Richards looked carefully over the table with the eye of the well-trained manservant. He retouched a bowl of lilac that offended against his slavish idea of symmetry and then put a screen across the dying fire.

It was the end of May and the night was warm, but as Carey Image was to be one of the guests that evening, Richards had seen to it that the room was well heated. For Carey Image had just come back from five years’ sojourn on the frontier of India, and Richards was afraid that the rigours of the Eastern climate—particularly trying to a man in the fifties—might strike a chill into his sunbaked body. He was thinking about him as he placed the screen, for Richards had been in the Currey family for many years, and he remembered well the genial little man, generous with his pourboires and “full of pleasant remarks”—the expression was Richards’ own, communicated to his wife, the cook—who had been godfather to the owner of the rooms thirty-two years ago, and had, on the occasion of the christening, optimistically prophesied that the baby would grow into a remarkable man.

Richards had heard the remark, and he now recalled it as he drew the curtains. Was not Carey Image’s prophecy coming true? He had been the first in the field, if one may use that expression of a prophet, but others now began to endorse his opinion.

“Wonderful how he knew,” muttered Richards to himself, “for babies is that alike, all pink and squally.”

Then by a natural sequence of thought Richards glanced at a large photograph of his master in wig and gown which reposed on a table, and which had been taken at the request of his mother, who lamented afterwards that it made him look too severe and old. A remarkable man? No, the title was not yet earned; for no man is remarkable until he is forty and has buried the prophet, his godfather. Still, Gilbert Currey was well on the way to success, and that very week had seen him take a big stride forward. Had not his success in the Driver case made the eyes of the legal profession and a good many of the public turn towards him? Richards was old-fashioned enough to take a pride in the fortunes of his master.

A slight noise through the curtains which shut off the dining-room from the room in the front portion of the flat caused the butler to turn. One of the guests had arrived early. He must apologize for his master’s non-appearance. Gilbert Currey was still dressing; he generally rushed home from his chambers at the last moment.

“Ah!” said a well-remembered voice, “it is the faithful Richards. How do you do, Richards, and how have the years treated you?”

Carey Image smiled genially, and Richards, as to an old family friend, permitted himself an answering smile.

“I hope I see you well, sir.”

“Tolerably, Richards. My bones creak a little.... Ouf! Was it always the custom to make the rooms so hot?”

Richards, crestfallen, explained. “I will open the window wider.”

“Yes, do. But it was thoughtful of you, Richards, very thoughtful. It seems that everyone looks on me now as a salamander.... So you are here with my godson in his flat. How is that?”

“Well, sir, when Mr. Gilbert came to live in town, my mistress was anxious that I should look after him, so my wife and I came up here.”

“Ah! let me see. Your wife made delicious omelettes. I remember them well. So you came here to give him, as it were, all the comforts of home. Lucky young dog. I am confident of a good dinner now, for I was a little doubtful, Richards, as I dressed. Gilbert is not an epicure, or at least he was not five years ago. He eats—well, he eats, and that’s all there is to it. I have come to the age when I dine. And I remember your wife’s cooking. Will you tell her so?”

The compliment pleased Richards and afterwards the cook, as it was meant to. Image had been born with the knack of saying the graceful thing in the right place, and his memory was wonderful. This trick had made many friends for him.

“I will tell my master you are here.”

“No, no, don’t hurry him. A party of five, eh? To celebrate his birthday and his latest success at the Bar? He is going to be a remarkable man.”

“I was just remembering what you said, sir, when you came in.”

Image smiled, and taking off his glasses, carefully polished them. “Ah! he was so sturdy and he shut his little mouth so firmly—a great deal in the set of the mouth even at the early age, Richards—and he knew what he wanted so decidedly that I felt there was a career before him. He commenced to orate loudly in church, and I understand the same oration—more intelligible and persuasive—won this much talked-of Driver case. Don’t hurry him on my account. I have not yet become accustomed to the taxi-cabs. Distances by rickshaws and distances by four-wheelers I know, but taxi-cabs—I find myself hurrying along like the witch on her broomstick.”

Richards quietly withdrew, and Image surveyed the rooms through his glasses, which made his near-sighted brown eyes so extraordinarily brilliant and piercing. He nodded in old acquaintanceship to several pieces of furniture and a few pictures, for Gilbert’s mother had robbed Wynnstay Manor for her son’s furnishing. On either side of the fireplace were two new portraits which had been painted since Image had been away. One represented a woman, with delicate colouring and well-chiselled features. The calm blue eyes were shallow as pools of water in the sun, and there were no full curves to the lips or any indication of deep emotion or temperament. A well-preserved woman—Gilbert’s mother. On the other side was a companion picture, Sir John Currey, Bart., M.P. No weakness there, rather a dominating nature, an iron will, a certain ruthlessness in the lines of the heavy jaw, a certain coldness in the direct glancing eyes.

“A capital portrait, my old friend,” apostrophized Image. “I wonder if Gilbert will——”

“Now, Carey, talking to the devil?” broke in a voice on his meditations, a full, very masculine voice, that filled the room. It made Image’s voice seem effeminate and thin. “My old nurse used to say when she found me muttering to myself that I was telling the devil too much of my mind.”

“My dear fellow, how glad I am to see you again. It’s a silly habit of mine. I and myself, we often talk to one another.... Let’s have a good look at you.... A bit heavier——”

“Yes,” said Gilbert laughing ruefully, “I am putting on flesh. Don’t get enough exercise. You haven’t changed, Carey.”

“Ah! I have definitely come to the shrivelled stage. I was looking at your father’s portrait. Capital! When you laugh you are not so like, but your face in repose—very like. I am glad to hear of your success, my boy. Johnson Marks was in court yesterday, and he told me your speech was truly remarkable for a young man, and you know how many young barristers he has heard. You must have been very pleased at the successful issue of the trial.”

“Yes, I confess I was. I wanted to pull the thing off. I made up my mind to get him acquitted.”

As he said it, the determined set of his mouth was old beyond his years and reminded Image very powerfully of his father. Then Gilbert smiled and clapped Image on the back, and the impression of egoistic ruthlessness was dissipated. When Gilbert Currey smiled he had considerable charm. Women would have let him know this if he had found time to court them.

Richards’ voice was heard at the door. “Mr. Iverson.”

“Hallo, old chap, flushed with victory, eh? Lord! what a lot of swotting you must have done over that case. Your knowledge of Eastern poisons knocked me silly. You’re a nut, you are.”

No one could have mistaken Jack Iverson for anything else but a Service man. As a matter of fact, he was in the Blues, and exceptionally good-looking, with that rare distinction in a man—a wonderful clear, healthy skin. His eyes a curious jadelike green with the bluish clear whites that one usually sees only in the eyes of a small child, Jack Iverson was one of the handsomest and richest young men that lounged about Mayfair.

Image did not know Jack Iverson, but he knew the next guest, an old friend, Dr. Fritz Neeburg, and he had heard of the last arrival, Gilbert’s particular friend and college chum, Colin Paton.

The impression Paton made on the casual observer was that of a well-groomed reserved man of a very English type, and one of the best. There was nothing at all arresting in his appearance; he had regular features, smooth hair, well-cared-for hands, and a general air of wellbeing. He was three years older than Gilbert, though they had been at Oxford together, but he had been delicate in his early manhood, and had spent several years in desultory travel. Paton’s movements were all quietly deliberate; they might have belonged to a man of fifty equally well as to a man of thirty. He did not give the impression of forceful energy, as did his friend. Quite unlike in character and tastes, they were yet excellent friends, and though Gilbert would have been at a loss to describe or analyse Paton—he had no interest in psychology, apart from its bearing on his legal work—Paton had long ago realized the possibilities and the limitations of his host.

They sat down to dinner in a pleasant intimate circle of yellow light. Richards’ wife had a passion for flowers—she would spend hours standing in front of the beautiful florists’ displays in the West End, when she took her constitutionals—so Gilbert’s rooms and table were always tastefully decorated. This evening, heavy-headed, fragrant jonquils, rather sick and drooping with their own sweetness, nodded from some exquisite Venetian glass, while bunched violets in silver bowls added to the spring-like effect. Image was quick to notice the flowers.

“The English flowers! You must have spent ten years in the tropics to appreciate them. One gets so satiated with gorgeousness and overpowering perfume, just as one gets tired of the burning sun and the eternal blue sky. But the English flowers one never tires of. There is such a wonderful simplicity and purity about them. They refresh and cleanse one. In the East there are flowers that are positively wicked, one almost starts back from their viciousness. But the English flowers are perfect.

“I saw your lights burning at two o’clock this morning,” observed Neeburg; “were you celebrating your victory, Gilbert?”

“No. I was working.”

“Don’t overwork, old man. Don’t urge the willing steed too fast and furious. I think we are all inclined to do that nowadays. Faster and faster physical and mental locomotion seems the order of the day.”

“And that’s how you rake in the guineas, Neeburg. You shouldn’t grumble. But I’m as strong as a horse. Work doesn’t hurt me. Thank God, I inherited a good constitution from my father.”

“My dear fellow, the strongest horse, if you overwork him, will sometimes go lame. You’ve been working very hard the last couple of years. Keep things in their proper proportions—that’s the secret of life and happiness—proportion!”

“Ah!” said Image briskly, “that’s very true, Fritz, only we usually learn that secret when it’s too late and everything is out of proportion.”

“Proportion!” said the host quickly. “How can you keep a sense of proportion nowadays? Look at me. When you start in the legal profession the proportion is on the wrong side. You have nothing to do except to wear out the leather chairs at your chambers. Get a move on and a few eyes directed to you, and you are very soon swamped with work. And if a man doesn’t work for all he is worth with a singleness of aim and ambition between twenty-five and forty, he will never arrive. You have to keep your nose to the grindstone or success will pass you by. It’s all very well for doctors to talk of moderation and a sense of proportion, but how can you be moderate? Life is immoderate nowadays.”

“You mean that a man’s ambitions and wants are immoderate,” returned Neeburg.

Jack Iverson, who was quite frankly out of the conversation, tried to contribute his quota. “I say, what’s the good of spending all the days of your youth swotting?” he said in his rather rich, lazy voice. “The game isn’t worth the candle.”

Gilbert went on a trifle impatiently. “The thing to do nowadays is to specialize. Make up your mind what you can do best, and what you want, and hang on like a bulldog till you get it.”

“A bit of a gamble if you only stake on worldly success,” said Paton quietly.

Image nodded emphatically, and looked curiously from one young man to the other.

“It isn’t such a gamble. I believe most firmly that you can ensure success provided that you have certain abilities and a fair constitution. You hear a lot of people blaming Fate for their non-success in life. How many of them have really striven whole-heartedly to get what they want? The road to success is a sort of obstacle race, and you can’t afford, while you are surmounting the obstacles, to either look to the right or the left or even behind you, to see who is possibly going to overtake you. Success isn’t a chance; it’s a certainty if you concentrate.” Gilbert had a very decisive manner, which was worth its weight in gold to him in the courts.

For a moment there was silence as he ceased speaking.

“Yes, but my dear boy,” said Image at length, “what is success?”

“Making money, I suppose,” said Jack Iverson, watching Richards refill his glass. He was glad that he did not do any of these strenuous things. He had a secret awe and lazy admiration of Gilbert.

“No,” said his host, “you generally make money if you are successful—it follows as the night the day—but I should say that very few of the world’s successful men have worked for the sake of money.”

“Well, how do you define it? Notoriety, fame, the applause of undiscriminating men who shout with the crowd, paragraphs in the halfpenny papers side-by-side with an account of the latest high kick of a popular actress, a long obituary notice to be followed by a badly-written book of biography by one of the family which nobody reads—is that worth struggling for?” Paton put the question quietly, his voice a trifle colourless after Gilbert’s.

“You are not ambitious,” retorted Gilbert. “You never were. You have always let other fellows walk over you, chaps with half your brains. You dream your time away.”

“No, excuse me, I don’t dream. I hate excessively to hear myself classed with those vague, anÆmic brains that wander like will-o’-the-wisps over the world. You think I wasted my time at Oxford because I did not take any degree. I don’t. I taught myself how to think. I refused to cram my brains with facts most of which would be of little use to me in after-life, or to my neighbour. I tried to leave a little room for the imagination. Oxford appealed to my imagination, and I think I have brought something away from her that will be a precious possession all my life. You came away with an enormous capacity for assimilating knowledge, with a well-trained memory and a habit of pigeonholing everything and everybody. Most useful to you in your profession, my dear fellow, but it did not appeal to me as worth working for.”

“You have no ambition to be labelled ‘successful’?” said Image, who had been watching Paton as he spoke with his brilliant dark eyes. He found something that he liked in Paton, something which he vaguely missed in Gilbert and had always missed in his father before him.

“I don’t care for what is usually called success. Of course, many people say that because they know they won’t set the world on fire; and in spite of what Gilbert says, there are people who will never, with any amount of concentration, arrive; but, honestly, I don’t much care what my fellow-creatures think of me from the point of view of worldly success—I care very much otherwise; and I refuse to try and narrow myself down within the cramped little borders of success. I want room to develop, and I don’t want to be forced through the world’s mill and come out in a certain pattern.”

“And Gilbert doesn’t care a pin what people think of him ‘otherwise,’ but very much from the world’s stand-point, that’s the difference between you,” said Neeburg, helping himself to a quail en cocotte. “Now, I wonder which makes for happiness?”

“Oh, hold on!” cried Gilbert, laughing. “I like people all right. I protest, Neeburg.”

Neeburg smiled and shook his head. “Individuals are not really necessary to you,” persisted Neeburg.

“I won’t be made out a hard and miserable materialist just because I am honest enough to say I am ambitious.”

“My dear boy, there are many like you,” said Neeburg; “and ambition is by no means a bad thing. But with you the game is the thing. You are the type of man who lives and dies in harness. Men and women are pawns in the game of life to you. Once I thought as you do, but I was checked in time. And I found it wasn’t worth while. Bay-leaves may be bitter.”

“Well,” said Image; “to every man his own meat and his own poison. I’ve met a good many famous men in my time, and I can’t recall that any of them seemed to be particularly happy. To be great is to be lonely.... How delicious these strawberries are!... I think I’d rather be one of the common herd. The big man looks over the heads of others in a crowd, but he misses a lot of friendly glances and intimate whispers. I even like some of the jolly, familiar nudges one gets. No one would dare to nudge a great man.”

The others laughed, and Richards came in with the coffee.

“That reminds me of something that was said to me yesterday,” said Neeburg, “by an Anglo-Indian just come home. Was no end of a pot in India with absolute control over a big province. He was lamenting that it was horrible to find himself obliged to use buses and sit next to—just anybody!”

“He doesn’t appreciate the nudges,” laughed Gilbert.

“He’s forgotten how jolly they are,” retorted Image, with a twinkle. “That’s just what I complain of.”

