CONCERNING A ROSEBUD, AND MARIANNE'S TORTOISESHELL KNIFE. CHALLIS'S PRESENCE OF MIND. THE FOOL ON FIRE. DEFINITION WANTED OF DEFINITION. CHALLIS'S SUDDEN CALL BACK TO TOWN. HOW SIBYL HAD SEEN IT ALL

There was a little fountain in the middle of the little garden, with a little amorino from the court of the Signoria at Florence to attend to the squirting. The moon was comparing the light she could make on its shower of drops with sparkles from the lady's dress who stood beside it. It was in no hurry to decide—might perhaps ask a tiny cloud, that was coming, to help. Once inside the garden Challis was committed to approaching its centre. There was—remember!—no official recognition of any change in the position of the two since Trout Bend.

"I came here to be alone, but you may come." Judith's words might well have made matters worse. But her tranquil, unconcerned, almost insolent beauty in the moonlight was fraught with a sense of self-command that more than counterbalanced them. It gave her hearer a sort of rangÉ feeling—determined his position—put him on his good behaviour. He could trust to her control of their interview, but all the same a little resented feeling so much like a child in her hands.

"I came here to be alone, too," said he.

"Perhaps I ought to go?" Manifestly not spoken seriously, but not jestingly enough to set badinage afoot. She did not wait for his answer, but went on, "Perhaps we both ought, for that matter. Did you find the politics bored you?... oh!—metaphysics, was it? I came here because I found my little sister unendurable."

Challis thrust what he had overheard, when eavesdropping, into the background of his mind: "About the stage, I suppose? Why do you not tell her—set her mind at ease?" But he knew Sibyl knew already, and this was only to help him to keep his foreground clear.

Judith appeared to select her answer at leisure, from among reserves. "Sibyl knows," she said. "The indictment related to something else this time." Then, as though she were weighing a possibility: "No—I suppose I could hardly tell you about that. One is too artificial. We should be much nicer if we were small children. Never mind! Some day, perhaps!"

Challis decided on saying, with a laugh, "I suppose I mustn't be inquisitive and ask questions," as the best way of suggesting that his own guesses, if any, were trivial and impersonal. She ended a silence in which he fancied the subject was to be forgotten by saying: "I should tell you nothing, whatever you asked. Besides, you have never had a little sister, and would not understand. Family relations are mysteries."

"No, I have never had a little sister." And then Challis felt like a liar, and heart-sick as he thought of the thoroughness with which he had accepted Kate's "little sister" as his own. What a compensation he had thought her for a mother-in-law his most gruesome anticipations had not bargained for! When did the change come about?—when?—when? Why need the memory of it all come on him now, of all times? But Judith stopped his retrospect short with: "Get me that rose-bud, if you have a knife. Don't scratch yourself on my account." For Challis to reply: "What care I how much I scratch myself, if it is on your account?" would have savoured of Chitland, musically audible afar. Challis left it unsaid.

The rose-bud was soon got with the aid of a little tortoiseshell knife that was really Marianne's. There was another twinge in ambush for her husband over that, and a sharp cross-fire between it and the soul-brush, that was being kept at work all this while—unconsciously, one hopes; but this story knows exactly what Charlotte Eldridge would have thought and said. And she might have been right, for it makes little pretence of being able to see behind the veil this Judith's beauty hides her inner soul with, nor to read her heart. All it, the story, has known of her so far has been that beauty and her love of power. A perilous quality, that!

All it can say now is that if this woman knows, as she bends, careless how close, to take the flower from the hand that gathered it; as she flashes the diamonds on her white fingers quite needlessly near his lips—if she has any insight, as she does this, into the way she is playing with a human soul, then is she a thoroughly bad woman. And to our thinking all the worse if she knows, or believes, her reputation is safe in her own keeping. For then what is she, at best, but a keen sportswoman wicked enough to poach on her fellow-woman's preserves, destroying the peace of a home merely to show what a crack shot she is. We must confess to a preference for the standard forms of honourable, straightforward lawlessness. But perhaps these reflections are doing injustice to Judith. She may be capable of good, honest, downright wickedness. Remember that she is comparatively young and inexperienced.

One should surely beware, too, of doing injustice to beautiful women—ascribing to them motives of overt fascination, to entangle man, in every simple action a discreet dowdy might practise unnoticed and unblamed. Make an image of such a one in your mind—make it ropy, bony, obliging, with unwarrantable knuckles—let it place a flower in its bosom, if any; and then say whether Charlotte Eldridge's keenest analysis could detect in its action the smallest element she could pounce on as seductive; the slightest appearance of a hook baited to captivate her John, or anybody else's? No, no!—let us be charitable, and suppose, for the present, at any rate, that Judith was unconscious in this flower incident of every trace of guile—merely wanted the flower, in fact, and asked Challis to get it, rather than risk her "Princess" skirts in the thorns which would have made shoddy of them in no time.

