Front matter (continued 5)

There was a sneer in Lothian's voice which the other was quite quick to hear and to resent. On that occasion he had not defended his friend, as it happened.

"Oh, I said you meant well," Ingworth answered with quick impertinence, and then, afraid of what he had done hurriedly drained the second glass which the barmaid had just brought him.

"Well, I do, really," Lothian replied, so calmly that the younger man was deceived, and once more angry that his shaft had glanced upon what seemed to be impenetrable armour.

Yet, below the unruffled surface, the poet's mind was sick with loathing and disgust. He was not angry with Ingworth, against Toftrees he felt no rancour. He was sick, deadly sick with himself, inasmuch as he had descended so low as to be touched by such paws as these.

"I'll get through his damned high-and-mighty attitude yet," Ingworth thought to himself.

"I say," he remarked, "did you enjoy your trip to Brighton with Rita Wallace? Toftrees saw you there, you know. He was dining at the Metropole the same night."

He had pierced—right through—though he did not know it.

"Rather dangerous, wasn't it?" he continued. "Suppose your wife got to know, Gilbert?"

Something, those letters, near his heart, began to throb like a pulse in Lothian's pocket. One of the letters had arrived that very morning.

"Look here, Ingworth," he said, and his face became menacing, "you rather forget yourself, I think, in speaking to me in this way. You're a good sort of boy—at least I've thought so—and I've taken you up rather. But I don't allow impudence from people like you. Remember!"

The ice-cold voice frightened the other, but he had to the full that ape-like semi-courage which gibbers on till the last moment of a greater animal's patience.

The whiskey had affected him also. His brain was becoming heated.

"Well, I don't know about impudence," he answered pertly and with a red face. "Anyhow, Rita dined with me last week!"

He brought it out with a little note of triumph.

Lothian nodded.

"Yes, and you took her to that disgusting little café Maréchale in Soho. You ought not to take a lady to such a place as that. You've been long enough in London to know. Don't be such a babe. If you ever get a nice girl to go out with you again try and think things out a little more."

Tears of mortified vanity were in the young man's eyes.

"She's been writing to you!" he said with a catch in his voice, and suddenly his whole face seemed to change and dissolve into something else.

Did the lips really grow thicker? Did the angry blood which suffused the cheeks give them a dusky tinge which was not of Europe? Would the tongue loll out soon?

"I beg your pardon?" Lothian said coolly.

"Yes, she has!" the young fellow hissed. "You're trying on a game with the girl. She's a lady, and a good girl, and you're a married man. She's been telling you about me, though I've a right to meet her and you've not!—Look here, if she realised and knew what I know, and Toftrees and Mr. Amberley know, what every one in London knows, by Jove, she'd never speak to you again!"

Gilbert lifted his glass and sipped slowly. His face was composed. It bore the Napoleonic mask it had worn during the last part of their drive to the town.

Suddenly Gilbert rose up in his chair.

"You dirty little hanger-on," he said in a low voice, "how dare you mention any woman's name in this way!"

Without heat, without anger, but merely as a necessary measure of precaution or punishment, he smashed his left fist into Ingworth's jaw and laid him flat upon the carpet.

The girl behind the bar, who knew who Gilbert Lothian was very well, had been watching what was going on with experienced eyes.

She had seen, or known with the quick intuition of her training, that a row was imminent between the famous Mr. Lothian—whose occasional presences in the "lounge" were thought to confer a certain lustre upon that too hospitable rendezvous—and the excited young man with the dark red and strangely curly hair.

Molly Palmer had pressed the button of her private bell, which called Mr. Helzephron himself from his account books in the office.

Mr. Helzephron was a slim, bearded man, black of hair and saffron of visage. He was from Cornwall, in the beginning, and combined the inherent melancholy and pessimism of the Celt with the Celt's shrewd business instincts when he transplants himself.

He entered at that moment and caught hold of the wretched Ingworth just as the young man had risen, saw red, and was about to leap over the table at Lothian, whom, in all probability he would very soon have demolished.

Helzephron's arms and hands were like vices of steel. His voice droned like a wasp in a jam jar.

"Now, then," he said, "what's all this? What's all this, sir? I can't have this sort of thing going on. Has this gentleman been insulting you, Mr. Lothian?"

Ingworth was powerless in the Cornishman's grip. For a moment he would have given anything in the world to leap at the throat of the man at the other side of the table, who was still calmly smoking in his chair.

But quick prudence asserted itself. Lothian was known here, a celebrity. He was a celebrity anywhere, a public brawl with him would be dreadfully scandalous and distressing, while in the end it would assuredly not be the poet who would suffer most.

And Ingworth was a coward; not a physical coward, for he would have stood up to any one with nothing but glee in his heart, but a moral one. Lothian, he knew, wouldn't have minded the scandal a bit, here or anywhere else. But to Ingworth, cooled instantly by the lean grip of the landlord, the prospect was horrible.

And to be held by another man below one in social rank, landlord of an inn, policeman, or what not, while it rouses the blood of some men to frenzy, in others brings back an instant sanity.

Ingworth remained perfectly still.

For a second or two Lothian watched him with a calm, almost judicial air. Then he flushed suddenly, with a generous shame at the position.

"It's all right, Helzephron," he said. "It's a mistake, a damned silly mistake. As a matter of fact I lost my temper. Please let Mr. Ingworth go."

Mr. Helzephron possessed those baser sides of tact which pass for sincerity with many people.

"Very sorry, I'm sure," he droned, and stood waiting with melancholy interest to see what would happen next.

"I'm very sorry, Dicker," Lothian said impulsively; "you rather riled me, you know. But I behaved badly. It won't do either of us any good to have a rough and tumble here, but of course" . . . he looked significantly at the door.

Ingworth took him, and admired him for his simplicity. The old public school feeling was uppermost now. He knew that Gilbert knew he was no coward. He knew also that he could have knocked the other into a cocked hat in about three minutes.

"I was abominably rude, Gilbert," he said frankly. "Don't let's talk rot. I'm sorry."

"It's good of you to take it in that way, Dicker. I'm awfully sorry, too."

Mr. Helzephron interposed. "All's well that ends well," he remarked sententiously. "That's the best of gentlemen, they do settle these matters as gentlemen should. Now if you'll come with me, sir, I'll take you to the lavatory and you can sponge that blood off your face. You're not marked, really."

With a grin and a wink to Lothian, both of which were returned, Ingworth marched away in the wake of the landlord.

The air was cleared.

Gilbert was deeply sorry for what he had done. He had quite forgotten the provocation that he had received. "Good old sportsman, Dicker!" he thought; "he's a fine chap. I was a bounder to hit him. It would have served me jolly well right if he'd given me a hiding."

And the younger man, as he went to remove the stain of combat, had kindly and generous thoughts of his distinguished friend.

But, che sara sara, these kindly thoughts were but to bloom for an hour and fade. Neither knew that one of them was so soon to be brought to the yawning gates of Hell itself, and, at the very last moment, the unconscious action of the other was to snatch him from them.

Already the threads were being woven in those webs of Time, whereof God alone knows the pattern and directs the loom. Neither of them knew.

The barmaid, a tall, fresh-faced young girl, came down the room and took the empty glasses from the table.

"I say, Mr. Lothian," she remarked, "it's no business of mine, and no offence meant, but you didn't ought to have hit him."

"I know," Gilbert answered, "but why do you say so?"

"He's got such nice curly hair!" she replied with a provocative look from her bright eyes, and whisked away to the shelter of her counter.

Lothian sighed. During the years he had lived in Norfolk he had seen many fresh-faced girls come and go. Only a few days before, he had read a statement made by Mrs. Bramwell Booth of the Salvation Army that the number of immoral women in the West End of London who have been barmaids is one quarter of the whole. . . .

At that moment, this Miss Molly Palmer was the belle des coulisses of Wordingham. The local bloods quarrelled about her, the elder men gave her gloves on the sly, her pert repartees kept the lounge in a roar from ten to eleven.

Once, with a sneer and as one man of the world to another, Helzephron had shown Lothian a trade paper in which these girls are advertised for—

"Barmaid wanted, must be attractive."

"Young lady wanted for select wine-room in the West End, gentlemen only, must be well educated and of good appearance, age not over twenty-five."

"Required at once, attractive young lady as barmaid—young. Photograph."

. . . A great depression fell upon the poet. Everywhere he turned just now ennui and darkness seemed to confront him. His youth was going. His fame brought no pleasure nor contentment. The easy financial circumstances of his life seemed to roll over him like a weed-clogged wave. His wife's love and care—was not that losing its savour also? The delightful labour of writing, the breathless and strenuous clutching at the waiting harps of poetry, was not he fainting and failing in this high effort, too?

His life was a grey, numbed thing. He was reminded of it whichever way he turned.

There was a time when the Holy Mysteries brought him a joy which was priceless and unutterable.

Yes! when he knelt at the Mass with Mary by his side, he had felt the breath of Paradise upon his brow. Emptied of all earthly things his soul had entered into the mystical Communion of Saints.

To husband and wife, in humble supplication side by side, the still small voice had spoken. The rushing wind of the Holy Ghost had risen around them and the Passion of Jesus been more near.

And now?—the man rose from his chair with a laugh so sad and hollow, a face so contorted with pain, that it startled the silly girl behind the bar.

