I

Fallaray had been lunching with George Lytham at his rooms in the Albany. There had been half a dozen of the men who backed Reconstruction to meet him. From one o’clock until three every one of the numerous troubles which affected England had been discussed and argued about,—disarmament, unemployment, the triple alliance, Mesopotamia, Indian unrest, the inevitable Ireland, the German chicanery and the hot-tempered attitude of France in the matter of Ruhr; and, as though with an impish desire to invent new troubles, George Lytham had brought up the subject of Bolshevism in the universities. Every one of the men present had, of course, his own pet solution to these questions, and as usual, argument had run about like a terrier out for a walk,—backwards and forwards and in circles. Finally, with his head in a whirl, Fallaray had broken up the party to go along to the House. He was down to answer questions from the critics of the Government, and, according to his custom, to dodge the truth as far as he could. He walked out into Piccadilly with his host and together these two tall men, who were giving themselves up to an apparently abortive attempt to put together again the peace of the world—deliberately and ruthlessly smashed by the country which now whined and squealed and cried out excuses while it hid money and machine guns in secret places—made for Westminster arm in arm.

“Where’s your car?” asked young Lochinvar.

“I gave it up,” said Fallaray. “The sight of our unemployed going about in processions made the keeping of a car grotesque. I’ve tried to cut down in every other way too. If I were a bachelor, I would let the house in Dover Street, go and live in two rooms and give the money I thus saved to the fund for out-of-work soldiers. I can’t do that. There’s Feo.”

Lytham nodded and said to himself, “Yes, there’s Feo and her old scamp of a father and Gilbert Jermyn,—with nothing back from any of them, not even gratitude.” If he had stood in Fallaray’s shoes he would long since have brought an action for divorce against that woman and gone in quest of a girl who understood the rudimentary rules of sportsmanship and the art of give and take. He held in utter contempt the old adage that having made your bed it is necessary to lie upon it. What bosh that was. Wasn’t the town full of beds of every size and price? Sometimes, when he thought of the way in which Fallaray permitted himself to be run and worked and milked and used by his so-called wife and her family, by the Government, by all sorts of societies and even by himself, a huge impatience swept over him and he wanted to cry out, “Fallaray, for God’s sake, kick somebody. Don’t be so damned fair. Give a little consideration to yourself. Don’t always look at everything from everybody else’s point of view. Be selfish for a change.”

And yet, all the while, different as he was from Fallaray in nature and character—with that strong streak of ruthlessness which permitted him to climb over the bodies of his opponents—Lytham loved Fallaray and would willingly have blacked his boots. There were moments when, looking into the eyes of his friend, he saw behind them a spirit as pure, as unselfish and as merciful as that of Christ, and he stood back, almost in awe. It was all the more galling, therefore, to see his friend hipped and hedged in by the rotten tricks of his party, by the quick shifting changes of his chief and by the heavy blundering of the other old bad men. How could he stand it? Why didn’t he give it all up, get out, try and find a corner of the earth where people didn’t quarrel and cheat,—and fall in love. He needed, no man more so, the “rustle of silk.”

Fallaray was on his own chain of thought. “Hookwood’s line about the Irish leaders,” he said suddenly, “if based on any truth, makes negotiations with them futile. They have got a great deal of American money in their possession,—every Irish servant girl in the United States has been forced by the priests to subscribe to the Sinn Fein funds. We know that. But if, as Hookwood says, the Irish Republican leaders are afraid of an inquiry as to how they have spent or misspent these funds, it stands to reason that they will continue to fight tooth and nail for something which they know they can never get. It’s the only way in which they can maintain a barrier between themselves and disgrace and that brings us back to the beginning. Robert Cecil, Lord Derby, Horace Plunkett, Philip Gibbs and all the rest of us may just as well toss up the sponge. Don’t you think so, Lytham?”

“Oh, God,” said Lytham, “I’m sick of the Irish. The mere mention of the name gives me jaundice. A rabble of egomaniacs led by a set of crooks and gunmen who are no longer blessed by the Roman Catholic Church.”

After which, as this was certainly a conversation stop, there was silence. They walked down St. James’s Street into the Mall, through the Horse Guard’s parade to Parliament Street and so to the courtyard of the House of Commons. The undercurrent of excitement and activity brought about by the strike was noticeable everywhere. Military lorries carrying men and kit moved about. St. George’s barracks was alive with recruits and old soldiers going back. In and out of the Horse Guards ex-officers in mufti came and went. The girls who had served in the W. A. A. C.’s streamed back again to enroll, and through it all, sarcastic emblems of a peace that did not exist, sat the two figures on horseback in their plumes and brass.

“London enjoying itself,” said Fallaray ironically. “There is the taste of blood in the mouths of all our people. Fighting has become a habit, almost a hobby.”

And young Lochinvar nodded. Would he ever forget the similar scenes that had taken place away back in that August of ’14?

“I’m tired,” said Fallaray, with a groan. “I’m dog-tired. If Feo were not at Chilton Park this weekend, I would escape after question time and go down and lie on the earth and sleep.—Well, good by, my dear lad. Don’t be impatient with me. Bring out your numbers of Reconstruction, hit hard and truly from the shoulder and see what you can do, you young hot-heads. As for me——!”