There are those, we believe, who hold that all the fascination of woman is due to adjuncts; that the thrill of enchantment that "goes with" adroit coiffures and well-cut skirts—especially the latter—would not survive seeing their owner, or kernel, run across a ploughed field in skin-tights—for we assume that the Lord Chamberlain would allow no more crucial experiment. It may be they are right. High Art teaches us the truth of the converse proposition. For that draggled-tailed, ill-hooked, ill-eyed, ill-buttoned thing with a bad cold and a shock of tow on its head, that is emerging from a damp omnibus to the relief of its next-door neighbour, is going, please—when it has got rid of some raiment which would certainly go to the wash with advantage—is going to sit for Aphrodite, of all persons in the world; for that very goddess and no other!—for her the light of whose eyelids and hair in the uttermost ends of the sea none shall declare or discern....

There!—it's no use talking about it, and stopping the story. Besides, Miss Arkroyd "had on" her "Princess" dress aforesaid, a strange witchery of infinitely flexible woven texture, snake-scaled and gem-fraught without loss of a fold, rustling and glittering till none could say which was rustle and which was glitter. And it all seemed a running comment on its owner—its pith and marrow, as it were!—a mysterious outward record of her inner self. Where is the gain of trying to guess how much was shell and how much was self? Enough that few women would have looked as lovely as she did, then and there. For all this speculation—let the story confess it—is due simply to the excessive beauty the moonbeams made the most of, as its owner's eye dropped on the flower her fingers were adjusting, to make sure it was exactly in the right place, and to engineer stray thorn-points that else might scratch. As for what is really passing in her heart, the story washes its hands of it.

"Marianne refuses again, of course," said she, when the rose was happily settled—or sadly, as it must have felt the parting from its stem.

"Again, of course!" said he. "But...!"

"But how did I know, you mean? Why, you would have told me at once if she had been coming."

"Not necessarily. I might have hoped for a second letter, to say she had changed her mind. It is no pleasure to me that she refuses."

"It might be to some husbands. But you are an affectionate husband. Do tell me something."

"Anything!" His emphasis on this was a satisfaction to him. It was like a very small instalment of what he had no right to say, or even to think; but, uttered in an ambush of possible other meanings, it franked the speaker of any particular one among them.

"If I were to ask to see her letter, should you be offended?"

He knew he could not answer, "Nothing you do can possibly give me offence," in the tone of empty compliment that would have made it safe. He gave up the idea, and said, with reality in his voice: "I should not show it to you."

"I like you when you speak like that," said Judith.

He felt a little apologetic. "After all," he said, "it's only tit-for-tat. You wouldn't tell me what Sibyl said."

"I am not offended," said Judith. A certain sense of rich amusement in her voice made these words read: "I take no offence at your male caprices. I know your ways. You are forgiven." But aloud her speech was, with a concession to seriousness: "I cannot well repeat what Sibyl said. But do not think of showing me Marianne's letter if you wish not to do so. It is not idle curiosity that made me ask to see it. I had a motive—perhaps not a wise one—but I think...."

"What?"

"I think you would forgive it." The suggestion certainly was that the speaker would see some way of influencing Marianne—making her drop her absurd obstinacy. No other motive was possible, thought Challis.

After all, what was there in the text of the letter that it would be a hanging matter for Judith to read? She, from her higher standpoint—for Challis believed in her, you see?—could forgive, overlook, understand a scrap or two of rudeness, a misspelt word or so. Why should he not show the letter, and have done with it?

"It is in your pocket, you know!" Judith was certainly clairvoyante, and Challis said so. "Clairvoyante enough to see you put it in your pocket as you came into the drawing-room!" said she, laughing.

Why this context of circumstances should make Challis plead illegibility by moonlight as a reason for not producing the letter he could not have said for the life of him. It was a weak plea; because, when Judith "pointed out" that so inveterate a smoker probably had wax vestas in his pocket, it seemed to leave him no line of defence to fall back upon. He produced the letter, and to our thinking was guilty of a breach of faith to Marianne in allowing Judith to take it from him. At least, he should only have read to her what related to the invitation.

The first wax vesta blew out, and the second. "Hold it inside this," said Judith, making a shelter for the third with a gauzy thing of Japanese origin she really had no need for, the night was so warm. "You must hold it steadier than that," she added. "If this caught, it would blaze up." She was holding the open letter herself, with perfect steadiness.