She made a rapid calculation. "He was sober when 'e come," she thought in the vernacular, "and 'e can stand a lot, can Mr. Lothian. It's nothing. Them poets!"

"Something amusing you?" she said with her best smile.

Lothian nodded. "Oh, just my thoughts," he replied. "Give me another whiskey and soda—a fat one, yes, a little more, yes, that'll do."

For a moment, a moment of hesitation, he held it out at arm's length.

The sunlight of the afternoon blazed into the glass and turned the liquid to molten gold.

The light came from a window in the roof, just over the bar itself. The remainder of the room was in quiet shadow.

He looked down into the room and shuddered. It was typical of his life now.

He looked up at the half open window from which the glory came.

"Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!" he said, with a sad smile.

Molly Palmer watched him. "Juggins!" she thought, "them poets!"

But Lothian's words seemed to call for some rejoinder and the girl was at a loss.

"Wish you meant it!" she said at length, wondering if that would meet the occasion—as it often met others.

Lothian laughed, and drank down the whiskey.

The light from above faded almost instantly—perhaps a cloud was passing over the sun.

But, au contraire, the shadow of the room beyond had invitation now. It no longer seemed sombre.

He went into the shadows and sat down in the same chair where he had been before.

He smiled as he lit another cigarette. How strange moods were! how powerful for a moment, but how quickly over! The letters in his breast pocket seemed to glow out with material warmth, a warmth that went straight to his heart through the cloth and linen of his clothing. The new Ego was fed. Rita!

Yes! at least life had given him this and was it not the treasure of treasures? There was nothing coarse nor earthly in this at least!

The music of the Venusberg throbbed in all his pulses, calling, calling from the hollow hill. He did not realise from where it came—this magic music—and that there is more than one angelic choir.

Rita and Gilbert. Gilbert and Rita!

The words and music of one song!

So we observe that now the masked musicians in the unseen orchestra are in their places.

Any little trouble with the Management is over. Opposition players have sorrowfully departed. The Audience has willed it so, and the band only awaits its leader.

Monsieur L'Ame du Vin, that celebrated conductor, has just slid into his seat. He smirks at his players, gives an intelligent glance at the first violin, and taps upon the desk.

Three beats of the baton, a raised left hand, and once more the oft repeated overture to the Dance of Death commences, with the Fiend Alcohol beating time.

Ingworth came back soon. There was a slight bruise upon his upper lip, but that was all.

The two men—it was to be the last time in lives which had so strangely crossed—were friends in a sense that they had never been before. Both of them looked back upon that afternoon during the immediate days to come with regret and sorrow. Each remembered it differently, according to the depth of individual temperament. But it was remembered, as an hour when strife and turmoil had ceased; when, trembling on the brink of unforeseen events to come, there was pause and friendship, when the good in both of them rose to the surface for a little space and was observed of both.

"Now, Dicker, you just watch. They'll all be here soon for their afternoon drink—the local bloods, I mean. It's their substitute for afternoon tea, don't you know. They sit here talking about nothing to friends who have devoted their lives to the subject. Watch it for your work. You'll learn a lot. That must have been the way in which Flaubert got his stuff for 'Madame Bovary.'"

Something of the artist's fire animated the lad. He was no artist. He hadn't read "Madame Bovary," and it wouldn't have interested him if he had. But the plan appealed to him. It fitted in with his method of life. It was getting something for nothing. Yet he realised, to give him his due, a little more than this. He was sitting at the feet of his Master.

But as it happened, on that afternoon the local bloods were otherwise employed, for at any rate they made no appearance.

Lothian felt at ease. He had one or two more pegs. He had been so comparatively abstemious since his accident and under the regime of Dr. Morton Sims, that what he took now had only a tranquillising and pleasantly narcotic influence.

The nervous irritation of an hour before which had made him strike his friend, the depression and hollow misery which succeeded it, the few minutes of lyrical exaltation as he thought of Rita Wallace, all these were merged in a sense of bien être and drowsiness.

He enjoyed an unaccustomed and languid repletion in his mind, as if it had been overfed and wanted to lie down for a time.

Mr. Helzephron sat down at their table after a time and prosed away in his monotonous voice. He was a man of some education, had read, and was a Dickens lover. He did not often have the opportunity of conversation with any one like Lothian and he made the most of it. Like many common men who are anxious to ingratiate themselves with their superiors, he thought that the surest way to do so was to abuse his neighbours, thus, as he imagined, proclaiming himself above them and flattering his hearer. Lothian always said of the landlord of the George that he was worth his weight in gall, and for a time he was amused.

At five o'clock the two visitors had some tea and toast and at the half hour both were ready to go.

"I'll run round to the post office," Ingworth said, "and see if there are any late letters."

"Very well," Gilbert answered, "and I'll have the horse put in."

The afternoon post for Mortland Royal left the town at three, and letters which came in by the five o'clock mail were not delivered at the village until the next morning unless—as now—they were specially called for.

Ingworth ran off.

"Well, Mr. Lothian," said the landlord. "I don't often have the pleasure of a talk with you. Just one more with me before you go?"

They were standing together at the bar counter when a page boy entered the lounge and went up to his master. "Please, sir," he said, "the new young lady's come."

"Oh, very well," Helzephron answered. "I'll be out in a minute. Where is she?"

"In the hall, sir. And shall Boots go down for her trunk?"

"Yes; tell him to go to the station at once with the hand-cart. A new barmaid," he said, turning to Gilbert, "for the four ale bar, a woman of about thirty, not much class, you understand, wouldn't do for the lounge, but will keep the working men in order. It's astonishing how glad they are to get a job when they're about thirty! They're no draw then, and they know it. The worst of it is that these older women generally help themselves from the till or the bottle! I've had fifty applications for this job."

He led the way out into the hall of the hotel, followed by Lothian, who was on his way to the stable yard.

A woman was sitting upon a plush-covered bench by the wall. She was a dark gipsy looking creature, coarsely handsome and of an opulent figure. She stood up as Helzephron came out into the hall, and there seemed to be a suggestion of great boldness and flaunting assertion about her, oddly restrained and overlaid by a timidity quite at variance with her appearance.

The landlord was in front, and for a moment Lothian was concealed. Then, as he was about to wish Helzephron good afternoon and turned for the purpose, he came into view of the new barmaid.

She saw him full face and an instant and horrible change came over her own. It faded to dead paper-white. The dark eyes became fixed like lenses. The jaw dropped like the jaw of a ventriloquist's puppet, a strangled gurgle came from the open mouth and then a hoarse scream of terror. The woman's arms jerked up in the air as if they had been pulled by strings, and her hands in shabby black gloves curved into claws and were rigid. Then she spun round, caught her boot in the leg of the chair and fell in a swoon upon the floor.

The landlord swore in his surprise and alarm.

Then, keen as a knife, he whipped round and looked at Lothian.

Lothian's face expressed nothing but the most unbounded astonishment. Help was summoned and the woman was carried into the landlord's private office, where restoratives were applied.

In three or four minutes she opened her eyes and moaned. Lothian, Helzephron and a chambermaid who was attending on her, were the only other people in the office.

"There, there," said the landlord irritably, when he saw that consciousness was returning. "What in heaven's name did you go off like that for? You don't belong to do that sort of thing often I hope. If so I may as well tell you at once that you'll be no good here."

"I'm very sorry, sir," said the poor creature, trembling and obviously struggling with rising hysteria. "It took me sudden. I'm very strong, really, sir. It shan't happen again."

"I hope not," Helzephron answered in a rather more kindly tone. "Elsie, go into the lounge and ask Miss Palmer for a little brandy and water—but what took you like this?"

The woman hesitated. Her glance fell upon Lothian who was standing there, a pitying and perplexed spectator of this strange scene. She could not repress a shudder as she saw him, though both men noticed that the staring horror was going from her eyes and that her face was relieved.

"I'm very sorry," she said again, "but the sight of that gentleman coming upon me sudden and unexpected was the cause of it."

"This gentleman!" Helzephron replied. "This is Mr. Gilbert Lothian, a famous gentleman and one of our country gentleman in Norfolk. What can you have to do with him?"

"Oh, nothing sir, nothing. But there's a very strong resemblance in this gentleman to some one"—she hesitated and shuddered—"to some one I once knew. I thought it was him come back at first. I see now that there's lots of difference. I've had an unhappy life, sir."

She began to sob quietly.

"Now, drink this," said the landlord, handing her the brandy which the chambermaid had just brought. "Stop crying and Elsie will take you up to your room. Your references are all right and I don't want to know nothing of your history. Do your duty by me like a good girl and you'll find me a good master. Your past's nothing to me."

Lothian and the landlord went out into the stable yard where the rainbow-throated pigeons were murmuring on the tiled roofs, and the ostler—like Mousqueton—was spitting meditatively. They discussed this strange occurrence.

"I never saw a woman so frightened!" said Mr. Helzephron. "You might have been old Bogy himself, Mr. Lothian. I didn't know what to think for a moment! I hope she doesn't drink."

"Well, I suppose we've all got a double somewhere or other," Lothian answered. "I suppose she saw some likeness in me to some one who has ill used her, poor thing."