Jack Iverson, who had been vainly trying to follow “those brainy fellows,” broke in with a commonplace. “Well, I hate the people you see in buses and tubes. They think they are as good as you, and they always seem in such a beastly hurry to get somewhere. And, all the time, I suppose most of ’em don’t do anything in particular.”

“No, they only earn their livings,” said Neeburg drily.

“Well, I’m glad I don’t have to,” said Iverson, lighting his cigar. “I’d rather have money than brains. I say, I’ve got to rush off soon, Gilbert. Claudia insisted that I must go to Lady Laud’s dance at the ‘Ritz.’ Rotten fag, bunny-hugging and Gaby-gliding.”

“Is your sister going too?” asked Gilbert quickly.

“Claudia? Yes. I suppose you got an invitation?”

“Yes, but I had forgotten all about it.”

“Dancing is a beastly bore. I’m fed up with it,” continued Iverson complacently, his striking good looks in obvious contrast to his commonplace mind. “I’d rather play bridge any day, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, I don’t dislike dancing, only I can’t afford the time. If I go to a dance I always stay too late. And I certainly should if I danced with your sister.”

“Not half a bad dancer, is she? She goes on at me for being too lackadaisical. She says she likes a partner who feels the music. But how can you feel the Chocolate Soldier every night, and what are you to feel? Quite imposs. I can’t understand all these delicate sort of feelings. They were playing ‘The Rosary’ the other night at supper, and the girl with me put on such a die-away air that I thought she felt sick. She was awfully annoyed with me for offering her some brandy.”

There was a general laugh as the men moved away from the table. The noise of the traffic outside was like a huge buzzing bee; the fresh air, holding a subtle promise of spring, came in through the open casement windows.

Iverson was the first to break up the party. “Claudia will go for me if I don’t get there in decent time.”

Fritz Neeburg went with him. He never kept late hours, for the hand of the surgeon must be steady and there must be no overnight fogs in his brain. Presently Carey Image, Paton and their host, were alone together.

CHAPTER II
CIRCE’S DAUGHTER

“Well, I’ve been an unsuccessful man as the world counts success,” said Image, as though the thread of their early conversation had never been broken, “but I’ve had fifteen years of great personal happiness. Can one expect more than that in life? Could I have been more successful? And I’ve laid up a store of beautiful memories for my old age.”

Everyone knew the story of Carey Image. He had himself started out in life at the Bar. When in his thirty-second year and well on the road to be a K.C., he was briefed as counsel in a divorce case. The woman was unsuccessful in divorcing her husband, the definition of legal cruelty did not cover practices and habits that had reduced a beautiful, healthy woman to a frightened shadow; but she was successful in winning a heart that had stood between her and the world for fifteen years afterwards. Pariahs in social London—for in those days public opinion was more cruel than it is to-day—they had wandered all over the world together. They had not been quite idle, for she helped Image to write several books of thoughtful travel that had first set the fashion of “wander literature.” She had died five years previously, and never once had Image regretted what he had given up for her. He had rescued a woman from the lowest depths and made her perfectly happy. His worldly failure in life had been his real success. The look in the dying woman’s eyes as they had turned to him had made an imperishable crown.

Gilbert was silent. As a child he had known Image, and he had often wondered since if it had really been worth while to make a pariah of himself. He was answered now. It was so different from his mother’s version of the good-looking woman who got Image in her clutches and whom he was too unworldly to see through.

“I think that fifteen years of happiness is more than most of us can hope for,” said Paton quietly.

“I remember as a boy,” said Image reminiscently, “being asked what I wanted to do in life, and I replied ‘To do one thing well and make one person happy.’ I think I did the latter, but in the first I have failed. My globe-trotting books are pretty well known, but what are they, after all?” He looked at the portrait of Gilbert in his wig and gown, and there was a sort of gentle regret in his eyes.

“Surely you have been successful in both,” said Paton. “To love well—isn’t that one of the rarest talents?”

Image turned on him with his charming smile. “Ah! but it was so easy. If you had known her you would realize it was nothing to my credit—nothing at all.” He said it very simply, as though stating an undeniable fact. For a moment there was silence, while the ghost of a beautiful, sweet-natured woman passed through the room.

Then Gilbert, who, like most Englishmen, felt rather uncomfortable at the sentimental vein into which they had fallen, poured himself out a whisky and soda, and the prosaic hiss of the syphon dispelled the ghost.

“Well, I must be going,” said Paton, rousing himself from a little reverie and slowly getting out of the big armchair; “time for all good children, et cetera. Good-night, Mr. Image, I am very pleased to have met you. I hope we shall meet again.”

“We are sure to,” said Image cordially. “I wish you would come and lunch with me at my club one day? You will? Good. I’ll drop you a line. Good-night to you.”

Gilbert went to see him out, and Image, rising, looked again at the photograph of him which his mother said was too severe. As Gilbert came back to the room he compared the original with the photograph. More than a presentable man, Gilbert Currey was distinctly good-looking. The brow was broad and high, and the hair grew thick and strongly. His eyes, which Image remembered in the baby had been blue like his mother’s, were now a darkish grey and the lids fell rather heavily over them. This, however, did not give any impression of sleepiness, rather that of self-sufficiency and reserve force. The nostrils of his well-shaped nose were somewhat wide, denoting his energy and driving power. The chin was rather too heavy, and had he not closed his mouth so firmly the lips would have been a trifle sensual. Above the medium height, he gave promise of being one day a heavy man if he did not exercise sufficiently, but now he was still well-proportioned. The two men were physically a great contrast, for Carey Image was always known as “little Carey Image,” though the diminutive indicated affection as well as size. He had the small build and fineness of the Japanese.

“Well, cousin Carey,” laughed Gilbert as he met the ruminative gaze of the brown eyes, “sizing me up, eh? Find me much changed?” He took out a pipe and commenced to fill it.

“No, very little, surprisingly little. You’re going to be like your father. How is he?”

“Well, and fiercely combating socialism and all the other revolutionary ‘isms.’ You can imagine how much he likes the democratic tendency of the times. He gets grimmer over them every time we meet.”

Image smiled. “Yes, politically I find a great change in England since I left it. But it’s interesting—very.... Your friend Paton is very charming. What does he do?”

“That’s a difficult question to answer. I can’t reply “nothing,” because he is always doing something. Much more energetic than he looks. His father is urging him to go into Parliament, and I think he will later on. But at present he says he is ‘informing himself,’ whatever that may mean. He is helping Sir John Tollins with his Prison Reform Crusade at the moment, and he is visiting various institutions all over the country.”

“Ah! yes, a sociologist. Such men do very useful work. And what is Mr. Jack Iverson?”

“A rich young ass,” laughed Gilbert.

“Sir,” said Carey with a twinkle; “that is not information. I can see into shop windows as well as you.”

“Well, he’s in the Blues; but I always think of him as Claudia’s brother.” He said it without the slightest embarrassment, just as he might have referred to his own uncle.

“Claudia! A pretty name. Is she as pretty as her name?”

“Prettier. But they are a wonderfully handsome family. Looks on both sides.”

Image lit another of his French cigarettes, and then he said gently, “And have you any designs on the pretty sister?”

“Yes,” said Gilbert, with a curious thoughtful deliberation. “I think—I think I shall marry her.”

A look flashed into his godfather’s eyes at the—to him—curious way in which a young man expressed his intention of asking a woman to confer the greatest honour upon him. But the modern young man was always astounding Carey Image and making him wonder if he had lost his bearings in India or if some mischievous god had deliberately turned things upside down.

“I was going to ask you if you had any plans other than worldly.... Is Miss Iverson likely to do you the honour to——?”

Gilbert broke in rather abruptly. The subtle reproof had passed him by, immersed as he was in his own thoughts. “You know the family? Mrs. Iverson was Sybil Daunton-Pole, and Geoffrey Iverson is Lord Creagh’s third son.”

“Why, of course; I wondered why the name was familiar.” A light broke in on him and he became animated. “I remember—why, yes. She was the woman who made such a sensation when she was first presented, and her portrait was painted as Circe and exhibited at the Academy? A lovely creature.”

Gilbert nodded. “Time has taken his toll now.”

Image was searching back many years. “Let me see, and wasn’t she supposed to be a Circe in real life? Wasn’t there a story about her and a member of Parliament——?”

“Oh! a hundred stories. One of the most talked-of women in London.”

“A certain Royal personage was supposed——”

“Yes, it’s always said so.... I should say she has had a high old time. Iverson never tried to control her. Of course, as I say, she’s a bit passÉe now. She knows it, too, and has taken up with occultism, mysticism, or whatever you call it. ‘I must occupy myself,’ she said to me the other day. ‘I have decided definitely to retire from the stage of Love while I am still desirable. My children bore me. I will seek the occult.’”

“Not an ideal mother for a girl,” said Image.

“Oh! Claudia is all right. Here’s her photo. She promised it to me if I won the Driver case. It only came this morning.” He took it out of a drawer and handed it to Image. In the corner was written in a firm individual hand, “Best congratulations, Claudia.”

“Beautiful,” said Image warmly, who was ever an admirer of all things lovely, especially women. “I think I have met her somewhere. Not at all like I remember the portrait of Circe.”

“Not a scrap like her mother. A good deal of what the French call beautÉ du diable about Mrs. Iverson. Claudia’s look are quite different.”

Image began to recall various tit-bits of scandal and gossip that had found their way out to India regarding Claudia’s mother. Utterly unmoral, passionately heartless, the fascinations of a siren, Image had heard many tales of her. He recalled vaguely one story, which was particularly scandalous and which questions the paternity of one of the daughters. There had been whisper at that time that she had gone too far, and weak, complaisant Geoff Iverson would be roused to divorce her.

“Miss Iverson is dark, I should say? Yes, I thought so.” Image looked at the girl in the portrait, who looked back at him. She had adopted no coquettish pose, no drooping eyelids or heavenward gaze, but she looked straight out of the frame with her clear, fine eyes. And they seemed to Image to be asking innumerable questions of life. There was a suggestion, too, of eagerness about the mobile lips, as though they would open and presently shape the word “why?”

“Not a bit like her mother.” Gilbert seemed to take a comfort in repeating it. “And although there is all this talk about heredity nowadays, such a woman as Circe is something unusual. Of course, if I thought——”

“My dear boy, can you be in love with her and stop to think it over in this way?” Image was a little impatient with his godson. He liked the girl with the questioning eyes.

Gilbert looked up in slow surprise. “Well, mother doesn’t like Mrs. Iverson, as you may imagine. She calls her that ‘dreadful, immoral woman.’ And you know what mothers are. She’s carefully picked out a girl for me. Plenty of money, and influential family relations. But the girl annoys me: she is one of the clinging, sentimental sort. I don’t think I could stand her as my wife.”

“Why—why are you marrying?” said Image slowly. Gilbert had evidently consulted his mother, or at least listened to her counsels. In some way Image was old-fashioned in his ideas of what is due to a parent, but he had never held it right that a mother should select a wife for her son.

“Why?” Gilbert knocked the ashes out of his pipe. “Well, I think it is about time.”

“I see.” Image looked again at the photograph. Gilbert was only marrying because “it was about time.” What were the eager dark eyes asking for? Only for that? “You don’t believe in having any sentiment about choosing one’s life partner?”

“Oh, yes, of course. I’ve just told you the girl my mother has picked out would annoy me no end. I like Claudia very much. Only she is in a bad set, though it doesn’t seem to have affected her. As a matter of fact, her mother has hardly had any intercourse with her. She has none of the domestic virtues, you know. As far as one can see there is no taint there, but—well, its a serious responsibility to marry the daughter of a Circe. And people talk so much about heredity and eugenics——”

“My dear boy,” said Image heatedly, “love snaps its fingers at heredity and pulls a long nose at eugenics. To the devil with them, I say. It’s too much talk about these things that makes people so anÆmic these days. If you love a woman, take her in your arms and keep her there. A good woman won’t want to go far astray. But keep her in your arms. Don’t put them round her once and hold her tight till she says ‘yes’ and then loosen hold. Most Englishmen deserve to lose their wives.” Image spoke with such warmth that Gilbert smiled.

“A champion of woman!” He took the photo from Image. For the first time a tinge of warmth crept into his voice. It may have been caught from Image. “She is handsome, isn’t she?”

“No, I do not stand up as a champion of women. I would not dare to do such a thing. But, thank God, I was brought up to love and respect women and to think that they needed protection and guarding. And men are all the better for the responsibility.”

“Women nowadays resent guarding and protecting. They’ve changed while you’ve been away.”

“Nonsense, I don’t believe it. They resent bullying and spying and the things that are done under the name of protection. They may pretend to like guarding and protecting themselves, but it’s because their men-folk are such incompetent slacksters. You modern lovers, what you miss in life! Don’t be a fool, Gilbert. You are in love with her, aren’t you?”

“Oh! yes, I have a feeling that way.” Gilbert gave a little laugh to cover his confession. For Image’s enthusiasm was infective. And really Claudia was very charming. What a good hostess she would make. And she was quick to see things; her fine eyes had a wonderful way of lighting up—one of the gifts of the gods; she was interested in his career——

Image rose and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Why don’t you put on your dancing-pumps and go off and dance with her to-night? I daresay she’ll cut out some unfortunate fellow for you.”

Gilbert considered. “I must go down to my chambers early to-morrow, and I wanted to read over a brief to-night. Still, I might go for an hour. After all——” He broke off and put his pipe on the mantelpiece. After all, he had been celebrating a victory and his birthday. He had the feeling that he might allow himself a little treat. Claudia would be surprised and, he thought, pleased to see him. It was always easy to see her emotion mirrored in her eyes.... Yes, he would treat himself.

Image said good-night and went down in the lift. He was thinking of Gilbert, a little puzzled, a little regretful, of what he hardly knew—and he flashed back a glance to his own youth.

He stood still for a moment in the warm spring air and looked up at the stars. Then he took off his hat and for a moment stood bareheaded, as before a shrine.

“I’m very glad,” he said softly; but why he was glad no one but himself knew, unless it were the stars.

CHAPTER III
THE WORLD, THE FLESH——

The dance was at its height when Gilbert entered the ball-room. He thought of Jack Iverson’s protest as the strains of the waltz from the Count of Luxembourg began to float over the room, played as only a Viennese orchestra can play it. Yet the strains were alluring to that part of him that was not the successful barrister, and his feet itched like any ordinary young man’s to be dancing. Claudia, of course, would be booked up—she was, as her brother had left unsaid, a beautiful dancer—and no matter who went short of partners, Claudia did not. She had been out a year, and rumour said that she had had a good many offers of marriage. An aunt, who was anxious to see her settled, had said, with annoyance, that Claudia must be waiting for a prince.