"This is the last vesta," said Challis. "So you must read quick. Look sharp!" It was the fifth match, and the flame was nearing his fingers.

"Half-a-second more!" said Judith. She had turned the letter over. There was writing on the back that Challis had missed. He tried to read it now, over the shoulder that was so white in the moonlight, and failed. For the flame touched his fingers, and burned him.

Man is absolutely powerless against the sudden touch of fire. Remember Uncle Bob and the knife! Challis had to leave go, nolens volens. The burning remnant of the wax fell on the gauzy scarf, which caught instantly. The moment was critical. But Challis showed a presence of mind beyond what one is apt to credit neurotic literary men with—mere mattoids, after all! Instead of trying to beat the flame out, or waiting to get his coat off to smother it, he tore the scarf sharply away from its wearer, who, happily, had the nerve to release a safety-pin in time to get it clear.

"Are you burned?" His voice seemed out of keeping with the resolution of his action." Very little, if at all. Just a touch, on this shoulder. Nothing really—but I am afraid your hands...."

"Oh no!—they're all right. Stop a bit!—what's that?" It was Marianne's letter, half-burned, and still burning. The unextinguished scarf it had fallen to the ground with had got through its combustion briskly. Challis was only just in time to save half the letter; and it was not the half he wanted.

"I dare say it doesn't matter," said he to Judith; "but there was something I hadn't read on the back. What you were reading when the match gave out."

"Yes—I think there was. A postscript. I didn't make it out. Shall we go in, or over on the lawn, where they are dancing?" She added a moment later: "I don't know why I am taking it for granted that you don't dance."

"I certainly don't; nowadays, at least. But you do, of course. The lawn by all means!" They passed through the little porticino, and complied with the understanding it had entered into. As Challis was turning the key, he paused an instant to look round at Judith and say: "Are you sure you can't remember anything of what was written on the back of the letter?" And she replied without hesitation: "Not a word. I had no time." Then he said: "I wish you could remember only just one word or two, to show what it was about." She answered: "But I can't. I am sorry. We must hope it was of no importance."

They walked side by side, without speaking, to the end of the last yew-hedged terrace, just on the open garden. Then, inexplicably, they turned and went back along the path. When they arrived again at the little gate in the wall, Challis suddenly faced his companion. He looked white and almost handsome in the moonlight—or so she may have thought, easily enough—for his eyes had a large, frightened look, that became them and the thoughtful thinness of their bone-marked setting. He spoke quite suddenly, keeping his voice under, with quick speech that showed its tension.

"Judith—Judith Arkroyd! It is no use. I can bear it no longer. I must leave you. It would have been well for me if I had done so earlier. It would have been best for me if I had never seen you." He turned from her, almost as though he shrank from the sight of her, and leaned against the grey stone angle of the little doorway, his face hidden in his arms. Had the woman who watched him—shame if it were so!—a feeling akin to triumph, as she saw how his visible hand caught and clenched and trembled in the moonlight? It may have been so. The story has no plummet to take soundings of her heart. Her mere words may have meant fear lest she had overplayed her part—no more! "Oh, Scroop, you cannot blame me." But the way she too leaned, as for support in dizziness, on the edge of a great Italian garden-pot, raised on a pedestal at the path-corner, and pressed her hand to her side as though her breath might catch the less for it—these things seemed to belong to more than the alarm of a sudden start.

He turned, with some recovery of self-possession, as one who shakes free of any unmanliness. "Blame you, Judith!" he cried, calling her freely by her name—a thing he had never yet done. "Not I, God knows! I am all self-indictment, if ever man was. And this, look you, is my offence: that I, knowing myself as I am, knowing what I owe to my wife, to my children—they are dear to me still, I tell you, believe it who may!—that I have allowed the image and presence of you, Judith Arkroyd, to take such possession of me, my mind, my whole soul, that you are never absent from me. And the bondage that is on me is one I cannot see the end of. All I know is that I am powerless against it. It may be—it may be—that the memory of you will die out and leave me—that when I see you no longer, your voice and your beauty will become things of the past, and be forgotten. When we have parted, as we must, Heaven grant me this oblivion! But I cannot conceive it now."

He paused, and as he wiped the drops from his brow, seemed to hark back a little to his daily self, saying in a quick undertone: "It is a good world to forget in. Precedents are in favour of it. There is that to be said."