"Oh, yes, sir," Helzephron replied. "That's it—she said as much. Half the plays and novels turn on such likenesses. I used to be a great play-goer when I was in London and I've seen all the best actresses. But I'm damned if I ever see such downright horror as there was in that girl's face. He must have been a bad un whoever he was. Real natural tragedy in that face—William, put in Mr. Lothian's horse."

He said good-bye and re-entered the hotel.

Lothian remained in the centre of the yard. He lit a cigarette and watched the horse being harnessed. His face was clouded with thought.

It was very strange! How frightful the poor woman had looked. It was a nightmare face, a face of Gustave Doré from the Inferno engravings!

He never saw the woman again, as it happened, and never knew who she was. If he had read of the Hackney murder in the papers of the year before he had given it no attention. He knew nothing of the coarse siren for whose sake the poisoned man of Hackney had killed the wife who loved him, and who, under an assumed name, was living out her obscure and haunted life in menial toil.

Dr. Morton Sims might have thrown some light upon the incident at the George perhaps. But then Dr. Morton Sims never heard of it and it soon passed from the poet's mind.

No doubt the Fiend Alcohol who provided the incidental music at the head of his orchestra was smiling.

For the Overture to the Dance of Death is curiously coloured music and there are red threads of melody interwoven with the sable chords.

CHAPTER VI

AN OMNES EXEUNT FROM MORTLAND ROYAL

Dickson Ingworth returned from the post office with several letters.

He handed three of them to Lothian. One was a business letter from the firm of Ince and Amberley, the other an invitation to a literary dinner at the Trocadero, the third, with foreign stamp and postmark, was for Mary Lothian.

As they drove out of the town, Ingworth was in high spirits. His eyes sparkled, he seemed excited.

"Good news by this post, Dicker?" Gilbert asked.

Ingworth had been waiting for the question. He tried to keep the tremulous pleasure out of his voice as he answered.

"Well, rather. I've just heard from Herbert Toftrees. When I saw him last, just before I came down here, he hinted that he might be able to influence things for me in a certain quarter." . . .

He paused.

Gilbert saw how it was. The lad was bursting with news but wanted to appear calm, wanted to be coaxed. Well, Gilbert owed him that!

"Really! Has something come off, Dicker, then? Do tell me, I should be so glad."

"Yes, Gilbert. It's the damnedst lucky thing! Toftrees is a topping chap. The other day he hinted at something he might be able to do for me in his deep-voiced, mysterious way. I didn't pay much attention because they say he's rather like that, and one mustn't put too much trust in it. But, by Jove! it's come off. The editor of the Wire—Ommany you know—wants somebody to go to Italy with the delegation of English Public School Masters, as special correspondent for a month. They've offered it to me. It's a big step, Gilbert, for me! They will pay awfully well for the job and it means that I shall get in permanently with the Wire."

"I'm awfully glad, Dicker. Splendid for you! But what is it exactly?"

"The new movement in Italy, anti-Papal and National. It's the schools, you know. The King and the Mayor of Rome are frightfully keen that all the better class schools, like our public schools, you know—shall be taken out of the hands of the Jesuits and the seminary priests. Games and a healthy sort of school life are to be organised for the boys. They're going to try and introduce our system if they can. A Harrow tutor, a Winchester man, undermasters from Haileybury, Repton and Denstone are going out to organise things."

"And you're going with them to tell England all about it! I congratulate you, Dicker. It's a big chance. You can make some fine articles out of it, if you take care. It should introduce your name."

"Thanks awfully, I hope so. It's because I got my running blue I expect. But it's jolly decent of the old Toffer all the same."

"Oh, it is. When do you go?"

"At once. They start in four days. I shall have to go up to town by the first train to-morrow."

"I'm sorry, but of course, if you must" . . .

"Oh, I must," Ingworth said importantly. "I have to see Ommany to-morrow night."

Unconsciously, as he urged the cob onwards, his head sank forward a little, and he imitated the grave pre-occupation of Lothian upon the drive out.

Mary Lothian was sitting in a deck chair in front of the house when the two men came through the gate. A little table stood by the side of her chair, and on it was a basket of the thin silk socks her husband wore. She was darning one of the expensive gossamer things with a tiny needle and almost invisible thread.

Mary looked up quickly as the two men came up to her. There was a swift interrogation in her eyes, instantly suppressed but piteous in its significance.

But now, she smiled.

Gilbert was all right! She knew it at once. He had come back from Wordingham quite sober, and in her tender anxious heart she blessed God and Dr. Morton Sims.

She was told of Dickson's opportunity. Gilbert was as anxious to tell, and as excited as his friend. "Oh, I am so glad, Dicker!" she said over and over again. "My dear boy, I am so glad! Now you've got your chance at last. Your real chance. Never come down here again if you don't make the most of it!"

Ingworth sat down upon the lawn at her feet. Dusk was at hand. The sun was sinking to rest and the flowers of the garden were almost shouting with perfume.

Rooks winged homeward through the fading light, and the Dog Trust gambolled in the middle-distance of the lawn as the cock-chafers went booming by.

. . . "Think I shall be able to do it, Mrs. Gilbert?"

"Of course you will, Dicker! Put your very heart into it, won't you! It's your chance at last, isn't it?"

Ingworth jumped to his feet. "I shall do it," he said gravely, as who should say that the destinies of kingdoms depended upon his endeavours.

"And now I must go in and write some letters. I shall have to be off quite early to-morrow, Mrs. Gilbert."

"I'll arrange all that. Go in and do your letters. We're not going to dine till eight to-night."

Ingworth crossed the lawn and went into the house.

Gilbert drew his chair up to his wife.

She held out her hand. He took it, raised it to his lips and kissed it. He was at home.

"I'm glad, dear," Mary said, "that Dicker has got something definite to do. It will steady him. If he is successful it will give him a new sense of responsibility. I wouldn't say anything to you, Gillie, but I have not liked him so much this time as I used to."

"Why?"

"He doesn't seem to have been treating you quite in the way he used to. He's been talking a good deal to me of some people who seem to have taken him up in London. And I can't help knowing that you've done everything for him in the past. Really, Gillie, I have had to snub him quite severely, for me, once or twice."

"Yes."

"Yes. He assumed a confidential, semi-superior sort of air and manner. In a clumsy, boyish sort of way he's tried to suggest that I'm not happy with you."

Lothian laughed bitterly. "I know," he said, "so many people are like that. Ingworth has good streaks like all of us. But speaking generally he's unstable. I've found it out lately, too. Never mind. He's off to-morrow. Oh, by the way, here's a letter for you, dear, I forgot."

Mary took the letter and rose from her chair. Arm in arm they entered the house together and went upstairs to dress for dinner.

Gilbert had had his bath, had changed, and was tying his tie in front of the dressing table mirror, when the door of his room opened and Mary hurried in.

Her hair was coiled in its masses of pale gold, and a star of emeralds which he had given her was fixed in it. She wore a long dressing robe of green silk fringed with dull red arabesques—he had bought it for her in Tunis.

A rope of camels' hair gathered it in round her slender waist and the lovely column of her neck, the superb white arms were bare.

"What is it, dear?" he said, for his wife's fair face was troubled.

"Oh, darling," she answered, with a sob in her voice, "I've had bad news from Nice."

"About Dorothy?"

"Yes, Miss Dalton, the lady nurse who is with her has written. It's all been no use, Gillie, no use at all! She's dying, dear. The doctor from Cannes who has been attending her has said so. And Sir William Larus who is at Mentone was called in too. They give her three weeks or a month. They've cabled to India but it's a forlorn hope. Harold won't be able to get to her in time—though there's just a chance."

She sank down upon the bed and covered her face with her hands.

She was speaking of her sister, Lady Davidson, who was stricken with consumption. Sir Harold Davidson was a major in the Indian Army, a baronet without much money, and a keen soldier. Mary's sister had developed the disease in England, where she had been ordered from Simla by the doctors there. She was supposed to be "run down" and no more then. Phthisis had been diagnosed in London—incipient only—and she had been sent to the Riviera at once. The reports from Nice had become much worse during the last few weeks, and now—this letter.

Gilbert went to his wife and sat down beside her upon the bed, drawing her to him. He was fond of Dorothy Davidson and also of her husband, but he knew that Mary adored her sister.

"Darling," he said, "don't give way. It may not be so bad after all. And so much depends upon the patient in all illnesses—doesn't it? Morton Sims was telling us so the other night, you remember? Dolly is an awfully sporting sort of girl. She won't give in."

Mary leant her head upon his shoulder. The strong arms that held her brought consolation. The lips of the husband and wife met.

"It's dear of you to say so," Mary said at length, "but I know, dear. The doctor and the nurse have been quite explicit. Dorothy is dying, Gillie, I can't let her die alone, can I?"

"No, dear, of course not," he replied rather vaguely, not quite understanding what she meant for a moment.

"She must have some one of her own people with her. Harold will most likely not arrive in time. I must go—mustn't I?"

Then Gilbert realised.

His swift imagination pictured a lonely hotel death-bed among the palms and mimosa of the Côte d'Azur, a pretty and charming girl fading away from the blue white and gold with no loving hands to tend her, and only the paid services of strangers to speed or assuage the young soul's passage from sunshine and laughter to the unknown.

