He might have been setting out for Australia or to explore Tibet, they made such a final matter of his going. The way in which he was waited on, considered and admired brought to his remembrance those early days when he had been sent to Miss Rufus to be cured of his ‘magination.

“But motherkins, dearest, Oxford’s only sixty miles—a two hours’ journey. I can write to you the last thing at night and you can be reading me next morning at breakfast.”

Nan shook her head. “It’s the spreading of wings, Peter—the first flight from the nest. You’ll come back, of course; but always more rarely.”

She foresaw in this first departure, all the other departures that lay ahead. The day was coming when she would be left alone. She pictured herself as old and grayheaded, sitting listening to phantom footsteps of memories which passed and repassed, but never brought the living presence. Already she tasted the bitterness of the woman who, having been first, must learn to be second in the affections of those who were part of her body. Kay and Peter were growing up. They would soon have their secrets—their interests which she could not share. They would marry and enter her house as visitors. She pictured all that; the spreading of wings had commenced.

When Peter had been a little boy at Sandport, certain lines had driven the tears into her eyes with their wistful yearning. They were often on her lips now:

“Oh, to come home once more, when the dusk is falling,

To see the nursery lighted and the children’s table spread;

‘Mother, mother, mother!’ the eager voices calling,

‘The baby was so sleepy that she had to go to bed.’”

Already the inexorable law of change had taken her babies from her, and soon——. There would come a day when the rooms would be empty; her home would become again what it was before she had entered it—merely a house.

When Peter laughed at her tenderly, attempting to coax her into braver thoughts, she clung to him, searching his face to discover the odd little boy who had asked such curious questions. For his sake she would smile through her tears, saying, “I’m just a silly woman, getting old, Peter. Don’t think that I grudge you anything. I don’t, I don’t, only—only it’s the first spreading of wings—the struggling out of the nest.”

It was true—truer than she fancied; there was Cherry.

However late he worked in those last days, however noiseless he made his feet upon the stairs, she heard him. Creeping from her room, she would stand white-robed beside his bed, stoop above his face on the pillow and tuck him up warmly. It wouldn’t be for much longer—he was almost a man.

And Billy—he tried to laugh her out of a sentiment which he fought down in himself. Manlike, he disguised his feelings. He took so much interest in the preparations, that it might have been he, instead of Peter, who was going up to Oxford. By day he pretended to be cheerful; but at night, when she lay down beside him, after her excursions to Peter’s bedroom, he would take her in his arms, whispering the old endearments, “Golden little Nan,” and “Princess Pepperminta,” just to let her understand that, whoever went from her, he would be left.

One October afternoon Mr. Grace, the herald of Topbury’s great occasions, drew up against the pavement. Boxes were carried out. Cat’s Meat shuffled away into the distance. At the end of the Terrace, Peter leant from the window; they were still there, waving from the steps. He had begged them not to come to the station; he knew they would break down. He turned the corner—his flight had begun in earnest. While familiar sights lasted, he was conscious not of adventure, but depression. Yes, that was the house from the dusk of whose garden a hand had stretched out to grasp him. Strange, and this was the same Christmas cab! Inanimate things hadn’t changed; it was he who had altered.

Then came the excitement of Paddington—undergrads with golf-bags slung across their shoulders; others who were spectacled and looked learned; still others with ties of contrasting hues and secret significance—a crowd superbly young and enthusiastic, which did its best to appear blasé. And then the rush of the train, the exalted sense of opportunity, the overwhelming consciousness of manhood, and that first night of romantic speculation within the gray walls of Calvary College! Bells, hanging so high and sounding so mellow that they seemed to swing from clouds, struck out the hours. His mother had heard them, those same bells, in her girlhood. By craning out, he could see the window from which Jehane had caught first sight of his father and had called Nan’s attention. He was beginning his journey at the spot where his parents’ journey, halfway over, had commenced. Would he and Cherry tell their children stories of where and how they had met? He and Cherry! It was of her that he was thinking when Harry Arran entered and found him seated among his partly opened boxes.

“Tried to reach you all summer,” Peter said.

Harry was taking stock of the room’s contents. “I say, old boy, you’ve brought no end of furniture. You’ll be quite a swell.—— What’s that? Tried to reach us with letters, did you? We never got one of ‘em. Never knew our next address ourselves. Just went wandering, you know. My brother’s such an erratic chap.”