The little change in his manner made her find her voice. "Yes!" she said. "I see how it is. You must go. I shall always grieve that I could not keep your friendship ... yes—you see my meaning? I have valued it. But this kind of thing is the misfortune of some women. It is a bitter thing—we must part in a few hours, so I may speak plainly—a bitter thing to be forced to lose a friend one loves as a friend, merely because one chances to be a woman."

If only this interview might have ended here! If only Mr. Ramsey Tomes and Mr. Brownrigg could have come on the scene now, instead of five minutes later! But there never was good came of last words, from the world's beginning.

The unhappy, storm-tossed man and his tormentor—for that was what Judith was, meaningly or without intent—turned to go back towards the noisy world. Half-way, as though she would use the silence and darkness of the alley they were passing through for the freedom of speech such surroundings give, Judith spoke again. If Charlotte Eldridge had been there, her interpretation of Judith certainly would have been: "She doesn't mean to let him go—not she!" Would it have been a fair one?

Possibly. But all Judith said was: "I am afraid I am a woman without a heart."

Challis said interrogatively: "Because...?" and waited.

"Because I find myself only thinking of what I shall lose when you go. If I were good, Scroop"—a slight sneer here—"I should have a little thought for you. I suppose I'm bad. Very well!"

"I am taking no credit to myself for any sort of altruism in my—my feelings towards yourself." Challis shied off from the use of the word "love"; but whether because it would have rung presumptuously without the sanction of its object, or because of the bald rapidity of its use on the stage, where Time is of the essence of the contract, he might have found it hard to say.

"I should not thank you for it. Nor any woman. But many a woman who injures a friend unawares—being unselfish and pious and so on—would gladly...." She hesitated.

"Put a salve to the wound?"

"Well—yes—that sort of thing! But I am afraid I am rather brutal about it. Can you not, after all, forget this foolish infatuation for my sake? Consider the wild words you spoke just now unsaid, and give me back my friend. Come, Scroop!" Her beautiful eyes were surely full of honest appeal—no arriÈre pensÉe Mrs. Eldridge would have damned her for—as she went frankly close to him and laid her hand on his.

He shrank from her—absolutely shrank!—and gasped as though her touch took his breath away. He found no words, and she had not finished.

"Think—oh, think!—what rights could I ever have in you? Think of your wife...."

"I do think of her—oh, I do think! But it makes me mad."

"Go back to her and forget me then, if it must be so. Remember this, Scroop—that the bond that holds you to her is thrice as strong as it would be if...."

"If what?"

"Well!—I must say it. If it were a legal one...."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean you are not married to her—there!"

"Oh, the Deceased Wife's Sister rubbish?"

"Yes." And then Challis thought to himself, through the fog of all his soul-torture and perplexity, "How comes she to be so ready to go home to the mark? We have never talked beyond the bare fact that Marianne and Kate were sisters." But he let the thought go by, to make way for another of greater weight with him.

"You never can mean," he cried—"you—you—you never can mean that I——" She interrupted him with the self-command that seemed to belong to her—to grow upon her, if anything—and completed his speech for him: "That you would take advantage of a legal shuffle to evade a promise given in honour? Of course, I mean the exact reverse. I mean that you, of all men, would hold yourself three times bound to an illegal contract."

"All men would, worth the name of men. Debts Law disallows are debts of honour. But all that is nothing. I love my wife. I tell you I love my wife; I will not have it otherwise." His voice was almost angry, as against some counter-speech. But he dropped it in a kind of exhaustion, with a subdued half-moan. "What have I to do," said he wearily, "with all these wretched nostrums of legislation and religion, that would dictate the terms of Love? Mine have come to me, and my soul is wrenched asunder. Surely the penalty is enough to make beadledom superfluous. No man who knows what Love means will ever love two women.... There—that's enough!" He stopped abruptly, as cutting something needless short. She spoke:

"It comes to good-bye, then?"

"Yes—unless...."

"Unless what?"

"You will say I am strange."

"You are. But you cannot change yourself. Speak plainly!"

"Listen, Judith! If you can look me in the face and say you have no love for me—you know the sense I use the word in as well as I—then I will pack away a sorrow in my heart till it dies; and the time will come when you shall say: 'That man is my good friend, but he declared a fool's passion to me once, for all that, and now he seems to have forgotten it.' It shall be so. But, better still, and easier for me, if you could say with truth that there was some other man elsewhere whose hand in yours would be more welcome than mine; whose voice, whose look, whose lips would be a dearer memory. If you could tell me this, the fool's passion would at least be all the shorter lived." He stopped as they reached the end of the sheltered path, and looked her full in the face. He had stopped, as it were, on a keynote of self-ridicule—the habit was inveterate—and he was one of those men who are at their best when individuality comes out strongest. She had never looked so beautiful in his eyes as when she stood there, silent in the moonlight, weighing to all appearance the answer she should make. Perhaps she knew how beautiful—who can say? She remained motionless through a long pause—through the whole of a nightingale's song in the thicket hard by. Then her bosom heaved—a long breath—and then, with a sort of movement of surrender of her hands—how the diamonds flashed!—she said, "I cannot," and then again, "No—I cannot." Then, in a more measured and controlled voice: "This means that we must part—now! I shall not see you to-morrow."

