The "ridiculous flat" held one supreme joy--the finest view which a Londoner may have of London. From its parlor window, of a day, one could survey all the city--from Putney Church to St. Paul's, from Chiswick Mall where once red-heeled gallants tripped it with the ladies of St. James's, to Keats's Hampstead and the dim blue of Highgate.

At that window, on an April evening, Aliette and her lover stood to contemplate the pageant which Thames and town proffered nightly for their delight. Dusk had fallen, masking the river-pageant with a cloak of indigo and silver. Northward, a saffron shimmer under murky skies, lay London. Westward, the river dwindled out between its fringing lamps to darkness and the misty fields.

"Time for bed," said Ronnie practically. He made to close the curtains, but Aliette restrained him.

"Not yet, man."

"Why? Aren't you sleepy?"

Aliette made no answer. She seemed to have forgotten his presence. Her eyes were all for the pageant below; her ears all for the faint hum of the city which mounted, drowsily murmurous, to their high apartment. And after a little while, knowing the need for solitude upon her, Ronnie tiptoed away.

Aliette was hardly conscious of his going. It seemed to her as though--in that moment--she were aloof from him, from all men; as though her soul, wandering free, mingled with myriads of other souls whom night had liberated from their earthly bodies to hover above the city.

The little French clock on the mantelpiece ticked and ticked. Hardly she heard it ticking. The earthly minutes passed and passed, flowing under her, flowing away into the ocean of time as the river-flood flows away into the oceans of the sea. From below came sound of London's clocks chiming the quarters.

Thought died in her brain. Only the imaginative power was alive. Imagination's self died. Only her soul was alive. And, with her soul, she dreamed a dream.

She dreamed that her letter to Hector had been written, that Hector had answered it. She saw herself setting out to meet him. He had sent his car to fetch her from Embankment House. She saw herself stepping into the car. It was their old car; but the man whose back she could see through the plate-glass of the cabriolet was not their old chauffeur. "I wonder what his name is," she thought.

The car set out, noiseless. It left Embankment House behind; it crossed Putney Bridge. It came, between miles and miles of utterly empty streets, into London. A peculiar grayness, neither of the night nor of the day, a peculiar silence, almost a silence of death, brooded over London. No lights gleamed from its ghostly houses; no feet, no wheels echoed on its ghostly paving.

The car spun on, noiseless--beyond the ghostly gray into ghostly green--and now it seemed to Aliette as though the time were twilight-time; as though she were in Hyde Park; as though in a few minutes she would make the remembered door in Lancaster Gate.

"Hector's house," she thought. And the thought frightened her. She wanted not to go to Hector. She wanted Ronnie--her Ronnie. But the car spun on.

Now, faltering and afraid, she stood before the door of her husband's house. Now the door opened; and Lennard, subservient as ever, led her into the recollected hall.

Lennard vanished; and suddenly Aliette's soul knew its dream for dream.

Then the dream grew real again. Fearful and alone she stood in the chill vastness of that shadowy hall among the recollected furniture. She felt her breasts throbbing under the thin frock, felt her knees tremble as she grasped the door-handle of Hector's study.

No lights burned in the study. It was all gray, gray as the streets without. Hector was not there--only a face--a huge, cruel, unrelenting face.

"So you've come back," it said.

She moved toward the face, across the gray carpet that gave back no sound to her feet. But she could not speak with the face. Between her and the face--as a great sheet of glass--slid silence, the interminable unbearable silence of dreams. Through the glass, Aliette could see every pore in the great face, every hair of its head; but she might not speak with it, nor it with her. Then a voice, a voice as of very conscience, cried out in her: "Your strength against its strength. Your will against its will."

She felt her will beat out from her as wings beat, beat and batter at the glass between them. The glass of silence slid away; and she knew the face for Hector's. She said to it:

"Hector, I haven't come back. I'm never coming back."

"You shall," said the face, Hector's face; and now, under the face, she knew feet, her husband's feet.

At that, terror, the hopeless panic of dreams, gripped her soul by the throat, choking down speech. It seemed to her that she stood naked in that gray and silent room.

But now, as a momentary beam through the grayness, another face--the face of her lover--was added to their silent company. And again, "Your will against its will," said the voice.

Terror's fingers unclutched from her throat, so that her will spoke, "I shall never come back, Hector."

The face writhed at the words as a face in pain; and suddenly, knowing herself its master, she knew pity for the face, pity for the thing she had done. Till once more she heard the inner voice whisper: "No pity. Your strength against its strength. Your will against its will."

"But I love you," pleaded Hector. "I need you."

She said to him, "My children need me, Hector. Set me free."

And once more the glass of the silences slid between them; once more the interminable, unbearable silence of dreams held her speechless.

Tap, tap, tap. Who was that knocking on Hector's door? It must be Ronnie. Tap, tap, tap. Ronnie mustn't come in. Ronnie mustn't find her and Hector alone together.

The glass darkled. Behind the glass Aliette could see Hector's face blur and blur. The face vanished. She was alone, alone in Hector's study. She was cold, desperately cold through all her limbs.

Tap, tap, tap. She heard a voice, a human voice: "Mr. Cavendish, Mr. Cavendish. Are you there, Mr. Cavendish? You're wanted on the 'phone, Mr. Cavendish."

CHAPTER XXIV