Peter turned away, so that his face would not be seen, and spoke in an offhand manner. “Cherry with you?”

The question tickled Harry. He straddled his legs and watched his friend’s back, tilting his head toward his shoulder with a magpie expression of impertinent knowledge. “Cherry with us! No, jolly fear. She’s a nice kid and all that, but we weren’t out for love-affairs. Fact is, I was trying to make that silly ass brother of mine forget one woman. We carried knapsacks and went almost in rags. But what made you ask?”

“I thought she was. The golden woman said——.”

Harry interrupted. “Oh, so you’ve been seeing her!” He pronounced her with his old hostility. “I wouldn’t see too much of her.”

Peter smiled quietly. How unjust Harry had always been to his brother’s women friends! He was still the mouth-organ boy, only a little too old now to climb trees to display his jealousy. Did he think that he could protect the Faun Man forever from marrying? Didn’t it ever enter his head that he might fall in love himself? And yet Peter sympathized with Harry, for he had the same feelings with regard to Kay. He would hate any man who tried to win her. That was a long way off—she was only thirteen at present. His thoughts came back to Harry. “So, if you were me, you wouldn’t see too much of her! Why not? I’ve been feeling—well, rather sorry for her.”

“You have, have you?” Harry laughed tolerantly. “Sorry for her! Pooh! People who begin by feeling sorry for Eve end by being sorry for themselves. She always starts her affairs like that, by getting people sorry for her. Don’t you know what’s the matter with her? She’s selfish—a lap-dog kind of woman, born to be petted, but of no use whatever in the world. She wants everyone to love her, and gives nothing in return. She doesn’t play the game, Peter; she expects to have a man always toddling after her, but she won’t marry him because——. I don’t know; I suppose it would disturb her to have children.” Harry paused, waiting for Peter to argue with him. When his remarks were met without challenge, he continued, “She doesn’t mean any harm—her sort never does; but she’s a jolly sight more dangerous than if she were immoral. She gambles like an expert as long as luck’s with her; the moment she loses, she pretends to be a little child who doesn’t understand the rules. So she wins all the time and never pays back. She’s kept my brother feverish for years, loving him, and then, when it comes to the point, not knowing whether she really loves him. Gives her a nice comfortable sense, when anything goes wrong with her investments, to feel that he’s always in the background. I’m sick of it. She’s a ship that’s always setting sail for new lands and never coming to anchor. Lorie’s too fine a chap to be kept dawdling his life away by a vain woman. Some day she won’t be quite so pretty—she dreads that already; it’s part of her shallowness. Then she’ll run to cover, if any man’ll have her.—— You don’t believe me. Suppose you think every woman’s wild to be married?”

“I don’t think that.” In this particular Peter flattered himself that he had had more experience than Harry.

Harry took him up shrewdly. “If you don’t think it, you wish you did. You’ll see, if you live long enough. There are heaps of well-bred women like Eve, with the greed of chorus-girls and the morals of refrigerators. And here’s something else for your protection—Eve can’t bear to see any woman loved except herself. Lorie knows all this, and still he’s infatuated—plays Dante to her Beatrice. She isn’t worth it. She tells him she isn’t worth it; that makes him think she’s noble. She—she sucks men’s souls out for the fun of doing it when she isn’t thirsty, and flings them in the gutter like squeezed oranges.”

Peter’s case was so nearly similar to the Faun Man’s that he couldn’t bear this conversation. It was as though Harry was describing and accusing Cherry. She sucks men’s souls out and flings them in the gutter like squeezed oranges. And Cherry hadn’t been thirsty either; she had pretended that she hadn’t wanted to do it.

“But Cherry,” he said, “do you know where she is and anything about her?”

Harry looked at him squarely, a little pityingly. He sat down and crossed his legs. “Yes. We took her abroad with us and dropped her at the convent-school. She’s—— I don’t know. She’s got a queer streak in her—she’s an exotic.” And then, “I suppose you know that she thinks she’s in love with Lorie?”

Peter bit his lip; he drew his knee up with his hands clasped about it. “I know that. And the Faun Man, does he care for her?”

