Part 2 — FLAMBY IN LONDON (continued 2)

"Paul," said Don, "This is Claude Chauvin. You have one of his pictures in your dining-room. Paul Mario—Mr. Jules Thessaly. Chauvin, I know you require another assistant in your studio. You cannot possibly turn out so much black and white stuff for the sporting journals and all those etchings as well as your big pictures."

"It is hopeless to expect to find anyone to help me," replied Chauvin. "Nobody understands animals nowadays. I would pay a good assistant any amount as well as putting him in the way of doing well for himself later on."

"I am bringing a girl around to you in the morning who knows nearly as much about animals as you know yourself."

"A girl."

"A girl—yes; a female Briton Rivière."

Chauvin's rather tired-looking eyes lighted up with professional interest and he bent lower over the table upon which he was resting his hands. "Really! Who is she?"

"Flamby Duveen. I would never trust her to anybody's care but yours, Chauvin. She is the daughter of a man who saved my life and she is a born artist as well. She starts at Guilder's on Monday. Her style wants broadening of course. But look at this."

Don dived into the capacious pocket of his trench-coat and brought forth a large envelope marked "On His Majesty's Service. Strictly Confidential." From the envelope he took a water-colour drawing representing a pair of long-legged ungainly colts standing snuggled up to their mother under a wild briar hedge. He handed the drawing to Chauvin, and Chauvin, adjusting a pair of huge horn-rimmed spectacles upon his nose, examined it critically. All three watched him in silence. Presently he removed the spectacles and laid the drawing down on the table. He held out his hand to Don.

"Bring her along early," he said. "Good night." He returned to the human geranium.

Don replaced the drawing in the official envelope, smiling happily. "Old Chauvin is not exactly chatty," he remarked; "but he knows."

"I should say that he was a man of very extraordinary talent," said Thessaly, "even if I were unacquainted with his work. His choice of a companion alone marks him as no ordinary mortal."

Don laughed outright, fitting the envelope into his pocket again. "The lady is a Parisienne," he replied, "and very entertaining company."

"Parisiennes make delightful companions for any man," declared Thessaly, "and good wives for one who is fond of adventure. She is studying you with keen interest, Mario."

"She probably regards me as an embodiment of mediaeval turpitude. People persist in confusing novelists with their creations."

"Quite so. Yet because de Quincey was an opium-fiend, Poe a drunkard and Oscar Wilde a pervert, it does not follow that every clever writer is unfit for decent society. Even if he were, his popularity would not suffer. Few things help a man's public reputation so much as his private vices. Don't you think you could cultivate hashish, Mario? Sherlock Holmes' weakness for cocaine has endeared him to the hearts of two generations."

"I shall endeavour to dispense with it, Thessaly. Excepting a liking for honey which almost amounts to a passion, my private life is exemplary."

"Honey? Most peculiar. Don't let Bassett know or he will paragraph the fact. Honey to my way of thinking is a much overrated commodity which survives merely because of its biblical reputation and its poetic life-history. It is only one's imagination which lends to it the fragrance of flowers. Personally I prefer treacle. Is Chauvin's attachment to the French lady of a Platonic nature, Captain Courtier?"

"I cannot say. He is quite capable of marrying her."

"Probably he knows his own mind," Paul murmured absently.

"Quite probably; but does he know hers?" asked Thessaly. "I always think this so important in London although it may not matter in Paris. Some infatuations are like rare orchids. A certain youth of Cnidus fell in love with a statue of Aphrodite, and my secretary, Caspar, has fallen in love with Gaby Deslys. Apollonius of Tyana cured the Cnidian youth, but what hope is there for Caspar? My nightly prayer is that he may find the courage to shave his side-whiskers and renounce the passionate life—a second Plato burning his poems."

Paul became absorbed in contemplation of the unique turmoil about him. The excitement created by his entrance had somewhat subsided and the various groups in the café had resumed their respective characteristics. The place was seething with potential things; the pressure of force might be felt. At a centre table a party of musicians talked excitedly, one of them, a pale young man with feline eyes, shouting hoarsely and continuously. Well-known painters were there, illustrating the fact that many a successful artist patronises a cheap tailor. There was a large blonde woman who smoked incessantly as she walked from table to table. She seemed to have an extensive circle of acquaintances. And there was a small dark girl with eyes feverishly bright who watched her; and whenever the glances of the twain met, the big woman glared and the small one sneered and showed her white teeth. A little fat man with a large fat notebook sat near the door apparently engaged in compiling a history of some kind and paying no attention whatever to a tall thin man who persistently interrupted him by ordering refreshments. The little fat man absently emptied glass after glass; his powers of absorption were remarkable.

There were models with pale faces and short fabulous hair surrounding a celebrated figure-painter who was said to have seven wives named after the days of the week, and there were soldiers who looked like poets and artists who looked like soldiers. A sculptor who had discovered the secret of making ugliness out of beauty and selling it, was deep in conversation with an author of shocking mysteries whose fame rested largely upon his creation of the word "beetlesque" and the appearance of a certain blue-faced ourang-outang in every story which he published.

Paul's immediate neighbours on the right-hand side were two earnest young brushmen, one wearing military uniform, and the other a rational check suit designed with much firmness. They shared a common pencil and drank black coffee, demonstrating their ideas in line upon the marble table-top. They evidently thought with Mr. Nevinson, that man invented circles but the Lord created cubes. Beyond them was a lady of title who aspired to the mantle of George Sand. In the absence of an Alfred de Musset she had fled from her husband with a handsome actor of romantic rôles whom later she had left for an ugly violinist with a beautiful technique. She was sipping pomegranate juice in the company of her publisher and glancing under her lashes at a ferocious-looking ballad writer who had just seated himself behind the next table from whence he directed a malevolent glare upon no one in particular.

"His gentle work deserves a kinder master," said Thessaly, observing Paul watching the melody-maker. "I have noticed, Mario, that although there are few pressmen present, there are a number of publicists. Our progress is merely in terminology after all. The writers who matter may readily be recognised by their complacent air; the others, who have not yet succeeded in mattering, by their hungry look. They have missed a course in the banquet of life. They have failed to grasp the fact that our artificial civilisation has made a mystery of marriage, which, veil by veil, it is the duty of the successful novelist to disclose. If I were a novelist I should seek my characters in the Divorce Court; if I were a painter I should study those superstitions which have grown up around human nudity so that the very word 'naked' has become invested with a covert significance and must very shortly be obsolete. I contemplate opening a new Pythagorean Institute for instruction of the artistic young. Above the portal I shall cause to be inscribed the following profound thought: 'Art does not pay; portrait and figure painting do.'"

