his impulses,” she said; “he’s acting in direct opposition to them.”

“He’s moonstruck over another man’s wife,” Carruthers returned; “and the other man is moonstruck over somebody else. What’s that but encouraging one’s fool sentimentalities? Some fellows enjoy messing about, and imagining themselves in love with every fresh face.”

“The hunter’s instinct,” she murmured sleepily.

Carruthers grunted.

“It’s abnormal vanity,” he replied... “that, and suggestion... Just giving rein to unwholesome thoughts. I suppose, if I wanted to, I could work up that sort of feeling in respect to lots of women.”

She opened both eyes at this, and regarded him with wide curiosity. Then she laughed.

“Silly old duffer!” she said. “I don’t think George’s influence is good for you. You had better get to bed, and leave off talking nonsense. I want to go to sleep.”

Carruthers got off the bed and repaired to his dressing-room, there to continue his reflections on the sex problem while he proceeded with the business of undressing.

“It’s nosing about for the scent of these things,” he mused, taking off a shoe, and holding it in his hand with a contemplative eye upon it, as though the sight of this familiar object presented aspects hitherto unobserved. “If a man trains his mind to think along commonsense lines, his feelings don’t run amok.”

He dropped the shoe on to the carpet, and focussed his attention on the pattern of his socks.

“Gods! what a muddle it is!” he muttered... “A beastly lot of sentiment,—a beastly uncomfortable time of it,—and then,—reaction. And men go out of their way to tumble into these kind of messes. Hanged if I can understand it!”

The following morning he surprised his wife with the inquiry:

“Connie, were you ever in love before you met me?”

“Lots of times,” she answered cheerfully.

“How was it you never married one of the crowd?” he asked, a trifle nettled by the unexpectedly frank reply.

“Because none of them asked me,” she replied with extraordinary candour.

“Oh!” he said. He pondered this for a second or so. “I suppose you married me as a sort of substitute?” he added.

She gave a little amused laugh.

“Guess again,” she said.

He went to her and put an awkward arm about her neck.

“Tell me,” he entreated. “I’m a duffer at guessing.”

“My reason for marrying you was precisely the same as yours for marrying me,” she answered provokingly, and pulled the encircling arm closer. Carruthers bent his head and kissed her.

“There isn’t a better reason,” he affirmed in satisfied tones. “I guess we’re all right.”

That before breakfast talk had the effect on Carruthers of inducing a kindly mood which inclined him to view Dare’s folly with greater toleration. He was even conscious of a certain sympathy with the man; his overnight impatience had moderated considerably. He threw out a few suggestions, intended to be helpful; and promised, without being asked, to keep Dare informed if anything transpired at that end.

Carruthers’ cheerfulness had an irritating effect upon Dare. He had passed a sleepless night, kept awake by the worried thoughts which had harassed him throughout the long hours; by the passion of longing which possessed him, which refused, despite his utmost effort, to be subdued. He wanted Pamela, wanted her urgently,—and he was fool enough to be about to assist in bringing off a marriage between her and the villain who had spoilt her life. The irony of the situation struck him in its full absurdity. It was the consummation of a tragedy wearing comedy’s mask,—the enforced marriage of a man and woman who had ceased to care for one another, for the sake of the new generation which had arisen as the result of their one-time passion.

Her decision was right, of course. It was the one unquestionably right step she had taken in the whole miserable affair. Because of its unanswerable equity he could only acquiesce.

Chapter Twenty Three.

Dare made inquiries in respect to the movements of the “Exotics,” the musical troupe with which Blanche Maitland had associated herself, and without much trouble traced them to Bloemfontein, and came up with them there.

On the evening of his arrival in the town he attended a performance at which they were advertised to appear. He wondered as he took his seat in the hall whether he should find the girl he sought among the performers, or if she had severed her connection with the troupe in favour of a more private mode of life.

He gazed round the well-filled room with the object of ascertaining whether Arnott was present. He was not. It was not very likely, Dare decided, that he would be; to show up at these performances would suit neither his inclination nor his policy. Still, there was just a chance.

The room was very full. It was a popular entertainment at popular prices. Dare resolved to satisfy his curiosity and then leave; he could gain nothing from sitting through the entertainment, and the night was extraordinarily close. Fortunately the “Exotics” came on early in the performance. They were billed to appear again between the pictures toward the finish. Songs and character dances formed their repertoire.

Dare looked expectantly towards the platform as they came on. There were nine of them, men and women; the ninth being the accompanist. She walked on behind the others, and went straight to the piano, a tall, striking-looking figure, clad in blue and silver which scintillated a cold brilliance where the lights caught the filmy draperies. It was Blanche Maitland. The calm, unsmiling face, set off by the stage finery, and crowned with the dark glossy hair, aglitter with sham diamonds, looked handsomer than he had ever seen it; but there was something repellant, he thought, in its cold, unyielding beauty, something unyouthful in her air of composed aloofness. She moved and acted like some handsome automaton. Not once did he observe her smile, or display interest in what she was doing. She was wonderfully inanimate. And yet her performance at the piano was extraordinarily skilful, far and away above he ordinary run of talent heard at these entertainments. One felt one wanted to hear her in something worthier of her gifts.

Dare kept his seat until the performance came to an end; then he made his way behind, and sent his card in to her. He was not admitted to the dressing-rooms; but she came out and interviewed him in the passage, to the curious interest of one or two people who loitered there. She was manifestly surprised to see him, and pretended to have forgotten his name, and when and where they had met. He recalled the circumstances to her.

“It was so long ago,” she said; “I had forgotten.”

“I don’t call that kind,” he returned. “You see, I didn’t forget I saw you in Johannesburg last month.”

“Yes!” She looked at him with increased interest. “We were there, of course. We have been to several places since. We are working down towards the coast.”

“It is a change for you, this life,” he said. “Do you find it agreeable?”

“Oh! I don’t know. It amused me at first. But I leave them at the coast. I came in as a stop-gap because their regular accompanist was ill.”

Her voice sounded a little weary, her face, too, underneath the rouge, looked tired.