Harry laughed. “On that score you don’t need to be jealous. He wishes she wasn’t such a little donkey. He’s bored by it. It complicates matters most frightfully; he’s her guardian. We had a most awful job in shaking her. That’s why we left her at the convent. Had a rotten scene in Paris—tears and hysterics. She’d planned to make a third in our party. We weren’t on for it, you can bet your hat.”

Peter grew impatient at Harry’s way of talking. He spoke shortly. “So you know where she is? You can give me her address?”

“I can’t.” The grin of the mouth-organ boy, poking fun at everything, accompanied the refusal. “The kid made us promise not to tell you. She has her own idea of playing fair. Wish Eve had.” He yawned. “By George, time I was off to bed. I’ve got to be up bright and early to-morrow to call on Mr. Thing—the tutor-bird.”

Left alone in the stillness, Peter did not stir. In the street, below his window, footsteps echoed at rare intervals. Now and then, as men parted in the quadrangle, laughter burst on the night and voices shouted. Then, again, he heard the bells, high up and spectral, telling him that time was passing. He thought about Harry, envying him the cavalier cloak of indifference behind which he hid his sensitiveness. He thought about the Faun Man, with his fine faculty for loving wasted all these years by an undecided woman. And he thought of Eve and how she had misled him, letting him believe that the Faun Man had deserted her. Why had she done it? And then he thought of Cherry, poor little Cherry, who was keeping out of his way that she might play fair.

But he would make her love him. He would work day and night to make himself splendid. He was nothing at present—had nothing to offer her. But, one day——. And so, with the invincible optimism of youth, he pulled himself together. He was a knight riding out on a quest, wearing his lady’s badge to bring her honor.

Had he cared, he might have pictured to himself the other adventurers he had known, who had ridden out in the same brave belief that life was romantic: Jehane, who had looked from the window across the street and had beckoned with her eyes, only to give a husband to another woman; Ocky Waffles, who had come to her as the feeble substitute for the nobility she had coveted; his mother and father for whom, despite its kindness, life had proved a pedestrian affair. But, on his first night in this city of dreamers, he saw, stretching away below him, wide landscapes of illusion. There was so much to do, so much to experience, so much to dare. The spreading of wings had brought him to a crag from which he viewed, not the catastrophe of sunsets, but the riot of morning boiling up against cloud-precipices and pouring ensaffroned and clamorous across the world. He saw only the glory of its challenge, nothing of its threat.

In the weeks that followed his belief in the marvelousness of mere living was quickened. The head and shoulders of the marvel were that, for the first time, he was lord of his own existence. Like God, he could create himself. Mr. Thing, the tutor-bird, advised him, in a sneering tone of voice, that he had a chance of a first in Honor Mods. Mr. Thing had become embittered by past experience with other brilliant students. “If you don’t take to drink and to yowling like a cat of nights, you may do it, Mr. Barrington. But I expect you’ll run wild like the rest.”

Peter was claimed by Roy Hardcastle, the captain of the boats. His breadth and height, and slightness of hip marked him as a potential oarsman. Every afternoon he ran down through the meadows to the barges, there to be tubbed and sworn at by the coaches. He rowed in the Junior Fours as stroke and won his race. He was chosen as stroke for the Toggers—after that his career as an athlete was settled. Calvary men began to prophesy a rowing future for him. He noticed that men, not of his own college, paused on the bank to watch his style as his eight swung by.

The keenness of Oxford life awoke him to his powers; the contempt in which slackers were held spurred him forward. He had never been called upon to test his personality in competition with others. The experience took him out of himself, but beneath externals he remained the same simple-hearted, compassionate idealist. He was different from other men, and other men knew it. Perhaps it was that he was uncivilized, as the golden woman had told him—uncivilized in the sense of being unsophisticated and intense. Perhaps it was that his standards were pitched high, and that he was chivalrous in his attitude of cleanness toward himself. At all events, it never entered his head that the sowing of wild oats was a legitimate employment. Men stopped talking about certain adventures when he was present.

Even Mr. Thing, the tutor-bird, felt it—this subtle atmosphere of robust innocence, which Peter carried about with him, an innocence which bore no resemblance to the lily-white priggishness of a Sir Galahad. Mr. Thing was rather surprised; he had always felt virtue in a man to be offensive and had compared it to a prim little maid attired for a party, refusing to romp with bolder children for fear she should spoil her dress.