"Some portrait painters are artists," said Don.

"I agree: Velasquez for instance; and consider the treatment of the velvet draperies in Collier's Pomps and Vanities so widely popularised by its reproduction in the Telephone Directory." He turned to Paul. "I have noted no fewer than six novelists, Mario, engaged in outlining to admirers projected masterpieces dealing with the war from a psychological aspect. Think of the disappointments. Excepting the creators of omniscient detectives and exotic criminals (who form a class apart, self-contained, opulent and immune from the stress of life) every writer dies with his greatest work unwritten. We are beginning to bore one another. Let us proceed to Murray's and contemplate bare backs."

IX

One evening early in the following week Flamby and Mrs. Chumley stood upon a platform of Victoria Station looking after a train from which protruded a forest of waving hands. Somewhere amongst them was the hand of Don, but because of that uncomfortable mistiness which troubled her sight at times, Flamby was quite unable to distinguish anything clearly. "Damn the German pigs," she said under her breath.

"Did I hear you swearing, dear?" asked Mrs. Chumley tearfully. "So many girls seem to be able to swear nowadays. No doubt they find it a great relief."

"I am so sorry," said Flamby breathlessly. "I had really made up my mind never to swear again and never to say things in Latin or quote Shakespeare; but it's very hard for me."

"It must be, dear. Quite agree. I once tried to make up my mind never to give money to blind beggars again. It was in Cairo, and I found that so many of them were not really blind at all. Do you know, dear, it was not a bit of good. I found myself doing it when I wasn't thinking. I tried going out without money and then all the blind men followed me about the streets. It was most awkward. The poor things couldn't understand why I had changed, of course."

"You had not changed, Mrs. Chumley. You never could change," said Flamby, squeezing the old lady's arm as they made their way out of the station. "You will always be generous, but I hope I shall not always swear on the slightest provocation."

"I hope you won't, dear, if you think it would be as well."

Number twenty-three at The Hostel now was converted into a miniature suite de luxe. Flamby's instinctive good taste had enabled her to arrange her new possessions and her old to the best possible advantage. The cost of those purely useful articles which had not been purchased under the guidance of Don, as compared with such delightful things as cushions and gowns, surprised her very much indeed, but the ingenious Don had secured a quantity of cutlery, linen and other household necessities from an acquaintance "in the wholesale trade," thus saving Flamby more than half the usual cost. Once committed to an emprise, Don's resource was limitless.

Flamby switched on the centre light of her little domain, fitted with a charming shade of Japanese silk, and removing her coat (purchased locally at a price which she had considered preposterous) she stood gazing vacantly into the little square mirror above the mantelpiece behind the china clock. It reflected the figure of a slim girl wearing a blue serge skirt, a blue jersey coat and a grey velour hat—a very pretty girl indeed, her colour heightened by the humid night air.

How swiftly her life had moved in that one short week. She stared at her reflection with a sudden interest, seeking for signs of age. Eight days ago she had possessed no friend in all the world; now, friends seemed to have sprung up around her miraculously, and all at the bidding of Don. From such lonely despondence as she had never known he had lifted her into a new and brighter world. She had seen the studio of the great Claude Chauvin; she was actually going to work there on three days of every week. On the other three she was to attend the art school. The crowning wonder of it all lay in the fact that Chauvin proposed to pay her a salary. Her father had taught her to expect nothing but rebuffs, although he had assured her that some day she would make a reputation as an animal painter. She recognised that Don was the magician whose transmuting wand had surrounded her with the gold of good fellowship. He had forgotten nothing.

One day they had lunched at Regali's, that esoteric Italian restaurant wherein disciples of all the Arts congregate to pay tribute to good cooking and modest bills.

Don, who seemed to know everybody, presented the great Severus Regali himself, a vast man ponderously moustached and endowed with a mighty voice and the fierce bearing of a Bellino; a figure in bravura with the heart of a child. He bowed low before Flamby, one huge hirsute hand pressed to his bosom.

"Ragout Regali is on to-day," he said; no more—but those words constituted an initiation, admitting Flamby to the Epicurean circle.

Of Severus Regali and his famous ragout a story was told, and this was the story as related by Don: No other chef in Europe (Regali had formerly been chef to a Personage) could make a like ragout, and Regali jealously retained the secret of the preparation, which he only served to privileged guests. To him came M. Sapin, the great artist responsible for the menus of a certain peer far-famed as the foremost living disciple of Lucullus. A banquet extraordinary was shortly to take place, and M. Sapin, the mastermind, came to beg of Regali the recipe for his ragout. Wrapped in a fur-lined coat, the immortal Sapin descended from his car (for his salary was that of a Cabinet Minister). Hollow-cheeked, sallow, and having death in his eyes, he begged this favour of his modest rival.

"It shall never be prepared by my hand again, Regali," he said. "My physician gives me but one month of life."

"What!" cried Regali. "It is then a dying request?"

"It is indeed," was the mournful reply. "For this great affair I have sought inspiration from all the classic authorities. I have considered the dormice served with honey and poppy-seed and the grape-fed beccafico dressed with garum piperatum, which, according to Petronius, were served at Trimalchio's banquet. But neither of these rare dishes can compare with Ragout Regali." Regali bowed. "Therefore, I beg of you, grant me permission to prepare that supreme triumph of our beautiful art, and in honour of the guest of the evening, to present it for the first and, alas! the last time as 'Ragout Prince Leopold!'"

Regali consented, and that night after closing-time a strange scene was enacted. Outside the restaurant stood the luxurious car of M. Sapin, and downstairs in the kitchen, behind double-locked doors, the two chefs made Ragout Regali, M. Sapin noting the method of preparation with those pathetic dying eyes. But at the great banquet following the appearance of "Ragout Prince Leopold," M. Sapin was summoned to the dining-room and toasted by the epicures there gathered. This was his final triumph. He died a few weeks later. But of such dream stuff was the wonder-dish to whose mystery Regali had admitted Flamby with the words "Ragout Regali is on to-day."

