I

Fallaray was to meet Lola at the gate in the wall at four o’clock. He wanted to show her how the vale looked in the light of the afternoon sun. But it was a long time to wait because, instead of going to bed after he had taken Lola to Lady Cheyne’s cottage at the moment when a line in the sky behind it had been rubbed by a great white thumb, he had walked up and down the terrace and watched the dawn push the night away and break upon him with a message of freedom.

He paced up and down while the soft blur of the valley came out into the clear detail of corn fields, rolling acres of grass, sheep dotted, a long white ribbon of road twisting among villages, each one marked by the delicate spire of an old church, spinneys of young trees and clumps of old ones, gnarled and twisted and sometimes lonely, standing like the sentinels that receive “the secret whispers of each other’s watch.”

He stood up to the new day honestly and without shame. Like a man who suddenly breaks away from a Brotherhood with whose creeds he has found himself no longer in sympathy, he rejoiced in his release. Lola had come to him at the moment when he was lying on his oars at the entrance to a backwater. He had been in the main river too long, pulling his arms out against the stream. He was tired. It was utterly beyond argument that he had failed. He had nothing in him of the stuff that goes to the making of a pushing politician. He detested and despised the whole unholy game of politics. In addition, he had come to the dangerous age in the life of a man, especially the ascetic man. He was forty. He had never allowed himself to listen to the rustle of silk. He had kept his eyes doggedly on what he had conceived to be his job, wifeless. And when Lola came, the magnet of her sex drew him not only without a struggle but with an insatiable hunger into the side of life against which Feo had slammed the door, leaving him stultified and disgusted. He had welcomed in this girl what he now regarded as the unmet spirit of his adolescence, and he fell to her as only such a man can fall. The fact that she loved him and had told him of her love with the astounding simplicity of a child gave the whole thing a beauty, a depth and permanence that made him regard the future with wonder and delight, though not yet with any definite plan. At present this volte face was too astonishing, too new in its happening, to be dissected and balanced up. For a few days at least he wanted irresponsibility, for a change. He wanted, like a man wrecked on the shore of Eden, to explore into beauty and dally, unseen, with love. The time was not yet for a decision as to which way he would go, when, as was certain, some one would discover the wreckage and send out a rescue party. He had promised himself a holiday and all the more now he would insist upon its enjoyment. Whether at the end of it he would refuse ever to go back into the main stream, or go back and take Lola with him, were questions that he was not yet formulating in his mind. But as to one thing he was certain, even then. Lola was his; she had brought back his youth like a miracle, and he would never let her out of his sight.

He breakfasted in his library, ignoring the papers. Their daily story of chaos made more chaotic by the lamentable blundering of fools and knaves, seemed to deal with a world out of which he had dropped, hanging to a parachute. He went smiling through the morning, watching the clock with an impatience that was itself a pleasure. He felt the strange exhilaration of having lived his future with all his past to spend, of returning as a student to a school in which he had performed the duties of a Master. And there were times when he drew up short and sent out a great boyish laugh that echoed through his house, at the paradox of it all. And once, but only once, he stood outside himself and saw that he was placing his usefulness upon the altar of passion. And before he leaped back into his skin and while yet he retained his sanity and cold logic, he saw that he loved Lola for her golden hair and wide-apart eyes, her red lips and tingling hand, her young sweet body,—but not her soul, not the intangible thing in a woman that keeps a man’s love when passion passes. But to this he said, “I am young again. I have the need and the right. When I have had time to find her soul, she shall have my quiet love.”

And finally, at three o’clock, with an hour still to drive away, he went down to the gate in the wall, eager and insatiable to wait for the rustle of silk.

II

Lady Cheyne had encouraged her flock to lateness in order that she might lock the door after Lola had come back. She was terrified of burglars, and although she had sold most of her pearls and diamonds to help her various protÉgÉs over rainy days, she shuddered at the thought of being disclosed by a flash light to a probably unshaven man. Nothing could shake her from her belief that a man who could go bearded after five o’clock in the afternoon must be a criminal,—and this in spite of the fact that she had lived among artists for years. But she was a woman who cultivated irrational idiosyncrasies as other women collect old fans or ancient snuffboxes. She would never live in a flat, for instance, because if she passed away in one it would be so dreadfully humiliating to be taken down to the street in a lift, head first.