"Strangers and foes do sunder and not kiss," said Helena to Bertram. But how about those who are neither foes nor strangers, yet must be more than friends, and dare not be lovers? An interview of this sort had best not end in an embrace, if two victims of infatuation are to be saved from themselves. Let the description remain for Judith as well as Challis. But she had the self-command to check his impulse, throwing out her jewelled hands against it, and crying—not loudly, but beneath her breath: "No—no—no! Remember what we are—what we must be. For Heaven's sake, no madness!" And then, as he let fall his hands and their intention, but with all his hunger on him, and the foreknowledge of sleepless hours to come, she turned towards the voices that were approaching them from the house.

"I cannot recall"—it was Mr. Tomes who couldn't—"any occasion on which a discussion of so abstruse, and I may say elusive, a topic has been conducted with more philosophical insight, and a stronger sense of what I need not scruple to term the argumentative meum and tuum. Neither am I prepared to admit what possibly inexperience in debate may be eager to affirm, that the ratiocinative perspicuity of a post-prandial collective intelligence has been fruitless in result. I may point with satisfaction to at least two conclusions—the impossibility of drawing safe inferences in discussions where the same word is used in several different senses, and the uselessness of the attempt to define the meaning of words until we are agreed upon the nature, and, I may add, the legitimate limits, of Definition." Mr. Tomes paused. He was a little disconcerted at the discovery that he was being intelligible by accident, and also he had caught sight of Challis and Miss Arkroyd. His abrupt full-stop as he met them was unwelcome to this former, who would have had the orator continue, to hide his own perturbation. But it did not matter, for Judith was more than equal to the occasion. "I have narrowly escaped being burned alive, Mr. Tomes. Mr. Challis set fire to me lighting his cigar. However, he put me out." Nothing could exceed her easy grace and perfect self-possession.

Very fortunately Mr. Wraxall, the Universal Insurer, was one of Mr. Tomes's companions. The opportunity was a splendid one, and he seized upon it. Challis got away in a most dastardly manner, leaving Judith exposed to risks and averages and premiums beyond the wildest dreams of Negotiation run mad. As a matter of fact, Mr. Wraxall must have been welcome enough. When life jars, let others do the volubility, and spare us!

The dispersal of guests and the family at the foot of the great staircase was to-night more tumultuous than usual. Not only was the house-party at its maximum—its noisy maximum!—but many outsiders from the neighbourhood were among the dancers. Challis noticed, though whether as cause or consequence he never inquired, four more young soldiers, who, he understood, had come from as far off as it would take a blood mare in a dog-cart, that just held them and no room to spare, an hour and fifty minutes to trot back to, over a good road. These youths were in such tremendous spirits that when the last farewells of the dog-cart died away on the offing, a sort of holy hush seemed to ensue, and people drew long breaths, and smiled excusefully—for young folk are young folk, you know—and said now we could hear ourselves speak. Why was it that Challis, not unobservant, for all his own hidden fever, pictured the occupants of the dog-cart, beyond the offing, as speaking little now, each dwelling on his own private affairs? Was it because four corresponding chits, at least, had hushed down and become self-absorbed and absent? And where was the relevance of measles, and Challis's thought to himself that it was best to have them young?

The Rector was there, too. He had not been a dancer, but had refrained merely because, in view of this great accession of force from Jack's and Arthur's friends from the garrison, no further male dancers were wanted. When Challis reached the house, after prolonging a voluntary ostracism in the garden-silences until he heard the guests dispersing, and saw Chinese lanterns being suppressed, he found Athelstan Taylor just on the point of taking leave. He was explaining to her ladyship why he had not come to dinner—for it seemed he had been invited—when she stopped him with a question about one of the children who came into his explanation. His reply was: "Oh yes!—just a bad inflammatory cold. But she'll be all right in a day or two. Only we shall have to be careful. Good-night, Lady Arkroyd!"

"'I think it is good-morrow, is it not?'" said Challis, quoting. "Is Charles's Wain over the new chimney, I wonder. Perhaps, Rector, you know which Charles's Wain is. I don't. I always confuse between him and Orion."