Another morning they went to Guilder's, the art school of which Don had said, "They teach you everything except how to sell your pictures," and Flamby made the acquaintance of Hammett, famous as a painter of dogs, velvet and lace, under whom she was to work. The school surprised her. It was so extremely untidy, and the big windows were so very dirty. Busts and plaster casts, canvas-stretchers, easels, stools and stacks of sketches littered the first, or "antique" room, and they were all mantled in dust. There was no one in the "life" room at the time of Flamby's visit, except an old Italian, who was a model, but who looked like an organ-grinder. The suspended lamps, with their huge ugly shades, had an ominous appearance by daylight, and Flamby found herself considering the unfinished drawings and paintings which were visible about the large bleak room, and trying to conjure up thought-forms of the students who had executed them. Later she learned that there were a number of smaller painting-rooms right and left, above and below, but the dirtiest room of all was that in which lumps of clay lay casually about on tables and rests and on the floor, where embryonic things perched upon tripods, like antediluvian birds and saurians, and where the daughters of Praxiteles and sons of Phidias pursued their claggy but fascinating studies under a sculptor who possessed the inestimable gift of teaching more than he knew himself. It was all very unromantic. Strange how ugliness is the mother of beauty, and the sacred fairy-winged scarab of Art comes forth from dirt.

One day Paul came to The Hostel. Flamby was engaged in hanging pictures when she heard his voice in the courtyard below. She was standing on a chair, but her heart began to beat so ridiculously that she was compelled to sit down. She swore with a fluency and resource worthy of her father, then in feverish haste attempted to strip off her overall and wash her hands and adjust her unruly hair at one and the same time. She ceased her frantic efforts as suddenly as she had begun them, drying her hands and tousling her hair fiercely. What did she care? Let him find her looking like a freak; it did not matter. "You are a little ass," she told herself bitterly; "a silly little donkey! Have you no brains? He doesn't care how you look. You should not care what he thinks about you. Why don't you get in a panic when Don comes alone? You were as red as a tomato half a minute ago; now you are as white as a ghost. You poor contemptible little idiot!"

She snatched up the hammer which she had dropped and resumed the task of attaching a picture fastener to the wall; but as she passed the mirror above the fireplace she raised her disengaged hand and pulled a curl into place. She banged a little brass nail so hard that it bounced out of the plaster and fell upon the floor. Paul and Don were at the door and the bell was ringing. Flamby achieved composure, and hammer in hand she went to admit her visitors.

One swift glance she ventured, and in Paul's eyes she read that which none could have deduced from his manner. The shameful phantom which had pursued her so long had not been illusory; the photographs taken by Sir Jacques had survived him. Paul had seen them. Momentarily she almost hated him, and she found a savage and painful satisfaction in the discovery that there was something in his nature less than godlike. It should be easy to forget a man capable of believing that of her which Paul believed. She longed to hide herself from his sight. But almost with his first word of charming greeting came the old joy of hearing him speak, the old foolish sense of inferiority, of helpless gladness. Flamby even ceased to resist it, but she noted that Don was more silent than usual; and once in his grey eyes she detected a look almost of sadness. In the very charm of Paul's unchanged manner there lay a sting, for if he had cared he could not have believed that which Flamby was convinced he did believe and have dismissed the matter thus. But, of course, he did not care.

"Why should he care?" she asked aloud, when again she found herself alone. "He is just sorry that I am not a good girl. Dad saved the life of his dearest friend, and therefore he considers it his duty to be kind to me. But that is all."

In vain Flamby sought to reason with her unreasonable heart. What did she desire?—that Paul should love her? A hot flush crept all over her body. That his wife should die? Oh! what a coldly merciless thing was logic! Flamby at this point discovered that she had been weeping for quite a long time. She was very sorry for herself indeed; and recognising this in turn she began to laugh, perhaps rather hysterically. She was laughing when Mrs. Chumley came to look for her, nor could she stop.

"Whatever are you laughing about, dear? Has Don been telling you one of his ridiculous stories?"

"No. I just thought of a silly trifling thing, and began to laugh and couldn't leave off."

"Quite understand, dear. I've been like that. I once began laughing in the Tube; so unfortunate. And a man sitting opposite became really annoyed. He had a very odd nose, you see, and he thought I was laughing at it. I could see he thought so, which made me laugh all the more. I had to get out at the next station, dear. Most ridiculous, because I wasn't laughing at the poor man's nose at all, I was laughing at his funny umbrella."

X

Six months stole almost unobserved into a dim land of memories. The war, which ate up all things, did not spare the almanack; and what should appear to later generations as the most stirring period in the world's history, appeared to many of those who lived through it in London as a dreary blank in their lives, a hiatus, an interval of waiting—a time to be speedily forgotten when its dull aches were no more and absent dear ones again worked side by side for simple ends, and the sweeter triumphs of peace. Some there were whose sorrows drove them like Sarak in quest of the Waters of Oblivion, but, to all, those days were poppy days, unreal and meaningless; transitionary, as a bridge between unlike states.

Flamby made progress at Guilder's, growing more and more familiar with the technique of her art, but, under the careful guidance of Hammett, never losing that characteristic nonchalance of style which was the outstanding charm of her work. So many professors seem to regard their pupils as misshapen creatures, who must be reduced to a uniform pattern, but Hammett was not as one of these. He encouraged originality whilst he suppressed eccentricity, and although, recognising the budding genius in the girl's work, he lavished particular care upon her artistic development, he never tried to make love to her, which proved that he was not only a good painter, but also a sound philosopher. He took her to lunch once or twice to Regali's, which created a coterie of female enemies, but Flamby regarded all women in a more charitable manner since her meeting with Mrs. Chumley, and some of her enemies afterwards became her friends, for she bore them no malice, but sought them out and did her utmost to understand them. Her father had taught her to despise the pettiness of women, but in Mrs. Chumley's sweet sympathy she had found a new model of conduct. Her later philosophy was a quaint one.

"It isn't fair, Mrs. Chumley," she said one day, sitting on the settee in her little room, knees drawn up to chin and her arms embracing them—"it isn't fair to hate a girl for being spiteful. You might as well hate a cat for killing mice."

"Quite agree, dear. I am glad you think so."

"Women are different from men. They haven't got the same big interests in life, and they are not meant to have. I am sorry for women who have to live alone and fight for themselves. But I can't be sorry for those who want to fight. Loneliness must be very terrible, and there is really no such thing as a girl friend after school days, is there? Except for very ugly girls or very daft ones."

"I am sure you would be a staunch friend to anyone, dear."

"Yes; but they don't know it, you see. Naturally they judge me by themselves," said Flamby wistfully. "I used to hate being a woman before I met you, Mrs. Chumley, but I am not quite so sorry now."

"I am glad, dear. So nice of you to say so."

"If there were no men in the world I think women might be nicer," continued Flamby the philosopher—"not at first, of course, but when they had got over it. Nearly all the mean things girls do to one another are done because of men, and yet all the splendid things they do are done for men as well. Aren't we funny? Three of the girls from the school went to be nurses recently, one because her boy had been killed, another because she was in love with a doctor, and the third because she had heard that a great many girls became engaged to Colonials in France. Not one of them went because she wanted to be a nurse. Now, if you went, Mrs. Chumley, you would go because you were sorry for all the poor wounded, I know. It would have been just the same when you were eighteen, and that's why I think you are so wonderful."