Mr. Thing was a don of the old school, a two-bottle man; not infrequently about midnight he was intoxicated. It was said that under the influence of wine his scholarship was ripest. He would recite rolling speeches from Thucydides in the language of Athens, working himself up into fervor and tears, declaiming in a voice which trembled with humanity and trumpeted with valor. But when, after drinking to excess, he met Peter beneath the stars in the shadowy quads, he seemed conscious that an excuse was necessary. He invented a lie, this gray-haired scholar, beneath which to hide his shame from clear-eyed youth. It was reported that he was getting ready for the Judgment Day, that he might be letter-perfect in his apology to his maker.

“Been to the fun’ral of a dear fr’end, Mr. Barrington—a very dear fr’end. Been taking the sharp edge off my grief. You haven’t losht a dear fr’end—not so dear as I have. So don’t you do it.”

He showed drunken concern lest Peter should do it, and had to be reassured many times. At last, shaking his head sceptically, he would permit Peter to pilot him to his room. The boy’s erectness hurt him; it accused him. It caused him to look back and remember another lad, who, beyond the waste of misspent years, had been not unlike him. One night, made carelessly sentimental by an extra bottle, he told the truth. “Wasn’t always like this, Mr. Barrington. I was something like you—only a little reckless. She said she’d wait for me, and then——. So that’s why. Now you know it.”

Cakes and ale in the imagination of young Oxford are usually associated with licence. To be abstemious is to be unpopular and entails persistent ragging. Peter believed whole-heartedly in the consumption of cakes and ale, so long as it wasn’t carried to the point of gluttony. He was eager to taste life, and took part in all the fun that was going; only always at the back of his mind lay the thought of Cherry—he must make himself fine for her, so as to be worthy.

He got into frequent adventurous scrapes. He was present at the Empire with Harry when a young lady, whose stockings were the most conspicuous part of her clothing, came to the footlights and sang a song, each verse of which ended with the question,

“Will you risk?

I’d risk it.

Wouldn’t you?”

Harry couldn’t bear that she should go away unanswered. The courtesy of the ‘Varsity was jeopardized. Moreover, she was pretty and only the musicians separated him from the stage. The theme of the song was kissing. He leapt the orchestra-rail, splashed his foot on the key-board of the piano, seized her hand and hauled himself up beside her, shouting, “Yes, I’ll risk it.”

She hadn’t intended her invitation to be taken so seriously. With becoming modesty she broke away from him, just as he was about to prove his assertion that he’d risk it. Harry followed her, in one wing and out the other, to and fro across the stage. The theatre rose yelling, watching this amorous game of hide-and-seek. Of a sudden the cry, “Proggins! Proggins!” went up. The Proctor and his bulldogs entered. Harry jumped from the stage into his seat. Some considerate person turned out the lights and there was a rush of undergrads for the exits. Peter and Harry burst into the night with the Proctor’s bulldogs close behind them. Then came the long run; the brilliant plan, Peter’s invention, that they should escape over walls instead of by thoroughfares; the clambering and climbing, the dashes across gardens and the final escape into freedom through the house of a startled old gentleman who threw his slipper after them—but not for luck.

Harry, as a rule, was the initiator of their escapades; Peter championed them to a finish gamely. The mouth-organ boy walked through the world with a roving eye, seeking always new lands of innocent adventure. When he had almost come to shipwreck on some wild coast of whimsical absurdity, it was Peter who hurried to his rescue. The song which he had sung in the tree-tops of Friday Lane had been a prophecy. He still sang it in the austere city of gray walls and spires. It was a pÃÂan of high spirits and irrepressible youth:

“I’ve been shipwrecked off Patagonia,

Home and Colonia,

Antipodonia;

I’ve shot cannibals,

Funny-looking animals,

Top-knot coons;

I’ve bought diamonds twenty a penny there,

I’ve been somewhere, nowhere, anywhere—

And I’m the wise, wise man of the wide, wide world.”