"You'll have a hard job to do so now. Why, my dear fellow, can't you remember how we talked of Orion last Autumn, and he was hardly visible even then?"

"I remember—in your garden. You must show him to me again some day!" The Rector looked attentively at the speaker. He had caught the minor key in his voice; it had crept in alongside of a misgiving. "I shall lose this friend I would so gladly keep, cloth or no!"

"All right! But you mustn't stop away till Orion comes. When shall I tell my sister to lay a place for you? I believe we are clear next Thursday—will that do?" He took out a notebook for an entry.

"I'm sorry," said Challis. "But I'm obliged—I was just going to tell Lady Arkroyd—I am obliged to return to town to-morrow. I had a letter to-day, calling me back on business. It's a case of compulsion—oh no!—nothing wrong. A mere matter of business relating to publication!"

Her ladyship's sorrow at losing her distinguished guest knew no bounds. She must look forward to seeing him in town, where the family would return in a fortnight. But Mr. Challis would stay over to-morrow. No!—Mr. Challis couldn't do any such thing, thank you! He ought to go by the early train—was sorry to give trouble—but if he and his box could be taken to the railway early enough.... Oh no!—he didn't mind breakfast at 6:30, only it was the trouble! But as Lady Arkroyd's heart was rejoicing—hostesses' hearts do—at her guest getting clear of the mansion before she was out of bed, she was able, from gratitude, to make her grief at his departing at all almost a reality. Otherwise she was consciously relieved that he should go; but as for any mental discomfort on the score of her daughter's relations with him—the idea!—a middle-aged, married, professional man! The eleventh century to the rescue!

Athelstan Taylor said "Good-bye, then!" with real regret, especially as there was something wrong, manifestly. His first instinct was to forswear driving back with Miss Caldecott to the Rectory, and to persuade Challis to walk "part of the way" with him. But—breakfast at 6:30, and Charles's Wain over the new chimney, or its equivalent! After all, he was human. Only, what a pity! A talk with him might have meant so much to Challis.

Sibyl's regrets merely meant, "See how well-bred I am, to be able to conceal my rejoicing! Go away, and don't call in Grosvenor Square when I'm there! Do not give my kind regards to your wife, though a worthy woman, no doubt!" That is, if Challis translated an overflow of suave speech rightly.

Other adieux followed, genuine enough. Mr. Brownrigg was honestly sorry to lose the opportunity of showing Mr. Challis those extracts from Graubosch. Mr. Wraxall was seriously concerned at not being able to supply the figures necessary to a complete understanding of Differential Equivalents, a system by which all deficits would be counteracted. Mr. Ramsey Tomes said he should always regard with peculiar satisfaction the opportunities for which he was indebted to his friend Sir Murgatroyd, of shaking the hand of an author of whom he had always predicted a very large number of remarkable things, "considering"—thought his author—"that he does not appear to have read any of my immortal works." The Baronet himself seemed to be developing a scheme for correlating Feudalism with everything else, in connection with his regret that Mr. Challis had to go away next morning, until her ladyship reminded him that Mr. Challis had to go to bed. So at last Mr. Challis went.

Sibyl hung back. Judith had not gone up yet, she said, in answer to her mother's "I suppose you do mean to go to bed, child, some time!" Why, then, couldn't she leave Judith till breakfast to-morrow? But her ladyship stopped short of pushing for an answer, for she mixed "Good-night" with a yawn, and got away upstairs.

Mr. Elphinstone testified discreetly that he could hear Miss Arkroyd coming. Yes—there she was! Who was that with her? Only the young girl, Tilley, miss! This was what the name Cintilla had become, naturally, in the mouths of the household.

"Go up, child, and see that my hot water isn't cold. Cold hot water is detestable.... Yes, Sibyl?" This was in answer to a particular method of saying nothing, containing an intention to say something disagreeable presently.

"I didn't say anything."

"Please don't be tiresome. You know what I mean, quite well. What was it you didn't say?"

"I suppose you know Mr. Challis is going away to-morrow?"

Judith's demeanour is exemplary. Something pre-engages her. Mr. Challis must come after. She calls the little ex-dairymaiden back; and then, turning to Mr. Elphinstone, waiting patiently to be the last to retire, says to him, "What is good for a burn, Elphinstone?"—as to a universal referee. He replies, "I always use olive-oil, miss," as if he belonged to a particular school of singed butlers. "Give the child some for me," says Judith; and then, being free to give attention to her sister, goes on with, "Yes, what is it? Oh yes! Do I know Mr. Challis is going away to-morrow? Of course I know Mr. Challis is going away to-morrow."