Gilbert caught sight of Jack Iverson dancing with a pretty dÉbutante who was too plainly desirous of winning his approval. The only son, he was in the curious position of being wealthier than his own father, for an aunt, who had in the sixties married an immensely rich Jew, had recently died and left all her fortune to him. Why, heaven knows, unless she thought that the money would be put into quick circulation. This made young Iverson a very desirable parti in the matrimonial market, and mothers of budding and blooming daughters were extremely polite to him. But Jack Iverson’s taste did not lie in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair.

Gilbert waited about, but he could not see Claudia. He turned away, more disappointed than he would have owned, and there, under a big palm, tapping her fan impatiently on her knee, he saw her—alone.

“Claudia,” he said, going quickly up to her, “are you not dancing this?” He called all the Iverson family by their Christian names. He had known them in his early youth, when their country house had adjoined his father’s. When Claudia was ten, their house had been sold—it was too far from town—and it was only during the last few months that he had really renewed his acquaintance with the family. Lady Currey had been unfeignedly glad when the Iversons moved away.

Claudia jumped up, all animation. “You here! I thought you couldn’t afford the time for such frivolities.”

“I can’t really, but I’ve come for an hour. I wondered if there was a chance of getting a dance with you.” The music was humming in his ears, there was a heady odour from a group of lilies beside them, and—and Claudia was glad to see him. “I should not have come otherwise,” he added. He smiled at her, and though he used the smile very seldom, it was quite attractive.

She met his eyes squarely without the least bit of a flutter, but a faint flush rose to her smooth cheeks. “Well, come,” she said, putting her hand within his arm. “I am engaged for this—but my partner has kept me waiting. So he can lose the dance. A laggard dancer, like a laggard lover, deserves to lose his partner.”

“Blessings on his laggardism.”

“If I had been an Early Victorian maiden, I should have waited patiently, like a brown paper parcel, till he came to claim me.... Ah, well! You dance much better than he does. He dances like a pair of animated fire tongs.”

Some people dance, and others move their feet. Claudia would have inspired an elephant to tread coquettishly. She had the real spirit of the dance in her, and a magnetism that communicated itself to her partners, no matter how stodgy and how deep one foot was in the grave. An old colonel had once said—he was turned sixty, and out of pure good nature she had danced with him—that it was too dangerous to dance with Claudia Iverson. “I can’t afford to regret my youth so bitterly.” Circe had had a good deal of magnetism in her youth, but it had been purely animal. With Claudia it was a tantalizing blend of spirit and body.

For some time they waltzed in silence. Then Gilbert said involuntarily, “I’m glad I came.”

“I’m glad, too,” said Claudia softly. A little strand of soft dark hair that had become unloosened swept his cheek now and again, her body gave to every movement, lithe, supple and warm. He forgot his career and the brief he had meant to study. His youth asserted itself—he had never really enjoyed it—and insolently told his maturer intellect to hold off and take a back place.

But Claudia, like most women, could think of many things while she was thoroughly enjoying the dance, for women can do several things at the same time. She was thinking of his triumph the day before. Many people had been talking about him the last few days, and prophesying big things for him. He was the young man of the hour, and he had left his work to come and dance with her. The thought was intoxicating.

Claudia was desperately tired of the men who did nothing. Her father did nothing—he sat on one or two boards, and grumbled at having to attend their monthly meetings—her brother did very little. Although he was in the army, his duties sat lightly upon him, and those duties seemed to involve little or no brain power. Jack confessed that the only time he thought was the few minutes when he was sitting in his bath in the morning. The man with whom she should have danced the waltz did nothing. He was vaguely going in for politics one day, in the meantime he gracefully and idly existed. Most of the men Claudia knew, except one or two elderlies who were M.P.’s or the heads of large companies, did nothing in particular. And Claudia had a great admiration for the people who did things. As a girl, she had read all the biographies of famous men that she could lay her hands upon, and she had even once had a desire to do something big herself. Though she had long ago given up the idea, she still admired the vigorous men who did and thought strongly.

The dance came to an end and Gilbert led her out of the room.

“I was in court yesterday,” said Claudia, tucking the little strand of hair tidily away under the fillet of pink coral and pearls which she wore. She was dressed in a pastel shade of something diaphanous and soft, that harmonized exactly with the creamy tones of her skin. The only colour about her was supplied by the corals which she also wore wound in strands round her neck and drooping over the front of her corsage.

“No, were you?” said Gilbert, thrilling at this evidence of her interest.

“I made Uncle John take me.... I had to bribe him by promising to go and play backgammon with him two afternoons this week. But it was worth it. I—well, I should have howled if you hadn’t won the case, I was so excited. Uncle John went to sleep and snored, and he says I’ve pinched him black in my indignation. Isn’t it dreadful to be old and not be interested in anything for more than half an hour? He said it was the air of the courts.”

“I did make a long speech though. Did you realize I was speaking for two hours? You were not there all that time?”

“Yes, I was. Uncle John went to get something to eat, but I never budged.”

“Claudia, how sweet of you.” He came a little nearer to her and his nostrils dilated a little. No man is unmoved by the subtle flattery of a beautiful woman, and Claudia was looking her best that night.

“But,” said Claudia, with an abrupt change of voice, “I wish the man, the prisoner, had been more worth it. An awful poor thing, wasn’t he? Even if he didn’t murder the boy, he was only a wisp of straw, wasn’t he?”

“If men and women were all fine strong characters, my services wouldn’t be required, would they?”

Claudia looked thoughtful, and the brown eyes seemed to grow larger and brighter, as though some lamp were burning behind them. “No, I suppose you live on people’s weaknesses and lack of morals and stamina. Oh! dear, I don’t like to think that.”

“Well, don’t think it. Don’t let’s talk about my work. Tell me what you have been doing since I saw you last week?”

She was leaning a little forward, her elbow on her knee, and he could see the rise and fall of her bosom, the soft curves outlined by the clinging chiffon. And though he sat outwardly unmoved, something tingled within him and strained like a dog in a leash.

Claudia sat up with a shrug of her shoulders. It was a little trick of hers that suited her dark eyes. “I have been gloriously doing nothing in particular, the same things as I did last year, meeting much the same people and talking much the same talk. I spent two afternoons helping at the Duchess’s bazaar, and I smiled a continuous persuasive smile from ear to ear all the time, and I told a great many lies trying to sell things that were of an unutterable hideousness, and that nobody could want to buy. There was such a funny man came up to me. I tried to sell him a poker-work photo frame. ‘Isn’t it charming?’ I murmured. ‘Madam,’ he said, with a little twisty smile that began in his eyes and came down to his lips, ‘if you will frankly tell me what you think of it, I will purchase it. Your tone lacks conviction.’ ‘Sir,’ I replied, ‘frankly I think it one of the ugliest things I have ever seen and nothing would induce me to have it in my room.’ ‘How much?’ said he. And he bought it. I should like to meet him again. I am sure we should be friends.”

“I wonder what he did with it?” laughed Gilbert. “Perhaps he put his worst enemy into it.”

“If I ever see him again I shall ask him.... Have you heard about Pat? She has run away from Germany and come home. She says that speaking the Teutonic language all day was spoiling the shape of her mouth, and there was something in the air or the water that she was sure was making her figure spread! Isn’t she too quaint? She announces that she has learnt quite enough for the present, and she insists that mother shall bring her out.”

“Why, she’s quite a child, surely!”

“Oh, no! Patsy is—let me see—nearly eighteen. Mother is so annoyed. You see I keep out of her way, but Pat is noisy about the house. She finds Pat absolutely antagonistic to—well to the spooks and the thought waves. She had hoped Pat would stay over in Germany for six months and acquire a philosophic language. Pat informed mother yesterday that she knew her type of good looks went off early, and she advised mother to get her safely off-hand before she began to fade.” Claudia laughed heartily at the remembrance. “She’s awfully pretty. You don’t remember her?”

“I remember a small child with forget-me-not eyes and flaxen hair, who was always sitting down heavily on choice seedlings in the flower-beds and then crying because she had ‘hurted them.’”

“Yes, that was Patsy. But she’ll get married quite easily. She’s really sweet. She’s got little tricks with her eyes, quite natural, not affected—and her eyebrows go up in a funny way that makes her look like an intelligent cock robin. By the way, have robins got eyebrows? They seem eyebrows all over, don’t they? Oh! Pat will make a hit when she comes out.”

Gilbert looked at her curiously. Did Claudia not think about getting married? He hazarded a question in a bantering, rather intimate way.

“And when are you going off?”

“It sounds like a firework, doesn’t it? I don’t mind telling you in a burst of confidence that Aunt Lucretia thinks the squib is a little damp. It hasn’t gone bang yet! But Pat will make a brilliant firework. Mind you don’t get burnt.”

The music had struck up again, and Claudia took up her programme with a faint sigh.

Gilbert put his hand over the little white-gloved one that held the card. “Who are you dancing with? Never mind who it is. Throw him over. Yes,” he said firmly, as she protested, “I know it isn’t your usual habit. But—well, isn’t it a special night somehow? It’s my birthday for one thing and——”

“Oh, is it? Many happy returns. You got my photograph this morning?”

“Yes, it’s on my mantelpiece now.... Never mind the wretched programme.”

“But what shall I say?” she protested laughingly, for, womanlike, she loved a high-handed man who insists on getting his own way.

“Say—say you prefer to dance with me.... Isn’t it true, Claudia? Say it is.”

One hand was quite lost in his. His compelling eyes were on her face. Something for an instant caught her by the throat and made her shut her eyes as she said almost under her breath, “Yes, it’s true.”

They made their way back to the ball-room. More than one man stopped to congratulate Gilbert, and a good many women smiled up at him invitingly.

As far as Claudia knew, Gilbert never flirted. She had never heard his name coupled even lightly with that of any woman. And he was thirty-two! It was almost unique in her set, where sexual philandering is one of the most amusing games for passing the time. She did not realize that it was precisely for lack of time that he had not paid much attention to women. The Law had been his only love. Claudia was a little tired and contemptuous of the hurrying, bee-like gentleman who sips from many flowers with no distinct preference for any bloom. Many such had buzzed around her, but she had kept fast closed the petals of her heart. But Gilbert Currey was different; yes, he was certainly different.

A pale-faced, vapid youth, the heir to a famous dukedom, was just inside the door.

“Quick, that’s my real partner. He’ll grab me.”

“He won’t,” said Gilbert firmly. He caught her to him a little fiercely, with all the primitive man in him awake. His mother’s warning about the bad stock from which Claudia sprang was forgotten. He had decided that Claudia was his. He, and he only, was going to grab her and carry her off to his Wigwam. His wife would never want to be a Circe. Geoffrey Iverson had never been worth much as a husband. Like most men, Gilbert had his fair share of conceit.

He guided her skilfully round the room, interposing himself and his arm between her and possible collisions, for the room was inconveniently crowded. She happily forgot the rest of the world and gave herself up to the sensuous music. But some of the gay spirit with which she had danced earlier in the evening had gone from her, a slight languor, more than a little pleasant, had stolen into her veins. The music seemed a lullaby to send her brain to sleep. She liked to feel the pressure of Gilbert’s arm and know that it enclosed her safely. She had danced with him before on one or two other occasions; but to-night his arm seemed to caress her. There was a curious charm in it and she abandoned herself to it. She had never before danced with anyone who had given her this sensation.

And Gilbert felt the blood rushing through his veins as he would have thought impossible an hour ago. The knowledge of her liking, her nearness to him, seemed to make a little hammer pound away in his head, so that he had to set his teeth not to let himself get giddy. And Gilbert, when roused, had a good deal of the masculine animal in him, only he was so seldom roused. When he was a youth at Oxford his very clear and reasonable brain had warned him of a possible danger to his working powers in the delights of the flesh, and he had made himself not think about them by grinding away at his books. His work and his intellect had become an almost invulnerable armour. But to-night passion took him by the throat and he could think of nothing but the lissome pretty body in his arms. And his intellect, not quite drugged, approved of this diversion. His mother had said it was time to marry. Why not combine pleasure and duty? His reason quite approved of this proceeding.

“Claudia,” he said breathlessly, coming to a standstill, “it’s confoundedly hot in here. Don’t you feel it. Shall we—shall we try for some fresh air?”

She nodded, she did not want to speak. A beautiful dream had been roughly broken into. She had been happy in her unsubstantial dream; he—had not.

Gilbert was lucky enough to find an untenanted cosy corner in a convenient angle that cut them off from the rest of the world.

“Claudia, will you?” His arm was round the back of the couch ready to take her in his arms.

“Will I—what?” faltered the girl. She knew what he would ask, but she had not imagined being proposed to thus. She had thought the man she could love would lead up gradually with protestations, with promises, with entreaties. Why did there seem no time for this? Why did something hurry her into his arms, something irresistibly compelling, stronger than herself?

“Will you marry me?” She tried to raise her eyes to his, and perhaps he caught a glimpse of what was in them for the next instant she felt his lips on hers, and the world rocked and then stood still.

Afterwards, she wished that it had been more as her imagination had planned. Though every pulse in her body still throbbed with his kisses, she yet vaguely regretted that Prince Charming had not come in the guise she had imagined. But that it was the real Prince Charming—in somewhat of a hurry and a little inarticulate—she did not doubt for a moment.

“But nothing is just as one imagines it will be,” said Claudia to herself and the pillow that night. And having discovered that truth, Nature kindly pulled down the blinds and she went to sleep.

CHAPTER IV
A TOY MOTHER

Later the same day Claudia awakened to the sound of snortings and snufflings. Exasperated puffings sounded in her ear. For an instant she dreamed that she was being pursued down a long road by an angry motor-car bent on her destruction. It came nearer and nearer—now it was quite close—she put out her hand in vague dreamlike fashion to push it away. The motor-car retreated somewhere at her touch, but returned in a few seconds to make a fresh onslaught. Then something soft and velvety—obviously not a motor-car—rubbed up against her cheek. Claudia came back from the world of Nowhere in Particular to her own room in Grosvenor Square.

To whom could those snortings and snufflings belong save Billie, her beloved dachshund!

Claudia yawned lazily. Billie gave another tug to the brown plait on her pillow. That was always Billie’s way of engaging her attention in the morning. Extraordinary, how long these superior mortals took to awake in the morning when they were always so bright and fond of pulling his ears at night!

The outline of the map of the world was still blurred for his mistress when she vaguely remembered that something very pleasant had happened to her. What was it that made her open her eyes that sense of bien Être?

“Oh!... Oh! Billie!” She turned on her elbow and kissed Billie’s silky brown coat with unusual fervour. He was the most delightful thing in dachshunds, with a coat like sealskin, only softer and warmer, and the most pathetic and companionable eyes in the world. He was exclusively devoted to Claudia, who, in return, gave him a big corner of her heart. To the rest of the family he was a little elusive and aloof, rather bored with their desultory attentions, occasionally very busy with his own thoughts and affairs. Only Claudia’s hand gave him real joy. Sometimes out of politeness he allowed Pat to think he liked her petting, but that was because she was only a young thing and Claudia was fond of her.