Mrs. Chumley became the victim of silent merriment, from which she recovered but slowly. "You are a really extraordinary child, dear," she said. "Yet you seem to have quite a number of girl friends come to see you as well as boys."

"Yes. You see I make allowances for them and then they are quite good friends."

"Who was that fair man who took you to the theatre last night, and brought you home in a lovely car?"

"Orlando James. He has the next studio to Mr. Chauvin. I hate him."

Mrs. Chumley's blue eyes became even more circular than usual. "But you went to the theatre with him?"

"Yes; that was why I went. He buys me nice presents, too. I wouldn't take them if I liked him."

Presently, retiring to her own abode, Flamby picked up a copy of a daily paper and stared for a long time at two closely-printed columns headed, "Mr. Paul Mario's Challenge to the Churches." The article was a commentary by a prominent literary man upon Paul's second paper, Le Monde, which had appeared that week and had occasioned even wider comment than the first, Le Bateleur. Long excerpts had been printed by practically every journal of note in Great Britain. It had been published in full in New York, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Christiania and Copenhagen, and had been quoted at great length by the entire Colonial press. It was extraordinary; revolutionary, but convincing. It appealed to every man and woman who had loved, lost and doubted; it was written with conviction and displayed knowledge beyond the compass of ordinary minds. Touching as it did upon mysteries hitherto veiled from public ken, it set the civilized world agog, hoping and questioning, studying the secrets of the Tarot and seeking to divine the hidden significance of the word of power, Yod-he-vau-he.

Flamby, disciple of the Greek sages, could face the truth unflinchingly, and now she recognised that to endeavour to battle against the memory of Paul Mario was a waste of energy. But because her pride was lofty and implacable she avoided meeting him, yet could not avoid following all that he said and wrote, nor could her pride withhold her from seeking glimpses of him in places which she knew him to frequent. Le Monde frightened her. It had the authority of conviction based upon knowledge, and it slew hope in her breast. If nothing was hidden from this wonderful man, why did he omit to explain the mystery of unrequited love?

On more than one occasion Flamby had found herself in that part of Chelsea where Paul's house was situated, and from a discreet distance she had looked at his lighted windows, and then had gone home to consider her own folly from a critical point of view. Flamby, the human Eve, mercilessly taxed by Flamby the philosopher, pleaded guilty to a charge of personal vanity. Yes, she had dared to think herself pretty—until she had seen Yvonne Mario. Flamby, the daughter of Michael Duveen, had defined Yvonne's appearance as "a slap in the face." She no longer expected any man who had seen Yvonne Mario to display the slightest interest in little insignificant Flamby Duveen; for Yvonne possessed the type of beauty which women count irresistible, but which oddly enough rarely enchains the love of men, which inflames the imagination without kindling the heart. Thus was the fairness of the daughter of Icarius, which might not withhold Ulysses from the arms of Calypso, and of this patrician beauty was Fulvia, whom Antony forgot when the taunting smiles of Cleopatra set his soul on fire.

That Paul's esteem was diminished Flamby had known from the very hour that he had quitted Lower Charleswood without word of farewell. His first visit to The Hostel had confirmed her opinion, although confirmation was not needed. He had visited her twice since then; once at Chauvin's studio and once at Guilder's. She had met him on a third occasion by chance. His manner had been charming as ever but marked by a certain gravity, and as Flamby had thought, by restraint. Sense of a duty to Don alone had impelled him to see her. He had never mentioned his wife.

Flamby first saw Yvonne in the cloisteresque passage into which Chauvin's studio opened, for the studio was one of a set built around three sides of a small open courtyard in the centre of which was a marble faun. Orlando James, the fashionable portrait painter, occupied the studio next to Chauvin. Flamby had been rather anxious to meet James because Chauvin had warned her to avoid him, and one afternoon as she was leaving for home, she came out into the passage at the same moment that a man and a woman passed the studio door on their way to the gate. The woman walked on without glancing aside, but the man covertly looked back, bestowing a bold glance of his large brown eyes upon Flamby. It was Orlando James. She recognised him immediately, tall, fair, arrogantly handsome and wearing his soft hat à la Mousquetaire. But, at the moment, Flamby had no eyes for the debonair Orlando. Stepping back into the shadow of the door, she gazed and gazed, fascinatedly, at the tall, graceful figure of his companion whose slim, daintily shod feet seemed to disdain the common pavement, whose hair of burnished gold gleamed so wonderfully in the wintry sunlight. Flamby's heart would have told her even if she were not familiar with the many published photographs that this elegant woman was Yvonne Mario. Opening the gate, Orlando James held it whilst Yvonne passed out; then ere following her he looked back again smiling destructively at Flamby.

He was painting Yvonne's portrait, as Flamby had pointed out to Chauvin when Chauvin had uttered veiled warnings against his neighbour.

"I know, my dear kid," Chauvin had replied, peering over his horn-rimmed spectacles; "but Mrs. Paul Mario can walk in where angels fear to tread. She is Mrs. Paul Mario, my dear kid, and if Mr. Paul Mario approves it is nobody else's business. But your Uncle Chauvin does not approve and your Uncle Chauvin is responsible to your Uncle Don."

"Don't call him that!" Flamby had cried, with one of her swift changes of mood. "It sounds damned silly!"

Thereupon Chauvin had laughed until he had had to polish his spectacles, for Chauvin was a cheery soul and the embodiment of all that Mürger meant when he spoke of a Bohemian. "Oh! oh!" he had chuckled—"you little devil! I must tell Hammett." And he had been as good as his word; but that same day he had bought Flamby a huge box of chocolates which was a direct and highly immoral encouragement of profanity.

Nevertheless Flamby managed to make the acquaintance of Orlando James, but she did not tell Chauvin. She detested James, but it had been very gratifying to be noticed by a man actually in the company of the dazzling Yvonne Mario. Flamby had profound faith in her ability to take care of herself and not without sound reason, for she was experienced and wise beyond her years, and James's pride in his new conquest amused her vastly because she knew it to be no conquest at all. Only with age do women learn that the foolish world judges beauty harshly and that the judgment of the foolish world may not be wholly neglected. Thus, for human life is a paradox, this knowledge comes when it is no longer of any use, since every woman is not a Ninon de Lenclos.

Of such-like matters were Flamby's thoughts as she sat squeezed up into the smallest possible compass upon her settee, arms embracing knees; and, as was so often the case, they led her back to Paul Mario. It was wonderful how all paths seemed to lead to Paul Mario. She sighed, reaching down for the newspaper which had slipped to the floor. As her fingers touched it, the door-bell rang.