"You must go to her at once, sweetheart," he said gravely.

"Oh, I must! You don't mind my leaving you?"

"How can you ask it? But I will come with you. We will both go. You will want a man."

Mary hesitated for a second, and then she shook her head.

"I shall manage quite well by myself," she said. "It will be better so. I'm quite used to travelling alone as you know. And the journey to Nice is nothing. I shall be in one carriage all the way from Calais. You could come out after, if necessary."

"I would come gladly, dear."

"I know, Gillie, and it's sweet of you. But you couldn't be of use and it would be miserable for you. It is better that I should be alone with Dolly. I can always wire if I want you."

"As you think best, dear. Then I will stay quietly down here."

"Yes, do. You have that poem to work on, 'A Lady in a Library.' It is a beautiful fancy and will make you greater than ever! It's quite the best thing you've done so far. And then there's the shooting."

"Oh, I shall do very well, Molly. Don't bother about me, dear."

She held him closer. Her cool white arms were around his neck.

"But I always do bother about you, husband," she whispered, "because I love you better than anything else in the world. It is sweet of you to let me go like this. And I feel so much happier about you now, since the doctor has come to the village."

He winced with pain and shame at her loving words. A pang went right through him.

It passed as swiftly as it had come. Sweet and loving women too often provide men with excuses for their own ill conduct. Lothian knew that—under the special circumstances of which his wife knew nothing—it was his duty to go with Mary. But he didn't want to go. He would have hated going.

Already a wide vista was opening before him—a freedom, an absolute freedom! Wild music! The Wine of Life! Now, if ever, Fate, Destiny, call it what he would, was preparing the choicest banquet.

He had met Rita. Rita was waiting, he could be with Rita!

And yet, so subtle and tortuous is the play of egoism upon conscience, he felt pleased with himself for his ready concurrence in his wife's plans. He assumed the rôle she gave him with avidity, and when he answered her she thought him the best and noblest of men.

"It will be dreadful without you, darling, but you are quite right to go. Send for me if you want me. I'll catch the next boat. But I have my work to do, and I can see a good deal of Morton Sims"—he knew well, and felt with shame, the cunning of this last statement—"and if I'm dull I can always run up to town for a day or two and stay at the club."

"Of course you can, dear. You won't feel so lonely then. Now about details. I must pack to-night."

"Yes, dear, and then you can go off with Dicker in the morning, and catch the night boat. If you like, that is."

"Well, I shouldn't gain anything by that, dear. I should only have to wait about in Calais until one o'clock the next day when the train de luxe starts. But I should like to go first thing to-morrow. I couldn't wait about here the whole day. Dicker will be company of sorts. I shall get to town about two, and go to the Charing Cross Hotel. Then I shall do some shopping, go to bed early, and catch the boat train from the station in the morning. I would rather do it like that."

Both of them were experienced travellers and knew the continental routes well. It was arranged so.

Mary did not come down to dinner. A tray was sent up to her room. Lothian dined alone with Ingworth. The voices of the two men were hushed to a lower tone in deference to the grief of the lady above. But there was a subdued undercurrent of high spirits nevertheless. Ingworth was wildly excited by the prospect before him; Gilbert fell into his mood with no trouble at all.

He also had his own thoughts, his own private thoughts.

—"I say, Dicker, let's have some champagne, shall we?—just to wish your mission success."

"Yes, do let's. I'm just in the mood for buzz-water to-night."

The housemaid went to the cellar and fetched the wine.

"Here's to you, Dicker! May you become a G. W. Stevens or a Julian Ralph!"

"Thanks, old chap. I'll do my best, now that my chance has come. I say I am awfully sorry about Lady Davidson. It's such rough luck on Mrs. Gilbert. You'll be rather at a loose end without your wife, won't you?—or will you write?"

He tossed off his second glass of Pol Roger.

"Oh, I shall be quite happy," Lothian answered, and as he said it a quiet smile came placidly upon his lips. It glowed out from within, as from some comfortable inward knowledge.

Ingworth saw it, and his mind, quickened by wine and excitement, found the truth unerringly.

Anger and envy flushed the young man's veins. He hated his host once more.

"So that is his game, damned hypocrite!" Ingworth thought. "I shall be away, his wife will be out of the way and he will make the running with Rita Wallace just as he likes."

He looked at Lothian, and then had a mental vision of himself.

"He's fat and bloated," he thought. "Surely a young and lovely girl like Rita can't care for him?"

But even as he endeavoured to comfort his greedy conceit by these imaginings, he felt the shadow of the big mind falling upon them. He knew, as he had known so often of late, the power of that which was cased in its envelope of flesh, and which could not be denied.

Perhaps there is no hate so bitter, no fear so impotent and distressing, as that which is experienced by the surface for the depth.

It is the fury of the brilliant scabbard against the sword within, decoration versus that which cleaves.

Ingworth wished that he were not going away—leaving the field clear. . . .

"Have a cigar, Dicker. No?—well, here's the very best of luck."

"Thanks, the same to you!"

END OF BOOK TWO

BOOK THREE

FRUIT OF THE DEAD SEA

"Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth."

"Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe: let her breasts satisfy thee at all times: and be thou ravished always with her love."

"And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?"

"His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins."

CHAPTER I

THE GIRLS IN THE FOURTH STORY FLAT

In the sitting room of a small forty-five pound flat, upon the fourth floor of a tall red-brick building in West Kensington known as Queens Mansions, Ethel Harrison, the girl who lived with Rita Wallace, sat sewing by the window.

It was seven o'clock in the evening and though dusk was at hand there was still enough light to sew by. The flat, moreover, was on the west side of the building and caught the last rays of the sun as he sank to rest behind the quivering vapours of London.

Last week in August as it was, the heat which hung over the metropolis for so long was in no way abated. All the oxygen was gone from the air, and for those who must stay in London—the workers, who could only read in the papers of translucent sunlit seas in Cornwall where one bathed from the beaches all day long; of bright northern moors where dew fell upon the heather at dawn—life was become stifling and hard.

In the window hung a bird-cage and the canary within it—the pet of these two lonely maidens—drooped upon its perch. It was known as "The Lulu Bird" and was a recurring incident in their lives.

Ethel was six and twenty, short, undistinguished of feature and with sandy hair. She was the daughter of a very poor clergyman in Lancashire, and she was the principal typist in the busy office of a firm of solicitors in the city. She had ever so many certificates for shorthand, was a quick and accurate machine-writer, understood the routine of an office in all its details, and was invaluable to her employers. They boasted of her, indeed, trusted her in every way, worked her from nine to six on normal days, to any hours of the night at times of pressure, and paid her the highest salary in the market.

That is to say, that this girl was at the very top of her profession and received two pounds ten shillings a week. Dozens of girls envied her, she was more highly paid than most of the men clerks in the city. She knew herself to be a very fortunate girl. She gave high technical ability, a good intelligence, unceasing, unwearying and most loyal service for fifty shillings a week.

Each year she had a holiday of fourteen days, when she clubbed with some other girls and they all went to some farmhouse in the country, or even for a cheap excursion abroad, with everything calculated to the last shilling. This girl did all this, dressed like a lady, had a little home of her own with Rita, preserved her dignity and independence, and sent many a small postal order to help the poor curate's wife, her mother, with the hungry brood of younger ones. Mr. and Mrs. Harrison in Lancashire spoke of their eldest daughter with pride. She had "her flat in town." She was "doing extraordinarily well"; "Sister Ethel" was a fairy godmother to her little brothers and sisters.

She was a good girl, good and happy. The graces were denied her; she had made all sweet virtues her own. No man wooed her, no man looked twice at her. She had no religious ecstasies, and—instead of a theatre where one had to pay—asked no thrills from sensuous ceremonial. She simply went to the nearest church and said her prayers.

It is the shame of most of us that when we meet such women as these, we pass them by with a kindly laugh or a patronising word. Men and women of the world prefer more decorative folk. They like to watch holiness in a picturesque setting, Elizabeth of Hungary washing the beggar's feet upon the palace steps. . . .

A little worker-bee saint, making a milk pudding for a sick washerwoman on a gas-stove in a flat—that comes rather too close home, does it not?

The light was really fading now, and Ethel put down her sewing, rose from her basket-work chair, and lit the gas.

It was an incandescent burner, hanging from the centre of the ceiling, and the girls' living room was revealed.

It was a very simple, comely, makeshift little home.

On one side of the fireplace—now filled with a brown and gasping harts-tongue fern in an earthen pot—was Ethel's bookshelf.

Up-to-date she had a hundred and thirty-two books, of the "Everyman" and "World's Classics" series. She generally managed a book and a half each fortnight, and her horizon was bounded by the two-hundredth volume. Dickens she had very much neglected of late, the new Ruskin had kept the set at "David Copperfield" for weeks, but she was getting on steadily with her Thackeries.

Rita had no books. She was free of that Kingdom at the Podley Institute, but the little black piano was hers. The great luxury of the Chesterfield was a joint extravagance. Both ends would let down to make a couch when necessary, and though it had cost the girls three pounds ten, it "made all the difference to the room."