“I’d like to call on you to-morrow, if I may,” he said, and paused expectantly.

She hesitated, regarding him with vague suspicion in her eyes. Then she mentioned the boarding establishment at which they were staying, and gave a reluctant permission. It was not a fashionable hostelry; presumably the “Exotics” were not flourishing in respect to funds.

“We might go for a drive,” he suggested, “if you care about it.”

She acquiesced, but without enthusiasm. It occurred to Dare that her manner was a little distrustful. He smiled encouragingly.

“That’s kind of you,” he observed. “I’m at loose ends in this place. Then I’ll be round about three, if that suits.”

He did not feel quite satisfied when he parted from her that she would keep the engagement; but on the following afternoon when he motored up to the house, she came out dressed for the drive and met him at the gate. He was aware, as he helped her into the car, of several curious faces watching them from the doorway and behind the dingy curtains of the front room windows. The “Exotics” were frankly interested in the proceeding, and watched the car and its occupants with eager, envious eyes until they were out of sight.

“I am glad you are giving up this life,” Dare remarked to his silent companion, as they spun along in the sunshine with the light wind in their faces. “It’s all very well in its way, I don’t doubt; but it’s just a trifle sordid, isn’t it?”

“What is one to do?” she asked. “One must live. There isn’t a wide choice for women, as you know.”

“That’s true,” he acknowledged, and was silent for a moment. “Why did you give up teaching?” he asked abruptly.

She reddened and appeared distinctly annoyed.

“That isn’t a vastly amusing, nor particularly lucrative form of earning a livelihood,” she returned with sarcasm. “How do you know I was teaching?”

“I have recently been staying with the Carruthers,” he replied. “Mrs Carruthers spoke of you. I told her I had seen you in Johannesburg.”

Blanche looked deliberately away.

“Mrs Carruthers! Was she... She was my very kind friend formerly,” she remarked in an embarrassed, hesitating way. “I should be sorry if she thought less kindly of me now.”

“Why should she?” he asked.

She brought her face round again, and her eyes, steady and inquiring, met his fully.

“I don’t think you are being quite sincere with me,” she said.

Dare was unprepared for this direct attack. He felt at a decided disadvantage. She was much more shrewd than he had expected.

“Now, I wonder why you should think that?” he asked.

“Oh!” she exclaimed sharply. “Do you suppose I don’t know that while you were in Wynberg you heard me discussed? I’ve got relations there; they write to me. The things people say!”

So already the gossip that was being circulated had reached her on her journeying. Dare scrutinised her closely, uncertain whether to treat her frankly as she seemed to wish, or to attempt to acquire the information he needed by less straightforward methods. In the end he resolved to be frank. Despite all that he had heard relative to her flight and her previous relations with Arnott, he had a strong persuasion that the stories concerning her were mostly lies. He discredited entirely the tale of her elopement. A girl does not run away with a man and leave him immediately to follow the kind of life she was at present leading. The fact that Arnott had been in Johannesburg at the same time that she was there called for some other explanation, he decided.

“Don’t you think that perhaps you have your own indiscretion to blame for the stories that are being floated?” he asked.

His question seemed to surprise her.

“In what way should you say I have been indiscreet?” she inquired.

“The manner of your leaving is an open secret,” he replied.

“There is no secret about it,” she returned with some impatience. “I just went. In my opinion I was quite justified in acting as I did.”

“Quite possibly you were,” he allowed. “But unfortunately Mr Arnott acted in the same ill-considered manner. When people do these things they must expect gossip.”

She did not reply to this. Dare judged from her silence that she was fully informed as to the manner of Arnott’s leaving home. This seeming knowledge of the man’s movements shook his faith in her somewhat.

“I suppose you think, with others, that circumstance had something to do with me?” she said presently.

“I would only believe that,” he replied quietly, “if you told me so yourself.”

She looked at him quickly, and then turned her face aside, unwilling that he should detect the shame in her eyes, and the gratitude that strove with other emotions at his unexpected answer. She knew so little of this man, who was but a chance acquaintance; and yet already he appeared inexplicably mixed up in her life, acquainted with all the most intimate details concerning her. It puzzled her why he should display this interest in her affairs. She felt that she ought to resent his unwarranted interference; and yet oddly she did not feel resentful. It was after all rather a relief to have some one with whom to discuss these matters, which were too private and difficult to speak of with other people. His knowledge of events seemed to constitute a reason, if not a right, for his discussion of them. But his intimacy with the Arnotts, and with Mrs Carruthers, inclined her to be somewhat on her guard with him.

“I don’t know why you should be less ready than others to believe the reports that are spread,” she remarked. “Your knowledge of me is so slight. We’ve met—three times, is it?”

“I am not judging from my knowledge of you, but from my knowledge of human nature,” he returned.

She laughed cynically.

“Has human nature revealed only its amiable qualities to you?” she asked.

“Oh! no. Not by any means. But humanity is not without a moral sense. The baseness which some natures reveal is a form of degeneracy,—a sign of mental abnormality. In the case of man or woman, deliberate viciousness denotes a kink somewhere.”

She pondered this.

“Yes,” she allowed; “you are probably right. But there are a good many people with kinks. I may have a kink myself... I believe I have.”

“Then straighten it out,” he advised.

“Oh!” she said in a voice of weary irritation. “What’s the use of talking? Words are easy enough. It’s easy enough, perhaps, to act, as well as think, finely when life runs smoothly. But life is terribly difficult for some of us—and dull. The dulness, I think, is the worst.”

She stared out at the sunny landscape with hard, dissatisfied eyes, and the bitterness in her voice increased as she continued:

“I took up this kind of thing—touring and playing—because I thought I might find it brighter. It seemed so at first... the lights, and the people, and the noisy excitement of constant moving, constant change. Now I find that too unutterably dull. The tawdry dresses,—the limelight,—the sea of white faces, staring, always staring,—cold, unsympathetic, scarcely interested even. I hate them. I hate playing those ridiculous airs on timeless, indifferent pianos. I want something... I don’t know... I’m a fool to say all this. I hope you didn’t invite me to drive with you in the belief that you would find me an amusing companion?”