Flamby jumped up impetuously, glancing at the celebrated china clock, which recorded the hour of ten p.m. She assumed that Mrs. Chumley had called for what she was wont to describe as "a goodnight chat." Flamby opened the door, and the light shone out upon Paul Mario.

XI

There are surprises which transcend the surprising, and as the finer tones of music defeat our ears and pass by us unnoticed so do these super-dramatic happenings find us unmoved. Flamby was aware of a vague numbness; she felt like an automaton, but she was quite composed.

"Good evening, Mr. Mario," she said. "How nice of you to call."

The trite precision of her greeting sounded unfamiliar—the speech of a stranger.

"May I come in, or will the lateness of my visit excite comment among your neighbours?"

"Of course you may come in."

Paul walked into the cosy little sitting-room and Flamby having closed the door contrived to kick the newspaper under the bureau whilst placing an armchair for Paul. Paul smiled and made a nest of cushions in a corner of the settee. "Sit there, Flamby," he said, "and let me talk to you."

Flamby sat down facing him, and her nerves beginning to recover from the shock imposed upon them, she found that her heart was really beating, and beating rapidly. Paul was in evening dress, and as the night was showery, wore a loose Burberry. A hard-working Stetson hat, splashed with rain, he had dropped upon the floor beside his chair. His face looked rather gaunt in the artificial light, which cast deep shadows below his eyes, and he was watching her in a way that led her to hope, yet fear, that he might have come to speak about the Charleswood photographs. He was endowed with that natural distinction whose possessor can never be ill at ease, yet he was palpably bent upon some project which he scarcely knew how to approach.

"Will you have a cigarette?" asked Flamby, in a faint voice. "You may smoke your pipe if you would rather."

"May I really?" said Paul buoyantly. "It is a very foul pipe, and will perfume your curtains frightfully."

"I like it. Lots of my visitors smoke pipes."

"You have a number of visitors, Flamby?"

"Heaps. I never had so many friends in my life."

Paul began to charge his briar from a tattered pouch. "Have you ever thought, Flamby, that I neglected you?" he asked slowly.

"Neglected me? Of course not. You have been to see me twice, and I felt all the time that I was keeping you from your work. Besides—why should I expect you to bother about me?"

"You have every reason to expect it, Flamby. Your father was—a tenant of my uncle, and as I am my uncle's heir, his debts are mine. Your father saved me from the greatest loss in the world. Lastly"—he lighted his pipe—"I want you to count me amongst your friends."

He held the extinguished match in his fingers, looking around for an ash-tray. Flamby jumped up, took the match and threw it in the hearth, then returned slowly to her place. Her hands were rather unsteady, and she tucked them away behind her, squeezing up closely against the cushions. "We are friends," she said. "You have always been my friend."

"I don't want you to feel alone in the world, as though nobody cared for you. When Don is home I have no fear, but when he is away there is really no one to study your interests, and, after all, Flamby, you are only a girl."

"There is Mrs. Chumley and Mr. Hammett and Claude Chauvin."

"Three quite delightful people, Flamby, I admit. But Hammett and Chauvin cannot always be with you, and Mrs. Chumley's sweet and unselfish life affords nothing but an illustration of unworldliness. Yet, if these were your only friends, I should be more contented."

Flamby tapped her foot upon the carpet and stared down at it unseeingly. "Are there some of my friends you don't think quite nice?" she asked. Her humility must have surprised many a one who had thought he knew her well.

Paul bent forward, resting one hand upon the head of the settee. "I know very little about your friendships, Flamby. That is why I reproach myself. But a girl who lives alone should exercise the greatest discretion in such matters. You must see that this is so. Friends who would be possible if you were under the care of a mother become impossible when you are deprived of that care. It is not enough to know yourself blameless, Flamby. Worldly folks are grossly suspicious, especially of a pretty girl, and believe me, life is easier and sweeter without misunderstanding."

"Someone has been telling you tales about me," said Flamby, an ominous scarlet enflaming her cheeks.

Paul laughed, bending further forward and seeking to draw Flamby's hands out from their silken hiding-place. She resisted a little, averting her flushed face, but finally yielded, although she did not look at Paul. "Dear little Flamby," he said, and the tenderness in his voice seemed now to turn her cold. "You are not angry with me?" He held her hands between his own, looking at her earnestly. She glanced up under her lashes. "If I had not cared I should have said nothing."

"Everybody goes on at me," said Flamby tremulously. "I haven't done any harm."

"Who has been 'going on' at you, little Flamby?"

"You have, and Chauvin, and everybody."

"But what have they said? What have I said?"

"That I am no good—an absolute rotter!"

"Flamby! Who has said such a thing? Not Chauvin, I'll swear, and not I. You are wilfully misjudging your real friends, little girl. Because you are clever—and you are clever, Flamby—you have faith in your judgment of men yet lack faith in your judgment of yourself. Now, tell me frankly, have you any friends of whom Don would disapprove?"

"No. Don trusts me."

"But he does not trust the world, Flamby, any more than I do, and the world can slay the innocent as readily as the guilty."

"I know!" cried Flamby, looking up quickly. "It was Mr. Thessaly who told you."

"Who told me what?"

"That he had seen me at supper with Orlando James. I didn't see him, but James said he was there."

She met Paul's gaze for a moment and tried to withdraw her hands, but he held them fast, and presently Flamby looked down again at the carpet.

"Whoever told me," said Paul, "it is the truth. Do you write often to Don?"

"Yes—sometimes."

"Then write and ask him if he thinks you should be seen about with Orlando James and I shall be content if you will promise to abide by his reply. Will you do that, Flamby? Please don't be angry with me because I try to help you. I have lived longer than you and I have learned that if we scorn the world's opinion the world will have its revenge. Will you promise?"

"Yes," said Flamby, all humility again.

Paul stood up, taking his hat from the floor and beginning to button his Burberry. "I am coming to see you at the school one day soon, but if ever there is anything you want to tell me or if ever I can be of the slightest use to you, telephone to me, Flamby. Don't regard me as a bogey-man." Flamby had stood up, too, and now Paul held her by the shoulders looking at her charming downcast face. "We are friends, are we not, little Flamby?"

Flamby glanced up swiftly. "Yes," she said. "Thank you for thinking about me."