All the photographs upon the mantel-shelf were Ethel's. There was her father in his cassock—staring straight out of the frame like a good and patient mule. . . . Her sisters and brothers also, of all ages and sizes, and all clothed with an odd suggestion of masquerading, of attempting the right thing. Not but what they were all perfect to poor Ethel, whose life was far too busy and limited to understand the tragedy of clothes.

Rita's photographs were on the piano.

There were several of her school-friends—lucky Rita had been to a smart school!—and the enigmatic face of Muriel Amberley with its youthful Mona Lisa smile looked out from an oval frame of red leather stamped with an occasional fleur-de-lys in gold.

There was a portrait of Mr. Podley, cut from the Graphic and framed cheaply, and there were two new photographs.

One of them was that of a curly-headed, good-looking young man with rather thick lips and a painful consciousness that he was being photographed investing the whole picture with suspense.

Ethel had heard Rita refer to the original of this portrait once or twice as "Dicker" or "Curly."

But, then, there was another photograph. A large one this time, done in cloudy browns, nearly a foot square and with the name of a very famous artist of the camera stamped into the card.

This was a new arrival, also, of the past few weeks, and it was held in a massive frame of thick plain silver.

The frame, with the portrait in it, had arrived at the flat some fortnight ago in an elaborate wooden box.

Ethel had recognised the portrait at once. It was of Mr. Gilbert Lothian, the great poet. Rita had met him at a dinner-party, and, if she didn't exaggerate, the great man had almost shown a disposition to be friendly. It was nice of him to send Rita his photograph, but the frame was rather too much. All that massive silver!—"it must have cost thirty shillings at least," she had thought in her innocence.

When the gas was turned up, for some reason or other her eye had fallen at once upon the photograph upon the top of the piano.

She had read some of Lothian's poems, but she had found nothing whatever in them that had pleased her. Even when her father had written to her and recommended them for her to read the poems meant less than nothing, and the face—no! she didn't like the face. "I hardly think that it's quite a good face," she said to herself, not recognising that—the question of morality quite apart—her hostility rose from the fact that it was a face utterly outside her limited experience, a face that was eloquent of a life, of things, of thoughts that she could never even begin to understand.

In the middle of the room the small round table was spread with a fair white cloth and set for a meal. There was a green bowl of bananas, a loaf of brown bread, some sardines in a glass dish. But a place was laid for one person only.

Rita was in their mutual bedroom dressing. Rita was going to dine out.

The two girls had lived together for a year now. At the beginning of their association one thing had been agreed between them. Their outside lives were to be lived independently of their home life. No confidences were to be expected or demanded as a matter of course. If confidences were made they were to be free and spontaneous, at the wish or whim of each.

The contract had been loyally observed. Ethel never had any secrets. Rita had had several during the year of their association, but they had proved only minor little secrets after all. Sooner or later she had told them, and they had been food for virginal laughter for them both.

But now, during the last few weeks?—Ethel's glance flitted uneasily from the big photograph upon the piano to a little round table of bamboo work in one corner of the sitting room.

Upon this table lay a huge bunch of dark red roses. The stalks were fitted into a holder of finely-woven white grass—as delicate in texture as a panama hat—and the bouquet was tied with graceful bows and streamers of purple satin—broad, expensive ribbon.

A boy messenger, most unusual visitor, had brought them an hour ago. "For Miss Rita Wallace."

The quiet mind, the crystal soul of this girl, dimly discerned something alien and disturbing.

The door of the sitting-room opened and Rita came in.

She was radiant. Her one evening dress was not an expensive affair, a simple, girl's frock of olive-green crêpe de chene in the Empire fashion, but the girl and her clothes were one.

The high "waist," coming just under the curve of the breast, was edged with an embroidery of dull silver thread, and the gleam of this upon its olive setting threw up the fair column of the throat the rounded arms, the whiteness of the girlish bosom, with a most striking and arresting lustre.

Round her neck the girl wore a riband of dark green velvet, and as a pendant from it hung a little star of amethysts and olivines set in a filigree of platinum, no rare nor costly jewel, but a beautiful one. She was pulling her long white gloves up to the elbow as she entered the room.

Ethel loved Rita dearly. Rita was her romance, the art and colour of her life. She was always saying or doing astonishing things, she was always beautiful. To-night, though the frock was an old friend, the pendant quite familiar, Ethel thought that she had never seen her friend so lovely. The nut-brown hair was shining, the young, brown eyes lit up with excitement and joy, the tints of rose and pearl upon Rita's cheeks came and went as her heart beat.

"A Duke might be glad to marry her," the plain girl thought without a throb of envy.

She was perfectly right. If Rita had been in society or on the stage she probably would have married a peer—not a Duke though, that was Ethel's inexperience. There are so few dukes that they have not the same liberty of action as other noblemen. The Beauty Market is badly organised—curious fact in an age when to purvey cats' meat is a specialised industry. But the fact remains. The prettiest girls in England don't have their pictures in the papers and advertise no dentrifice or musical comedy on the one hand, nor St. Peter and St. George, their fashionable West End temples, on the other. Buyers of Beauty have but a limited choice, and on the whole it is a salutary thing, though doubtless hard upon loveliness that perforce throws itself away upon men without rank or fortune for want of proper opportunity!

"How do I look, Wog dear?" Rita asked.

"Splendid, darling," Ethel answered eagerly—a pretty junior typist in Ethel's office, who had been snubbed, had once sent her homely senior a golliwog doll, and since then the good-humoured Ethel was "Wog" to her friends.

"I'm so glad. I want to look my best to-night."

"Well, then, you do," Ethel replied, and with an heroic effort forbore further questioning.

She always kept loyally to the compact of silence and non-interference with what went on outside the flat.

Rita chuckled and darted one of her naughty, provocative glances.

"Wog! You're dying to know where I'm going!"

Some girls would have affected indifference immediately. Not so the simple Wog.

"Of course I am, Cupid," she said.

"I'm going to dine with Gilbert."

"Gilbert?"

"Gilbert Lothian I mean, of course. We are absolute friends, Wog dear—he and I. I haven't told you before, but I will now. You remember that night I was home so late, nearly a month ago? Yes?—well I had been motoring to Brighton with Gilbert. I met him for the first time at the Amberleys'—but that you know. Since then we have become friends—such a strange and wonderful friendship it is, Ethel! It's made things so different for me."

"But how friends? Have you seen him often, then? But you can't have?"

Rita shook her head, impatiently for a moment, and then she smiled gently. How could poor old Wog know or understand!

"No!" she cried, with a little tap of her shoe upon the carpet. "But there are such things as letters aren't there?"

"Has he been writing to you, then?"

"Writing! I have had four of the most beautiful letters that a poet ever wrote. It took him days to write each one. He chose every word, over and over again. Every sentence is music, every word a note in a chord!"

Ethel went up to her friend and kissed her. "Dear old Cupid," she said, "I'm so glad, so very glad. I don't understand his poems myself, but Father simply loves them. I am sure you will be very happy. Only I do hope he is a good man—really worthy of my dear! And so"—she continued, with a struggle to get down to commonplace brightness of manner—"And so he's coming for you to-night! Now I know why you look so beautiful and are so happy."

Two tears gathered in the kind green eyes, tears of joy at her dear girl's happiness, but with a tincture of sadness too. With a somewhat unaccustomed flash of imagination, she looked into the future and saw herself lonely in the flat, or with another girl who could never be to her what Rita was.

She looked up at Rita again, trying to smile through her tears.

What she saw astounded her.

Rita's face was flushed. A knot of wrinkles had sprung between her eyebrows. Her mouth was mutinous, her brown eyes lit with an angry and puzzled light.

"I don't understand you, Ethel," she said in a voice which was so cold and unusual that the other girl was dumb.—"What on earth do you mean?"

"Mean, dear," Ethel faltered. "I don't quite understand. I thought you meant—I thought . . ."

"What did you think?"

"I thought you meant that you were engaged to him, Cupid darling!"

"Engaged!—Why Gilbert is married."

Ethel glanced quickly at the flowers, at the photograph upon the piano. Things seemed going round and round her—the heat, that was it—"But the letters!" she managed to say at length, "and, and—oh, Cupid, what are you doing? He can't be a good man. I'm certain of it, dear! I'm older than you are. I know more about things. You don't realise,—but how should you poor darling! He can't be a good man! Rita, does his wife know?"

The girl frowned impatiently. "How limited and narrow you are, Ethel," she said. "Have you such low ideals that you think friendship between a man and a woman impossible? Are you entirely fettered by convention and silly old puritanical nonsense? Wouldn't you be glad and proud to have a man with a wonderful mind for your friend—a man who is all chivalry and kindness, who pours out the treasures of his intellect for one?"

Ethel did not answer. She did not, in truth, know what to say. There was no reason she could adduce why Rita should not have a man friend. She knew that many singular and fine natures despised conventionality or ordinary rules and seemed to have the right to do so. And then—honi soit! Yet, inarticulate as she was, she felt by some instinct that there was something wrong. Mr. Gilbert Lothian was married. That meant everything. A married man, and a poet too! oughtn't to have any secret and very intimate friendships with beautiful, wilful and unprotected girls.

. . . "You have nothing to say! Of course! There is nothing that any wide-minded person could say. Ethel, you're a dear old stupe!"—she crossed the room and kissed her friend.