They stood on the edge of the courtyard with all its indifferent pigeons struggling for a living, oblivious to the intricacies, secrecies and colossal egotisms of the men who passed into the House. But before they separated something happened which made both their hearts beat faster.

A tall, primly dressed elderly man, who had apparently been waiting, sprang forward, a glint of great anger in his eyes and two spots of color on his pale cheeks. He said, “Mr. Fallaray, a word with you, Sir.”

And Fallaray turned with his usual courtesy and consideration. “What can I do?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you what you can do. You can stop showing sympathy for the Irish murderers and assassins. You can stop pussyfooting. You can withdraw all your remarks about reprisals. That’s what you can do. And if you’re interested, I’ll tell you why I say so.” His voice shook and blood seemed to suffuse his pale eyes.

“My only son went all through the War from the beginning to the end. He joined as a Tommy because, as an insignificant doctor, I had no pull. He was promoted to a commission for gallantry and decorated with the M. C. for distinguished work in the field. He was wounded three times—once so severely that his life was given up—but he returned to his regiment and finally marched with it into Germany. He was almost the last officer to be demobbed. After which, failing to get employment because patriots are not required in the city, he volunteered for the Black and Tans. Last Friday afternoon, in the course of carrying out orders, he was set upon in the streets of Cork by a dozen men in masks, foully murdered and hideously desecrated. My God, Mr. Fallaray, do you wonder that my blood boils when I hear of your weak-kneed treatment of these dirty dogs?”

He stood for a moment shaking, his refined face distorted, his gentle unathletic figure quivering with rage and indignation. Then he turned on his heel and went away, walking like a drunkard.

Fallaray and George Lytham looked at each other and both of them made the same gesture of impotence.

It was a difficult world.

II

Fallaray’s position in the Cabinet was a peculiar one. It was rather like that of a disconcerting child in the house of orthodox church people who insisted on asking direct and pertinent questions on the Bible story, especially after having read Wells’s first volume of the “Outline of History.” How did Adam and Eve get into Eden? If God never sleeps, isn’t he very cross in the morning? And so on.

All through the War, Fallaray had been a thorn in the side of his chief. His honesty and his continual “why” were a source of irritation and sometimes of anger. He had no patience whatever with shiftiness, intrigue and favoritism, the appointment of mere duffers to positions of high responsibility. He made no bones whatever about expressing his opinion as to the frivolity that prevailed in certain quarters, together with the habit of dodging every grave issue. On the question of the League of Nations too, he was in close accord with Lord Robert Cecil and often made drastic criticisms of the frequent somersaults of his chief. His definite stand on the Irish question was extremely annoying to the brass-hat brigade and to the master-flounderer and weathercock, who showed himself more and more to be a mixture of Billy Sunday and Mark Anthony, crying out that black was white at one end of the town and ten minutes later that white was black at the other end. And yet, when it came to results, Fallaray might almost as well have been on the town council of Lower Muddleton as in the Cabinet of the British Government. Respected for his faithfulness to duty, he was disliked for his honesty and feared for his utter disregard for personal aggrandizement and the salary that went with it.

No wonder, therefore, that he was tired. He had been under a long and continual strain. In Parliament he found himself still dealing with the men who had suffered from brain anÆmia before the War and had, therefore, been unable ever to believe, in spite of Lord Roberts, that war was possible,—that same body of professional politicians who were mentally and physically incapable of looking at the numerous problems of the hour, the day and the week with sanity and with courage. At home—if such a word could be used for Dover Street—there was Feo, who had no more right to be under his roof than any one of the women that passed him in the street. He was a tired and lonely man on the verge of complete disillusionment, disappointed with his fellow Ministers and deeply disappointed with the suspicion and jealousy which had grown up between England and her allies. It seemed to him, also, that the blank refusal of the United States to have anything to do with the League of Nations, even as revised from the original draft of President Wilson, the Messiah who had failed to function mainly because of the personal spite of the Republican leaders, jeopardized the future of the world and gave Germany a springboard which one of these days she would not fail to use. In spite of her reluctantly made promises, she was very busy inventing new and diabolical weapons of war and taking out patents for them in Washington, while pretending to observe the laws laid down by the Allies as to her disarmament and the manufacture of war materials under her treaty obligations. Krupps had designed new methods of artillery fire control, new fuses for projectiles, new gas engines, new naval fire-control devices, new parts for airplanes, new chemicals and new radio apparatuses. To what end? In the face of these facts he could perfectly well understand the French attitude, hysterical as it seemed to be. They knew her for a liar, a cheat and an everlasting enemy and whenever Fallaray returned from those interminable conferences in Paris, he did so with the recollection upon him of something in the eyes of Foch and other Frenchmen whose love of country was a religion that put a touch of fear into his soul. What were they all doing, these politicians of England, of the United States, of Italy? Were they not those very same ostriches who during all the years that led up to the War had hidden their heads in the sand,—the same heads, precisely the same sand?