XII

The rain-swept deserted streets made a curious appeal to Paul that night—an appeal to something in his mood that was feverish and unquiet, that first had stirred in response to an apparently chance remark of Thessaly's and that had sent him out to seek Flamby in despite of the weather and the late hour. He did not strive to analyse it, but rather sought to quench it, unknown, and his joy in the steady downpour was a reflection of this sub-conscious state. Self-distrust, vague and indefinite, touched him unaccountably. He considered the intellectual uproar (for it was nothing less) which he had occasioned by the publication of his two papers—comprising as they did selections from the first part of his book. The attitude of the Church alone indicated how shrewdly he had struck. He had bred no mere nine days' wonder but had sowed a seed which, steadily propagating, already had assumed tall sapling form and had unfolded nascent branches. The bookstalls were beginning to display both anonymous pamphlets and brochures by well-known divines; not all of them directly attacking Mario nor openly defending dogma, but all of them, covertly or overtly, being aimed at him and his works. He had been inundated with correspondence from the two hemispheres; he had been persecuted by callers of many nationalities; a strange grey-haired woman with the inspired eyes of a Sita who had addressed him as Master and acclaimed him one long expected, and a party of little brown men, turbaned and urbane, from India, who spoke of the Vishnu-Purana, hailing him as a brother, and whose presence had conjured up pictures of the forests of Hindustan. A dignified Chinaman, too, armed with letters of introduction, had presented him with a wonderful book painted upon ivory of the Trigrams of Fo-Hi. But most singular visitor of all was a sort of monk, having a black, matted beard and carrying a staff, who had gained access to the study, Paul never learned by what means, and who had thundered out an incomprehensible warning against "unveiling the shrine," had denounced what he had termed "the poison of Fabre d'Olivet" and had departed mysteriously as he had come.

There had been something really terrifying in the personality of this last visitor, power of some kind, and Paul, whose third paper, La Force, was in the press, seemed often to hear those strange words ringing in his ears, and he hesitated even now to widen the chasm which already he had opened and which yawned threateningly between the old faith and the new wisdom which yet was a wisdom more ancient than the world. He was but a common man, born of woman; no Krishna conceived of a Virgin Devâki, nor even a Pythagoras initiate of Memphis and heir of Zoroaster; and this night he distrusted his genius. What if he should beckon men, like a vaporous will-o'-the-wisp, out into a morass of error wherein their souls should perish? His power he might doubt no longer; a thousand denunciations, a million acclamations, had borne witness to it. And he had barely begun to speak. Truly the world awaited him and already he bent beneath the burden of a world's desire.

Few pedestrians were abroad and no cabs were to be seen. Every motor-bus appeared to be full inside, with many passengers standing, and even a heroic minority hidden beneath gleaming umbrellas on top. Paul had found the interiors of these vehicles to possess an odour of imperfectly washed humanity, and he avoided the roof, unless a front seat were available, because of the existence of that type of roof-traveller who converts himself into a human fountain by expectorating playfully at selected intervals. Theatre audiences were on their several ways home, and as Paul passed by the entrance to a Tube station he found a considerable crowd seeking to force its way in, a motley crowd representative of every stratum of society from Whitechapel to Mayfair. Women wearing opera cloaks and shod in fragile dress-shoes stood shivering upon the gleaming pavement beside Jewesses from the East-End. Fur-collared coats were pressed against wet working raiments, white gloved hands rested upon greasy shoulders. Officers jostled privates, sailors vied with soldiers in the scrum before the entrance to the microbic land of tunnels. War is a potent demagogue.

Isolated standard lamps whose blackened tops gave them an odd appearance of wearing skull caps, broke the gloom of the rain mist at wide intervals. All shops were shut, apparently. One or two cafés preserved a ghostly life within their depths, but their sombre illuminations were suggestive of the Rat Mort. Musicians from theatre orchestras hurried in the direction of the friendly Tube, instrument cases in hand, and one or two hardy members of the Overseas forces defied the elements and lounged about on corners as though this were a summer's evening in Melbourne. Policemen sheltered in dark porches. Paul walked on, his hands thrust into his coat pockets and the brim of his hat pulled down. He experienced no discomfort and was quite contented with the prospect of walking the remainder of the way home; he determined, however, to light his pipe and in order to do so he stepped into the recess formed by a shop door, found his pouch and having loaded his briar was about to strike a match when he saw a taxi-cab apparently disengaged and approaching slowly. He stepped out from his shelter, calling to the man, and collided heavily with a girl wearing a conspicuous white raincoat and carrying an umbrella.

She slipped and staggered, but Paul caught her in time to save her from a fall upon the muddy pavement. "I am sincerely sorry," he said with real solicitude. "I know I must have hurt you."

"Not in the least," she replied in a low tone which might have passed for that of culture with a less inspired observer than Paul. A faint light from the head lamp of the cab which had drawn up beside the pavement, touched her face. She was young and would have been pretty if the bloom of her cheeks and the redness of her lips had not been due to careful make-up; for her features were good and, as Paul recognised, experiencing a sensation of chill at his heart, not unlike those of his wife. If he could have imagined a debauched Yvonne, she would have looked like this waif of the night who now stood bending beneath the shelter of her wet umbrella upon which the rain pattered, ruefully rubbing a slim silken-clad ankle.

"I can only offer one reparation," Paul persisted. "You must allow me to drive you home."

The cabman coughed dryly, reaching around to open the door. "It's a rotten night, sir," he said, "and I'm short of petrol. Make it a double fare."

"Really," declared the girl with that exaggerated drawling accent, "I can manage quite well."

"Please don't argue," said Paul, smiling and assisting her into the cab. "Tell me where you want to go."

She gave an address near Torrington Square and Paul got in beside her. "Now," he said as the cab moved off, "I want to talk to you. You must not be angry with me but just listen! In the first place I know I collided with you roughly and I am sorry, but you deliberately got in my way and I did not hurt your ankle at all!"

"What do you mean?" she cried, the accent more overdone than ever. "I thought you were a gentleman!"

"Perhaps you were wrong. It is one of the most difficult things in the world to recognise a gentleman. But we can all recognise the truth and I want you to admit that I have told you the truth."

"Did you get me in here to start the Bible-banging business?" inquired the girl, her factitious refinement deserting her. "Because if you did I'm getting out."

"You are going to do nothing of the kind," said Paul, patting her white-gloved hand. "You are going to tell me all about yourself and I am going to show you your mistakes and see if some of them cannot be put right."

"You're nothing to do with the Salvation Army, are you?" she asked sarcastically. But already she was half enslaved by the voice and manner of Paul. "Do you think I don't know my mistakes? Do you think preaching can do me any good? Are you one of those fools who think all women like me only live the way we do because we can't see where it will end? I know! I know! And I don't care! See that? The sooner the better!" Her sudden violence was that of rebellion against something akin to fear which this strange picturesque-looking man threatened to inspire in her—and it formed no part of her poor philosophy to fear men.