“Billie,” she said, with a rippling laugh of sheer happiness, “you don’t know it, but I’m different from what I was yesterday morning. I’m engaged!”

Billie regarded her seriously. He seemed to be digesting the news and wondering what difference it would make to him.

“Yes,” continued his mistress, giving him a hug. “I’m engaged. I’ve promised to marry someone very, very nice. Congratulate me, Billie.”

Billie rose to the situation and barked joyously.

“Thank you, sir. I am sure they were most sincere congratulations. Heigh ho! we shall have to tell mother.... What do you say to breakfast, eh?”

She put her hand on the bell, and Billie blinked happily. He always waited to take his breakfast with Claudia, and really she was very late during the season.

“Billie, don’t rootle about in the bed like that. Be more respectful, because I’m much more important to-day than I was yesterday.” Then she lay back among the pillows and thought happily of Gilbert. She longed to see him or hear from him. She hoped he would telephone or perhaps send her some flowers on his way to his chambers. She was certain he must be thinking of her just as she was thinking of him.

She had a curious and not unpleasant feeling that last night she had settled her whole life. She was like someone who had been standing at the cross-roads awaiting an indication which turning to take. Last night she had taken what she was sure was the right turning. Now the road of her life seemed to stretch before her like a glorious golden riband.

Yet, oddly enough, at the back of her mind was a sense of loss. She had lost the right of making her choice, she had lost a certain excited feeling that life was a great adventure. The adventure had taken definite shape now like a fluid that has been poured into a mould. Some of the delightful indecision, one of the biggest “perhapses” of life had gone. She had always taken it for granted that she would marry without making it her business to do so. She had looked with soft, speculative eyes at the men she met. Perhaps it will be this one—perhaps I shall sit next to him at dinner to-night—perhaps he will be one of my partners at the dance to-morrow! A girl who knows that she is attractive to men always has this feeling consciously or unconsciously. Now this feeling had merged into something else, the happy glow of knowledge. Love had come.

It seemed to Claudia that it had come rather suddenly, although she had known Gilbert for many years. It was only the last month he had seemed a “possible.” She remembered the exact moment that the label had fixed itself upon him. She had been at a big dinner-party, given by the wife of the Home Secretary, and the man who took her in had talked all through the fish and the entrÉe about him. That was before the Driver case, when he had definitely proved his metal, but her dinner companion had been brought into contact with him over some business and been greatly impressed with his ability. Claudia had heard vaguely of Gilbert’s distinguished career at Oxford, but the thumb-nail sketch which her companion drew of him in his chambers arrested her attention. Then later that very evening she had met him at a reception which her aunt, Lady Pitsea, gave.

Claudia had an almost Greek appreciation and love for physical fitness, and had Gilbert not been a most personable man, her interest in his mental achievements might have evaporated. But because he was strong and came of healthy stock, the night-oil that he had burned had so far left no mark upon him. There was no doubt that he had personality, that he would never be overlooked wherever he went. Claudia could never have married a handsome man without brains, but it is doubtful if she could have loved anything lacking in physical fitness. She demanded a certain amount of beauty and colour in her life, just as she demanded a certain amount of fresh air and food.

Until the reception they had not met for a couple of years, and he showed unmistakably that he admired her. After that he seemed to dwarf the other men with whom she ate and danced and talked. That she did not meet him often at social gatherings—he was too busy to go—whetted her appetite for his company. Sometimes he would come in to some gathering with a little line of fatigue between his brows. It had been an agreeable pastime to smooth it out by her conversation and gaiety.

She realized this morning, as she stirred her coffee, that actually they had talked very little. Not that he was a silent companion, but they had always talked in crowded places of other people and current events. Necessarily their talk had been largely on the surface—a large surface, but yet only the surface of the things that matter. She had never, since childhood’s days, been with him for many consecutive hours. She had never, since those days, been alone with him in the country, tramping side by side, or sitting for long, lazy hours under the green trees. Claudia knew that such times bare the man or woman of mannerisms and conventionalities, and expose the real ego. Two or three times before she had thought she liked men, but always on further and closer knowledge she had found them disappointing. Then she had been annoyed with herself for even that faint stirring of interest. In some unaccountable way she had felt humiliated when her brain failed to approve of them. But Gilbert could not disappoint her. How could such an admittedly clever man disappoint any woman? She was glad he was going to have a career, she saw herself helping him, entering into his thoughts and aims, working and loving side by side. She was glad she had not fallen in love with a nonentity or an idle, rich man.

She reflected that she would have hated to feel apologetic for her husband. And yet she had seen girls of her own age, whom she knew to be clever and even brilliant, marry men, and not for money or position, who seemed to be absolutely devoid of the grey matter we call brain. She had heard them rave rapturously over commonplace males that bored her in twenty minutes, and she knew that Love is a freakish thing. Fate might have played a joke on her. “I wonder what it is exactly—this sex attraction?” she murmured to the sleeping dachshund, and pigeonholed the question for future investigation, when her mind was quite clear and at rest, for Gilbert had urged a speedy marriage.

Gilbert’s love-making had been almost inarticulate. She wished he had said something memorable, something she could enshrine in her heart and when she was an old woman bring forth with a happy smile—“Do you remember you said——” But Gilbert had hardly even said the conventional Ich liebe dich. Ah! but his heart, beating violently against her own, had said it. Claudia did not know that in the crucial moment love and passion are indistinguishable, so she had no doubt that his soul had spoken to hers.

Billie raised his head from the eiderdown and looked questioningly at the door. Someone was approaching. A rap with something sharp and hard followed.

“Can I come in, Claudia? Johnson said you were having your breakfast.”

Claudia called out permission to enter, and a fair young Amazon, riding-crop in hand, stalked into the room. It was Patricia Iverson, generally called Pat, the youngest of the three children of Circe. Pat was unusually tall, and in her long riding-habit she looked even taller than usual. She was flushed with exertion, her fine, fair skin showed almost startlingly against the black of her hat and habit.

“Bill, where are your manners? Why don’t you wag your tail? All right, I shall wag it for you! What’s the good of being a dog with a usable tail, if you don’t wave it when a lady enters the room? Oh! it was spiffing in the Park this morning.”

“I am sure it was. I feel ashamed to be in bed, but I was so late again this morning. Past four. Aren’t we fools to dance the night away and spend the mornings in bed?”

“Yes,” said Patricia, disposing her long limbs in an easy chair. “But I shall do it when I get the chance.”

“You ache to be dissipated?”

“Rather, because after dissipation you can appreciate virtue and—a rest. Claudia, why are you smiling like a Cheshire cat this morning? I hate people to smile like that unless they tell me the reason. It’s like hearing the music of a dance you can’t go to.”

Claudia wondered if she would break the news to Pat. It was strange, but there was nobody to whom she felt compelled to impart her news. There was no one would quite understand and be glad with her in her gladness. Pat was so young, and then you never knew how she would take things. Sometimes she was as hard as nails, and Claudia naturally felt she would like a sympathetic ear.

“I’ve been riding with Mr. Paton,” continued Patricia, pulling Billie’s ear, a proceeding which he bore with the patience of an early Christian martyr. “We had such a jolly gallop. He’s awfully nice, isn’t he?”

“Very nice,” agreed Claudia heartily. She felt that the whole world of men and women were nice this morning, but she could honestly give Paton an emphatic adjective. “He’s a great friend of—of Gilbert Currey’s.”

“He says such quaint things sometimes, and he isn’t a bit like most men you meet. Do you know what we were talking about this morning? We were discussing animals, and how far they feel human emotion, and how much brain they’ve got. He’d been reading some German book on the subject. He’s fond of animals. Oh! he sent you a message.”

“Yes?” Claudia was wondering what the bond of sympathy was between the two men.

“He told me to tell you that he’s ordered that book you wanted from the publisher. And I am to convey an invitation for us both to have tea with him to-day in Kensington Gardens. We don’t need Jujubes.”

Jujubes was a disrespectful name applied to Miss Morrow who had once been with them as governess, and had slid into position of amiable General Utility. She could be used as a chaperon, walking-stick, or sedative. Hence Pat’s nickname for her.

“I promised to go to some theatricals at Stretton House,” said Claudia, grabbing her diary, “and, let me see—yes, I ought to go with Aunt Carrie to call on some people.”

But her words were regretful. She would have loved to sit in the Park and have tea under the trees, where the birds come hopping round your chairs for crumbs, and everything around is green and fragrant. It would have accorded so much better with her mood than paying formal calls on people to whom she couldn’t tell the great and important thing that had happened to her.

“Don’t be a pig, Claudia. I’m not allowed to do much, and you might say yes. Mr. Paton won’t want me without you.”

“Oh, yes, he would. Take Jujubes.”

“Pooh! he looks upon me as a flapper. Wait till mother gives me some proper dresses and I begin to fill out. I look like the Bones of the Holy Innocents now, but you wait till I get some curves. They are beginning to come.”

She nodded her head knowingly, as she looked down at herself.

Claudia suddenly decided she would throw over Aunt Carrie. This was a special day in her life, and she felt she ought to do just what she wanted most. If only Gilbert could tea with them! She thought of telephoning, and then some instinct warned her that Gilbert would think it trivial. Gilbert not being available, Claudia found the idea of a quiet sunny afternoon with Colin Paton quite pleasing. One never had to be politely talkative and interested in him. One talked or one didn’t talk, just as one pleased. Sometimes one found oneself talking particularly well, helped by the right word or the appreciative smile. Claudia thought of him in a sort of revolving roundabout with Gilbert, as she took her bath, and tried to find the right word to express him. The best she could get was “companionable,” although she felt that was a little tepid.

When she was dressed she sent a message to her mother. She must tell her the news. Sometimes Claudia did not see her for days together, and they were in no sense mother and daughter, but Claudia felt it was the proper thing to inform her at once. It had always seemed to her friends that Mrs. Iverson was a mother merely for the three weeks she had to remain an invalid. After that she shook off her maternity.

The maid came back with the answer that Mrs. Iverson was having her face massaged, but that Claudia could come to her.

Her mother’s bedroom and dressing-room suggested a hothouse with a quantity of mirrors. Circe had always been something of an exotic, and lately she had grown more so, or what Pat called “stuffier.” There was an insidious Eastern perfume that always trailed after Sybil Iverson, and the room Claudia entered was heavy with it. The hangings and huge divan were Oriental in colouring and material. The sun was excluded from the room by pink curtains closely shrouding the windows, and electric lamps with becoming shades were burning. Her mother was in the dressing-room, prostrate under the hands of the masseur, who had a great reputation among women, especially those who were on the borderland of youth and middle age. He was ridiculously expensive, but his hands were magical.

Mrs. Iverson lazily opened her closed eyelids and regarded Claudia. Her eyes were still very beautiful. “You wanted to see me dear?”

Claudia hesitated. “Yes, but——” If it had been Pat she would have said cryptically “P and P”—private and particular.

“Well, Jules has nearly finished.” Mrs. Iverson was still beautiful, but with a great effort. In her youth when the famous portrait had been painted, she had been almost as fair as Patricia, but now her hair was tinted auburn and her complexion was enamelled to match. Her eyes—still marvellous—were of a deep shade of blue, like a violet under the rays of the midday sun. Her mouth was much fuller than Patricia’s; and told its own tale. Mrs. Iverson had always been unutterably bored with her children, but she seemed to like or rather dislike Claudia the least. Patricia annoyed her, because she was reminded of her own lost freshness, and Jack she found stupid. She really rather liked to talk to Claudia for a quarter of an hour or so. Claudia was neither gauche nor ignorant. And her brown eyes, with their purposeful gaze—well, some memories are pleasanter than others, even to a Circe.

Claudia picked up the Occult Review, and tried to be interested in it till her mother should be free.

At length Jules departed. Mrs. Iverson inspected the result in the hand-mirror.

“He’s a marvel. I hope he’ll still be alive when you want him.... I like the cut of your skirt, Claudia. Who made it? Ah! I thought so. She can cut skirts. Don’t you find her ruinous?”

It was a polite interrogation, as though to a stranger.

“Yes, I thought her more of a robber than usual,” continued her mother. “I’m glad you haven’t got such long legs as Patricia. When she comes toward me with her arm waving she reminds me of a sign-post on a country road. It’s a pity. Men don’t like too long women. You and I are just the right height. I think this modern girl by the yard is a mistake. None of the famous women such as Jeanne du Barry and Ninon de Lenclos were very tall. Patricia will make most men look ridiculous.”

“Perhaps Pat doesn’t want to be a Ninon de Lenclos,” suggested Claudia, with a twinkle.

“Nonsense, every woman wants to be a Ninon de Lenclos, if she could have the chance. Don’t be taken in by this talk of ‘I wouldn’t.’ It’s a case of ‘I couldn’t.’ Most women have to be virtuous, because they can’t be anything else, and they make the best of it. What’s that American saying, ‘Virtue must be its own reward—any other would be a tip.’ Do you know what Ninon said herself, ‘Love is a passion, not a virtue: and a passion does not turn into a virtue because it happens to last—it merely becomes a longer passion.’ ... But what did you want to see me about?”

It should have been a propitious opening, this discussion of love, but somehow it was not.

“I think—I think I ought to tell you something.”

“Don’t unless you want to,” said her mother quickly. “I don’t think you ought to tell me anything. If you think it will interest me—tell me, but don’t use me as a mother, please.”

“Would it interest you to know that I am engaged?” It was out. Claudia breathed more freely. Then she blushed as her mother looked at her with unusual attention.

“Yes, that quite interests me. I have wondered once or twice what sort of a man you would choose. Who is it?”

“Gilbert Currey, mother.”

“Gilbert C——yes, the M.P.’s son. Does something, doesn’t he? A barrister? I remember his mother Marian Darby. She never liked me, and I returned the compliment; but we were once great friends. What made you choose her son?”

“Mother! I—I fell in love with him. Why do people marry?”

Circe smiled at her young daughter, who met her eyes quite squarely but was obviously uncomfortable.

“For hundreds of reasons, my dear. You’ll find out some of them later on. Of course, one must marry”—she retouched an eyebrow with a little brush—“just as one must have a birth certificate and a license for the motor.... I don’t think I’ve noticed him since he was a boy. I remember him at Wynnstay. I used to see him in a canoe on the river, deep in his books. Is he still strenuous and booky?”

“People say he is going to have a big career.” It was difficult to talk to her mother.

“Really? And you want to be part of that career? Well, I daresay it is all right. Better tell your father. I should think you might have done better from a worldly point of view, though the Curreys are rich, and Gilbert will succeed to the baronetcy.... You’ve really made up your mind? Your aunt was telling me the other day that you are considered one of the most attractive girls in Society to-day. She mentioned a Russian prince of great renown—I forget his name——”

“He is fifty and has been married twice already.”