And Ethel was so glad to hear the customary affection return to Rita's voice, the soft lips upon her cheek set her gentle and loving heart in so warm a glow, that her fears and objections dissolved and she said no more.

The electric bell at the front door whirred.

Rita tore herself from Ethel's embrace. There was a mirror over the mantel-shelf. She gazed into it for a few seconds and then hurried away into the little hall.

There was the click of the latch as it was drawn back, a moment of silence, and then Ethel heard a voice with a peculiar vibration and timbre—an altogether unforgettable voice—say two words.

"At last!"

Then there was a murmur of conversation, the words of which she could not catch, interrupted once by Rita's happy laughter.

Finally she heard Rita hurry into the bedroom, no doubt for her cloak, and return with an excited word. Then the door closed and there was an instant of footsteps upon the stone stairs outside.

Ethel was left alone.

She went to her bookshelf—she did not seem to want to think just now—and after a moment's hesitation took down "Sesame and Lilies." Then she sat at the table with a sigh and looked without much interest at the bananas, the sardines and the brown bread.

Ethel was left alone.

CHAPTER II

OVER THE RUBICON

Gilbert and Rita said hardly anything to each other as the motor-cab drove them to the restaurant where they were to dine.

There was a sort of constraint between them. It was not awkwardness, it was not shyness. Nevertheless, they had little to say to each other—yet.

They had become extraordinarily intimate during the last weeks by means of the letters that had passed between them. In all his life Lothian had never written anything like these letters. Those already written, and those that were to be written before the end, would catch the imagination of Europe and America could they ever be published. In prose of a subtle beauty, which was at the same time virile and with the organ-note of a big, revealing mind, he had poured his thoughts upon the girl.

She was the inspiration, the raison d'être, of these letters. That "friendship" which his heated brain had created and imposed upon hers, he had set up before him like a picture and had woven fervent and critical rhapsodies about it. The joy that he had experienced in the making of these letters was more real and utterly satisfying than any he had ever known. He was filled and exalted by a sense of high power as he wrote the lovely words. He knew how she would read, understand and be thrilled by them. Paragraph after paragraph, sentence after sentence, were designed to play upon some part of the girl's mind and temperament—to flatter her own opinion at a definite point, and to flatter it with a flattery so subtle and delicate, so instinct with knowledge, that it came to her as a discovery of herself. He would please her—since she was steeped in books and their appeal, utterly ignorant of Life itself—with a pleasure that he alone could give. He would wrap her round with the force and power of his mind, make her his utterly in the bonds of a high intellectual friendship, dominate her, achieve her—through the mind.

He had set himself to do this thing and he had done it.

Her letters to him, in their innocent, unskilful, but real and vivid response had shown him everything. From each one he gathered new material for his reply.

He had lived of late in a new world, where, neglecting everything else, he sat Jove-like upon the Olympus of his own erection and drew a young and supremely beautiful girl nearer and nearer to him by his pen.

He had fallen into many mortal sins during his life. Until now he had not known the one by which the angels fell, the last sin of Pride which burns with a fierce, white consuming flame.

All these wonderful letters had been wrought under the influence of alcohol. He would go to his study tired in body and so wearied in brain that he felt as if his skull were literally packed with grey wool.

"I must write to Rita," he would think, and sit down with the blank sheet before him. There would not be an idea. The books upon the walls called to him to lose himself in noble company. The Dog Trust gambolling with Tumpany in the garden invited him to play. The sight of Mary with her basket on her arm setting out upon some errand of mercy in the village, spoke of the pleasant, gracious hours he might spend with her, watching how sweet and wise she was with the poor people and how she was beloved.

But no, he must write to Rita. He felt chained by the necessity. And then the fat cut-glass bottle from the tantalus would make an appearance, the syphon of soda-water in its holder of silver filigree. The first drink would have little or no effect—a faint stirring of the pulses, a sort of dull opening of tired mental eyes, perhaps. Yet even that was enough to create the desire for the moment when the brain should leap up to full power. Another drink—the letter begun. Another, and images, sentences which rang and chimed, gossamer points of view, mosaics and vignettes glowing with color, merry sunlight laughter, compliments and devoirs of exquisite grace and refinement, all flowed from him with steady, uninterrupted progress.

. . . But now, as he sat beside Rita, touching her, with the fragrance of her hair athwart his face, all ideas and thoughts had to be readjusted.

The dream was over. The dream personality, created and worshipped by his Art in those long, drugged reveries, was a thing of the past.

He had never realised Rita to himself as being quite a human girl. No grossness had ever entered into his thoughts about her. He was not gross. The temper of his mind was refined and high. The steady progress of the Fiend Alcohol had not progressed thus far as yet. Sex was a live fact in this strangely-coloured "friendship" which he had created, but, as yet, in his wildest imaginings it had always been chivalrous, abstract and pure. Passion had never soiled it even in thought. It had all been mystical, not Swinburnian.

And the fact had been as a salve to his Conscience. His Conscience told him from the first—when, after the excursion to Brighton he had taken up his pen to continue the association—that he was doing wrong. He knew it with all the more poignancy because he had never done sweet Mary a treachery in allegiance before. She had always been the perfect and utterly satisfying woman to him. His "fountain was blessed; and he rejoiced with the wife of his youth."

But the inhabiting Devil had found a speedy answer. It had told him that such a man as he was might well have a pure and intellectual friendship with such a girl as Rita was. It harmed none, it was of mutual and uplifting benefit.

Who of the world could point an accusing finger, utter a word of censure upon this delightful meeting of minds and temperaments through the medium of paper and pen?

"No one at all," came the satisfactory answer.

Lothian at the prompting of Alcohol was content to entertain and welcome a low material standard of conduct, a debased ideal, which he would have scorned in any other department of life.

And as for Rita, she hadn't thought about such things at all. She had been content with the music which irradiated everything.

It was only now, with a flesh and blood man by her side in the little box of the taxi-cab, that she glanced curiously at the Musician and felt—also—that revision and re-statement were at hand.

So they said very little until they were seated at the table which had been reserved for them at a celebrated restaurant in the Strand.

Rita looked round her and gave a deep sigh of pleasure. They sat in a long high hall with a painted ceiling. At the side opposite to them and at the end were galleries with gilded latticework. At the other end, in the gilded cage which hid the performers from view, was an orchestra which discoursed sweet music—a little orchestra of artists. The walls of the white and gold hall were covered with brilliantly painted frescoes of scenes in that Italy from where the first proprietor had come. The blue seas, the little white towns clustering round the base of some volcanic mountain, the sunlight and gaiety of Italy were there, in these paintings so cunningly drawn and coloured by a great scenic artist. A soft, white and bright light pervaded everything. There was not a sound of service as the waiters moved over the thick carpets.

The innumerable tables, for two or four, set with finest crystal and silver and fair linen had little electric lamps of silver with red shades upon them. Beautiful, radiant women with white arms and shining jewels sat with perfectly dressed men at the tables covered with flowers. It was a succession of little dinner parties; it seemed as if no one could come here without election or choice. The ordinary world did not exist in this kingdom of luxury, ease and wealth.

She leant over the little table against the wall. "It's marvellous," she said. "The whole atmosphere is new. I did not think such a place as this existed."

"And the Metropole at Brighton?"

"It was like a bathing machine is to Buckingham Palace, compared to this. How exquisite the band is! Oh, I am so happy!"

"That makes me happy, Cupid. This is the night of your initiation. Our wonderful weeks have begun. I have thought out a whole series of delights and contrasts. Every night shall be a surprise. You will never know what we are going to do. London is a magic city and you have known nothing of it."

"How could the 'Girl from Podley's' know?—That's what I am, the Girl from Podley's. I feel like Cinderella must have felt when she went to the ball. Oh, I am so happy!"

He smiled at her. Something had taken ten years from his age to-night. Youth shone out upon his face, the beauty of his twenties had come back. "Lalage!" he murmured, more to himself than to her—"dulce ridentem, dulce loquentem!"

"What—Gilbert?"

"I was quoting some Latin to myself, Cupid dear."

"And it was all Greek to me!" she said in a flash. "Oh! who ever saw so many hors d'œuvres all at one time! I love hors d'œuvres, advise me, don't let me have too many different sorts, Gilbert, or I shan't be able to eat anything afterwards."

How extraordinarily fresh and innocent she was! She possessed in perfection that light, reckless and freakish humour which was so strong a side of his own temperament.

She had stepped from her dingy little flat, from a common cab, straight into the Dance of the Hours, taking her place with instant grace in the gay and stately minuet.

For it was stately. All this quintessence of ordered luxury and splendour had a most powerful influence upon the mind. It might have made Caliban outwardly courteous and debonnair.

Yes, she was marvellously fresh! He had never met any one like her. And it was innocence, it must be. Yet she was very conscious of the power of her beauty and her sex—over him at any rate. She obviously knew nothing of the furtive attention she was exciting in a place where so many jaded experts came to look at the flowers. It was the naïve and innocent Aspasia in every young girl bubbling up with entire frankness. She was amazed and half frightened at herself—he could see that.

Well! he was very content to be Pericles for a space, to join hands and tread a measure with her and the rosy-bosomed hours in their dance.

It was as though they had known each other for ever and a day, ere half the elaborate dinner was over.