Paul took her hand and held it firmly. "Little chance acquaintance," he said, "was there never anyone in the world whom you loved?—never anyone who was good to you?" She turned aside from him, making no reply. "If ever there was such a one tell me."

The cab had already reached the Square, and now the man pulled up before a large apartment-house, and the girl withdrew her hand and rose. "It's no good," she said. "It's no good. I think you mean to be kind, but you're wasting your time. Good night."

"I have not finished," replied Paul, opening the door for her. "I am coming to see where you live before I say good night."

He followed her out, directing the man to wait and smiling grimly at the thought of his own counsel to Flamby anent giving the world cause for suspicion.

The room in which Paul found himself was on the first floor, over looking the square, and was well but conventionally furnished. A fire blazed in the grate, and the draped mantelpiece was decorated with a number of photographs of junior officers, many of them autographed. His companion, who said her name was Kitty Chester, had discarded her raincoat and hat, and now stood before the fire arrayed in a smart plaid skirt and a white silk blouse, cut very low. She had neat ankles and a slim figure, but her hands betrayed the fact that she had done manual work at some time in her career. She was much more haggard than he had been able to discern her to be in the dim light of the cab lamp. Taking a cigarette from a box upon the table she lighted it and leaned back against the mantelpiece.

"Well," she said, "another blank day;" and obviously she was trying to throw off the spell which Paul had almost succeeded in casting upon her in the cab. "Barred the Empire, barred the Alhambra, and now the old Pav is a thing of the past, too. I never thought I should find myself blowing through the rain all dressed up and nowhere to go."

Paul watched her silently for a moment. In Kitty Chester he recognised the answer to his doubts, and because that answer was yet incomplete, his genius responded and was revivified. As of old the initiate was tested in order that he might learn the strength of his wisdom, so now a test was offered to the wielder of the sword of truth. Paul did not immediately seek to re-establish control of this wayward spirit, but talked awhile lightly and sympathetically of her life and its trials. Presently: "I suppose you are sometimes hard up?" he said.

"Sometimes!"

"But I can see that you would resent an offer of help."

"I should. Cut it out."

"I have no intention of pressing the point. But have you no ambition to lead any different life?"

"My life's my own. I'll do what I like with it. I'd have ended it long ago, but I hadn't got the pluck. Now you know."

"Yes," replied Paul—"now I know. Come and sit down here beside me."

"I won't."

"You will. Come and sit down here."

Kitty Chester met the fixed gaze of his eyes and was lost. With the ghost of a swagger in her gait she crossed to the red plush sofa upon which Paul was seated and lounged upon the end of it, one foot swinging in the air. She had a trick of rubbing the second finger of her left hand as if twisting a ring, and Paul watched her as she repeated the gesture. He rested his hand upon hers.

"Did you love your husband?" he asked.

Kitty Chester stood up slowly. Her right hand, which held the lighted cigarette, went automatically to her breast. She wore a thin gold chain about her neck. She was staring at Paul haggardly.

"You did love him," he continued. "Is he dead?"

Paul's solicitude, so obviously real, so wonderfully disinterested and so wholly free from cant, already had kindled something in the girl's heart which she had believed to be lifeless, and for ever cold. Now, his swift intuition and the grave sympathy in his beautiful voice imposed too great a test upon the weakened self-control of poor Kitty. Without even a warning quiver of the lips she burst into passionate sobs. Dropping weakly down upon the sofa she cried until her whole body shook convulsively. Paul watched her in silence for some time, and then put his arm about her bowed shoulders.

"Tell me," he said. "I understand." And punctuated by that bitter weeping the story was told. Kitty had been in the service of a county family and had married a young tradesman of excellent prospects. Two short years of married life and then the War. Her husband was ordered to France. One year of that ceaseless waiting, hoping, fearing, which war imposes upon women, and then an official telegram. Kitty returned to service—and her baby died.

"What had I done," she cried wildly. "What had I done to deserve it? I'd gone as straight as a girl can go. There was nobody else in the world for me but him. Then my baby was taken, and the parson's talk about God! What did anything matter after that! Oh, the loneliness. The loneliness! Men don't know what that loneliness is like—the loneliness of a woman. They have their friends, but nobody wants to be friends with a lonely woman. There are only two ways for her. I tried to kill myself, and I was too big a coward, so I took the easy way and thought I might forget."

"You thought you might forget. And did you think your husband would ever forget?"

"Oh, my God! don't say that!"

"You see, the name of God still means something to you," said Paul gently. "Many a soldier's wife has become a believer, and you are not the first who has shuddered to believe." He saw his course clearly, and did not hesitate to pursue it. "The parsons, as you say, talk about God without knowing of What or of Whom they speak, but I am not a parson, and I know of What I speak. Look at me. I have something to ask you."

She turned her eyes, red with weeping, and was fascinated by Paul's concentrated gaze.

"Do you ever dream of your husband?" he asked.

"Oh! you'll drive me mad!" she whispered, trembling violently. "For the first six months after ... I was afraid to close my eyes. I am frightened. I am frightened."

"You are frightened because he is here, Kitty; but he is here to guard you and not to harm you. He is here because to-night you have done with that life of forgetfulness which is worse than the memories of those you loved. He will always come when you call him, until the very hour that you are ready to join him again. But if you do wrong to the memory of a man who was true to you, even I cannot promise that he will ever hold you in his arms again."

"But can you promise?—Oh! you seem to know! You seem ... Who are you? Tell me who you are——"

She stood up and retreated from Paul, the pallor of her face discernible through the tear-streaked make-up. He smiled in his charming fashion, holding out his hands.

"I am one who has studied the secrets of nature," he replied. "And I promise you that you shall live again as a woman, and be loved by those whom you think you have lost. Look at your locket before you sleep to-night and dream, but do not be afraid. Promise, now, that you will always be faithful in the future. You shall give me the names of your old friends and I shall see if all this great mistake cannot be forgotten."

XIII

Turning up the lights in his study, Paul seated himself in the great carved chair before his writing-table, and looked for a long time at a set of corrected proofs which lay there. Then, leaning back in the chair he stared about the room at the new and strange ornaments which he had collected in accordance with his system of working amid sympathetic colour. His meeting with Kitty Chester he accepted as a message of encouragement designed to restore his faith in himself and his mission. That he had accomplished her redemption he did not dare to believe, but at least he had rendered it possible. He readily recognised the symbolical significance of their meeting, and it tinged his reflections and quickened his genius, so that a new light was shed thereby upon some of the darker places of the religious past.