As he entered the House that afternoon to be heckled with questions which he dared not answer truthfully, he wished that he had been born not to politics but to sportsmanship. He wished that he had carried on his undergraduate love of games, had kept himself fit, had joined the army as a subaltern in August, ’14, and had found the German bullet upon which his name had been written. In such a way, at any rate, he could better have served his country than by being at that grave moment an impotent piece on the political chessboard. Both publically and privately this man felt himself to be a failure. In the House of Commons he was more or less friendless, regarded as an unreliable party man. In his home he was a lodger, ignored by the woman who ran his house. He was without love, joy, kindness, the interest and devotion of any one sweet person who could put her soft fingers on his forehead and give him back his optimism. He was like Samson shackled to the windlass which he pushed round and round with gradually diminishing strength.

III

Lola spent the afternoon with Ernest Treadwell. Loyalty to her old friend took her to the public library on her way back to lunch to ask him to fetch her for a little walk in the afternoon. The flash of joy that came into that boy’s eyes at the sight of her rewarded her well and sufficiently. To tell the truth, she would much have preferred to devote the whole of that afternoon to daydreams, but she knew, no one better, the peculiar temperament of young Treadwell and his hungry need of the inspiration which she alone could give him. But just as the boy arrived, a telegram was handed in addressed abruptly to “Breezy, 77 Queen’s Road, Bayswater.” It was opened, naturally enough, by John, who, to the astonishment of half a dozen customers, emitted a howl of rage. Getting up from his chair behind the glass screen, he wobbled into the back parlor where Lola was seated with Ernest, deciding as to whether they should take the motor bus to Wimbleton Common or the train to Windsor. With an air of comic drama, though he did not intend it to be comic, the watchmaker flung the telegram upon the crowded table. The remains of lunch hobnobbed with kodaks, tissue paper, balls of string and empty cardboard boxes. The telegram fell on a pat of butter and to Ernest Treadwell’s imaginative eye it looked like a hand grenade stuck into a blob of clay. To him, somehow, there was always something sinister about a telegram. Was this one going to ruin the brief happiness of his afternoon?

It was from Feo and ran like this. “I shall need you at six o’clock. Sorry. You had better be at Dover Street at five-thirty. Am dining in town.”

Lola read these words over again and again. Windsor was impossible. Even the trip to Wimbleton Common could not be made. But how was this going to affect the Carlton at seven-thirty? She longed above all things once more to get into the clothes and the proper social surroundings of Madame de BrÉzÉ, and hear people talking what had become her own language and listen to the music of a good orchestra. She felt that she deserved another adventure with Chalfont. This erratic twist by Lady Feo, whose movements seemed that week-end to resemble those of the woodcock, shattered all these plans. At least,—did they? Not if she knew it.

“Well, there it is,” she said and gave the telegram to Ernest Treadwell, who had been watching her face with the most painful anxiety. “She who must be obeyed. I’m afraid this means that all we can do is to wander about for a couple of hours and that our little jaunt to Windsor must be postponed. And we never went to Hampton Court to see the crocuses, did we? Bad luck.”

But while she was speaking, her brain was hitting all its cylinders and racing ahead. She would go to the Carlton, Lady Feo or no Lady Feo. She would get her dress from Mrs. Rumbold, with her shoes and stockings, and take them to Dover Street. She would have to dress at Dover Street, bribe Ellen to get her a taxicab and slip down at twelve o’clock to let her in to the area door. That must be the plan of action, whatever the risks might be.

She sprang to her feet and flung an arm round her father’s neck,—her disappointed, affectionate father who had looked forward to a merry evening at the local music hall and to one of the old-time Sundays when he could march out in his best clothes and show off Lola to the neighbors. “It’s life, Daddy,” she said. “It can’t be helped. You have your wrist watches. I have Lady Feo. What’s the good of grumbling? Tell Mother when you get the chance. At the moment she is busy and mustn’t be disturbed. Come on, Ernest, let’s go.”

But Ernest had other views, now that the country was impossible. “I’ve got something in my pocket I want to read to you,” he said. “Might we go up to the drawing-room, do you think?”

That was excellent. That made things ever so much easier. She could give Ernest until four o’clock or a little after and then get rid of him, go round to Mrs. Rumbold and get eventually to Dover Street in time to have everything ready for Lady Feo on her arrival.

And so they went upstairs and opened up the aloof room, with its persistent and insular odor of the Sabbath and antimacassars, and drew up chairs to the window. The row of houses opposite, which had been converted into shops, was bathed in the afternoon sun. A florist’s windows alight with flowers looked like a line from Tennyson in the middle of a financial article in a newspaper. Traffic roared in the street below but did not quite succeed in drowning a weather-beaten piano accompanying a throaty baritone singing, “She dwelt amid the untrodden wiys.—And h’oh the differ-rence ter me.”

With a thoughtfulness that seemed to Ernest Treadwell to be exquisite, Lola shut the window so that she might not miss a single word that she was about to hear. Without any preliminaries and with the colossal egotism that is part and parcel of all writing, the young librarian took from his pocket a wad of manuscript, and in a deadly monotone commenced to read his epic. It was in blank verse and ran to about sixteen pages. It retold the old story of Paola and Francesca, not in the manner of Stephen Phillips and not in imitation of Masefield or any of the younger poets, but in the Treadwell way,—jerky, explosive and here and there out of key; but for all that filled with a rough picturesqueness and passion, with a quite extraordinary sense of color and feeling which held Lola breathless from beginning to end. It was this boy’s greatest effort, on which he had been working for innumerable months, burning the midnight oil with the influence of Lola upon him, and his great love which lifted him into ecstasy.—And when he had finished and ventured to look into her face, he saw there something that crowned his head with laurels and filled his heart with tears.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.—Ernie, you’ve done it. It’s beautiful. You are a poet. However far behind them all, you are in the line of great singers.” And she reached out for the manuscript and saw that on the first page, in angular boyish writing, were the words, “To Lola,—of whom I dream.”