When he sang it, he and Peter would look at one another, with eyes laughing, and would talk of Kay—of how they had commenced their friendship by fighting over her, and of how—of so many things that were kind and golden, like memories of spring days when the wind is blowing. Little Kay, with her delicate face and shining hair, she stood a white flower in the shadow-wood of remembrance—a narcissus-shrine to which their steps were continually returning. So, while undergraduates of the Roy Hardcastle type shouted themselves hoarse on Saturday nights at college wine-clubs, making a rowdy effort to be men, Peter and Harry, without effort, remained boys and sat concocting fairy-tale letters to a little girl at Topbury. They refused to credit the evidence of their eyes, that she was growing up. They signed their letters jointly, filling them with ridiculous tenderness. She received them every Monday morning at breakfast, and was made to feel that she was still a sharer in their lives. Because Cherry postponed her coming, Peter had to have some outlet for his affection. In a curious way he made his little sister the temporary substitute for the girl he loved. It did not occur to him to inquire what motives prompted Harry’s epistolary philanthropy.

Jehane did not at once fulfil her promise to send her girls to stay with Professor Usk. On his return home for Christmas Peter discovered the reason. Riska was in the throes of her first romance. At Topbury shoulders were shrugged. Of course girls of fifteen did have their flirtations, but it was only among the lower-classes that they were openly acknowledged and dignified into love-affairs. Jehane, however, took the matter seriously. She explained why. The young fellow was a good catch and four years Riska’s senior; he was the son of a speculative builder who was invading Southgate with an army of jerry-built villas. The story of how Riska had effected the young man’s capture proved that Jehane’s training had been efficient. Riska had shown a fine faculty for seizing her strategic opportunity. Barrington’s comment when he heard it was brief and to the point, “Ought to be spanked. If she grows up this way, she’ll make her face the dumping-ground for anybody’s kisses.”

That was just it; in her fear lest her girls should never marry, Jehane had taught Riska, who was more apt a pupil than Glory, to welcome any comer without fastidiousness. There was nothing heaven-sent about marriage; it was a lucky-bag, into which you thrust your hand and grabbed; or, to employ her old parable, maidenhood was a raft from which girls who were wise escaped at the first opportunity, in cockle-boats, on boards and even by swimming—the great object was to reach the land of matrimony before the distance between the shore and the raft had lengthened. Possibly one might get wet in the effort. One couldn’t be too nice over an affair so desperate. It was anything to attain a marriage-song.

This was how Riska’s first excursion from the raft occurred. She had been out riding her bicycle and a hat had blown by her. The hat must belong to a head. She espied the head and liked it; therefore she chased the hat. Having caught it, she waited for the owner to come up. She accepted his thanks and indulged in a few minutes’ conversation. Next day, riding along the same road at the same hour, she had encountered the owner of the hat again. After that, good-luck and liking had taken a hand in bringing them together. Soon he had been invited to tea at the cottage. Jehane had made things easy for him. She had learnt that his father was a self-made, ambitious man, who wore side-whiskers and hoped to die a baronet.

“The Governor,” the boy had told her, “wants me to marry well.” There lay the rub. Would his father consider Riska good enough? The name of the young fellow was Bonaparte Triggers.

Jehane felt that it was absolutely necessary that young Triggers should be socially impressed. She persuaded Barrington to allow Riska to bring her suitor to Topbury. Before he came, she issued a careful warning that no mention was to be made of Ocky Waffles. Closely questioned, she admitted that, without deliberately lying, she had let the boy suppose that she was a widow.

“But, if he’s seriously in love with Riska, you’ll have to tell him,” Barrington objected.

Jehane’s face clouded. “That’s my affair. Who’d marry the daughter of a convict? It’s easy for you to talk.”

“Then you mean that——? Look here, I’m not criticizing; but don’t you think that this’ll look like deception? Supposing he married Riska without knowing, he’d be bound to find out after. Let Riska tell him. If he’s the right kind of a chap, he’ll love her all the more for her honesty.”

Jehane lost her temper as far as she dared. “You’ve always been against me—always. Of course, if you’re ashamed of us, and don’t want Riska to bring him——.”

There was no arguing along these lines. Barrington gave his reluctant consent.

Riska came, bringing with her Bonaparte Triggers, a flashy youth with a cockney thinness of accent. The purpose of his visit was to be impressed; he made it clear from the start that he had come to impress. He did not belong to a world of culture and felt, as Ocky Waffles had felt before him, that an effort was being made to rob him of his self-possession. He resisted the effort by smoking innumerable cigarettes, and tried to parade his own paces by accompanying himself on the piano while he sang music-hall ditties of the latest hug-me-quick-and-not-too-delicately order. His visit was not a success. He was jerry-built, like his father’s villas.