“Men grow more appreciative, not less so, as they get older. And Russians are sometimes fascinating. I remember one—Russians can be very wild and romantic.”

“I don’t want a wild and romantic husband.” Claudia laughed outright.

“No?—perhaps you are right. There is plenty of time, and I daresay a Russian would not make a comfortable husband. Well, child, I am glad if you are glad. I must meet my future son-in-law.” She made a little grimace. “It adds at least five years to my age, but I suppose I can’t ask you to consider me. I think he had better come to dinner one night. Look in my engagement book and find a night. Thursday—yes, that will do. Write down your name and Gilbert’s, and then I shall remember all about it. One or two of the family might be asked.” She gave her daughter a smile of dismissal. It was very sweet, if a trifle automatic, and it showed to advantage her perfect and natural teeth. Mrs. Iverson never kissed her children, but then she thought kissing between women ridiculous. The only thing she ever kissed of the female sex was a little toy terrier.

When Claudia went downstairs, relieved that the news had been broken, she found the book had arrived that Colin Paton had promised to obtain for her. She cut the string and dipped into it. It was a volume of essays that he had mentioned to her and that she had expressed a desire to read. Colin Paton never forgot things.

She looked from the book to the telephone and wished that Gilbert had found time to ring her up and just say, “Hallo! Here am I and there are you!” It would have seemed to make last night more real, more sure. Like a puff of wind it crossed her mind that the sender of the book would have somehow got in touch with the woman he had asked to be his wife the night before. Pat liked him. Perhaps he would marry Pat, she thought idly.

She was too keenly, too tinglingly alive for delicate essays that morning. Later on she would enjoy them. She put them down and picked up an illustrated paper.

The first thing that met her gaze was a portrait of Gilbert and a paragraph recording his right to such a distinction.

There was no one in the library, and she raised it impulsively to her lips. It was not a satisfactory kiss, for the paper smelt of something nasty and oily. Still the portrait seemed to bring Gilbert into the room with her. And this man was hers, this man at whom all the Bar was looking, was hers, hers, hers!

Because she was only twenty-one, thoroughly healthy and full of life, she danced round the room holding the paper to her breast. Her eyes were alight with happiness; her soft lips were curved with the joy of love and life.

Then having danced her little Te Deum to the music of her heart, she waltzed out of the door with a cheery shout for Billie. She would take him for a walk and give him joy, too.

CHAPTER V
GREEN BAY-LEAVES

Lady Currey was not at all pleased with her son’s engagement, and she said so. She came to town for this purpose, and made Gilbert give her lunch while she strongly disapproved, from the hors d’oeuvres to the coffee. She had the soulless good looks which Time, as if contemptuous, neglects to touch. And because she could afford to do so, she purposely dressed in a middle-aged, sober fashion which she considered dignified. She had a great sense of her own importance, and the modern grandmother of fifty in ninon and picture-hats was to her extreme anathema. She and Circe were much the same age. Sybil Daunton-Pole had flashed into society like a brilliant comet, a trail of admirers behind her, when Gilbert’s mother, the amiable daughter of the then Home Secretary, had been one of the small and unremarked stars that dot the social firmament.

Lady Currey had brought her husband a considerable sum of money, but the only thing for which she needed money was to gratify her craze for old china. If she had any heart or soul it was given to her specimens of priceless Ming and old Chelsea. She spent hours every day dusting her cabinets. Her only idea of travel was the opportunity it gave her for visiting museums and picking up bargains in rare porcelain.

For Gilbert she had a pleasant feeling of proprietorship—much the same as she felt for the wonderful famille rose-jar of the Kien-Lung period which she had herself unearthed in a visit to the East. Gilbert was an only child, and he had been little or no trouble. This was the first time he had disappointed her. When other mothers complained of their sons, of escapades at Eton and Oxford, or premature and undesirable love affairs, of monumental debts and lack of family pride, Lady Currey’s lips always took on an added shade of complacency as she thought of Gilbert and the even and admirable tenour of his way. It was entirely becoming that Gilbert should be so satisfactory and in some way reflected well on herself, just as did the discovery of the famille rose-jar. Lady Currey liked everything around her to be comme il faut, not the elastic comme il faut of fashion, but rather the correctness of the copybook and the ten commandments. Curiously enough, engrossed in herself and her china, she had never until quite recently speculated, as do most mothers, on her son’s probable choice of a wife. When she had thought of it, she had dismissed the idea with the assurance that Gilbert would choose wisely and soberly and to his advantage. It was not in her to feel any jealousy of the woman Gilbert should love.

“I am grieved,” she said, sitting very upright—she rarely used the back of a chair—“I am grieved to think that you intend to marry into the Iverson family. The Iversons are not a family of which I—or any right-thinking people—approve.”

“But, mother,” said Gilbert, rather taken aback, for he had become used to her invariable approval, “I am not marrying the family. I am marrying Claudia.”

“Ah! that’s what you think—the usual reply. For Geoffrey Iverson I have no particular dislike—he has been the cat’s-paw of a clever and unscrupulous woman. His family is a very good one. She would have spoilt any man who had the misfortune to be married to her. Why, Sybil Iverson is notorious!”

“Claudia is quite unlike her in every way. Why, she is not even like her in appearance.”

Lady Currey lifted her thin, fair eyebrows. It was unbecoming that she should tell him the scandalous rumours that floated about respecting Claudia’s parentage: Such things could only be told by a father to a son. She vehemently disapproved of any plain speaking between the sexes. Such a crime could never be laid to her charge; not even in the marital chamber had she ever discussed any such thing.

“She is the daughter of her mother, Gilbert, and the mother—I say it deliberately—is a bad woman, a woman who has trailed the glory and purity of the flower of womanhood in the dust.” Lady Currey occasionally indulged in such flights of rhetoric. She had rehearsed this in the train.

“I don’t think the two women see much of one another.” Gilbert was a little nettled. “Claudia told me herself that she hardly knew her mother at all in her young days. She was left entirely to her governesses. She can hardly have imbibed any—any idea from her mother.”

The pathos of such an admission did not strike Lady Currey, it only helped to justify her present attitude.

“It is, of course, very painful for me to have to mention such matters to you, but why has she seen so little of her mother? Because Sybil was—I blush to say it—so surrounded by lovers that she neglected her maternal duties. I say again, she is notorious for her lax life and morals. Don’t you believe in heredity, Gilbert? Think of the blood that runs in that girl’s veins.”

Gilbert frowned. “Heredity is a curious thing. Not worth worrying over, I think. I don’t profess to understand it.”

“I have studied the question.” She had read one book that was quite out of date. “I firmly believe in heredity. The vices or the virtues of the father and mother are surely transmitted to the children.” It was pleasing to think that only virtues could be transmitted to Gilbert, but it was all the more annoying that those inherited virtues should be linked with the vices of Sybil Iverson’s child.

Gilbert was becoming annoyed, and made no reply. After all, his mother was only a woman, and women never could argue. It jarred on his manhood that she should take him to task, and his voice was a little cold as he inquired what she would take to drink.

“You know I always take one glass of claret.” The tone somehow implied that a woman like Sybil Iverson might reprehensibly vary her drink with lunch, but she had regular habits. Then she returned to the attack.

“Claudia is not the woman that we—your dear father and I—would have chosen for you.”

“Doesn’t every mother say that about her son’s choice?”

His mother sighed and waited while Gilbert ordered the wine. “What sort of bringing-up has she had? What sort of a wife and mother will such a girl make? Her mother’s only god was pleasure, her only commandment ‘Enjoy the fleeting hour.’ Do you mean to tell me that the daughter of such a woman has proper ideas about life? Would you care to be the complaisant husband of a Circe?”

But here Gilbert put his foot down. His mother must be made to see that he knew quite well what he was about, that he had not run haphazard into this engagement. Not on any account would he let her see that curious mixture of surprise and annoyance at the back of his mind when he thought of the proposal scene. He had an undefined feeling that he had been hurried into it, though how he had been hurried, by whom or by what, he did not seek to explain even to himself. To Gilbert’s cast of mind vague feelings were best ignored as symptoms of a weak and illogical brain, much the same as vague symptoms may denote an illness of the body. Still the feeling was there, behind many stacks of docketed and pigeonholed pieces of information. Yet he had almost made up his mind to propose to Claudia—oh! yes—only—that particular night?

“Mother, I cannot hear you say such ridiculous things about Claudia. You do not know her. You might as well say that the children of murderers will all grow up murderers.”

“You might commit murder in a sudden fit of passion, but such a warped, degraded nature as Sybil Iverson’s is another story. Besides—the sons of a murderer have probably seen him hanged or punished—the law steps in; but who punishes a woman like Sybil Iverson? Society, nowadays, is too lax to such creatures, and virtuous women have to mix with them and take them by the hand, or else be dubbed ridiculous or old-fashioned. Well,” with a sudden little gust of passion like a disturbance in a tea-cup, “thank God, I am old-fashioned and absurd. I can say my prayers every night and lie down in peace.... No, Gilbert, you know I only take one glass of claret.”

“They say Mrs. Iverson has given up her wicked, siren-like ways and gone in for spiritualism.” He wished his mother realized that she was keeping him from his work and would hurry up with her lunch. The leisurely ways of the country were not those of town. But Lady Currey was doing her duty.

“Such women never give up their wicked ways, they take them to the grave with them.” Both Gilbert and his mother had very little sense of humour, with the distinction that Gilbert knew when things were ridiculous. “I know Sybil’s mother died of a broken heart.” This was quite untrue, she had died of fatty degeneration of the liver. “But there, the Psalms say that the wicked flourish like green bay-trees, and if they did in King David’s time there is no doubt they do now. But their punishment awaits them, Gilbert; always remember that.”

Gilbert nodded absently. Life after death was one of the vague things, like psychology, that he did not consider as practical politics. But he did not tell his mother this. If she liked to imagine him striving for a golden harp with humility of soul, she might.

“I confess I am disappointed in you, Gilbert. I had looked forward to your choosing some nice girl I could take to my heart, someone like Maud Curtice, for example.”

Maud Curtice was a colourless girl who agreed with Lady Currey in being shocked at the modern scanty fashion of dressing—she was painfully thin and had ungainly hands and feet—and who devoted herself to the mothers of eligible sons. She also had a large income.

“Wait till you know Claudia, mother. You are sure to like her.”

“I have heard she is very handsome and a great favourite in Society,” returned his mother gloomily. “It is a bad report to my way of thinking. That’s how her mother started.”

Just then, to his great relief, Gilbert caught sight of Colin Paton wending his way out of the restaurant. He hailed him with joy, and Paton came to a standstill beside their table.

Lady Currey approved of Colin Paton. His manners were respectful and he showed an intelligent interest in china. She never noticed the quizzical gravity with which he received her views on life, nor the humorous twinkle in his eyes at her criticisms. She thought him “a very nice young man.”

“Colin, old man, come and have some coffee with us.”

“Just had some. I hope you are quite well, Lady Currey?”

Gilbert made a business of looking at his watch and starting with alarm. “By jove, I didn’t know it was so late. I must just swallow my coffee and run. May I leave the mater with you to finish her coffee at her leisure?”

Colin caught the appeal in Gilbert’s eyes and guessed the cause.

“Certainly, if Lady Currey will accept me as a poor substitute for you.”

Lady Currey smiled a gracious assent. “I hope your dear mother is better, Mr. Paton?”

“Yes, thank you.... Busy as usual, Gilbert? I hear the proverbial busy bee is quite out of it.”

“Well, I am tearingly busy. Don’t get a minute to myself.”

Paton slipped into his chair. “And yet you’ve found time to get engaged, I hear? I wrote my congratulation this morning.”

“Thanks, old chap. Oh! getting engaged doesn’t take very long.” Gilbert laughed pleasantly and displayed his firm white teeth.

“Doesn’t it?” returned Paton, smiling. “I think it would take me no end of a time. But there, we shall soon be born in the morning, married at midday, and buried in the evening!” He saw Lady Currey looking at him rather doubtfully. “A man like your son, Lady Currey, takes a woman and the world by storm. Veni, vidi, vici is not for me. Women have to know me quite a long time before they remember me.”

“I am sure you have a great many friends,” she said encouragingly.

“Yes, that’s why I expect I shall never get a wife.... Really must go, Gilbert? I had tea with Claudia and the long-legged Patricia yesterday. We wished you could have been with us.”

“Teas are not in my line. I suppose I shall see you again soon?”

“Well, I’m going away, you know.”

Gilbert turned back in surprise.

“What, at the beginning of the season!” exclaimed Lady Currey.

“Going out to the Argentine for a while. A friend of mine is going out on a political mission and wants an assistant. I’ve decided to accompany him. Never been there, and it must be an interesting country.”

Gilbert raised his eyebrows. Why on earth didn’t Paton stop in one place and make a name for himself? He had often advised him to do so.

“Sudden isn’t it? I thought you said the other night that you were remaining in town until the end of July.”

Paton nodded. “I’ve changed my mind. I think I want a change. I shall only be away six months or so, perhaps a year.”

Gilbert’s thoughts had raced ahead. “Then if we’re married at the end of July, as is probable, you’ll be away? That’s too bad. I had relied on you for being best man.”

“You’ll be married so soon? No, I am afraid I can’t assist to give you away.”

Gilbert again expressed his regrets, which were quite genuine, and left his mother with Paton. Colin did not make the mistake of rushing in where angels fear to tread, but waited for Lady Currey’s comments.

“What do you think of this engagement, Mr. Paton? I know I can speak to you quite frankly. I think it is a great mistake. Weren’t you surprised?”

“Yes,” returned Paton truthfully, “I was very surprised. Gilbert did not confide his hopes in me. I didn’t see any wooing going on, and he never talked about her to me. He must have made the running quickly.” Then he added, half to himself, “He can’t have seen a great deal of her.”

“Of course not, or he wouldn’t have done it. Gilbert, for once in his life, has lost his head over a pretty woman. Why, you are much more of a friend than Gilbert.”

A slight shadow crossed her companion’s face and he dropped his eyelids. “Well, I thought I was. But then friend—oh! it’s the veni, vidi, vici trick. She’s a charming girl, Lady Currey, with all sorts of possibilities.”

Lady Currey pursed up her thin lips that had never bestowed or received a kiss of passion. “She is handsome, certainly. But is she the wife for Gilbert? I have lived long enough to know that looks are a poor foundation for matrimony.”

“She has quite a good deal of character,” said her companion quietly, without any annoying enthusiasm. “I am sure she will develop into a splendid woman with the man she loves. She isn’t the usual pretty society doll, you know.”

“Does it strike you that Gilbert wants a woman of character?” asked his mother with unexpected acuteness. “Clever men are usually better mated to stupid wives. Look at Carlyle and Jane Welsh! Much too clever for one another.” Then irrelevantly, “There are too many clever girls nowadays. I don’t believe they make any the better wives and mothers for being so clever. I am sure I never wanted such a daughter-in-law.”