“I invited you to drive with me,” he answered candidly, “because I wanted to talk to you on the subject which you, yourself, started. I am very anxious, for Mrs Arnott’s sake, as well as in your own interest, to put a stop to a scandal which is none the less harmful because I believe it to be a tissue of falsehoods. Since you have heard the scandal, I am spared the unpleasant task of paining you further by repeating it. If you choose, I believe you can help me in stopping the thing. Will you tell me, if you can, where Mr Arnott is to be got at?”

“How should I know?” she asked, flushing.

“I thought you might know,” he answered, unconvinced by her words of her ignorance as to Arnott’s whereabouts. “He was in Johannesburg when you were there. I could have settled this matter then, had I known of it. But I’ve only just heard the talk. I want to see him. He ought to be informed of the report that is going about, which his own indiscretion is mainly responsible for. I think, if he knew, he would see the wisdom of putting an end to it.”

“I don’t,” she replied unexpectedly. “I don’t think it would make the least impression on him.”

“Oh, come!” he said, surprised. “What grounds have you for supposing that?”

She glanced at the chauffeur’s impassive back, and from it into Dare’s curious, perplexed face.

“Do you think this quite the place for discussing these matters?” she asked.

Dare was obliged to admit the reasonableness of her remonstrance. Although they had spoken in lowered voices, they could not be positive that no part of their talk reached the driver’s ears.

“We’ll have tea somewhere,” he said. “Then we will drive out into the country where we can get out and walk.”

He leaned forward and gave the chauffeur his directions. When he turned to the girl again he was conscious of a new reserve which betrayed itself in her manner. She raised no objection to his arrangements; but a marked constraint showed in her speech. She fell back more and more upon silence and left the talking to Dare.

Chapter Twenty Four.

During tea, though there was ample opportunity for private talk at the little table where they sat alone, Dare was careful to avoid any reference to the business which had moved him to seek her out. He exerted himself to entertain her; and for the time it seemed as though Blanche actually forgot her discontent in enjoyment of the moment. But when on paying the score Dare would have bought her a box of chocolates, to his surprise the girl with hasty ungraciousness declined the gift. She hated sweets, she said.

His action in purchasing chocolates for her had reminded her of Arnott and the similar gifts he had showered on her in the past. The incident jarred upon her; and a return of her former reserve ensued. Already she regretted having accepted the invitation for this outing. It was not that she disliked the man, or that she mistrusted him; but she had a presentiment that he would urge her to tell him things which it might be against her own interests to disclose. She sought to reassure herself with the thought that he could not force her confidence. Nevertheless she experienced a doubt as to her powers of reticence; she had already allowed him against her better judgment to discover that she was to a certain extent acquainted with Arnott’s doings. And she had confessed to some authority as to his actions. That positive affirmation of the line he would be likely to take had been an indiscretion.

Dare was himself so quietly confident that the girl, having nothing to conceal, would aid him with any information which it lay in her power to give that he did not anticipate difficulty in persuading her to disclose her knowledge. He believed that she also would wish to have the scandal in which her name was concerned allayed finally. It could not be agreeable for her to know the opprobrious things that were being said of her in connection with the man. For her own sake she would wish that stopped.

They re-entered the car and continued the journey. When they were well out into the country, Blanche said, turning to him suddenly:

“Don’t let us stop... What’s the use? I don’t want to walk; it’s pleasanter driving. And I must not be late in getting back.”

“I will see that you are back in ample time,” he answered. “But I want you to get out here. You needn’t walk far. I’ll tell the man to wait for us at the bottom of this hill.”

He spoke to the chauffeur, and the car stopped. Dare got out and helped the girl to alight. She looked at him with faint resentment in her eyes, as they remained standing together beside the road while the car drove swiftly away.

“I asked you not to,” she said protestingly.

“I know,” he said. “Forgive me for disregarding the request. I wanted to talk with you more privately. Plainly we couldn’t discuss this matter before a third person.”

“I don’t wish to discuss it,” she returned, getting off the road and beginning to walk in the direction taken by the car. “I fail to see why you, who are almost a stranger to me, should persist in discussing a subject which you must know is unpleasant for me to listen to. It is ungenerous of you to have brought me out with such an object.”

“Oh! no,” he replied. “I can’t see it in that light. It is to your interest, as well as to Mrs Arnott’s, to clear up this matter.”

“Please leave me out of it. Would you,” she asked, looking at him deliberately, “have taken so much trouble on my account?”

“Possibly not,” he admitted. “But since it is my intention to get to the bottom of this business, I could wish at the same time to be of service to you. It is not good for a girl to have her name coupled with that of a married man. You would be well advised in helping me to stop the thing.”

“It is easier to float a scandal than to stop one,” she returned impassively.

She glanced up at him as they strolled along over the coarse grass, and smiled strangely.

“If you are acting for Mrs Arnott,” she said, “you will have quite enough to do in covering the traces of an older scandal.”

He looked down at her quickly, and their eyes met in a long gaze of challenge and inquiry. There was so much of significance in the girl’s tones, in her eyes, and in her peculiarly malicious smile, that Dare had an uncomfortable conviction that she knew more of the Arnotts’ affairs than he had supposed. He began to think that she was not as guileless as he had believed.

“To what do you refer?” he asked.

She stopped abruptly and confronted him with an air of sullen defiance, an increase of angry colour in her cheeks. Dare, perforce, halted also, and faced her, perplexed beyond measure and distinctly annoyed. This sudden change of mood, with its suggestion of open antagonism, took him aback. He was conscious of a revulsion of feeling which amounted almost to disgust. He regretted that he had wasted his time in seeking her.

“I don’t know by what right you question me,” she said. “If you want me to tell you certain things, you must explain your reasons. Confidence for confidence, Mr Dare.”

“Very good,” he answered coolly. “I want you to furnish me with Mr Arnott’s present address, to save me trouble in discovering it for myself.”

“Why do you want his address?” she inquired.

“I thought we had gone into that already,” he replied. “I wish to persuade him to return to his home as the best and quickest means of ending this scandal.”

She shook her head.