Simpkins, Treadwell, Chalfont,—but, oh, where was Fallaray, her hero, the man who needed love?

IV

When Feo bounced into her room a little after five-thirty she found a perfectly composed and efficient Lola who had laid out a selection of her mistress’s most recent frocks with the accompanying shoes and stockings. There was nothing about the girl to indicate her latent excitement and her determination under any circumstances to keep her appointment at the Carlton. The cardboard box from Mrs. Rumbold’s was up in her room. Ellen had been interviewed and had promised to slip down and open the area door at twelve o’clock.

Feo nodded and gave one of her widest smiles. “Good for you, Lola,” she said. “If you had been out for the day or something, I should, of course, have been able to do my hair, dress and get off,—but not so well as when you’re here. If it came to a push I suppose I could do everything for myself, even cook my breakfast; but I should hate it and it wouldn’t give me any pleasure.—That one,” she said, and pointed to a most peculiar frock that looked like the effort of that overconscientious chameleon when it endeavored to imitate the tartan of the Gordon Highlanders. It was a very chaos of colors, but she was in the highest spirits and evidently felt in a riotous mood. And while she gave herself up to Lola, in order to have a few deep waves put in her wiry bobbed hair, she babbled as though she were talking to Mrs. Malwood or one of her other particular friends.

“I don’t know what the devil’s happened to this week-end,” she said. “Every blessed thing’s gone wrong. That glossy scoundrel at Chilton,—good Lord, I must be more careful,—and all those dullards at Aylesbury! We played bridge nearly all night and no one ever doubled. It was like going to a race meeting and finding the anti-vice brigade where the bookies ought to be. I simply couldn’t stay there another night, so I slept until four o’clock this afternoon, had a cup of tea in my room and dashed up. To-night I hope for better things. An old friend of mine—and really old friends have their points—got back from India yesterday. I saw his name in the paper and rang him up at the Rag. We’re going to dine and dance and so forth, quite like old times; so do your best with me, Lola. I haven’t seen this man for five years.—Don’t allow any of them to remain round my eyes.—Oh, by the way, I’m really awfully sorry to have smashed up your plans and I don’t see how you can go back to your father and mother to-morrow because I shall want to be dressed about ten o’clock and I shall be home again to sleep. So it pretty well rots your day, Lola. Never mind, I’ll see that you have a little holiday before long.”

And she smiled up into Lola’s face and for the moment looked very womanly and charming and perfectly sincere. For all her curious tangents and unexpected twists and the peculiar hardness and unscrupulous selfishness that she brought into her dealings with every one, this woman had good points; and even when she hurt her friends deeply she had an unexplainable knack of retaining their loyalty. She really liked Lola and admired her and would have gone very far out of her way to look after her.—The pity of it was that she had not been born a man.

She babbled on while Lola polished her up and did all those quite unnecessary things which modern life has invented for women before they will show themselves to the public. In the frankest possible way and without the least reserve she roughed out the history of the man who had come back,—a pucca soldier who had been in India since the War and was one of Feo’s earliest friends. He had loved her violently, been turned down for Fallaray and had never married. It so happened that he had not seen Feo during his periods of leave while the War was on and had told her over the telephone that if he didn’t see her then, at once, he’d either have apoplexy or be taken to Bow Street for smashing the town. Feo laughed when she repeated this.

“And he would too,” she said. “He’s just that sort. Those tall, dark men with a dash of the Oriental in them somewhere go through life with the apparent indifference of a greyhound until the bursting point comes, and when they give way,—whew, look out for the splinters.”

She was excited,—almost as excited as Lola was. And finally, dressed and scented, with her nails pink and her full lips reddened, she had never looked more characteristically Feo, more virile, more audacious, more thoroughbred and at the same time more bizarre. “Now for the Ritz,” she said (Ah, then the Carlton was safe), turned at the door and in a moment of impulse took a diamond bracelet from her wrist and pitched it at Lola as though it were a tennis ball. “You’re a jolly good sportsman, child,” she added, with her widest smile.

All the way downstairs she sang an aria from “Le Coq d’Or,”—a strange, wistful, moonlit thing.—And hardly had she gone before Lola seated herself at the dressing table, where she commenced those operations which would transform her also into a woman of the world.

V

And then, with her nose in the air and her hands folded over her tummy, Miss Breezy marched into the dressing room. “Oh,” she said, which was quite enough.

And Lola sprang to her feet, caught in the act of using her mistress’s make-up. But it was so long, or it seemed to be so long, since she had held any conversation with her aunt that nearly all sense of relationship had faded out. This was Miss Breezy the housekeeper, natural enemy of servants and on the lookout especially to find something which would form the basis of an unfavorable report in regard to Lola.

“Good afternoon, Miss Breezy.”