"I thought you did," says Sibyl. This is hardly consecutive, but Judith's equanimity is impregnable. No impertinences or aggressions are to affect it, that's clear! She is easily able to compare the watch on her wrist with the hall-clock, and to find their testimony is the same, for all their difference of size, before she makes further answer.

"Mr. Challis is called away by business. So he says.... Good-night!" Cintilla, or Tilley, will bring the magic oil; so Judith goes upstairs leisurely. Her sister follows. But she has not said good-night yet.

Telepathy makes very funny terms, sometimes, between sisters. And a fact ignored, that has called for comment, may broach a reciprocal consciousness that will never be at rest without speech in the end. This time it is that burn, which Sibyl has said nothing about—has asked no explanation of. And both know it.

At the stair-top both sisters say good-night, with a sort of decision that seems overloaded for the occasion. But the valediction seems inoperative; as both wait, for no apparent reason. Then Sibyl speaks in a quick undertone:

"You wouldn't listen to me, Ju.... No, you needn't be frightened—they're not coming yet...." For Judith had glanced back down the staircase. "You wouldn't listen, and now you see what has come of it."

"What has come of it?"

"Judith!—do you think I am blind, or do you take me for a fool?"

"Yes, dear—the last! But go on. I can wait any time, in reason, for an explanation." She embarked on a period of waiting, gracefully indulgent, a tranquil listener.

"Do you suppose I am taken in by this story?"

"What story?"

"This story of Mr. Challis's going home on business."

"It's a very simple story." "Very simple ... oh dear!—there's the girl. I'll tell you in the morning...."

"I want to hear now.... Put it in my room, child, and go to bed." And Cintilla says, "Yes, miss!" and vanishes to an innocent pillow. "I want to hear now, and perhaps you'll be so kind as to tell me."

"Come into my room!"

"Certainly!" Judith complies without reserves, dropping gracefully into an armchair, after placing her candle in safety. She makes a parade of her waiting patience. Sibyl, all aflame with flashing eyes, turns on her after closing the door carefully.

"After what I have seen this evening, Judith, I know what to think.... No!—it's no use your denying it." Then in a lower voice, with the flush on her cheeks spreading to her temples, she adds: "Not an hour ago I saw that man Challis...." She pauses on the edge of her indictment.

"You saw that man Challis...?"

"I saw that man Challis ... yes!—I don't care, Judith ... making love to you in Tophet, with his arm round your waist."

"And where were you?"

"Up here in this room. My hair came down, dancing. And I looked out of that window and saw you. Oh, Judith!"

"Oh, Sibyl!" Judith repeats mockingly. She goes to the window with easy deliberation. It is wide open on the summer night, for heat. "Of course one sees Tophet from here," she says. "But how you could distinguish Mr. Challis's arm, or my waist, is a mystery to me, at this distance."

"Have I no eyesight, Judith? I tell you I saw it all, as I stood there where you are now. I saw him set fire to your scarf thing with his cigar. And his arm was round you, and he was looking over your shoulder. I saw it by the blaze-up, as plain as I see you now!"

Judith is undisturbed. "I see you have withdrawn my waist," she says. She circles her diamonded fingers round its girth, and seems not dissatisfied with the span they cannot cover. "But you've got the story wrong, little sister."

"Being offensive won't do you any good."

"You are my little sister, Sib dear! And you're a goose. Mr. Challis showed me a letter, and was kind enough to hold a lighted match for me to read it by."

Sibyl makes no reply. Her eyes remain fixed on her sister as she turns a bracelet on her arm uneasily. Evidently she only half believes her. Can she be lying? It is a matter on which a woman who has never lied before will lie freely. One who has flirted, at such close quarters, with another woman's husband, will tell her sister lies rather than admit it. Sibyl wishes, on the whole, that Judith would look her in the face as she speaks, instead of being so wrapped up in a landscape she knows by heart.

Judith seems inclined to get out of hearing of that subject—has had enough of it. "It seems a shame," she says, "to go to bed on such a heavenly night. But I suppose one must!"

Sibyl is not going to be fubbed off with any such evasions. She has made up her mind, this evening—this is in strict confidence—to accept a peer's son who will be a peer himself when his father ceases to be one, and she is keenly alive to the desirability of avoiding family scandals just at this crisis. If Judith is going to bring a slur on an honourable name, thinks Sibyl, let her do it after my coronet is landed. Her blood is up.

"What was there in the letter?" she says bluntly.

"Sibyl dear, really!" There is amusement in Judith's tone, as of forbearance towards juvenility.

Her sister mocks her. "Yes—me dear, really!" she says. "What was there in the letter?"