“He won’t,” she answered positively. “He can’t... He’s ill.”

This information moved Dare to a show of surprise. For a moment he was inclined to discredit the announcement; but the girl’s manner gave no indication that she was attempting to impose on him, and he accepted the statement as true. It was just possible that his illness accounted for Arnott’s silence.

“I left him at Pretoria,” she said, starting to walk again. “He is in a nursing home.” She furnished the address. “They won’t let you see him, if you go there,” she added abruptly.

He made a note of the address on the back of an envelope, and scrutinised her with puzzled uncertainty as he returned the envelope to his pocket.

“What’s the matter with him?” he asked.

“Paralysis.” She spoke curtly, with a kind of hard anger in her voice. “He will get better, but he will never be quite well. It will be a case for nursing—always.”

He observed a rush of tears to her eyes, but there was no softening in her manner as she went on in dull, resentful tones:

“Everything that happens to me ends like that. If it hadn’t been for this we were to have been married.”

“Married!” he repeated, amazed. “You! ... But—”

“Oh! don’t pretend,” she interrupted impatiently, “that you don’t know they aren’t properly married... His wife is dead. I made him show me proofs of that when he asked me to marry him... He thinks I am going to marry him still.”

“And are you?” he asked.

“I don’t know... I hate sickness. But—he’s rich. Money makes things so much easier.”

He made a gesture of repulsion.

“You couldn’t do a thing so vile as that, surely?” he said.

The horror and disgust he experienced at her callous reasoning revealed itself in his voice, in his eyes as he stared down at her, scarce able to credit what he heard. She looked back at him fiercely.

“How dare you talk to me like that? ... Can’t you see all that such a marriage means to a girl like me? Why shouldn’t I consider myself?”

“I was thinking of the woman who for years believed herself to be his wife,” he replied coldly. “Now that he is free to marry her she has a right to demand that he should fulfil his obligation.”

“He won’t,” she declared.

“I think he will,” he answered confidently.

“You mean—” she began, and stopped, eyeing him with quick suspicion. “I wish I hadn’t told you where he is,” she cried passionately. “But they won’t let you see him. He’s not in a condition to be worried. You can’t bully a man in his condition.”

“I have no intention of bullying him,” he answered, placing considerable restraint upon himself. “I am going to offer him the choice between two alternatives. If he is wise he will accept the only decent course open to him. The consequences of refusal will be awkward for him.”

“You don’t take into consideration,” she said, with bitter anger in her voice, “that the threat with which you would intimidate him for your purpose is one which I also can use to oblige him to oppose you, if I wish. You are overlooking me.”

“I simply never dreamed of insulting you by harbouring such a thought,” he returned. “Even though you have flung the challenge, I couldn’t believe you capable of that.”

“You will need to reconstruct your theories on human nature,” she said cynically.

“Oh! no. One instance of failure doesn’t damn the race. I am not going to take up your challenge. I am going to regard it as a thing uttered with ill-considered haste. How you came by your knowledge puzzles me; but one point I feel fairly confident on is that you won’t use it. Women don’t do these things, Miss Maitland, whatever they may say in moments of anger.”

“Oh! Women!” she exclaimed contemptuously. “You are fond of generalising. But in this case, it isn’t women; it’s just myself. I have got the chance I have always longed for. Do you think I am likely to let it slip? ... When he was taken ill so suddenly, and I feared he was going to die, I was nearly mad with anxiety. Then they told me he wouldn’t die, that he would probably live for many years—with care... It was almost as great a shock to know that he was going to live and be—like that always. Do you think that woman, who calls herself his wife, will want him like that? ... Will be ready to devote her life to nursing him? I don’t... Not when she learns the whole story.”

“We will leave it to her to decide,” he answered quietly.

The picture she drew of Arnott as a helpless invalid was not pleasant to dwell upon. It appealed to Dare in the light of a horrible injustice that Pamela should sacrifice herself to the care of an invalid husband, a man who had deceived and deserted her, who needed to be urged even then to return to her,—might possibly refuse to return. She would be wiser to yield to his entreaties and become his wife. He was not quite clear what legal relationship existed between Pamela and the man who had married her bigamously; but he had an idea that before she could be free of him it would be necessary for her to instigate divorce proceedings. He was not at all sure she would do that, even if Arnott refused to return to her. The whole affair was horribly complicated.

“The decision won’t rest with her, nor with you,” Blanche observed after a brief pause. “You can’t coerce a man like Mr Arnott. He won’t allow you to arrange his life.”

She spoke with a sort of furtive admiration of the man whose dominating qualities and virile personality had first attracted her to him, and ultimately conquered her reluctance to the extent of gaining her consent to his proposal of marriage. She had left his home to protect herself from his less honourable intentions, had fled because she was afraid of him and uncertain of herself; and he had followed, determined to possess her at all costs. Finding her still obdurate, and less accessible than when she had lived beneath his roof, he had suggested marriage. His passion for her had become so imperative that it would brook no denial. No argument which prudence suggested could deter him from carrying out his purpose. He flung every consideration aside, as he had done once before when inflamed with his desire for Pamela; and Blanche, tempted by all that he could give her, as much as by the reciprocal passion he inspired, consented readily to his proposal. His sudden illness had interfered with the plan, had made it for the time being impracticable; but though she hesitated, appalled at the thought of a querulous invalid, husband in place of the vigorous man whose imperious strength had formed a large part of his attractiveness, Blanche had by no means abandoned the intention of marrying him. The worldly considerations which had influenced her in the past proved a strong inducement still.

With a sudden desire to end the talk, she increased the pace at which they were proceeding. Dare, as he kept step with her, maintained a constrained silence. He felt inadequate to cope with the ugly, sinister turn this affair had taken. He did not know what to say to the girl. There was nothing he could say that might not give fresh offence. She glanced up at him frowningly, incensed at this show of mute disapproval, and remarked:

“I’ve told you things it would have been wiser to have kept to myself. I don’t know why I told you. You must treat what I have said as confidential, please.”