She had called him "Gilbert" at once, as if he were her brother, her lover even. He could have found or forged no words to describe the extraordinary intimacy that had sprung up between them. It almost seemed unreal, he had to wonder if this were not a dream.

She became girlishly imperious. When they brought the golden plovers—king and skipper, as good epicures know, of all birds that fly—she leant over the table till her perfect face was close to his.

"Oh, Gilbert dear! what is it now!"

He told her how these little birds, with their "trail" upon the toast and their accompaniment of tiny mushrooms stewed in Sillery, were said to be the rarest flower in the gourmet's garden, one of the supreme pleasures that the cycle of the seasons bring to those who love and live to eat.

"How perfectly sweet! Like the little roast pigling was to Elia! Gilbert, I'm so happy."

She chattered away to him, as he sat and watched her, with an entire freedom. She told him all about her life in the flat with Ethel Harrison. Her brown eyes shone with happiness, he heard the silver ripple of her voice in a mist of pleasure.

Once he caught a man whom he knew watching them furtively. It was a very well-known actor, who at the moment was rehearsing his autumn play.

This celebrated person was, as Gilbert well knew, a monster. He lived his life with a dreadful callousness which made him capable of every bestial habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure, without horror, and without pity.

The poet shuddered as he caught that evil glance, and then, listening anew to Rita's joyous confidences, he became painfully aware of the brute that is in every man, in himself too, though as yet he had never allowed it to be clamant.

The happy girl went on talking. Suddenly Gilbert realised that she was telling him something, innocent enough in her mouth, but something that a woman should tell to a woman and not to a man.

The decent gentleman in him became wide awake, the sense of comeliness and propriety. He wasn't in the least shocked—indeed there was nothing whatever to be shocked about—but he wanted to save her, in time, from an after-realisation of a frankness that might give her moments of confusion.

He did it, as he did everything when he was really sober, really himself, with a supreme grace and delicacy. "Cupid dear," he said with his open and boyish smile, "you really oughtn't to tell me that, you know. I mean—well, think!"

She looked at him with puzzled eyes for a moment and then she took his meaning. A slight flush came into her cheeks.

"Oh, I see," she replied thoughtfully, and then, with a radiant smile and the provocative, challenging look—"Gilbert dear, you seem just like a girl to me. I quite forgot you were a man. So it doesn't matter, does it?"

Who was to attempt to preserve les convenances with such a delightful child as this?

"Here is the dessert," he said gaily, as waiters brought ices, nectarines, and pear-shaped Paris bon-bons filled with Benedictine and Chartreuse.

A single bottle of champagne had served them for the meal. Gilbert lit a cigarette and said two words to a waiter. In a minute he was brought a carafe of whiskey and a big bottle of Perrier in a silver stand. It was a dreadful thing to do, from a gastronomic or from a health point of view. Whiskey, now! He saw the look of wonder on the waiter's face, a pained wonder, as who should say, "Well, I shouldn't have thought this gentleman would have done such a thing."

But Lothian didn't care. It was only upon the morning after a debauch, when with moles' eyes he watched every one with suspicion and with fear, that he cared twopence what people thought about anything he did.

He was roused to a high pitch of excitement by his beautiful companion. Recklessness, an entire abandon to the Dance of the Hours was mounting up within him. But where there's a conscience, there's a Rubicon. The little brook stretched before him still, but now he meant to leap over it into the forbidden, enchanted country beyond. He ordered "jumping powder."

He drank deeply, dropped his cigarette into the copper bowl of rose water at his side and lit another.

"Cupid!" he said suddenly, in a voice that was quite changed, "Rita dear, I'm going to show you something!"

She heard the change in his voice, recognised it instantly, must have known by instinct, if not by knowledge, what it meant. But there was no confusion, nor consciousness in her face. She only leant over the narrow table and blew a spiral of cigarette smoke from her parted lips.

"What, Gilbert?" she said, and he seemed to hear a caress in her voice that fired him.

"You shall hear," he said in a low and unsteady voice. He drew a calling card from the little curved case of thin gold he carried in his waistcoat pocket, and wrote a sentence or two upon the back in French.

A waiter took the card and hurried away.

"Oh, Gilbert dear, what is the surprise?"

"Music, sweetheart. I've sent up to the band to play something. Something special, Cupid, just for you and me alone on the first of our Arabian Nights!"

She waited for a minute, following his eyes to the gilded gallery of the musicians which bulged out into the end of the room.

There was a white card with a great black "7" upon it, hanging to the rail. And then a sallow man with a moustache of ink came to the balcony and removed the card, substituting another for it on which was printed in staring sable letters—"BY DESIRE."

It was all quite new to Rita. She was awed at Gilbert's almost magical control of everything! She understood what was imminent, though.

"What's it going to be, Gilbert?" she whispered.

Her hand was stretched over the table. He took its cool virginal ivory into his for a moment. "The 'Salut d'Amour' of Elgar," he answered her in a low voice, "just for you and me."

The haunting music began.

To the end of her life Rita Wallace never heard the melody without a stab of pain and a dreadful catch of horror at her heart.

Perhaps the thing had not been played lately, perhaps the hour was ripe for it in the great restaurant. But as the violins and 'cello sobbed out the first movement, a hush fell over the place.

It was the after-dinner hour. The smoke from a hundred cigarettes curled upwards in delicate spirals like a drawing of Flaxman's. Bright eyes were languorous and spoke, voices sank to silence. The very waiters were congregated in little groups round the walls and service tables.

Salut d'Amour!

The melody wailed out into the great room with all the exquisite appeal of its rose-leaf sadness, its strange autumnal charm. It was perfectly rendered. And many brazen-beautiful faces softened for a moment, many pleasure-sodden hearts had a diastole of unaccustomed tenderness as the music pulsed to its close.

Gilbert's acquaintance, the well-known actor, who was personified animal passion clothed in flesh if ever a man was, felt the jews-harp which he called his heart vibrate within him.

He was a luxurious pariah-dog in his emotions as in everything else.

The last sob of the violins trembled into silence. There was a loud spontaneous burst of applause, and a slim foreign man, grasping his fiddle by the neck, came from behind the gilded screen and looked down into the hall below with patient eyes.

Lothian rose from his chair and bowed to the distant gallery. The musician's face lighted up and he bowed twice to Lothian. Monsieur Toché had recognised the name upon the card. And the request, written in perfect, idiomatic French, had commenced, "Cher Maitre et Confrère." The lasting hunger of the obscure artist for recognition by another and greater one was satisfied. Poor Toché went to his bed that night in Soho feeling as if he had been decorated with the Order of Merit. And though, during the supper hours from eleven to half past twelve he had to play "selections" from the Musical Comedy of the moment, he never lost the sense of bien être conferred upon him by Gilbert Lothian at dinner.

Gilbert was trembling a little as the music ended. Rita sat back in her chair with downcast eyes and lips slightly parted. Neither of them spoke.

Gilbert suddenly experienced a sense of immense sorrow, of infinite regret too deep for speech or tears. "This is the moment of realisation," he thought, "the first real moment in my life, perhaps. I know what I have missed. Of all women this was the one for me, as I for her. We were made for each other. Too late! too late!"

He struggled for mastery over his emotion. "How well they play," he said.

She made a slight motion with her hand. "Don't let's talk for a minute," she answered.

He was thrilled through and through. Did she also, then, feel and know . . . ? Surely that could not be. His youth was so nearly over, the keen æsthetic vision of the poet showed him so remorselessly how changed he was physically from what he had been in years gone by, for ever.

Mechanically, without thinking, obeying the order given by the new half-self, that spawn of poison which was his master and which he mistook for himself, he filled his glass once more and drank.

In forty seconds after, triumph and pride flared up within him like a sheet of thin paper lit suddenly with a match. Yes! She was his, part of him—it was true! He, the great poet, had woven his winged words around her. He had bent the power of his Mind upon her—utterly desirable, unsoiled and perfect—and she was his.

The blaze passed through him and upwards, a thing from below. Then it ended and only a curl of grey ash floated in the air.

The most poignant and almost physical sorrow returned to him. His heart seemed to ache like a tooth. Yet it wasn't dull, hopeless depression. It was, he thought, a high tragic sorrow ennobling in its strength; a sorrow such as only the supreme soul-wounded artists of the world could know—had known.

"She was for me!" his heart cried out. "Ah, if only I had met her first!" Yes! he was fain of all the tragic sorrows of the Great Ones to whom he was brother, of whose blood he was.

In a single flash of time—as the drowning man is said to experience all the events of his life at the penultimate moment of dissolution—he felt that he knew the secrets of all sorrow, the pangs of all tragedy.

The inevitable thought of his wife passed like a blur across the fire-lit heights of his false agony.

"I cannot love her," he said in his mind. "I have never loved her. I have been blind until this moment." A tear of sentiment welled into his eye at the thought of poor Mary, bereft of his love. "How sad life was!"

Nearly every man, at some time or other, has found a faint reflection of this black thought assail him and has put it from him with a prayer and the "vade retro Sathanas."

Few men would have chosen their present wives if they had met—let us assume—fifty other women before they married. And when the ordinary, normal, decent man meets a woman better, clever, more desirable than the one he has, it is perfectly natural that he should admire her. He would be insensible if he did not. But with the normal man it stops there. He is obliged to be satisfied with his own wife. The chaos that riotous and unbalanced minds desire has not come yet. And if a man says that he cannot love a wife who is virtuous and good, then Satan is in him.