Close to his hand, upon an ebony pedestal, stood a squat stone figure having the head of a man with the face of a bull. It was an idol of incalculable age, from Jules Thessaly's collection, a relic of prehistoric Greece and the ancient worship of the threefold Hecate. Set in some remote Thracian valley, it had once looked down upon orgies such as few modern minds can imagine, had seen naked Bacchantes surrounded by tamed jungle beasts and having their arms enwreathed with living serpents, flinging themselves prostrate before its altar, and then amid delirious dances calling upon the Bull-faced Bacchus of whom we read in one of the Orphic hymns....

Dimly visible in a recess of the black-oak bureau was Káli, goddess of Desire, and near her, in a narrow cupboard, the light impinged upon a white, smooth piece of stone which was attached to a wooden frame. It was the emblem of Venus Urania from the oldest temple in Cyprus. These priceless relics were all lent by Thessaly, as were an imperfect statuette in wood, fossilised with age and probably of Moabite origin, representing Ashtaroth, daughter of Sin, and a wonderfully preserved ivory figure, half woman and half fish, of Derceto of Ascalon. The sacred courtesans of the past and the Kitty Chesters of the present (mused Paul) all were expressions of that mystic principle, IEVE, upon which the universe turns as a compass upon its needle, and which, reproduced in our gross bodies, has led to the creation of the Groves of Paphos. That sublime Desire which should lead us to the great Unity and final fulfilment, would seem through all the ages to have driven men ever further from it. Would a day never dawn when all that uncontrolled Force should be contained and directed harmoniously, when the pure Isis of the Egyptian mysteries should cast down the tainted Isis whose lascivious rites were celebrated in Pompeii? Scarcely perceptible was the progress of mankind. In every woman was born a spark of Bacchic fire, which leapt up sweetly at the summons of love or crimson, shameful, at the beck of lust. There were certain conditions peculiarly favourable to its evil development; loneliness, according to Kitty Chester, a loneliness beyond man's understanding....

Paul aroused himself from a reverie and remembered that he had been thinking of Flamby with a strange and lingering tenderness. The clock on the mantelpiece recorded the hour of two a.m., and he turned out the lights in the study and made his way upstairs. He had told Eustace not to wait up for him, and the house was in darkness. Before Yvonne's room Paul stopped, and gently opened the door. A faint sound of regular breathing, and the scent of jasmine came to him. He closed the door as quietly as he had opened it, and proceeded to the next, which was that of his own room.

When he retired he threw open the heavy curtains draped before the windows, and saw that the weather had cleared. White clouds were racing past the face of the moon. He fell asleep almost immediately, and the moon pursuing her mystic journey, presently shone fully in upon the sleeper. Unwittingly Paul was performing one of the rites of the old Adonis worshippers in sleeping with the moonlight upon his face, and thus sleeping he was visited by a strange dream....

Drunk with the wine of life, he ran through a grove of scented pines, flanked by thickets of giant azaleas and taunting one onward and upward to where faint silver outlines traced upon the azure sky lured to distant peaks. Etherealised shapes of haunting beauty surrounded him, and sometimes they seemed to merge into the verdure and sometimes it was a cloud of blossom that gave up an airy form as a lily gives of its sweetness, now bearing a white nymph, now an Apollo-limbed youth, sun kissed and godlike. Gay hued, four footed creatures mingled with the flying shapes, and all pressed onward; things sleek and eager hastening through the grove, swiftly passing, hoof and pad; leaping girls and laughing youths; amid sentient flowers and trees whose life was joy. Earth's magic sap pulsed through them all and being was an orgy of worship—worship of a bountiful Mother, of Earth in her golden youth....

He passed thence to the banks of Egypt's Nile, and heard the lamentations of priests and wailing of women as a black ox, flower bedecked and wearing a collar encrusted with gems, was drowned in the turgid stream. Time and space ceased to exist for him. Through the murk of cavernous passages he paced, pausing before a pit in which reposed a sarcophagus of huge dimensions; and when the dim company and he had paid tribute to that which lay there, all ascended to a temple, lofty and awesome, its dizzy roof upheld by aisles of monstrous granite. To an accompaniment of sorrowful chanting, the doors of the altar were opened, and within upon the shrine rested a square-hewn statue. Jewelled lamps glowed and censers smoked before the image of the bull, Apis.

The sistrums called him to a shrine of Isis, where kyphi was burning, and priestesses, fair royal virgins, made lotus offerings to the mother of light; but magic of old Nileland might not withhold him from the Rites of Ceres when the Hymn to Demeter arose within those wonder halls of Ictinus. He saw the blood of a white kid flow upon the altar of Diana at Ephesus and with his own hands laid poppy and dittany at the pearly feet of the Huntress. The Lament for Adonis wooed him to the Temple of the Moon, the Hymn to Râ won him back to Egypt's god of gods. He lighted Tsan Ihang, sweet perfume of Tibet, before Gautama Buddha in Canton's Temple of Five Hundred Ginns and kissed the sacred covering of the Kaaba at Mecca.

Consciousness intruding upon sub-consciousness, the mind calling upon the spirit, he found himself questing a likeness, a memory, a furtive thought; and partly it took shape, so that it seemed to him that Apis, Isis, Orpheus and the Buddha had a common resemblance to some person living and human, known to him; whose voice he had heard, and heard again leading the Orphic hymn, chanting the Buddhist prayers and bewailing the passing of Adonis. A man it was his memory sought, and alike in granite statue and golden idol he had detected him; in the silver note of the sistrum, in the deeps of the Hymn to Râ....

All blended into one insistent entreaty, voices, music, perfumes, calling upon him to return, but he forced his way through a passage, stifling, low and laden with the breath of remote mortality like those in the depths of Egypt's pyramids. He came forth into a vast cathedral and stood before the high altar. As the acolyte swung the thurible and incense floated upward to the Cross, he, too, arose seraphic and alighted upon the very top of the dome. Below him stretched a maze of tortuous streets, thronged with men and women of a thousand ages and of all the races of mankind. Minaret, pagoda, dome, propylon, arch, portico jutted up from the labyrinth like tares amid a cornfield. Then a mist crept darkly down and drew its mantle over them all. A golden crescent projected above the haze, but it was swallowed up; a slender spire for long remained but finally was lost. He looked down at the basilica upon which he stood. It had vanished. He raised his eyes, and the mist was gone, but an empty world lay where a teeming world had been; a desert wherein no living thing stirred. A voice, a familiar voice, spoke, and the words were familiar, too. They melted into the sweet melancholy of the Lament for Adonis, and he awoke, dazzled, half blinded by the brilliancy of the moonlight.