“I can’t promise that,” he answered. “But I will keep your name out of this business as far as it is possible to do so. After all, there is nothing that you have told me that was not bound to come out. You couldn’t marry a man who is known to have a wife and family, without the whole story coming to light. As soon as the facts are known Arnott will have to take his trial on a charge of bigamy.”

She turned pale as she listened to him. It was borne in upon her that this man was going to prove a determined and implacable enemy. She felt instinctively that he meant to oppose her with all his strength.

“She will never prosecute him,” she said, sullenly defiant.

“She won’t need to,” he answered convincingly. “The Crown will do that.”

“You are trying to intimidate me,” she exclaimed with sudden passion. “You have no right to threaten me.”

He looked at her deliberately with a faint uplift of his brows.

“I am doing nothing of the sort,” he answered. “I am merely making a plain statement of facts in order to show you what you will bring on the man you talk of marrying if you carry out your determination to encourage him in his cruel desertion of the woman he married. Only through you will the story of his crime ever come to be known.”

She walked on with lowered gaze, making no reply.

Chapter Twenty Five.

Dare paced the little balcony outside his room that night for many hours, plunged in a gloomy reverie so made up of confused conjecture, of scraps of that afternoon’s talk, of memories of other talks he had had with Pamela, and of doubts of Arnott, whose poor remnant of life she might still insist on linking with her own, that connected thought became impossible. His mind was a confusion of conflicting ideas that vied and strove with one another, and offered no solution of the complicated muddle of the human tragedy in which he was so inextricably involved.

On one point alone he was very clear: he did not wish Pamela to consolidate her marriage with Arnott. His love for her assumed proportions of vast magnitude, so that he lost sight of every other consideration save his own longing for her, and his repugnance for the idea of her bright life being passed at the side of the moral and physical wreck who did not want her, who would in all probability make her life with him a perfect hell.

Dare chafed at the picture his imagination conjured up, the picture which Blanche’s words had brought vividly before him, of Arnott paralysed, helpless, dependent as a child upon the care of the woman he had treated so abominably, with nothing of love between them to help in lightening the strain. The idea was intolerable. He brushed it aside with a sense of intense disgust. He felt that something must be done to prevent the horrible injustice of this useless sacrifice on her part. He must bring reason to bear with her, must use every argument to induce her to relinquish this vain belief in a personal sacrifice as the only means of retrieving her former mistake. The thing was monstrous, unthinkable; it must not be.

He went inside, switched on the light, and sat down to write to her.

“My dear,” he began, and found it impossible to address her by name, so let it stand at that. “I hardly know what to say to you,—how to tell you what I have learnt since my arrival here. Things are pretty much as you suspected—worse, indeed. It may be a shock to you, but I don’t feel that it can greatly distress you to hear that your husband is ill. He is never likely to be quite well again, if my information is correct I have yet to verify this account, though I have no reason for doubting its accuracy. I am going on to Pretoria, where he is, to find out what I can. I will write to you again when I am more fully informed.”

He paused, and read the letter through with some dissatisfaction. Then he bent over the paper again, and wrote quickly, with a certain eagerness, as though the impulse which dictated what he wrote were irresistible in the flood of emotions that inspired it.

“It is not a bit of use your thinking of going on with this. The thing is impossible. My dear, it is not just for my own sake I urge you to reconsider your purpose. You can’t do it. I can’t bear the thought of your throwing away all chance of happiness for a man who has left you finally, and is now paralysed and practically helpless. It is self-murder. I won’t permit it. I love you, and I want you badly...”

Suddenly Dare flung down the pen, and tore the letter into fragments, and burnt them with the aid of matches in the fireless grate.

“I can’t write to her,” he muttered. “It reads all wrong somehow. I must go to her. Things don’t sound the same on paper. I’ve got to see her and speak to her. I must see her.”

He went out on the balcony again, and resumed his walk and his troubled reflections, which helped not a whit in the solving of the muddle, but only aggravated his sense of the absurd futility of the sacrifice Pamela contemplated. Her resolve was the outcome, he was convinced, of purely intellectual reasoning. If she would only admit the factor of passion, the cold wisdom of her logic would go down before it, as the hardest of glaciers will dissolve adrift in tropic seas. It remained for him to go to her, and make her feel the powerful influence of human love,—force her to realise that, however much other considerations weighed in the great social scheme, love counted above everything, mattered more than anything else,—was the only thing really which did matter. It was the great fundamental principle of the entire universe. He never doubted that he could persuade her into seeing this thing as he saw it. The circumstances he felt justified him in the attempt.

The following day he took train for Pretoria. Before seeing Pamela it was necessary to investigate the truth of Blanche Maitland’s story. Unless he faced her with facts he could not hope to prevail with her, and his facts must be acquired at first hand.

Dare was essentially a man of action. To decide on a certain course with him was to pursue it without delay to the finish. He meant, if possible, to see Arnott himself. But when he arrived at Pretoria, and applied at the address which Blanche had given, he was confronted with the first difficulty; without the doctor’s sanction he could not be admitted to the invalid’s presence. Arnott’s condition was sufficiently grave to make the most stringent rules with regard to the sick-room absolutely imperative.

It being near the time for the doctor’s visit, he decided to wait in order to see him. He had given up the hope of an interview with Arnott. Clearly the man was not in a condition to discuss the painful subject of his domestic complications. That matter would have to be left in abeyance until he was well enough to cope with such things. The delay irked Dare, but it was unavoidable. He sat in the little waiting-room at the open window, and read a book of epitaphs, intended to be humorous, but which struck him as dreary reading, and an odd selection for the waiting-room of a nursing home. He was relieved when the doctor came in,—a young man with an energetic manner, and a display of haste. His greeting of Dare was somewhat curt: the interviewing of his patients’ friends was not in his opinion part of his day’s work; and he was obviously anxious not to be delayed. He did not sit down. Dare, who had risen, remained standing also.

“I understand,” the doctor said, “that you are a friend of Mr Arnott,—that you wish to see him?”

“I called with the purpose of seeing him,” Dare answered, carefully ignoring the first part of the speech. “His people are anxious for news of him.”