"I cannot love her," Lothian thought of his wife, and in the surveyal of this fine brain and noble mind poisoned by alcohol it is proper to remember that two hours before he could not have thought this thing. It would have been utterly impossible.

Was it then the few recent administrations of poison that had changed him so terribly, brought him to this?

The Fiend Alcohol has a myriad dominations. A lad from the University gets drunk in honour on boat-race night—for the first time in his life—and tries to fight with a policeman. But he is only temporarily insane, becomes ashamed and wiser in the morning, and never does such a thing again.

Lothian had been poisoning himself, slowly, gradually, certainly for years. The disease which was latent in his blood, and for which he was in no way personally responsible, had been steadily undermining the forces of his nature.

He had injured his health and was coming near to gravely endangering his reputation. His work, rendered more brilliant and appealing at first by the unfair and unnatural stimulus of Alcohol, was trembling upon the brink of a débâcle. He had inflicted hundreds of hours of misery and despair upon the woman he had married.

This, all this, was grave and disastrous enough.

But the awful thing that he was feeding and breeding within him—the "false Ego," to use the cold, scientific, and appallingly accurate definition of the doctors—had not achieved supreme power. Even during the last year of the three or four years of the poisoning process it had not become all-powerful. It had kept him from Church; it had kept him from the Eucharist; it had drawn one thick grey blanket after another between the eye of his soul and the vision of God. But kindly human instinct had remained unimpaired, and he had done many things sub specie Crucis—under the influence of, and for the sake of that Cross which was so surely and steadily receding from his days and passing away to a dim and far horizon.

But there arrives a time when the pitcher that is filled drop by drop becomes full. The liquid trembles for a moment upon the brim and trickles over.

And there comes a sure moment in the life of the alcoholic when the fiend within waxes strong enough finally to strangle the old self, fills all the house and reigns supreme.

It is always something of relatively small importance that hastens the end—ensures the final plunge.

It was the last few whiskeys that sent honour and conscience flying away with scared faces from this man's soul. But they acted upon the poison of years, now risen to the very brim of the cup.

One more drop . . .

People were getting up from the tables and leaving the restaurant. The band was resting, there was no more music at the moment, and the remaining diners were leaning over the tables and talking to each other in low, confidential tones.

Rita looked up suddenly. "What are we going to do now?" she said with her quick bright smile.

"When we went to Brighton together," Gilbert answered, "you told me that you had never been to a Music Hall. A box at the Empire is waiting for us. Let us go and see how you like it. If you don't, we can come away and go for a drive round London in a taxi. The air will be cooler now, and in the suburbs we may see the moon. But come and try. The night is yours, and I am yours, also. You are the Queen of the Dance of the Hours and I your Court Chamberlain."

"Oh, how perfectly sweet! Take me to the Empire."

As they stood upon the steps of the restaurant and the commissionaire whistled up a cab, Gilbert spoke to Rita in a low, husky voice.

"We ought to get there in time for the ballet," he said, "because it is the most perfect thing to be seen in Europe, outside Milan or St. Petersburg. But we've ten minutes yet, at least. Shall I tell him to drive round?"

"Yes, Gilbert."

The taxi-meter glided away through the garish lights of the Strand, and then, unexpectedly, swerved into Craven Street towards the Embankment.

Almost immediately the interior of the cab grew dark.

Gilbert put his arm round Rita's waist and caught her hand with his. He drew her closer to him.

"Oh, my love!" he said with a sob in his voice. "My dear little Love; at last, at last!"

She did not resist. He caught her closer and closer and kissed her upon the cheeks, the eyes, the low-falling masses of nut-brown, fragrant hair.

"Turn your face to me, darling."

His lips met hers for one long moment.

. . . He hardly heard her faint-voiced, "Gilbert, you mustn't." He sank back upon the cushions with a strange blankness and emptiness in his mind.

He had kissed her, her lovely lips had been pressed to his.

And, behold, it was nothing after all. It was just a little girl kissing him.

"Kiss met Kiss me again!" he said savagely. "You must, you must! Rita, my darling, my darling!"

She pressed her cool lips to his once more—how cool they were!—almost dutifully, with no revolt from his embrace, but as she might have kissed some girl friend at parting after a day together.

All evil, dominant passions of his nature, hidden and sleeping within him for so long, were awake at last.

He had held Rita in his arms. Yet, whatever she might say or do in her reckless school-girl fashion, she was really absolutely innocent and virgin, untouched by passion, incredibly ignorant of the red flame which burned within him now and which he would fain communicate to her.

"Are you unhappy, dearest?" he asked suddenly.

"Unhappy, Gilbert? With you? How could I be?"

And so daring innocence and wicked desire drove on through the streets of London—innocence a little tarnished, ignorance no longer, but pulsing with youth and the sense of adventure; absolutely unaware that it was playing with a man's soul.

The girl had read widely, but ever with the hunger for beauty, colour, music, the sterile, delicate emotions of others. One of the huge facts of life, the central, underlying fact of all the Romance, all the Poetry on which she was fed, had come to her at last and she did not recognise it.

Gilbert had held her in his arms and had kissed her. It was pleasant to be kissed and adored. It wasn't right—that she knew very well. Ethel would be horrified, if she knew. All sorts of proper, steady, ordinary people would be horrified, if they knew. But they didn't and never would! And Gilbert wanted to kiss her so badly. She had known it all the time. Why shouldn't he, poor boy, if it made him happy? He was so kind and so charming. He was a magician with the key of fairyland.

He made love beautifully! This was the Dance of the Hours!

The cab stopped in front of the Empire. Led by a little page-boy who sprung up from somewhere, they passed through the slowly-moving tide of men and women in the promenade to their box.

For a little space Rita said nothing.

She settled herself in her chair and leaned upon the cushioned ledge of the box, gazing at the huge crowded theatre and at the shifting maze of colour upon the stage. She had removed the long glove from her right hand and her chin was supported by one white rounded arm. A very fair young Sybil she seemed, lost in the vague, empty spaces of maiden thought.

Gilbert began to tell her about the dancers and to explain the ballet. She had never seen anything like it before, and he pointed out its beauty, what a marvellous poem it really was; music, movement, and colour built up by almost incredible labour into one stupendous whole. A dozen minor geniuses, each one a poet in his or her way, had been at work upon this triumphant shifting beauty, evanescent and lovely as a dream painted upon the sable curtains of sleep.

She listened and seemed to understand but made little comment.

Once she flashed a curious speculative look at him.

And, on his part, though he saw her lovelier than ever, he was chilled nevertheless. Grey veils seemed to be falling between him and the glow of his desire, falling one by one.

"Surgit amari aliquid?"—was it that?—but he could not let the moment escape him. It must and should be captured.

He made an excuse about cigarettes, and chocolates for her, and left the box, hurrying to the little bar in the promenade, drinking there almost furiously, tasting nothing, waiting, a strange silent figure with a white face, until he felt the old glow re-commencing.

It came. The drugged mind answered to the call, and he went back to the box with light footsteps, full of riotous, evil thoughts.

Rita had withdrawn her chair into the box a little.

She looked up with a smile of welcome as he entered and sat down by her side. She began to eat the chocolates he had brought, and he watched her with greedy eyes.

Suddenly—maid of moods as she was—she pushed the satin-covered box away.

He felt a little white arm pushed through his.

"Gilbert, let's pretend we're married, just for this evening," she said, looking at him with dancing eyes.

"What do you mean, Rita?" he said in a hoarse whisper.

The girl half-smiled, flushed a little, and then patted the black sleeve of his coat.

"It's so nice to be together," she whispered. "I am so happy with you. London is so wonderful with you to show it to me. I only wish it could go on always."

He caught her wrist with his hot hand. "It can, always, if you wish," he said.

She started at the fierce note in his voice. "Hush," she said. "You mustn't talk like that." Her face became severe and reproving. She turned it towards the stage.

The remainder of the evening alternated between wild fits of gaiety and rather moody silences. There was absolutely nothing of the crisp, delightful friendship of the drive to Brighton. A new relation was established between them, and yet it was not, as yet, capable of any definition at all.

She was baffling, utterly perplexing. At one moment he thought her his, really in love with him, prepared for all that might mean, at another she was a shy and rather dissatisfied school girl. The nervous strain within him, as the fires of his passion burned and crackled, was intense. He fed the flame with alcohol whenever he had an opportunity.

All the old reverence and chivalry of that ideal friendship of which he had sung so sweetly vanished utterly.

A faint, but growing brutality of thought came to him as he considered her. Her innocence did not seem so insistent as before. He could not place her yet. All he knew was that she was certainly not the Rita of his dreams.

Yet with all this, his longing, his subjection to her every whim and mood, grew and grew each moment. He was absolutely pervaded by her. Honour, prudence, his keen insight were all thrust away in the gathering storm of desire.

They had supper at a glittering palace in the Haymarket. In her simple girlish frock, without much adornment of any sort, she was the prettiest girl in the room. She enjoyed everything with wild avidity, and not the least of the exhilarations of the night was the knowledge—ripe and unmistakable now—of her complete power over him.