Paton found himself at a loss for conversation. He knew he could do Claudia no good by praising her warmly to her future mother-in-law, he might even make matters worse. Yet to hear Claudia belittled made something leap within him into fierce flame. It seemed disloyal to listen to Lady Currey’s sneers. Yet he knew that Claudia must storm the citadel of Lady Currey’s heart herself. As an advance agent his labours would be wasted. But Paton, looking across the table into the light, offended eyes of the woman, was sorry for the girl. It was rather odd. His mother, a confirmed invalid, and Lady Currey had been close friends in their youth. Yet his mother had warmly liked Claudia when she had once met her for a few minutes. He was startled to find that his current of thought had communicated itself to Lady Currey.

“Your mother always did like pretty things—I know she admires Claudia—but she was always unduly swayed by good looks, even at school. I know how deceptive they are. A man told me the other day that his wife had left him and been through the Divorce Court, and he attributed it entirely to her good looks. ‘A very pretty woman is difficult to live with,’ he said; ‘she gets a great deal of adulation and flattery in Society, and naturally the husband at home falls rather flat.’ There is a lot of truth in that, Mr. Paton.”

“Perhaps he was the typical English husband who, as soon as he has won a wife, forgets to be her lover,” replied Paton. “You are very careful and precious of your rare china, Lady Currey.”

His vis-À-vis stared. She wondered that Paton, who was usually so smooth in conversation, should make such a sudden jump. But it served to divert her mind from Claudia.

“I had such luck last week. I was walking along the High Street in Moulton and I caught sight of a pair of vases. I thought that powder blue could be nothing less than Chinese. They had blue and white reserves on them. You know what that means. I got them for a mere song, and they’re beauties. Since I last saw you I have bought....”

Still talking china, Paton saw her into a taxi.

He strolled away from the restaurant. It was warm and sunny, and the pedestrians seemed all in a good humour. Paton often wandered for hours through the streets of London, finding in that wonderful panorama food for eyes and brain and heart. He loved the feeling that he was part of the crowd, and his mind was stored with many observations and memories. The romance of the streets was no idle journalistic phrase to him. He felt it around him on all sides, plucking at him with alluring fingers leading him into the land of dreams. Often at night he would give himself wholly up to its enchantment, wandering along mile after mile through quaint byways and on misty commons, through silent Suburbia and the noisy, restless East-end slums. London was to him a book of unending pages with countless illustrations.

This afternoon he mingled with the crowd, but he did not heed it, so that he did not see a woman in a motor energetically waving her hand to him and directing the chauffeur to stop.

“Mr. Paton—oh! Mr. Paton, what a day-dream!”

It was Claudia herself, looking altogether charming in light summer attire. There were waving, greeny-blue ostrich feathers in her Leghorn hat and around her neck. The softness of the feathers and the peculiar shade of blue accentuated the creamy tint of her skin and the brightness of her eyes. Her happiness shone through the envelope of the flesh like a flame through clear glass. A heavy-eyed woman of the lower classes who was passing marked her and muttered, “She has a good time, I’ll be bound,” then, wrapped in her own bad one, passed on.

Paton went up to the car and held out his hand.

“Mr. Paton, you’re just the man I want. Do come and see some pictures with me. Jujubes hates pictures, don’t you, Jujubes?” She turned to the faded, amiable woman beside her in the car.

“I don’t hate them, but they all look so alike,” said Jujubes mildly. “When you’ve seen one, it seems to me you’ve seen the lot.”

“There, listen to this awful heathen who rejoices in her darkness! Leave me not to her tender mercies. Jujubes can do some shopping for me.” She looked entreatingly at him with her fresh young mouth smiling at herself, Jujubes, Paton and the whole world.

He hesitated for the fraction of a second. Then he said cheerily: “Of course I’ll come, if only out of kindness to Miss Jujubes. And I shan’t be seeing any more English pictures for a long time, I suppose.” Then he told her of his intended visit to the Argentine.

“Oh!” said Claudia blankly. “Oh! I wish you weren’t going away. I shall miss you so much—we shall all miss you.” She said it quite naturally as the thought came to her mind. One could always do that with Colin Paton.

“Thank you,” he said smilingly, as he helped Jujubes to alight. “It’s very good of you to say so.” He seated himself beside Claudia.

“Don’t. You needn’t be formal and polite. Why are you going? Is it the wanderlust again? Or is it to help you in your career?”

Gilbert had taught her to think of careers.

“Oh! I shall never have a career,” said Paton lightly, aware of the soft, dark eyes on his face questioning him. But he did not meet them. Somehow they held a look in them to-day that he could not bear. “I don’t concentrate, you know. I’m just ‘a blooming amateur.’ Gilbert was reading me a solemn lecture the other day, but—I go on the same old way. I’m glad, however, that Gilbert is getting on so well. But then, he does concentrate.”

“He works very hard,” said Claudia thoughtfully, “I had no idea how hard. He does too much, I think.” Then she looked at the rather fine lines of the face beside her. “But I don’t believe you are afraid of hard work. I remember how hard you worked when you were on that Hospital Committee.”

“No, I don’t think it’s that,” said Paton quietly. “Let’s say it’s lack of ambition and driving power.”

Was there something in his tone that sent a vague shadow of distrust over Claudia’s expression, or was it the echo of some secret misgiving in herself?

“Does that mean you think ambition—the ordinary get-to-the-top-of-the-tree ambition—rather commonplace?”

“Not a bit,” he said heartily. “After all, we live on a commonplace earth. Gilbert is right and I am wrong, and when Gilbert is Lord Chief Justice and I’m an obscure old bore of a bachelor, I shall, no doubt, fully realize my wrongness. But do ask me to dinner sometimes.”

“But you mustn’t remain a bachelor,” said Claudia, with all the enthusiasm of the newly-engaged woman, “because your life will be incomplete. That sounds like sex conceit, but you said it yourself to me, and then I began to believe it. And now——” she completed the sentence with a charming blush.

“Can you imagine any modern woman wanting a man without worldly ambition, a man she will never be proud of, a man who is nothing and does nothing?” The tone was light enough, and the girl, engrossed in her own happiness, did not detect an unusual note of bitterness. For Colin Paton was never bitter. He could be sarcastic and even scathing when roused, but he never indulged in the refuge of cowardly souls.

Claudia took him quite seriously, for happiness, just as sorrow, may temporarily obscure a sense of humour. “I forbid you to say such things of yourself,” she said, with an engaging air of motherliness. “You’re awfully clever—awfully clever. Why, you are one of the best-read and best-informed men in London.” Suddenly she realized how often she had turned to him for information or advice. And she could never remember an occasion on which he had failed her, or an opinion that her critical faculty on reflection deemed unsound.

“No market value, dear lady.”

She paused a moment thoughtfully. “Is that true?” she said slowly. “Gilbert said that the other day when I asked him if he had read something. He says he has no time for books, it’s as much as he can do to read the newspapers.... Somehow it seems all wrong.” She looked away with a puzzled expression at the trees of the Park.

He cast a quick glance at her profile and the beautiful lines of her throat. He seemed about to say something with unusual impetuosity, and then he resolutely locked his lips. He allowed her to go on speaking.

“Ambition gets in the way of—of a lot of other things, doesn’t it? It seems a voracious dragon, swallowing up everything: friends, books, pictures—all the beautiful, graceful things of life. Isn’t it a pity?”

“I think so; but then I’m in the minority.”

“And that’s why you are not ambitious,” she flashed out with sudden insight. “Yes, I see. I wonder if you are right.” Her voice was a little wistful.

“No,” he said, with resolute reassurance. “No. I’m wrong, and Gilbert is right. Wife of the Lord Chief Justice—what greater honour could you wish?”

“Now you are making fun of me,” she replied, with a tiny frown, “and I was quite serious. It’s difficult to explain. But—well, I hate the usual sort of man who does nothing except wear his clothes well, don’t you? Look at Jack. He sets off his uniform beautifully, but he just footles his life away. There doesn’t seem anything between that and great strenuosity—except you. I can’t place you. Somehow you always make me see things in a different perspective from anyone else. I wonder why it is. Sometimes you make things seem better and sometimes you make them seem worse.”

He drew in his breath a little and his hand in its thin suÈde covering clenched itself on his knee. “Claudia, you mustn’t let me make things seem worse or any different from—what they are. I’d be content if my mission in life were to make things better, not worse, for you. Not that you want that now,” he added hastily, pulling himself in. “I know, from things you have left unsaid, that your home life hasn’t been all you wanted and ought to have had, but now—now you are going to be very happy. Gilbert is a splendid fellow.”

She turned to him, her face glowing, her eyes deep and dark with emotion.

“Yes, I think I am going to be very happy. Somehow you have always understood. I have never had to tell you things. You see, nobody ever wanted me very much, and I—I wanted somebody to want me and to rely on me and care for my companionship. It is so wonderful to think that our interests are one, that what interests me interests him, that I can tell him my good news and bad news and be always sure that I don’t bore him. I’ve always had to bottle up things. I’ve had one or two girl friends, but it isn’t the same. And even then they get engaged and married and you fall in the background. But when I’ve got a husband of my own it will be different, won’t it?”

He hesitated the fraction of a second. “Yes, Claudia, it will be different. You know how glad I am that you have found happiness, don’t you? I wanted that so much for my—friend.”

“And isn’t it nice that I am marrying your friend?” she exclaimed joyfully. “Because you might not have liked my husband, or my husband might not have liked you. Oh, I know,” sagely. “I have heard from my friends who got married, that it is sometimes very difficult. But you and Gilbert are friends, and you and I are friends. It’s quite ideal, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said cryptically, “quite ideal. The ideal is always the unattainable.”

“But you must marry too,” she persisted, “because I am sure I should like your wife. There are some men that one knows and likes that one feels doubtful about their choice of a wife, and there are others—like you—one is sure it will be all right.” She laughed gaily. “Won’t you get married to please me?”

No one could have guessed there was any effort in his laughing reply. “I know. You are planning to get rid of some obnoxious wedding-present on me, something especially hideous in the way of rose-bowls or tea-services. No, I absolutely refuse to accommodate you.”

“Well, at least promise me to come back soon,” she smiled as the motor stopped before the entrance to the galleries. “I shall want to discuss a thousand things with you long before you’ve got to the Argentine. I think I shall keep a little book and call it ‘The Paton Diary.’ In it I shall enter all sorts of queries and the names of books and pictures and music that I want to discuss with you.”

“Heavens! I shall never come back!” Her hand rested in his as he helped her to alight, and she gave him a mischievous squeeze.

“No, but really.”

“Really, I will come back as—soon as I can, and I shall be grateful if the ‘Paton Diary’ will keep my memory green.... I hear there is a wonderful Giorgione here. You remember those two we saw here last year....”

CHAPTER VI
A MOTHERS’ MEETING

“Our respected mother has what you would call a tarnished reputation.” Pat said it in a mild and thoughtful manner, as she and Claudia exercised Billie in the Park to try and keep his figure within reasonable bounds.

“Pat!” exclaimed Claudia, abruptly recalled from her own thoughts. “You have no right to say such things.” Sisters who are not yet out and three years one’s junior must be kept in order.

“Why not? It’s true, I suppose. I was sitting here among a lot of people yesterday and mother drove by. The two women at the back began to talk. At first, I didn’t know they were discussing mother, till they mentioned you. When they said ‘Her daughter Claudia has just got engaged to Gilbert Currey, it’s to be hoped she won’t follow in her mother’s footsteps,’ I twigged.”

“You shouldn’t have listened,” rebuked Claudia indignantly.

“Well, I was hedged in, and I should have had to plough my way over such a lot of feet to get away, and I couldn’t turn round and say ‘Excuse me, you’re discussing my mother and sister,’ could I?”

“I should have got up, feet or no feet,” returned her sister.

“Mother seems to have had a pretty good time, according to these two women. They rattled off mother’s amours with great gusto. They were alternately shocked and envious—the combination was funny.”

“Nasty-minded gossips!”

“I should have liked to turn round and say ‘Sour grapes.’ I suppose mother has gone the pace. She’s been a sort of Helen of Troy, hasn’t she? Notorious for her temperament and beauty.”

“Women like that always invent a lot of scandal.” Claudia shrugged her shoulders. “It’s a sort of convention with them to think that all women in society live immoral lives.... Billie, no, you mustn’t bite little boys’ legs. I know it’s only in play, but they don’t like it.”

“Mother must have been stunning when she was young, in the days of the portrait,” continued Pat reflectively. “If I had been a man I should have fallen in love with her. Nothing mild and namby-pamby for me, thank you. I’ve a good deal of sympathy with her, for father is a bore. Only I can’t see how she could have been in love with so many men. Most men are so deadly uninspiring. I expect falling in love became a habit with mother.”

“Really, Pat, I don’t think we ought to discuss her.”

“Why? Because she is our mother? But she doesn’t feel like our mother—she told me so the other day—and she wouldn’t mind our discussing her a bit, just as though she were next-door neighbour.” Claudia could not contradict this, for Mrs. Iverson had never tried or wanted to be a mother to her children. The children had “happened” and been promptly relegated to the nursery. As soon as she was well she forgot them just as she forgot an annoying attack of influenza.

“Claudia, do you feel you could fall in love with a lot of men?”

“Pat! what awful questions you ask. I should think that——” She stopped herself. She was going to add, “No nice woman could fall in love with a lot of men,” but this would reflect on her mother, and out of loyalty and decency she could not say it, rather for what her mother might have been to her than what she was. So she said instead, “I haven’t thought about it, and if I were you, I shouldn’t. You’re too young to worry about sex problems. The little I have thought about them has only confused me; it seems such an enormous subject. One would have to be a Methuselah to have time enough to study it. I am sure threescore years and ten is too little.”

“I suppose it is all a question of experience,” said Pat slowly. “If only mother would tell us all she had learned! That would be better than all the silly morals and maxims that surround you like a barbed wire fence.”

Claudia stole a glance at Pat as she strode along, her skin flushed by the warmth of the sun, her corn-coloured hair glowing under her big white hat. How much did Pat know of the things she discussed so lightly? How much did she herself know, for that matter. And yet, quietly and earnestly, she had been watching men and women since her dÉbut a year since. She had seen the fair surface and some of the dark undercurrent, she had kept her ears and her eyes open and her mind as far as possible unbiased, but what was the harvest? How much did she really know? She did not make the mistake of thinking men angels or devils, she tried, on Paton’s advice, not to generalize—the temptation of youth—she knew that, on the whole, she liked the masculine sex better than her own, but what did she know that she could impart to a younger sister? As she looked at Pat, she wondered if she ought to try and find out where Pat stood. Ought she to try and influence her sister in any way? Pat was such a queer mixture. Sometimes she talked like an overgrown, slangy schoolgirl, and the next minute she would speak with the callous knowledge of a woman of forty; sometimes she showed signs of deep affection and strong emotions, which again would give place to a curious aloofness and independence.