The doctor looked doubtfully at the speaker. He had wondered why, save for the young woman who had called repeatedly during the first days after the patient’s admission to the home, and had manifested great distress at his condition, no one belonging to him had troubled even to make inquiries as to his progress. He had concluded that there was no one sufficiently interested in him to feel concern on his account.

“I am reluctant to allow any one to see him for the present,” he said. “He is getting on; but we have to avoid anything that might be likely to excite him. There is trouble with the brain unfortunately.”

“That is worse than I had anticipated,” Dare said, shocked and disconcerted by this intelligence. “Will you please tell me, so far as it is possible to judge at this stage, what the result of this illness is likely to be? Is he to be an invalid for life?”

“Well, it is paralysis, you know,” the doctor answered, “and a bad case. Chronic alcoholism is mainly responsible. He will be able to walk, we hope—with the aid of sticks, of course. But his brain will never be quite clear. He may, however, live a long while.”

“That is to be regretted in the circumstances,” Dare observed drily.

The doctor agreed with him, but he did not say so. His business was to patch the man up, and he was doing his best to attend to it. He furnished a few more details, and held out vague hopes of an improvement in the mental condition. The patient had a good constitution, though he had done his utmost to ruin it; and if not crossed or excited, or worried with business matters, the brain would become stronger, though it would never be normally active again.

Dare gathered from the fragmentary talk that Arnott was to be a semi-imbecile, just able to crawl about,—a reversion, in short, to childhood with the hideous defects of decrepit age to make the reversion more horrible. The information turned him sick. He was thankful to leave the place and get out again into the sunshine. He no longer desired to see Arnott. To reason with a man in that condition was impossible. Arnott had become a mere cipher in the drama, the finishing act of which had to be decided between Pamela and himself. It was unthinkable that she should persist in devoting the future to his wreck of humanity, to whom she owed no debt of duty, who had merely used her for his pleasure, and discarded her when he tired through his infatuation for a younger woman, which obsession possibly his failing mental faculties were responsible for.

Dare left Pretoria the same day, and started on the long return journey to the coast. He was impatient to see Pamela, and at the same time extremely nervous at the prospect of his interview with her. He did not know what to say to her, how to break to her the brutal fact of Arnott’s contemplated marriage, his determined and ruthless desertion of herself. The man’s actions, before his illness prevented the carrying out of his designs, pointed conclusively to a deranged intellect. With the cunning of latent insanity he had arranged his plans, counting on Pamela’s silence in respect to his bigamous marriage with her, utterly regardless of the stir which the scandal of his marriage with Blanche must create in circles where he was known to have a wife and children already. To a man in full possession of his faculties the impossibility of concealing the crime of bigamy would have been apparent, unless he fled the country and married under an assumed name.

What, he wondered, would Pamela decide upon doing when she learnt the entire truth? He could not tell. The uncertainty was nerve-racking. He fretted and worried himself with conjectures all through that tedious, seemingly unending journey,—during the hot dusty days as the train rushed through the Karroo, and throughout the long sleepless nights when, kept awake by his thoughts, he turned in weary discomfort in his narrow berth in the darkened compartment, and longed for the coming of day.

When he reached the terminus he despatched a telegram to Pamela to inform her of his arrival, and his intention of calling upon her the following morning. Then he took a taxi and drove to the Mount Nelson. He dined and went to bed, and slept soundly for the first time since leaving Pretoria.

Pamela did not sleep at all. The unexpected receipt of Dare’s telegram excited her, and kept her on the rack of expectation. She had not looked for him to return. The telegram was the only communication she had received from him, and it told her nothing, save that he was back and wished to see her. She knew that he must have something of importance to tell her or he would not have turned back so soon.

The thought of the coming interview was vaguely disquieting. So much had passed between her and this man of a painful and intimate nature that all the barriers of conventional friendship were down, and left her exposed, as he was, to the onslaught of each new emotion inspired by their mutual feeling. She had thought of him so much since he had pleaded his cause with her, and she had admitted her own love for him,—had reviewed all their pleasant intercourse of the past, his kind, patient, and unselfish devotion which later, in accepting her decision, had yet lent itself to aid her in her unprotected and difficult position, that the love which she had confessed to bearing for him had strengthened considerably. She looked up to him as to some one strong and fine and worthy of a woman’s entire trust. Never for the man she had believed to be her husband had she felt this reverence of love. She had admired him, had felt grateful to him for his passionate ardour for herself. Their marriage had proved a delirious period of excitement and delight, until his passion cooled; but it had never roused in her a lofty conception of love, or helped her to realise the seriousness of life’s responsibilities. Her life as Arnott’s wife had tended rather to lower the standard of fine thinking, and reduce the principles of living to the sensuous indolence of self-gratification, and an immense concentration upon the importance of purely personal things. She had lived for herself, detached in sympathy from the wider world about her, careless of the joys and sorrows of others as something altogether outside her life. And now sorrow had brought her into touch with the world, had broadened her sympathies and her understanding, and decreased proportionately the sense of her personal significance.

What is any life, however important to itself, however aggrandised by the world’s recognition, however necessary it may appear to others—to one other even, but a breath which expands the lungs of the universe and leaves them temporarily deflated as it passes on into the beyond?

Chapter Twenty Six.

Pamela was alone and waiting for Dare when he presented himself at the house on the following morning. She turned slowly when the door of the room opened, and advanced to meet him with a look of inquiry and of welcome in her eyes.

She looked better, he observed, than when he had last seen her; the anxiety that had sharpened her features and shadowed her face with an expression of dread had yielded to a new calm, which suggested a mind braced and prepared to meet and accept whatever offered. Her composure helped him enormously in quieting his nervousness, which before, and at the moment of, his entry had been excessive. He took her extended hand and held it.

“You bring me bad news?” she said, observing his grave face with a watchful scrutiny, and speaking in that quiet, level voice that one uses sometimes in discussing things too serious and strange for ordinary emotion. “I felt it must be bad news when your telegram arrived... You’ve seen him?”

“No,” he answered.