After he had departed. Nan had the nervous desire to fling up all the windows and to go through the house with a duster. It wasn’t snobbishness on her part, but she was unaccustomed to see fingers squeezed and kisses exchanged in public. Barrington found her in the drawing-room and slipped his hand into hers. “It’s as I thought; Riska’s not in love with him. Her mother’s trained her to believe that the first man to come should be the first man accepted. And, d’you know, Nan——?”

“What, Billy?”

“Didn’t you notice anything? She’s pretty and she’s sweet, because she’s young; but already she’s getting hard and calculating like Jehane. I’m afraid for her—she’s more passion than her mother ever had. She’s ripe fruit, and not sixteen yet; if she isn’t plucked, she’ll fall to the ground.—— It’s a horrible thing to say of a young girl.”

And then, “I don’t like him; but I hope he marries her.”

He didn’t marry her; Peter and Glory were blamed for that. Without telling anyone, they arranged to give Ocky a Christmas treat. What form the treat was to take caused many secret discussions. They had to be secret—all Glory’s dealings with her stepfather were secret; the mention of his name was forbidden by her mother.

“How about a theatre?” Peter suggested.

Glory shook her quiet head. “He’s not very intellectual.”

“Well, a pantomime?”

Glory nodded. “I believe he’d like that.”

So once again she set out alone with her tall cousin on the top of a bus. For a few brief hours he was to be hers entirely. In anticipating the adventure, she had racked her brains to think of entertaining subjects to talk about. She was terribly afraid she would bore him; she believed him to be so extraordinarily clever. She needn’t have worried. He was a big boy on that winter’s afternoon and not a man. Directly they were out of sight of the Terrace, he took her arm.

“But Peter!” she protested, her face flushing.

“Don’t be a little silly,” he told her; “you’ll slip on the snow and fall down.——— I say, Glory, you do look ripping. How you have got yourself up! You’ve put on everything except the parlor sofa.”

At Topbury Corner he wanted to take a hansom, but she insisted on a bus. “No, really. I prefer it. I’ve a reason—yes. But I wouldn’t tell you what it is for worlds.”

Her reason was that she was afraid to be left alone with him lest she should grow self-conscious. It was easier to talk in crowds. And how they did talk! Her little prepared speeches, her scraps of nervously gathered information were all forgotten. They were two children sailing through a Christmas world on a schooner of the London streets. House-tops were white with snow; shops gay with decorations. In the murky grayness of the sky a derelict sun wallowed, like a ship on fire. It was a happy day; their eyes were bright to find something on every hand to laugh about. Now it was a cutler’s window, merry with mistletoe and holly, all a-gleam with gnashing knives and razors, across which was pasted the legend, “Remember the Loved Ones at Home.” Now it was an undertaker’s, in which stood a placard:

DO IT NOW JOIN MY COFFIN CLUB

ANYONE CAN LIVE

MAKE SURE OF GETTING

BURIED A TACTFUL CHRISTMAS PRESENT

GIVE A YEAR’S SUBSCRIPTION

TO A FRIEND

Glory grew out of her shyness; she snuggled her chin against her squirrel muff, laughing and chatting, saying things which surprised herself. Peter kept glancing at her side-long. She was tender-looking. Yes, she was like Kay. He’d noticed that before. He noticed her for a day, and then forgot her for months. It had always been like that. Was it his fault? She was like a snow-drop—she had a knack of hiding herself.

They got off at Wardour Street, tunneling into dingy alleys from which Italy watches strangers with sad brown eyes, dreaming of vineyards and sun-baked towns.

Glory twitched his arm. “Down here. It’s a short cut.”

“Hulloa! You don’t mean to say that you’ve been here by yourself?”

She looked guilty; then smiled up from beneath her lashes. She had nothing to fear from Peter. “Often, since you first brought me. Once a week, at least; but don’t tell mother. He’s got no one to love except Mr. Widow. I—I’m sorry for him.”