“Oh, don’t be absurd. I’m your aunt and there’s no getting away from it. This playing of parts makes me impatient.” Her tone was snappy but there was, oddly enough, nothing antagonistic in her expression. On the contrary—and this put Lola immediately on her guard—there was all about her a new air of armistice, an obvious desire to call off unfriendly relations and bury the hatchet.

The thought that ran through Lola’s head was, “What does she want to know?”

With a touch of the adventurous spirit for which Lola had not given her credit, the good lady, who had recently somewhat increased in bulk, clambered into Feo’s extraordinary chair, in which she looked exactly as if she were waiting to have a tooth filled. Her thinning hair, streaked with white, was scrupulously drawn away from her forehead. Her black shiny dress was self-consciously plain and prim, and she wore those very ugly elastic-sided boots with patent leather tips that are always somehow associated with Philistinism. She might have been the Chairwoman of a Committee of Motion Picture Censorship. “I spent Thursday evening with your mother and father,” she said. “I’m glad to hear business is improving. Young Treadwell was there,—a precocious sort of person, I thought.”

“A poet,” said Lola.

“Poet, eh? Yes, I thought he was something of that sort. If I were his mother I’d spank the poetry out of him. What do we want poets for? Might as well have fiddlers to imitate whatever the man’s name was who played frivolous tunes when some place or other was burning. Men should work these days, not write sloppy things about gravestones.”

“He’ll make his mark,” said Lola.

“You should say a scratch,” corrected Miss Breezy. “However, that isn’t the point. It appears that Simpkins has become a friend of the family.”

Ah, so that was it. She had heard the gossip about Simpky and it was curiosity, not kindness, which had brought her into the dressing room.

“Simpkins,” said Miss Breezy, “is a warm member. His father left him some money and he has saved. For Ellen, for Elizabeth or even for Annie, whose father is a Baptist minister, he would make a very desirable husband. I have nothing to say against him—for them,” and she looked Lola fully and firmly in the eyes.

And Lola nodded with entire agreement, adding, “Simpky is a good man.”

“So there’s nothing in that, then? Is that what you mean?”

“Nothing,” replied Lola.

And Miss Breezy gave a sigh of relief. It was bad enough for her niece to have become a lady’s maid.

Would she go now? Or was there something else at the back of her mind?

For several minutes Miss Breezy babbled rather garrulously about a number of quite extraneous things. She talked about the soldiers in the park, the coal strike, what was likely to happen during the summer, the effect of unemployment on prices, all obviously for the purpose of presently pouncing hawk-like on the unsuspecting Lola,—who, as a matter of fact, had no intention of falling into any trap. “In yesterday’s Daily Looking Glass,” she said suddenly, “there was a short paragraph that set me thinking. I don’t remember the exact wording but it was something like this. ‘A short time ago a beautiful young French woman, bearing a name which occupies several interesting chapters in the past history of her country, paid a brief visit to London, dined at the Savoy with one of our best known generals and disappeared as though she had melted with the morning dew. The said general, we hear on the best authority, was distraught and conducted several days’ search for his dinner companion. Inquiries were made at every hotel in town without success until the name of de BrÉzÉ became quite well known.”

Lola had caught her breath at the beginning of this quotation which Miss Breezy obviously knew by heart, and had metaphorically clapped her hand over her mouth to prevent herself from crying out. But knowing that her aunt would turn round and fix her analytical eye upon her, Lola immediately adopted an attitude of mild impersonal interest.

The eye duly came, in fact both eyes, and they found Lola polite and unconcerned, the well-trained lady’s maid who was forced to listen to the gossip of her overseer. So that was what it was! Good Heavens, how much did this woman know? And was she, acting on instinct, going to stay in that room until it would be too late for Lola to dress and keep her appointment “with one of our best known generals”? Never before had Lola hung so breathlessly on her aunt’s words.

“Did you read these lines by any chance?”

“No,” said Lola.

“I asked your father if there was anybody of the old name in France and he said he didn’t think so. He said he understood from his grandfather that the name would die with him. It had already become Breezy in England. Somehow or other, I think this is rather strange.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lola. “You see these famous names are never allowed to die right out. This Madame de BrÉzÉ is probably an actress who is just using the name to suit herself. It has a good ring to it.”

“That may be so, and it’s true that actresses help themselves to any name that takes their fancy. You, I remember, when you threatened to go into the chorus, talked about claiming relationship with Madame de BrÉzÉ.” And again she darted a sharp look at Lola.

“I have the right to do that,” said Lola quietly, but with a very rapid pulse.

“Well, sometimes I go out of my way to satisfy a whim. It so happens that I have a friend in the detective department at Scotland Yard. I’ve asked him to keep his eye open for me and let me know what he finds out. As soon as he comes to me with any definite information, I’ll share it with you, Lola, you may be sure.”

“Oh, thank you, Auntie. That’s very kind of you.”

But being unable to force back a tide of color that swept slowly over her, Lola opened a drawer in the dressing table and began to put back the various implements that she had used upon her mistress and herself. To think of it! It was likely, then, that she was to be watched in future and that presently, perhaps, the story of her harmless adventures would become the property of her aunt and her parents, of Treadwell and Simpkins, and that the detective, whom she could picture with a toothbrush moustache and flat feet, would one day march into the rooms of General Sir Peter Chalfont and say to him, “Do you know that your friend Madame de BrÉzÉ is a lady’s maid in the employment of the wife of Mr. Fallaray?”