He led her to the sofa near the French window on which he had sat with her before when they had had their last interview. The memory of that former occasion was present in his mind. It was possibly present in Pamela’s mind also; but the recollection caused no sense of embarrassment. Her love for, and confidence in, him had swept all feeling of constraint away. He seated himself beside her.

“I wrote to you,” he said; “but I decided not to send the letter. I felt it was best to come down and explain. Mr Arnott is in Pretoria. I went there for the purpose of seeing him; but he is ill, and unable to see any one. I had an interview with the doctor who is attending his case. I thought you would wish to know exactly how matters are with him.”

He paused. Pamela was gazing at him with wide serious eyes. She showed less surprise than he had expected. She appeared somehow prepared, and extraordinarily calm. It made the telling easier. It was as though she had passed the final stage of emotionalism, had come through all the stresses of anguished uncertainty, of distressed and tormented doubt and wounded love, and emerged calm-eyed and efficient, amazingly controlled, and clear as to her judgment. She listened attentively without interrupting him. When he paused, she said:

“You are not preparing me to hear that he is dead?”

“No,” he answered. His feelings got the better of him, and he added bluntly,—“I would to God I were! Life—all that is left of it for him—isn’t worth the having. And anyway, living or dead, he isn’t worthy of one thought of your compassion.”

“Then he did go away with Blanche?” she said quietly.

“He followed her. He meant to marry her—means to marry her still, if her statement is to be believed. I saw her in Bloemfontein. It was she who told me of his illness.”

“What is the matter with him?” she asked, her earnest eyes holding his, questioning his, refusing, it occurred to him, to allow what he was telling her to bias her ultimate judgment. She had accustomed herself to ugly truths; she was not shocked or dismayed any longer, only anxious to have her worst fears confirmed or disproved. She desired to hear the whole truth, whatever it held of pain or humiliation. At least it could hold no disillusion for her.

“He has had a stroke of paralysis, they tell me,” Dare answered, avoiding her eyes.

He was conscious of a sudden movement on her part, of a quick, inaudible exclamation which was followed by a sharp indrawing of her breath. He did not look at her; he felt, without seeing them, that there were tears of pity and of horror shining in her eyes. He counted for something to her still. She was sorry for the man. Dare felt unreasonably incensed.

“There is hope of a partial recovery,” he continued dully, trying to keep under the sudden sharp jealousy that gripped him as nothing he had experienced in all their former talks had gripped and hurt. “He’ll get about again, they think... walk a little. His brain is affected—slightly. That will never be quite clear again...”

He broke off abruptly, and turned to her in protesting surprise. She was weeping. The tears were welling in her eyes and coursing down her cheeks. Arnott ill—broken—touched the deepest springs of her compassion. All the bitterness in her heart against the man who had so cruelly wronged her melted into sorrow for him in his terrible affliction. She no longer experienced any anger against him, only a great pity,—pity for the miserable wreckage of his health, which stood, it seemed to her, as a symbol of the wreckage of their love,—all the promise and the strength and the beauty gone for evermore,—only the dead ashes remaining in the furnace of life.

“Your tears are a big return for his cruelty to you,” he said, trying with ill success to hide the twinge of jealousy which caused him to wince at sight of her grief. “Some people might consider his condition a perfectly just retribution. You owe him nothing—not even pity.”

“One doesn’t only render what is due,” she said, wiping her eyes slowly. “That would make life too hard. Could you expect me to hear unmoved what you have just told me? I thought I had schooled myself to bear anything; but this is too awful. I would rather have heard that he was well and happy—with her.”

“She is going to him,” he said, bluntly.

“Going to him? ... Now?” Pamela’s tone expressed wonder. “You mean, she loves him sufficiently to marry him—ill—like that?”

“I mean,” he returned, watching her narrowly, “that she loves herself sufficiently to put up with his condition on account of his wealth. She admitted that almost in as many words. It’s as much as he has any right to expect.”

“Oh! no,” she said quickly. “He is giving her more than that.”

She was silent for a moment, looking thoughtfully beyond him towards the garden which showed through the aperture of the long window, a fair and peaceful background, in striking contrast to the tension within the room and the unquiet of her mind. Dare’s gaze never left her face. He was watching her continually, trying to gauge her intention from his study of her expression. The slow tears still fell at intervals; but they became fewer, and she wiped them mechanically with a small drenched handkerchief, making no effort at concealment from him. It seemed as if in her preoccupation she was scarcely conscious of his presence.

“It’s a sordid story,” he said. “I am sorry to have to distress you with it; but you had to know... It closes everything, you see,—puts a finish to your part in his life. He has flung aside his responsibilities deliberately. A man like that, devoid of all moral sense, cannot be influenced. I doubt you would accomplish anything, if you went to him.”

“At least, I must make the effort,” she said slowly. She turned to him, a look of sad entreaty in her eyes, as though she would appeal to him to help, instead of making things more difficult for her. “Don’t try to dissuade me,” she pleaded earnestly. “Don’t fail me. I am relying so much on your help.”

“But,” he urged gently, “don’t you realise how impossible this thing has become? Think, even if you succeeded in persuading him to return—which I doubt strongly you could succeed in doing—what would your life be like with him,—half-imbecile, helpless, an invalid always? ... It’s too horrible to contemplate.”

She shuddered at the picture of Arnott which he drew, and hid her white face in her hands and said nothing.

“It’s not as though you owe him anything,” he insisted. “It’s not as though you love him any longer, or can even give him what he wants—that girl, however little she brings him, can give him more than you. You are for defeating happiness all round, you see. It’s not worth it. I understand your reason for wishing to do this, but I can’t feel it justifies it in any sense.”

He put an arm about her and drew her to him and held her close.

“Cut it, Pamela,” he said. “I’ll take you home to England. We’ll be married quietly over there—or in Europe somewhere. It will be better for the children in the long run, dear, believe me. I can’t get reconciled anyhow to the idea of giving you up. You belong to me. I’ve a right to you. I have loved you always, from the day I saw you first at that tournament so many years ago. Arnott robbed me of you then. I can’t let him step in a second time and take you from me... Believe me, Pamela, I wouldn’t try to stand between you and what you consider to be a duty if I saw any possible chance of happiness in it for you at all,—if even I could feel that the result might justify the sacrifice. It won’t. It will be just death in life for you both. And it’s going to be pretty hard on me too. I could put up with that, if it spelt happiness for you; but it doesn’t. Pamela, is it worth it? cheating ourselves for a principle that isn’t going to work any solid good for any one?”