Lady Currey was coming to lunch that day with the Iversons, an event which Claudia dreaded. Mrs. Iverson had lazily decided that, under the circumstances, she ought to offer her some hospitality, and Lady Currey had felt it only right and fitting to accept. Her husband was confined to their house in the country with an attack of gout. Gilbert had pleaded that he was too busy to accompany her.

Punctually at half-past one—the clock was striking—Lady Currey arrived. Mrs. Iverson was not down yet, but she was never punctual, except when her clock was fast. Claudia had to receive Gilbert’s mother.

She wanted to like her, but her heart sank a little at Lady Currey’s formal greeting. Sometimes she had hoped—before she had considered Gilbert in the light of a possible husband—that when she married, her husband’s mother might be someone to whom she could, and would be allowed to, feel daughterly. She knew it was rare, but she would meet a nice mother-in-law more than half way, for there was no holy of holies occupied by a real mother. One could ask Mrs. Iverson’s advice on dress—not too often, because it bored her to give advice on any subject—but Claudia felt she had room in her heart for a nice cosy elderly woman, who might be a guide, philosopher and friend.

“Mother will be down directly,” said Claudia, with a heightened colour. “Will you not take this chair? It is more comfortable than that one.”

“Thank you, but I do not care for those low, padded chairs. They induce habits of indulgence. I was brought up to sit on hard, straight-backed chairs, so I never acquired the habit of lolling.”

She looked critically round the drawing-room, which was full of graceful and beautiful things. At one end, looking down insolently upon her, was the famous Circe picture. It dominated the whole room. The only other pictures were landscapes, a couple of Olssons, an exquisite Whistler, which the artist had himself given to Mrs. Iverson, a Sisley and a small CÉzanne. But they were all subservient to the glowing Circe in her wonderful clinging blue robes. The whole room had apparently been designed as a frame for the portrait, for it was a harmony of dull blues and faded pinks. A case of miniatures at her elbow contained some exquisite Cosway beauties and some rare scraps of old Venetian goldsmiths’ work. Lady Currey caught sight of a Vernis Martin cabinet full of priceless SÈvres and some Chelsea figures that made the collector’s mouth water. It was annoying to think that Sybil owned such china, for Lady Currey was sure she did not value it.

“You have some beautiful pieces here,” she said to Claudia, crossing to look at the cabinet.

“Yes, I believe they are considered very fine. I am afraid I don’t know much about china myself.” If Claudia had only known it, her last chance was gone. Lady Currey’s eyebrows went up in contempt. But the china was exquisite and avenged Claudia’s slip.

Lady Currey turned away and glanced at the clock. Twenty to two! Where was her hostess?

The door opened, but it was only Patricia with Billie at her heels. “Billie was crying for you, Claudia. I let him loose. I thought you had forgotten him.”

Claudia had instinctively felt that Lady Currey was the type of woman who disapproved of dogs in the house, so she had tied him up.

Pat surveyed the visitor with her clear blue eyes. Very precise and a little dowdy did Lady Currey look that day. Her grey silk was a dull shade, her ornaments were valuable, but belonged to the day when diamonds were deeply embedded in gold, her toque was as near to a bonnet as she could buy. Pat took it all in and her lips said “prunes and prism” behind their visitor’s back.

“Ripping day, isn’t it?” she said affably. “Doesn’t it make you feel as if you’d like to turn somersaults on the grass and yell like a wild Indian every time you come right side up?”

Claudia stifled a laugh at Lady Currey’s expression.

Of course, Sybil’s children would be terrible and lawless. She disliked anything so large and athletic as Pat, and privately thought that so much flesh and bone inclined to coarseness. She was of the small and tidy type herself.

“There’s no way of letting off steam nowadays, is there?” continued Pat, unabashed by Lady Currey’s stare, and crossing her legs so as to display a large expanse of silk-covered calf. “That’s why people get into mischief. They boil up inside, sometimes you can feel the bubbles!”

“That’s because you’re a very young kettle,” interposed Claudia hastily.

But at that moment—five minutes to two—Sybil Iverson glided into the room. Her figure was still wonderful, willowy and most seductive in its lissomness. She was wearing a dress that showed every curve of it, and the transparent guimpe of her bodice showed the gleam of her neck in a manner that Lady Currey found very indecent. Her hair, burnished and waved in a carefully negligent fashion, matched her slightly tinted complexion. The whole effect was pleasingly artificial, like that of some rare orchid. She was still Circe—after a careful toilette.

“Ah! Marian, what a long time since we met! But you are just the same.”

“We are both considerably older,” said the companion of her girlhood with emphasis.

“Are we really? I have ceased to be a body, I am now only a spirit, and spirits know no age.” She let her heavy lids drop over her eyes, a trick which Lady Currey had always disliked. “I have learned to project the soul into space and leave the body behind. Have you ever pierced through the intangible walls of the Unseen, Marian?”

“I attend regularly to my religious duties,” said her visitor shortly, rather nonplussed by Circe’s new attitude. Her flippancies she knew and could meet, but this was something that verged on her own preserves.

“Ah! that is not quite the same.” The hostess smiled sweetly upon her. “But now we will go in to lunch. Gilbert is not coming, I think?”

“He has his work,” said his mother. “You cannot expect such a man to dance attendance on a woman.”

“Oh! I quite understand,” interjected Claudia. “I did not expect he would come.”

“He has the aura of a successful man.” said Circe dreamily. “I saw it quite distinctly last night. But there was something mingled with it—I saw a vivid streak of purple——” She shook her head mysteriously and broke off the sentence.

“I shouldn’t say there were any purple patches about Gilbert,” smiled Claudia, across the rose-bowl.

“I do not understand the phrase,” said Lady Currey acidly. “Will you explain it to me?”

Patricia gave an audible chuckle, and Claudia looked imploringly at her mother.

“Purple patches,” said Circe vaguely, “stand for all the wonderful emotions and sensations that make this life a thing of magic and mystery. A purple patch—what is it? It may be a minute, a second even—the look from someone’s eyes caught in a crowd—a chord of music—a whiff of perfume—an hour of passion—a day of memories—the song of a bird—anything rare and evanescent. Purple patches are moments of crystallization, of ecstasy, of poetry, of life; patches that glow in your heart for years and I think, even when you are dead shroud it in royal mourning.”

She came out of her dream and took the salmon mayonnaise that the butler had been patiently holding.

“I am glad to think there are no purple patches on my son,” said his mother dryly, dubbing her hostess “a mass of affectation.”

“No, I don’t think a successful barrister would be likely to stray into Wonderland. Documents of the law, blue paper and crude red tape do not harmonize with purple, do they? Claudia, will you remember that when I die I want to be buried in purple silk and the coffin must be lined with a deep shade of crimson. I think I might select the colours when I have time. The wrong crimson would be so fatal to my hair.”

Billie suddenly gave a little howl from his seat on the sofa as though the conversation depressed him. Lady Currey looked her disapproval of him, and Claudia shushed him.

Then she tried to change the subject in deference to the dachshund’s tender feelings.

“Isn’t it delightful, Lady Currey? I had a letter from father’s old friend, the Countess Ravogli, this morning, sending her congratulations and offering us her beautiful villa on the Lake of Como for the honeymoon. I have seen photographs of it, and it is too sweet for words.”

“Does Gilbert like the idea?”

“I haven’t told him yet, but he is sure to like it. It is a sort of fairy castle with an enchanted garden full of wonderful sculpture and strange flowers. There is a terrace of white marble brought from Greece and a fountain of coloured waters. It must be perfectly delicious. I have always dreamed of it as an ideal honeymoon place.”

“One must be very young to look well in such a place,” said her mother. “The Countess tried to get me to visit her, but I declined. White marble is only suitable to the eternal youth of gods and goddesses and it is so chilly! A marble terrace always sounds delightful, but as a matter of fact it generally gives you cold feet and you have to fly in and demand hot-water bottles, and there is nothing romantic about a hot-water bottle.”

“The drinking-water is so bad in Italy,” remarked Lady Currey. “I do hope you will be careful.”

After luncheon, Mrs. Iverson carried off Lady Currey to her boudoir on the plea of reviving old memories. Claudia was relieved, but surprised, for her mother seldom took any but her very special cronies into her private apartments.

Circe lit a cigarette—the room was already heavy with some Oriental perfume which made Lady Currey sniff—and made herself thoroughly comfortable and picturesque on a low divan. Lady Currey told herself that it was exactly like a room in a harem, never having been in one.

“It is strange your boy should be marrying my girl,” commenced Mrs. Iverson, watching the pearly grey smoke rise in the air. “I confess I thought Claudia would have married quite differently.” Her voice was dangerously sweet.

“Indeed,” said Lady Currey. The perfume irritated her, and she felt a desire to sneeze.

“Yes, quite differently. But neither her father nor I would try to interfere with her choice. I have always allowed my children full liberty of action. And though Claudia would have had an enviable position as the Duchess of Swansea, I recognize her right to choose as her heart dictates. I saw the Duke last night, and he was very downcast. He thought Claudia might relent. Charming fellow, isn’t he?”

She opened her eyes blandly upon her visitor, and nothing but good will to men and contempt for women shone from them.

Lady Currey, who moved very little in London society now, did not personally know Swansea, but knew him to be one of the most eligible partis of the day. She had heard a vague rumour of Swansea’s attentions to Claudia from another quarter and saw no reason to doubt Circe’s news. She was nettled, and felt she was being placed in a false position. It revived old memories. Circe had possessed this trick as a young girl.

“Gilbert is bound to do well,” she said hastily.

“Of course.” Circe lit another cigarette. “But the future—well, it is the future! Futures are like horses—you can never count on them! If they could only invent automatic horses and automatic futures! Still, I have no doubt he will arrive one day, if Claudia is patient. Personally, I should have no patience to wait for a future.”

“Gilbert will make an excellent husband.” Lady Currey, to her great amazement, perceived that she was actually holding a brief for Gilbert. The thing was absurd.

“Oh, yes!” murmured her old friend vaguely. “But all the old-fashioned virtues are so out of date now, like four-wheelers and stage-coaches. The modern excellent husband is such a different article from what we called an excellent husband fifty years ago. I often think what a dreadful bore that good, old-fashioned husband must have been. I am sure those Early Victorian wives must have died of their partners’ excellences. Have you noticed how sad they always look in their portraits?”

“In my young days marriage was considered a sacrament,” remarked Lady Currey stiffly, glancing out of the corner of her eye at a notable array of masculine portraits. “I consider the interpretation and shortening of the marriage service nowadays scandalous. The Bishop of Dorminster quite agrees with me.”

“I am sure he would. If you sell patent medicines, you must believe in patent medicines.... Why don’t you start a campaign against it? I can see you at the head of a flourishing Anti society. I would join it with pleasure, Marian.”

Lady Currey stiffened. “Gilbert has very nice ideas about women.”

“What are nice ideas about women, Marian?”

“He treats women with respect and proper deference.”

“How dull!” murmured Circe, looking at the portrait of a man who had not treated her with undue respect.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said how delightful. But I hope he can—er—offer Claudia something more than respect. I hope he appreciates her and can offer a good deal of love and admiration. Some people set a great store by love—I fancy Claudia does. You see, that would be the one thing—you will forgive my speaking frankly like an old friend—that would compensate her father and me for a less good match than we had the right to expect. We want her to be happy, but Claudia is very much admired. She has had many good offers—I know, though she hasn’t told me—and I should feel a little sad if I thought Gilbert did not adore her. She is really rather a dear. I quite admire her myself, and I admire very few women.”

There was a short pause while Lady Currey struggled for words.

“I—I believe he is very much in love with her,” she said at last, flushing angrily.

“Ah! that is what I brought you up here to know. Love compensates for any worldly loss, does it not?... Dear Marian, I am afraid I must go out now, but it is charming to think that your son is going to marry Claudia. It reunites us again in the bonds of friendship. I am sure Gilbert is charming. Claudia is a lucky girl.”

Lady Currey was not to be outdone. She rose primly in her grey silk.

“Claudia is very handsome. It is Gilbert who is lucky.”

Thus ended a little Mothers’ Meeting.

Claudia was spending the week-end out of town at Holme Court, Wargrave, where one of her aunts, Mrs. Armesby Croft, always spent a good part of the summer. Gilbert had also been invited and her brother Jack, but Jack had refused to go.

She was coming down the stairs on the Friday morning and heard a familiar whistling. Jack’s door was open, and the musical-comedy tune—rather flat—proceeded from his room.

“Jack, I do wish you wouldn’t whistle so flat. Can’t you get your whistle manicured, or something?”

“Hallo! Claud, that you? Come in, I’m nearly all there.”

The late hours he habitually kept had not yet left any mark on Jack Iverson. This morning he looked wonderfully young and fresh, although he had not tumbled into bed until past three. Youth has a magnificent elasticity, and he looked like a modern god that has tubbed and shaved and is ready for a good breakfast.

“Why aren’t you coming down to Wargrave?” inquired Claudia, sauntering into his apartment. “It’s just the week-end for the river.”

“Maybe I am going on the river,” said Jack, with a knowing air, settling his tie in the mirror. “I’ve had on seven ties this morning. How’s this one?”

“Looks all right. I don’t notice anything wrong, so I suppose it’s all right. That’s the test of men’s dressing, isn’t it? Why not Wargrave?”

“Because, though Aunt Margaret is a clinking good sort and keeps a jolly good table, she is not a ravishing companion. You’re only my sister, and—’nuff said.”

Claudia looked at him, and her lip curled. “That means you are going up the river with a ravishing companion, I suppose?”

“Thou supposeth rightly, oh, wise one! She’s just the most fascinating thing you ever struck.”

“Which musical comedy?” queried Claudia, running her eyes over the collection of invitation cards and pretty women on his mantelshelf. The portraits had inscriptions on them of considerable fervour, and she noticed a family resemblance in the handwritings, which were either sprawly or very dashing, with huge flourishes at the end like a stockwhip in action.

“Never you mind. But she’s a duck, the very thing for a steam-launch. Got the neatest thing in ankles you ever saw. Beastly taking a woman with thick ankles on the river. They’re best hidden under a dinner-table.”

“Can she talk about anything?” asked Claudia curiously, picking up a photograph of a smile and a shoulder.

“She can talk well enough when she wants to. Oh! I know you, Claudia, we’ve had this discussion before. I’ve told you I don’t like clever women. I hate a girl who wants to impress you and talks like a smart novel. Give me a nice, affectionate little thing who’s got a string of funny stories and doesn’t make too many demands on a fellow. She’s worth a hundred clever women, with their soaring nonsense.”