With the peculiar satisfaction of one who has succeeded in making some one else extraordinarily uncomfortable, Miss Breezy gathered herself together, scrambled out of the chair which might have belonged to a dentist and left the room like an elderly peahen who had done her duty by the world.

And then, having locked the door, Lola returned to the dressing table. “Detective or no detective, I shall dine at the Carlton to-night,” she said to herself. “You see if I don’t.”

VI

“I want you to meet my sister, one day soon,” said Chalfont. “She’s a good sort. You’ll like her.”

“I’m sure I shall,” said Lola. “Will she like me?”

Chalfont laughed and answered the question with a look of complete admiration. Who could help liking a girl so charming, so frank, so cool, whose love of life was so young and so peculiarly unspoilt? “You would do her good,” he said. “Her husband was killed a week before the armistice. She adored him and is a lonely soul. No children, and will never marry again. She’s looking after my place in Devonshire, buried alive. But I’ve persuaded her to come to London and hook on to things a bit and I’ll bring you together one day next week,—if you’re not going to disappear again. Are you?”

Lola shrugged her shoulders. “So far as I know at present, my plans will keep me in town until the end of June.” How could she be more definite than that?

So Chalfont had to be satisfied and hope for the best. It was not his habit to drive people into a corner and force confidences. He had told Lola where he was to be found and she had promised to keep in touch with him. That, at any rate, was good. “We haven’t decided where to go to-night,” he said. “Don’t you think we’d better make up our minds?”

Lola rose from the table. The pleasant dining room at the Carlton was still well-filled, and the band was playing one of those French things with an irresistible march time which carry the mind immediately to the Alcazar and conjure up a picture of an outdoor stage crowded with dancing figures seen through a trickle of cigarette smoke and gently moving branches of young leaves. “Don’t let’s make up our minds what we’ll do till we get to the very doors. Then probably one or other of us will have a brain wave. In any case I’m very happy. I’ve loved every minute of this evening and it’s so nice to be with you again.”

Chalfont touched her arm. He could not resist the temptation. “I’d sell my soul in return for a dozen such nights,” he said, and there was a Simpkins quiver in his voice and a Treadwell look of adoration in his eyes. He was in uniform, having later to return to the Guards encampment in Kensington Gardens. They passed through the almost empty lounge into the hall with its cases of discreet, ruinous jewelry on the walls under gleaming lights, and there a man in plain clothes drew himself up as Chalfont approached and clicked his heels.

“Oh, hello, Ellingham,” said Chalfont. “How are you, my dear chap? Thought you were in India.”

“I was, Sir. Got back yesterday. Curious place, London, by Jove.”

Chalfont turned to Lola. “Madame de BrÉzÉ, may I introduce my friend Colonel Ellingham?”

Those tall dark men with a touch of the Oriental in them somewhere—Lola caught her breath, but managed to smile and say the conventional thing.

But at the sound of her voice, the woman who had been standing with her back to them, talking to the obsequious maÎtre d’hÔtel, whirled round. It was Feo—Feo with her eyes wide and round and full of the most astonishing mischief and amusement—Feo with her mouth half open as though she were on the point of bursting into a huge laugh. Lola, that discreet little Lola, that little London mouse, niece of the stiff old Breezy, daughter of those little people in Queen’s Road, Bayswater, with a brigadier general, if you please, the famous Sir Peter Chalfont with a comic cork arm to catch whom every match-making mother had spread her net for years!

Without turning a hair, Lola held out her hand impulsively. “My dear,” she said in a ringing voice, “I thought you said that you were going to the Ritz.”

Her own words as she had left her dressing room came back into Feo’s mind. “You’re a jolly good sportsman, child.”—Well, although she could hardly believe her eyes and the incident opened up the widest range of incredulity, she would show this astonishing girl that there were other sportsmen about. “We went to the Ritz,” she replied, as though to one of her “gang,” “but it looked hideously depressing and so we came on here.” And she went forward and put her arm around Lola’s shoulder in her most affectionate way. How well her old frock came out on that charming figure. She suspected the shoes and stockings. “So this is what you do, Lola, when the cat’s away!”

And Lola laughed and said, “Oh, but doesn’t one deserve a little holiday from time to time?”

“Of course,—and you who are so devoted to good causes.”

“The best of causes and the most beautiful.” Lola would return the ball until she dropped.

Feo knew this and had mercy, but there was an amazing glint in her eyes. The little monkey!

It was obvious to Lola that Feo had not met Chalfont or else that she had met him and was not on speaking terms. Either way how could she resist the chance that had been brought about by this extraordinary contretemps. So she said, “Lady Feo, may I introduce my old friend, Sir Peter Chalfont,—Lady Feodorowna Fallaray.”

It so happened that these two had not met,—although Feo’s was not the fault. It was that Chalfont disliked the lady and had gone deliberately out of his way to avoid her acquaintance. He bowed profoundly.—Lola, her name was Lola. What a dear little name.

“We’ve got a box at the Adelphi,” said Feo. “Berry’s funny and Grossmith’s always good. There’s room for four. Won’t you come?” What did she care at the moment whether this invitation made Ellingham’s eyes flick with anger or not. All this was too funny for words.—That little monkey!