"May the catechism stop, if I tell you?" The yawn that begins in these words lasts into what follows: "Oh, no, I don't mind telling you, child! There was nothing to make a secret of. It was from his affectionate wife—poor fellow! He really deserves something less dowdy. Let me see, now, how did it run? Her dear Titus—that was it!—she had had another letter from me, pressing her to come. Hadn't written back. Would her dear Titus make me understand that she was too much wanted at home to come away just now? Besides, she did not care for society, as her dear Titus perfectly well knew. She would only be in the way if she did come. It was much better she should have her friends, and he his—spelt wrong: ei instead of ie. Do you want to know all the rest of the important letter? Very well! She had spent yesterday evening with grandmamma at Pulse Hill, and dear Charlotte was just gone. He was not to hurry back on her account, as it was easier for—some name of a cook—when he was away. He had better stay as long as he could, where he was being amused and flattered. And she was his affectionate wife Marianne.... Have you been flattering Mr. Titus Scroop, Sibyl dear?"

Sibyl ignored the question. "Tulse Hill, I suppose," said she thoughtfully. "Who's dear Charlotte, I wonder?"

"A Mrs. Eldridge. Nobody you know!" "I wonder if she's good for dear Marianne." Simple truth must now and then tax credulity, or be excluded from fiction. The whole of the conversation is given above, and where or when on earth Sibyl found in it anything to warrant this wonderment of hers Heaven only knows! However, one can wonder at nothing, oneself, in these days of Marconigraphs. Sibyl ended her speech with, "The woman's as jealous as she can be—one can see that!"

"Can one?... oh, I dare say one can, dear! Only she's no concern of mine. Suppose we go to bed."

"If you were Mr. Challis's wife, you might feel just as she does. And if you were not really his wife, it would be all the worse."

"Of course, when one's neither, one doesn't care." This was faulty in construction, yet neither sister felt that it could not be understood.

The hardships of a forgotten casual on the landing outside were recognized with, "Oh dear! Why didn't you go to bed? It's nearly two o'clock." And then sleep came in view, for those who were at home to him.

If Judith said, "Not at home," was it any wonder? Think what an amount of dissimulation she had gone through since that revelation of Challis's in the garden—since what may have been a discovery about herself of something she may have suspected before, but had half-contemptuously dismissed! She may have more than once asked herself the question, "Do I possibly love this man?" and laughed a negative. But oh, the difference it makes when a man has said roundly, "I carry your image in my heart, and cannot be quit of it." She had played with edged tools, and had cut herself. The burn on her shoulder was not the only result of tampering with fire that day, for her. Most surely for her own sake, and his, concealment was the sacramental word, for the moment. She had let him know she was unable to say she did not love him; that was all! But an intent she had half formed in the very core of her heart must be hidden from him. He must have no suspicion that she would lend herself to a scheme that would take advantage of a wretched legal shuffle—one of the most wretched that even Themis has scheduled as a shift for the cancelling of a solemn contract. Was she quite prepared to say she would not, for her own sake, jump at an expedient granted by the solemnity of Law, to make Dishonour seem honourable, and disallow the claims of this stupid, commonplace, would-be wife, who was no wife at all? And who knew it, for that matter.

For this intention had sounded its first note in her heart as she read that postscript, when the last match was all but burned out. She could remember every word of it, as she paced to and fro in the silence of her bedroom, fostering the idea it suggested. "I suppose you know"—so poor fool Marianne had written, in her momentary fit of spleen and obduracy—"what mamma always says about you and me—that we are not really married at all. If so, I ought to go back and live with her, and the sooner the better. Then you would be free, and I suppose it would be Judith." For that was what the stupid, exasperated woman had actually written, and next morning would have been so glad to plunder the postman's bag of, when he disembowelled the vermilion pillar-box at the corner.

But, as for Judith, her business was to bury the suggestion—which she had read, and Challis had not—in her heart. Had she not a right to hide her cloven foot, if it was one—to wear over it a pretext of her reverence for the bond that linked this man to his dowdy wife, until it broke asunder from its natural rottenness? What was that nauseous saying male man was so fond of? "All's fair in Love!" and what the foetid interpretations he felt no shame to put upon it? Why was all the selfishness and meanness to belong to one sex alone?

And meanwhile Challis himself was tossing through the fever of a sleepless night, until some wretched sleep was broken by Samuel calling him at 6.30 in the morning, and the hoot of a motor outside. Samuel explained that he had come later than the first time fixed, as his lordship had placed the Panhard at Mr. Challis's disposal, and it would more than make up the time. Challis was grateful.