Becoming irritable from want of sleep, she had kept everybody up until two in the morning, by which hour even Salo had ceased from Impfing and Willy could Pouff no more. Zalouhou, who was as natural as a dog, had yawned hugely. And then, sending her party up to bed, she had proved the sublimity of her kindness by doing something that she had never done before. She had left a lamp burning in the hall and the front door wide open.

It was four o’clock when, a very light sleeper, she woke at the sound of creaking stairs and went out, giving Lola time to arrive at her room, to peer over the banisters to see that the lamp was out and the front door closed. Then, returning to bed, she lay in great rotundity and with a wistful smile, to think back to the days when she had been as young and slim as Lola and just as much in love.

It was not until after breakfast, at which Lola did not appear, that she became aware of a curiosity that was like the bite of a mosquito. Where had that girl been all those hours and who was the man? But it was not a sinister curiosity, all alive to gather gossip and spread innuendoes, as women give so much to do. It was the desire to share, however distantly, in what she had at once imagined was a Great Romance. Age had turned sentiment into sentimentality in this kind fat lady and she thought of everything to do with the heart in capital letters. Lola’s words in Mrs. Rumbold’s parlor came back to her. “It’s love and adoration and long-deferred hope,” and she was stirred to a great sympathy. Shutting the drawing-room door upon the after-breakfast rush to music, she went upstairs to Lola’s room in the newest wing, distressed at her inability to creep. The dear thing was in her care and must be looked after.

It was nearly midday and the house had echoed with scales and badinage, bursts of operatic laughter and pÆans of soprano praise to the gift of life for an hour and more. And so, of course, she expected to find her young friend lying in a daydream, reluctantly awake. But when she opened the door of Lola’s room as quietly as she could, it was to see the silver frock spilt upon the floor like a pool of moonlight and the girl lying under the bedclothes in the attitude of a child in irresistible sleep, breathing like a rose. Her golden hair was streaming on her pillow, the long, dark lashes of her wide-apart eyes seemed to be stuck to her cheeks. Her lips were slightly apart and one arm was stretched out, palm up, with fingers almost closed upon something that she had found at last and must never let go.

“Love and adoration and long-deferred hope,”—the words came back again and told their story to the woman of one great love, so that she was moved to renewed sympathy and re-thrilled. She stood over the slight form in its utter relax and saw the lips tremble into a smile and the fingers close a little more. She said to herself, little knowing how exact was the simile upon which she stumbled, “She has found the gate in the wall.” But before leaving the room to keep her song birds as quiet as possible, in order that her friend might sleep her fill, she caught sight of a book that lay open on the dressing table, upon the inner cover of which was pasted the photograph of a familiar face. “Fallaray!”—She read the title: “Memoirs de Madame de BrÉzÉ.” And she looked again at the strong, ascetic face, with the lonely eyes, the unwarmed lips, the cold high brow. It might have been that of St. Anthony.

And she stood for a moment before going down to her children—her only children—and repeated to herself, with great excitement, her former thought. “A Great Romance, Love in High Places. How wonderful to be in, perhaps, on History.”

III

If, during all their inarticulate talks, Fallaray had ever remembered to ask Lola about herself, she would have told him, with perfect truth, the little story of her life and love. She was now wholly without fear. She had found the gate in the wall and had entered to happiness. But Fallaray went through that week-end without thinking, accepting the union that she had brought about without question and with a joy and delight as youthful as her own. From the time that she had found him at four o’clock waiting for her, not caring where she came from so that she came, and saw that she had brushed the loneliness from his eyes and brought a smile to his mouth, all sense of being merely temporary lifted from her heart. In the eagerness of his welcome, in the hunger of his embrace, she saw that she belonged, was already as much a possession and a fact as the old house, hitherto his one treasure and refreshment.

They went hand in hand through those lovely days, like a boy and a girl. He led her from one pet place to another and lay at her feet, watching her with wonder, or going close to kiss her eyes and hair, to prove again and yet again that she was not a dream. And every moment smoothed a line from his face and pointed the way to his need of her in all the days to come. But while he showed that he had lived his future and had begun to spend his past, she, even then, forgot her past and turned her eyes to the future. Those holiday days which bound them together must come to an end, of course. And while she reveled in them as he did and avoided any mention of the work to which he must return, she had found herself in finding him, and becoming woman at last, saw her great responsibility and developed the sense of protection that grows with woman’s love.