He drew her head to his shoulder, and gathered her closer in his arms and kissed her, keeping his face pressed to the tear-wet cheek, feeling the trembling of her body lying passive in his arms, and the little choking sobs which escaped her as she wept in his embrace. Would she yield, he wondered? Had she not in surrendering to his caresses partly yielded already?

“It is asking too much of human nature to expect us to give up everything,” he said. “I want you. I am lonely without you. It isn’t a case of making love,—a phase of feverish emotions. I love you honestly, earnestly. I want you day after day. I want your companionship. I want you to fill my life, as I shall hope to fill yours. I want you at my side—always. Pamela, my dearest, you are not going to snatch my hope away from me for no more solid reason than the fulfilment of an imaginary duty which is going to benefit no one? Life—without you—is empty for me.”

“Oh! my dear!” she sobbed. She lifted her face to his and kissed his lips. “I want to do as you wish. I want to take the easy course; but the other is the right course. It isn’t just happiness that is at stake. It is neither love for him, nor any sense of obligation to him, that makes me desire to marry the father of my children... It’s just the knowledge of what is due to them. They count first. They have to be considered. Do you think I don’t realise,” she added passionately, withdrawing herself from his arms, “that I shall hate my life with him,—that—God forgive me I—I shall possibly hate him? ... hate him more every year, until even pity for him dies beneath the strain of constant weariness, daily resentment. What you offer tempts me sorely. It’s just dragging me to pieces to refuse you. Life with you would be a good and happy thing. I want it, and I can’t have it. But it is denying you which hurts more than denying myself. My dear!—my dear! I wish you didn’t care so much. What can I do? ... What can I say?”

“You can do,” he answered, looking at her steadily, “what I ask you to do, and leave the future of the children more safely in my hands than in their father’s. His example can be no possible guide for them. His influence in the home will tend neither towards their happiness nor their good. At most, you can give them his name—they have a right to that, as it is. Think, Pamela... Isn’t your idea of what is right for them merely a morbid fancy? Let the man go. You’ve lost your hold on him. Leave him to finish the muddle he has made of his life in his own way. He has proved himself incapable of faithfulness. It isn’t decent that you should continue to live with him. I show you a way out,—take it. Put yourself unreservedly in my hands.”

“That’s shirking,” she said. “I’ve always shirked.”

“What else is there for you to do?” he asked. “You can’t straighten a muddle which is none of your making. There’s a duty you owe to yourself,—you’re overlooking that Shake yourself free of this life which is hurtful to you in every sense, and give me the right to protect you, to act and think for you. I can’t countenance what you think of doing. I’m going to use my utmost effort to dissuade you. See here,” he said. He took a note-book from his pocket, and wrote the address of the Pretoria Home upon a page which he tore out and handed to her. “Write to the doctor there, and ask him to give you all particulars of Arnott’s case. He will possibly tell you more than he told me.”

“His condition makes no difference,” she answered, reading the address he handed to her before putting the paper away. “Ill or well, it doesn’t affect the main point.”

“I know,” he said. “But you ought to ascertain what you can before taking any decisive step. Then, if you wish to see him, I will take you there.”

At this suggestion, which she had not before considered, she glanced at him in quick dismay.

“I don’t think—I could go to him,” she said, hesitating nervously. “I... He must come home.”

“That, of course,” Dare answered, infinitely relieved, “is as you wish.”

The possibility of Arnott consenting to return occurred to him as very unlikely.

“You’ve got to face the chance of his refusal,” he added abruptly. He leaned towards her. “If he refuses, Pamela?—He may, you know.”

She turned to him and laid a hand impulsively upon his arm.

“Don’t tempt me to hope he will do that,” she said. “Be strong for both of us... I want you to be strong.”

He took her face in his hands and held it for a moment looking deeply into her eyes.

“Aren’t you demanding rather much of me,” he asked, “to insist that I should aid you in my own defeat? I’m only human, Pamela.”

She answered nothing, but placing her hands on his wrists, she pulled his hands from her face and carried them to her lips. At this unexpected act on her part Dare coloured awkwardly. The next moment he had seized her in his arms and covered her face with kisses. As abruptly as he had seized her, he released her and stood up. He pulled himself together with an effort, and walked as far as the window, where he paused for a second or so, and then turned and came slowly bade, and stood above her, looking down into the sweet, upturned face.

“When I came to you this morning,” he said, “I had only one purpose,—to win you,—to make you see that the only thing that really matters is our love for one another. I feel that still. It’s the only thing that counts with me. But I’m not going to worry you any more. You’ve got to follow your conscience in this. I think you’re wrong... time may prove you wrong. If it does, or if you fail in this, I count on you to let me know. I shall always be at hand—waiting. You’ll summon me, Pamela, when the time comes?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

She gazed into the strong face above her, sad now, and rather stern; and the thought of all that she was losing in sending him out of her life gripped her heart like icy fingers closing about the happiness of life. And while she sat there, and he stood over her, gravely silent, the gay sound of childish laughter broke upon the stillness, followed by the quick patter of little feet along the stoep. Dare looked round.

“Well, at any rate,” he said, “you’ve got them.”

The bitterness in his voice did not escape her. She understood what he was feeling, and, rising, she went to him and placed a hand gently on his arm.

“The best thing that life has given me is your love,” she said. “There is no sting of bitterness in that at all.”

Chapter Twenty Seven.

Dare remained in Cape Town for a while. Pamela had written to the doctor at Pretoria; and he waited to learn the result of his report, and hear what she decided upon doing. If she changed her mind about going up he meant to make the journey with her.

The report when it came differed very slightly from what he had told her. Arnott was making steady progress: it would be possible to move him shortly if Mrs Arnott wished. The doctor intimated that if she desired to see her husband there was no reason against it.