“Thanks so much,” said Lola, with a slight drawl, “but it so happens that we’re going round to the House of Commons to hear a debate. Perhaps we can foregather some other night.” And she looked Feo full in the face, as cool as a fish.

It didn’t matter what was said after that. There was a murmur from the other three and a separation, Ellingham marching the laughing Feo away, Chalfont crossing over to the hatroom, greatly relieved. Lola, alone for a moment, stood in the middle of what seemed to be an ocean of carpet under hundreds of thousands of lights, with her heart playing ducks and drakes, but with a sense of thrill and exultation that were untranslatable. “What a sportsman,” she thought.—“But of course she noticed her stockings.”

And when Chalfont returned to her side he said, “I don’t like your knowing that woman. You seem frightfully pally. You didn’t tell me that she was a great friend of yours.”

“Well,” said Lola, “I haven’t told you very much of anything, have I? That’s because I like to hear you talk, I suppose.”

“You draw me out,” said Chalfont apologetically. “But what’s all this about the House of Commons? First I’ve heard of it.”

“Oh, just an idea,” said Lola lightly. “Couldn’t you wangle it?” She had caught the word from him.

“I don’t know a blessed soul in that monkey shop, except Fallaray.”

“Who better?” asked Lola. “Let’s go round, send in your name and ask Mr. Fallaray for a card.”

“My dear Lola—I beg your pardon, I mean, my dear Madame de BrÉzÉ—if you remember, Fallaray didn’t know me from Adam that night at the Savoy. I really don’t think I can push myself in like that, if you’ll forgive me. Let’s take a chance at the Gaiety. No one’s going to the theater just now. There’s sure to be plenty of room.”

By this time they were in the street, with a huge commissionaire waiting for a glance from Chalfont to bring up a taxi with his silver whistle. It was another lovely night, clear and warm and windless,—a night that would have been admirable for Zeppelins. Lola went over to the curb and looked up at all the stars and at the middle-aged moon. Think of that light so white and soft on the old gardens of Chilton Park.—“Don’t let’s go in to a fuggy building,” she said. “Let’s walk. London’s very beautiful at night. If you won’t take me to the House of Commons, at any rate walk as far as the Embankment. I want to see the river. I want to see the little light gleaming over Parliament. It’s just a whim.”

“Anything you say,” said Chalfont. What did it matter where they went, so long as they were together? Lola,—so that was her name.

VII

They crossed to Trafalgar Square, the figure of Nelson silhouetted against the sky. They went down Northumberland Avenue to the Embankment and crossed the road to the river side. The tide was high but the old river was deserted and sullen. Westminster Bridge faced them, alive with little lights, and on the opposite bank the dark buildings ran along until they joined the more cheerful looking St. Thomas’s Hospital, whose every window was alight. Pre-war derelicts who were wont to clutter the numerous seats were back again in their old places, their dirty ranks swelled by members of the great new army of unemployed. Many of these had borne arms for England and wore service ribbons on their greasy waistcoats. Two or three of them, either from force of habit or in a spirit of irony and burlesque, sprang up as Chalfont approached and saluted. It threw a chill through his veins as they did so,—those gallant men who had come to such a pass. The House of Commons and the Victoria Tower loomed ahead of them.

To Chalfont, Parliament stood as a mere talking shop in which a number of uninspired egotists schemed and struggled in order to cling to office and salaries while the rest answered to the crack of the party whip and used whatever influence they had for self-advertisement,—commercializing the letters which they had bought the right to place against their names. He detested the place and the people it sheltered and regarded it as a great sham, a sepulchre of misplaced hopes and broken promises. But to Lola, who walked silently at his side, it symbolized the struggles of Fallaray, stood dignified and with a beautiful sky line as the building in which that man might some day take his place as the inspired leader of a bewildered and a patient country. And as she walked along on the pavement which had been worn by the passing of many feet, glancing from time to time at the water over which a pageant of history had passed, her heart swelled and her love seemed to throw a little white light round her head. Was it so absurd, so grotesque, that she should have in a sort of way grown up for and given herself to this man who had only seen her once and probably forgotten her existence? Sometimes it seemed to her not only to be absurd and grotesque but impudent,—she, the daughter of the Breezys of Queen’s Road, Bayswater, the maid who put waves into the wiry bobbed hair of an irresponsible lady of fashion, and who, from time to time, masqueraded in the great city under the name of a relative long since dead and forgotten. Nevertheless, a tiny figure at the side of Chalfont, her soul flowered at that moment and she knew that she would very willingly be burnt at the stake like Joan of Arc if, by so doing, she could rub away from Fallaray’s face even one or two of the lines of loneliness which life had put upon it.

Chalfont was silent, because he was wondering how far he dared to go with this girl who had talked about a “wee mystery” and who did not hold him in sufficient confidence to tell him where she lived or let him see her home. This was only the second time that he had met her and he asked himself with amazement whether it could be true that he was ready to sacrifice career, position and everything else for her sake. There were other women who had flitted across his line of vision and with whom he had passed the time. They had left him untouched, unmoved, a confirmed bachelor. But during the days that he had spent in an eager search for Lola he knew that this child had conquered him and brought him down with a crash. He didn’t give a single curse who she was, where she came from or what was this mystery to which she referred. He loved her. He wanted her, and he would go through fire and water to make her his wife. And having come to that conclusion, he broke the silence hitherto disturbed only by the odd wailing of machinery on the other side of the river and by the traffic passing over Westminster Bridge like fireflies. He put his hand under Lola’s elbow, stopped her and drew her to the stonework of the embankment. “In an hour or two,” he said, “I suppose you will disappear again and not give me another thought until you cry out, ‘Horse, horse, play with me,’ and there isn’t a horse. I can’t let that happen.”