“Is she?” Claudia looked at him thoughtfully as he put his watch in his waistcoat. “I often wonder why you and men like you prefer to spend your time with—well, affectionate little things, rather than with girls in your own set. Personally, I can’t understand your taste. I am sure these girls have common ways and petty thoughts. I couldn’t stand a musical-comedy man for five minutes.”

“Oh! that’s different. The men are awful bounders; you’re quite right. I’d like to see one of them make up to you!”

“Why is it so different?”

“Well, it is. I can’t explain things like that to you, but it is. You’re brainy, old girl, and I don’t pretend to be brainy. A lot of good brains do a woman, unless she’s a schoolmistress. Not that Ruby is stupid. She’s—well, she’s bright, if you know what I mean. She knows how to get what she wants, and knows her way about.”

“The cleverness of the gamin,” observed Claudia coolly.

“Well, anyway, she’s clever enough for me. You can be easy and comfortable with her, and she’s an amusing companion. Doesn’t go in for moods and all that nonsense. I like ’em bright and chirpy, I confess. If you girls only knew how your confounded moods and fancies bore a fellow. Why, look at you. You’re full of whims and fancies. You can be an awfully good companion if you like—none better; but one never knows what you will want the next moment. You women expect us to transpose ourselves to your key every few minutes. It’s a damned nuisance, Claudia. Take my advice, don’t try too many moods on with Gilbert.”

“You think there is much in common between you and Gilbert?” Claudia’s voice was sarcastic.

“Yes more than you think,” flashed out Jack unexpectedly. “Oh! I know all about his brains, but otherwise he’s much the same as me. He doesn’t care enough about women generally to make a study of ’em.”

“I’m glad of that.”

“He’s too indifferent, and I’m too lazy,” continued young Iverson, bent on pursuing his train of thought. “I daresay women are nice to me because I’ve got plenty of money—you are right in some cases—but as long as they are nice, what matters?”

“From your point of view, not at all, if you only want a woman as a mere plaything, to smile automatically the moment you appear, and produce a funny story when you turn a handle. You want a doll, Jack, not a woman, a pretty, jointed doll, that squeaks ‘darling’ when you come up to it, and which you can pick up when you like and drop when you like.”

“My dear girl,” said Jack, with a condescending smile “you can’t understand. Women never do understand these things. They talk a lot about sex nowadays, but it’s all talk. The proposition is quite a simple one, if you women wouldn’t wrap it up with complexities.”

“Well, I’m glad I don’t understand,” she returned warmly. “And if I were a man I don’t think I should understand either. I hope I should be more fastidious.” She pounced on a jeweller’s morocco case. “Hallo! May I look, Jack?”

Jack nodded. He rather liked Claudia when she was not too brainy and analytical.

She opened the case with a click. It contained a very handsome pendant with pearl drop and a big ruby in the centre.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” said Jack complacently. “The ruby was my own idea—her name—d’yer see?”

“Quite subtle,” said Claudia gravely; “but I daresay, if you explain it, she’ll see the point.”

“Eh? Oh, well! they like a little present occasionally. And if you saw her pleasure at anything you give her—well, you feel you want to go and buy her the whole shopfull at once.”

“H’m. I think I was wrong in suggesting she was not clever. Let’s go down to breakfast, Jacky.”

“You see,” said Jack confidentially, as they went down the stairs, “a fellow likes to be appreciated. You remember that, my dear, now you are going to be married. Don’t have any moods, and always be appreciative and bright. That does the trick every time. Take my advice.”

“Thank you. I’ll be sure and remember. Appreciative and bright. I might have it framed.”

“Don’t you fancy I don’t know anything about women. You’re a nut, Claudia, I admire you no end, but really you make too great demands on a chap. Come on, I could eat a tin can this morning.”

Later that day Claudia was lying very comfortably in a big wicker chair under an old elm-tree at Holme Court, when Gilbert arrived. He looked noticeably tired and fagged, for the week had been a very hot one, and he had been hard at it. He did not specially remark the pretty picture she made in her cool white linen against the green background, but he appreciated the shade of the elm. His chambers were abominably stuffy.

“Poor boy!” said Claudia softly. “You’re tired, I can see. I’ll be soothing. You don’t want me to tell funny stories, do you?”

Gilbert’s eyes opened in blank surprise, but he caught the twinkle in her eyes, and the smouldering laugh in the corners of her mouth as she watched him. He knew there was a joke somewhere, but he was much too hot and tired to worry it out. Instead he looked at Claudia’s mouth, which was soft and red, with a most provocative pout.

“It’s too warm even to laugh. But it’s nice and cool here.” He dropped into a chair with a huge sigh of content.

“We are all alone here,” said Claudia happily. “The others have gone on the river, but I waited for you.” There was no one in sight except a couple of birds hopping about in search of a worm. “I am going to give you some tea out here, and then we will go down and get one of the boats out.” She dropped a kiss on his hair, which already had several silver threads in it. “I thought I’d stop and mother a poor tired boy! Somehow—wasn’t it ridiculous of me?—I fancied you would like to have me all to yourself.” She laughed a little. “It’s rather nice to have someone to pet and fuss over. I’ve never had anyone who would let me do it. Mother hates us even to kiss her—we do it once a year, at Christmas, when we thank her for her present—and Pat is too tom-boyish to like being petted. I had to fall back on Billie. He can stand any amount of it, but still—well, he’s only a dog.”

“Does that mean I have cut out Billie,” said Gilbert lazily. Her hands, with their soft, rather mesmeric finger-tips, gave him agreeable sensations in keeping with idle hours and summer days.

“No, it doesn’t. As a matter of fact I feel so happy that I could pet the whole world!”

“A tall order! But, I say, I’d rather you didn’t do it to the masculine half. They might misunderstand your mothering instinct.”

She laughed and dropped another kiss on his hair before she went back to her seat among the cushions. Involuntarily he put up his hand and smoothed his hair, which was in no way disturbed. It was thick and straight, and spoke of his abundant energy.

“Gilbert! Don’t brush my kisses off. You are ungallant.”

“Sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to brush them off, but a man hates the idea that his hair has got ruffled.”

“That’s because you are afraid of looking ridiculous! Men are very dignified animals, aren’t they? I believe you’re a particularly dignified, conventional specimen!”

The maid was approaching with the tea-tray. As she came across the lawn, the silver caught the rays of the sun and threw them back in radiant shafts of light. The maid’s cap and apron seemed dazzlingly white against the green and blue of the sky and garden.

“Of course, I’m conventional,” responded Gilbert. “Haven’t you discovered that before? Only weak people are unconventional.”

Claudia pondered this saying as she watched the maid arrange the table.

“I don’t believe that is altogether true,” she said at length, taking hold of the teapot.

“Of course not. Nothing is altogether true and nothing is altogether false. Plenty of milk, please.”

“I don’t believe I have a conventional, tidy mind. I can imagine myself doing quite unconventional things, and I don’t believe I should realize they were unconventional till I looked back.”

“That’s having no mind at all.” He looked at her teasingly. “The little pink abominations out of the cake-basket, please.”

“And then you’d be terribly shocked and put on your barrister air, and say ‘Didn’t you know that ...?’ You don’t altogether hold a brief for conventionality, do you?”

“It’s the safest and most convenient path,” he said, stirring his tea. “Personally, I have no quarrel with convention.”

“Don’t you believe that circumstances may sometimes force you to do unconventional things when convention means death to the spirit?”

“I make allowances for weakness, because weakness is the rule and strength the exception. The world gets weaker-willed and more neurotic every day. That’s why one hears so much talk of ‘individuality,’ ‘independence,’ et cetera. More cake, please.”

Claudia shook her head, not at the request for more cake, but at his dicta.

“That’s not right. You are making no allowance for temperament. Sometimes it’s really brave to be unconventional.”

“More often weak and cowardly,” retorted Gilbert, “and the unconventional people usually put other people in a hopeless mess.”

“I don’t believe you were ever tempted to do anything unconventional.” Claudia looked at him, and it crossed her mind that he was very unlike her mother’s friends.

“No, I don’t pretend to have withstood great temptations in that line. ‘Trespassers will be prosecuted’ doesn’t enrage me. I put the same notice-board on my own property, and am content.”

“I see. Will that notice-board cover—your wife?” She was smiling at him, but there was a hint of earnest in the dark eyes.

“Most certainly, madam. The rest of the world may admire you—from a safe distance.” He found her looking very pretty behind the silver, the sun through the green branches just flecking her hair. “I warn you I should not make a complaisant husband if I found someone trespassing.” He laughed as he said it, but there was a decided champ of his jaws, which she noticed and secretly admired.

“And I shouldn’t be marrying you if I thought you would,” she replied, with a sudden touch of fire in her voice. “One sees so much of that and it is so—so horrible. One despises the husband more than the wife.” Then she went on more slowly. “I think most women feel the same about it, although they say they want perfect freedom in such matters. Women are playing a game of bluff nowadays. They don’t want a husband to be complaisant.”

He looked across at her, and his mother’s warnings came back to him. Claudia like her mother? Why, she had just naively acknowledged that she only wanted to be dominated by a strong man. Geoffrey Iverson had always been a slackster. A weak man makes a Circe. If a man cannot hold a woman, he deserves and must expect to lose her. Life to-day is not so far removed from savagery after all. The strong man always wins. And had he not won so far all along the line? Had he not taken and kept all that he needed? His mother did not understand that there was no cause to fear. A palmist had once told him that he possessed an indomitable will. He knew that she was right. His thoughts flew back, induced by the peace and quiet, to the last few years at the Bar. He had out-distanced all his rivals. Men who had eaten their dinners at the same time as he were still unknown, briefless. And some of them had shown brilliant promise, some of them had worked hard, too. He knew that already, although he was so young, there was a rumour that he might shortly be taking silk.

Claudia, her chin propped on the palm of her hand, had been watching him, and with a woman’s swift uncanny intuition she knew that he had ceased to think of her, that she had lost touch with him. With a touch of jealousy she cried:

“Gilbert, come back to me. Of what were you thinking?”

He came back at once, but without the faintest comprehension that she had felt left out in the cold, had divined that she had a serious rival.

“Suppose I say I was thinking of nothing in particular?”

She shook her head. “It wouldn’t be true. You were thinking of something that pleased you and—and interested you enormously. Your eyes were dark with thought, and there was a glint in them—— Ah! you were back in your chambers with your briefs?”

He laughed.

“Yes, I was right. You had deliberately left this sweet, sunny garden and—and me, and gone back to those stuffy chambers. We haven’t seen one another for four days, and you’d gone back to your work.”

There was an edge to her voice that roused him.

“Claudia, dear, I am very happy here with you, but one can’t control one’s thoughts or shut watertight doors on one’s affairs. A woman’s life is different. Men cannot help mingling their business with their pleasure.”

“You mean we have nothing else to think of but you?” She threw up her head at an angle which was particularly becoming, and showed the softness and whiteness of her throat in the collarless dress.

“No,” he said, “but you haven’t any big objective in life. My dear Claudia, if you understood the keen competition nowadays, you wouldn’t mind a man’s thoughts straying back to the fray. You don’t really, you are much too clever to want a stupid, love-sick swain who can talk or think of nothing else but love. You have said many times that you are in complete sympathy with my ambitions. Don’t be feminine and illogical. I was flattering myself”—he put his hand on hers with his most engaging smile—“that I had won a super-feminine and logical wife.”

“I am in sympathy with you Gilbert.” She carefully kept her eyes from his face, as though that would break the chain of her thoughts. “And I don’t want you to be a stupid, love-sick swain, but——” How could she make him understand without seeming petty and unreasonable? “Gilbert,” she went on quickly, determined to say frankly what she was thinking, “is everything in your life subservient to your work? Sometimes you talk as if everything else—as though we were the rungs upon which you mounted the ladder. When you talk of wasting time—things being trivial and not worth while—your face becomes so contemptuous and hard and engrossed it makes me frightened. I want you to have a career; I wouldn’t have married an idle man. I will help you in every way I can; I shan’t expect impossible attention—but, Gilbert, I want our marriage to mean something to you, a big something.”

She paused for breath, and he opened his lips to speak, but she signed to him to be silent.

“Let me finish. I couldn’t bear to think that your work was everything to you, and that I—I was merely the Hausfrau that bore your name and sat at your table. It might be enough for some women, but it wouldn’t be enough for me. I warn you that if you ever let me drop into the background of life I—I don’t know what I might not do. I told you just now that I wasn’t conventional. Love is the only convention that I own. Gilbert, tell me something quite truthfully. If I am asking things you can’t give me, let us break off the engagement before it is too late. I want”—her voice broke a little and her eyes were dimmed with feeling—“I want a great deal of love. I’ve never had it, you know, and I—I’m so hungry. If I didn’t love you, I shouldn’t be talking like this. You know I love you; but you—you—Gilbert——”

She had risen from her seat and faced him. She was very much in earnest, and her mouth trembled like a child’s. Her full, rounded bosoms under the linen and lace heaved with her quick heart-beats; her eyes asked piteously for love.

She was very beautiful in that moment. She was young and fresh and fragrant, with not a touch of artifice about her. There was no man alive that would not have been touched by her beautiful, pleading eyes. She promised so much. The hint of passion in her eyes and colouring would have allured any man, and Gilbert was by nature a passionate animal. Passion and ambition had warred from his youth, and he had deliberately crushed out his warm human instincts. Until he met Claudia they had been absolutely under control. Now, as on the night he had proposed to her, something swept over him like a huge wave and swamped his brain. He only knew that he desired this girl and that he had never been thwarted in anything he had set his heart upon. He did love her; what more could she want? She was young and immature; she did not understand that man’s feelings may be the deeper for not finding constant expression. Later, when they were married, she would understand better.

He forgot they were in the garden of Holme Court—in his cooler moments he was desperately afraid of any demonstrations of affection—and he sprang to his feet and caught her in his strong arms. He showered kisses on her passionate, trembling lips, kisses that sent a wild thrill of fearful joy through her, that made the placid, sunny garden rock and reel before her eyes, and gave her a vivid glimpse of what marriage might mean. And no man had ever roused her passions before. This man had always had the power to do so since the dinner-party when he had held her hand in his and asked if he might claim the privileges of old friendship and call her Claudia. Something had stirred uneasily then.

“If—if he has this power over me, if he can rouse the woman in me,” she reasoned, “he must be the right man, the man I should marry.” It was the simple, true mating of Nature. Surely, surely all would be well?

“You do—you do love me very much, don’t you? I am more to you than your work?”

Her lips had intoxicated him so that he would have told her any lie so that she did not elude him. But he really thought he was speaking the truth, that there was something more than mere sex attraction between them.

“Yes, yes,” he cried fiercely, with the conquering note of the male; “can’t you feel?—don’t you know?—kiss me, kiss me——”

It was several minutes before they went back to the pink abominations and the more sober discussion of their wedding.