Mr. Widow certainly wasn’t much to love. The secondhand shop had a cheerless aspect. On this winter’s day the door stood open; Mr. Widow held that it was tempting to customers. Ocky crouched over a coke-stove, rubbing his hands. The moment Glory entered, she hurried toward him, putting her arms about his neck. His face lit up. “Why, it’s Glory! Little Glory!” He ran his hands over her. “How beautiful! But you oughtn’t to come. The Duchess’ll find out. Oh yes, she will. She always finds out. Then, there’ll be a row.”

He caught sight of Peter. “Ha! Young Oxford to see his poor old uncle! I went to Oxford once. Humph! Got married there. A bad day’s work! A bad day’s work!”

They told him their plans. He wanted to ask Mr. Widow’s permission—Mr. Widow didn’t approve of theatres. “Let him go hang,” Peter said.

“That’s all very well.” Ocky shook his head thoughtfully. “All very well! But he may let me go hang one fine morning. What then?”

It was quite evident that Ocky was losing his pluck. He would have forgotten his spats and would have forgotten to twirl his mustaches, if Glory hadn’t been at hand to make him jaunty.

They popped him into a hansom and whirled him off to dinner at the Trocadero. He sat between them, holding Glory’s hand and blinking at the glaring shops; he was more accustomed to darkness. At the entrance to the restaurant he clutched at Peter, “I don’t belong here, old chap.”

“Nonsense. Glory and I——”

All through dinner Peter told his uncle what he and Glory were going to do for him. By-and-bye he, Peter, would have money. When he had money, he would buy a little house in the country. Ocky should live there with Glory, and he, Peter, between the intervals of making more money, would run down and visit them. It seemed almost true, almost possible, in that brilliant room where the corks flew out of bottles and the music clashed. It almost seemed that the world was generous—that it would give him another chance. He gazed from the eager boy, so keen to convince him of happiness, to the flower-face of his stepdaughter, which nodded and nodded, insisting, “Yes. Yes. Yes,” to Peter’s optimism. He asked if he might have whisky. When he got it, he tried to deceive himself and others as to the quantity he was drinking.

“God bless my soul! I’ve made my whisky too strong.” Then he would dilute it. “God bless my soul! I’ve made my whisky too weak.” The alcohol whipped up his courage. Of course there were good times coming. Peter would see to it; he never promised anything that he didn’t accomplish. Then, again he caught sight of the two young faces—but what had Peter to do with Glory?

They stepped into another hansom. Piccadilly Circus was a blazing jewel. Streets were gun-metal, washed with liquid gold. People were silver flowers. Peter would do it.

The curtain went up. He was a child again. He laughed at everything. How long was it since he had laughed? He kept nudging his companions, afraid lest they should miss the jokes. They were just the kind of jokes he used to make—Mr. Widow was his only audience now. You couldn’t expect a murderer to be a humorist—if he were a humorist he wouldn’t be a murderer.

He had laughed rather louder than usual. Someone turned round in the row just in front. A girl! He looked more closely. She was staring at him. Her companion followed her eyes, seemed surprised, and nodded to Peter and Glory. All through the evening the strange man kept turning round stealthily—the girl, without seeming to do so, was trying to prevent him.

Next day, when Glory returned from Topbury to Southgate, Riska met her with clenched hands.

“Now you’ve done it.”

“Done what?”

“Lost him for me. He’s begun to suspect. He wants to know who was that shabby man with you and Peter. Of course I daren’t tell him. He says I look like him. You stupid! And last night I’m sure he was going to have proposed to me.—And Ocky isn’t even your father.”

It was all too true; Bonaparte Triggers had done with Riska. He sent her a formal letter, breaking off everything. “My father,” he wrote, “happens to know Lawyer Wagstaff, your father’s old employer. At first I wouldn’t believe that you were his daughter. I wouldn’t have minded, anyhow; I was in love with you. But you and your mother lied to me about it. I could never trust you after that. The moment I saw that man with your cousin and Glory I knew the truth.”

So ended Riska’s first attempt to plunge from the raft. She clambered back, a little damp, but with her heart intact. Glory was blamed for the catastrophe; in future she had to be more careful in meeting Ocky. Barrington, after a stormy interview with Jehane in which Peter was accused, shook his head, “Riska! Humph! Poor kiddy, I’m sorry. She’s ripe fruit, Peter. Mark my words; if she isn’t plucked, she’ll fall to the ground.”