Instinct and the subconscious inheritance of a knowledge of men kept Lola from asking why not. The question would obviously provide Chalfont with a dangerous cue.

So Chalfont went on unhelped. He said, “Look here, let’s have all this out. I want you to marry me. I want you to be perfectly frank and treat me fairly. You’re a widow and you appear to be alone. I don’t want to force your hand or ask you to haul down your fourth wall. Nor do I hope that you will care more about me than any girl after two meetings. I just want to know this. Are there any complications? Is there anything in the way of my seeing you day after day and doing my utmost to show you that I love you more than anything on earth?”

Simpkins, Treadwell, Chalfont. But where, oh, where was Fallaray?

Lola didn’t know what to say. What was there in her that did these things to men? She looked up into Chalfont’s face and shook her head. “You’re a knight,” she said. “You stand in silver armor with a crusader’s cross on your chest. You came to my rescue and proved that there are good men in this world. You have made an everlasting friend of me but,—I love some one else. Oh, Sir Peter Chalfont, I love some one else. He doesn’t know it. He may never know it. I may never see him again. I may die of love like a field daisy put in a dry vase, but when I cross the Bridge I shall wait until he comes, loving him still.”

Leaning on the parapet side by side they watched the waters go by, dark and solemn, undisturbed even by the passing of a barge, licking the stonework away below. And as they stood there, moved to great emotion, Big Ben sang the hour. It was ten o’clock. On a seat behind them four men were grouped in attitudes of depression,—hungry, angry. A little way to their right stood that place in which the so-called leaders sat up to their necks in the problems of the world, impotent, bewildered.

And finally Chalfont said, “I see. Well, I wish you luck, little Lola, and I congratulate you on loving like that. Oddly enough, we both love like that. I wish to God——”

And as Lola moved away she put her hand through his arm as a sister might have done, which was better than nothing; and they walked back along that avenue of broken men, that street of weary feet, up Northumberland Avenue and back into the lights and the whirl. “I think I’ll leave you now,” said Lola. “There’s a cold hand on my heart. I want to be alone.”

And so, without a word, Chalfont hailed a passing taxi, opened the door, handed Lola in, and stood back, very erect, very simple, with his cork arm most uncomic. And before the cab started he flung up his left hand to the peak of his cap, not as though saluting a company of boy scouts or a queen, but the woman he loved, the woman he would always love, the woman for whom he would wait on the other side of the Bridge.

And all the way to Dover Street Lola wept.

VIII

In the servants’ sitting room Simpkins was sitting alone, not reading, not smoking; thinking of Lola and of the inn at Wargrave which had become so detestable,—a dead ambition, the ghost of a dream. And when the door opened and Lola let herself in, tear-stained, he sprang to his feet, gazing in amazement. Lola—dressed like a lady—crying.—But she held up her hand, went swiftly across the room and out, upstairs. She was back an hour and a half too soon. There was no need for Ellen to slip down and open the door. The evening had been a dismal failure. It would be a long time before she would play Cinderella again,—although the Prince loved her and had told her so.

But instead of going through the door which led to the servants’ quarters, she stood for a moment in the corridor through which Simpkins had taken her when she had first become an inmate of that house and once more she stayed there against the tapestry with a cold hand on her heart. Simpkins loved her. Treadwell loved her. Chalfont loved her, but oh, where was Fallaray? What a little fool she had been ever to suppose, in her wildest dreams, that Fallaray, Fallaray would see her and stop to speak, set alight by the love in her eyes! What a silly little fool.

A door opened and Fallaray came out,—his shoulders rounded, his Savonarola face pale and lined with sleeplessness. At the sight of the charming little figure in evening dress he drew up. Mrs. Malwood perhaps, or another of Feo’s friends. She was entertaining again, of course.

And Lola trembled like a frightened bird, with great tears welling from her eyes.

Fallaray was puzzled. This child did not look like one of Feo’s friends,—and why was she crying? He knew the face, he remembered those wide-apart eyes. They had followed him into his work, into his dreams,—de BrÉzÉ, de BrÉzÉ,—the Savoy, the Concert.

He held out his hand. “Madame de BrÉzÉ,” he said, “what have they done to you?”

And she shook her head again, trembling violently.

And Fallaray, with the old curious tingle running through his veins, was helpless. If she wouldn’t tell him what was the matter, what was he to do? He imagined that some flippancy or some sarcasm had wounded this astonishing girl and she had fled from the drawing-room and lost her way. But women were unknown to him, utter strangers, and he was called to work. He said, “My wife’s room is there,” stood irresolute for a moment, although his brain was filled with the songs of birds, and bowed and went away.

And when Lola heard the street door close, she moved like a bird shot through the wings, fumbled her way to the passage which led to her servant’s bedroom and flung herself face downwards upon her bed. What was it in her that did these things to every man,—except Fallaray?