And this new sense was strengthened and made all the more necessary because his desire to make holiday had come about through her. And while she lay in his arms in all the ecstasy of love, she knew that she would fall far short of her achievement if she should become of more importance in his life than the work that he seemed to have utterly forgotten. It was for her, she began to see, to send him back with renewed energy and fire, and then, installed in a secret nest, to fulfil the part marked out for her as she conceived it and give him the rustle of silk.

If she had been the common schemer, using her sex magnetism to provide luxuries and security—the golden cage, as she had called it in her youth—the way was easy. But love and hero-worship had placed her on another level. Her cage was Fallaray’s heart, in which she was imprisoned for life. Looking into the future with the suddenly awakened practicality that she had inherited from her mother, she began to lay out careful plans. She must find a girl to take her place with Lady Feo. Gratitude demanded that. She would go home until such time as she could take a furnished flat to which Fallaray could come without attracting attention. What her parents were to be told required much thinking. All her ideas of a Salon, of meeting political chiefs, of going into a certain set of society were foolish, she could see. The second of the most important of her new duties, she told herself, was to shield Fallaray from gossip which would be of use to his political enemies and so-called friends; the first to dedicate her life henceforward, by every gift that she possessed and could acquire, to the inspiration and the relaxation of the man who belonged more to his country than he did to her.

She knew from the observation of specific cases and from her study of the memoirs and the lives of famous courtesans that men were not held long by sex attraction alone, although by that, rather than by beauty and by wit, they were captured. She must, therefore, she owned, with her peculiar frankness, apprentice herself anew, this time to the cultivation of intelligence. She must be able, eventually, to talk Fallaray’s language, if possible, and add brain to what she called her gift.

All these things worked in her mind, suddenly set into action like one of her father’s doctored watches, while she wandered through the sunny hours with Fallaray. All that was French and thrifty and practical in her nature awoke with all that was passionate and love-giving. And when at night she had to leave him to return to the cottage of the sympathetic woman whose discretion deserved a monument, she lay awake for hours to think and plan. She was no longer the lady’s maid, going with love and adoration and long-deferred hope from one failure to another, no longer the trembling girl egged forward to a forlorn hope. She had found the gate in the wall, entered into a golden responsibility and blossomed into a woman.

IV

Feo’s new man, Clive Arrowsmith, had driven her down to the races at Windsor. Two of his horses, carrying colors new to the betting public, were entered. No one knew anything about them, so that if they won, and they were out to win, the odds would be good. There was a chance of making some money, always useful.

“I rather like this meeting,” she said. “It’s a sort of picnic peopled with caricatures,” and sailed into the enclosure, elastically, in more than usually characteristic clothes. She had discarded the inevitable tam-o’-shanter for once in favor of a panama hat, which looked very cool and light and threw a soft shadow over her face. She was in what she called a soft mood,—meaning that she was playing a feminine role and leading up to a serious affair. Arrowsmith was obviously pucca and his height and slightness, well-shaped, close-cropped head, small straw-colored moustache, straight nose, strong chin with a deep cleft, and gray eyes which had a way, most attractive to women, of disbelieving everything they said had affected Feo and “really rather rattled” her, as she had confessed to Georgie Malwood late one night. After her recent bad picks, which had left a nasty taste of humiliation behind, she was very much in the mood for an old-fashioned sweep into sentiment. She had great hopes of Arrowsmith and had seen him every day since Sunday. He was not easy. He erected mental bunkers. He was plus two at the game, which was good for hers. Altogether he was very satisfactory, and his horses added to the fun, on the side.

“It’s rather a pet of mine,” he said, looking round with a sort of affectionate recognition, “because when I was at Eton I broke bounds once or twice and had the time of my life here. Everything tastes better when there’s a law against drinking. But I never thought I should come here with you.”

“Have you ever thought about it then?”

“Yes,” he said, leaning on the rail and looking under her hat with what was only the third of his un-ironical examinations. She had memorized the other two. Was she approaching the veteran class? “The day you were married I happened to be passing St. Margaret’s and the crowd of fluttering women held me up. I saw you leave the church and I said to myself, ‘My God, if I ever know that girl, I’ll have a try to put a different smile on her face,’”

“You interest me, Cupid,” she said, giving him a nickname on the spur of the moment. “What sort of smile, if you please?”

“One that wouldn’t make me want to hit you,” he answered, still looking.

“You’ll never achieve your object on the way out of church.”

“No, that’s dead certain.”

And she wondered whether he had scored or she had. She would like to feel that he was hard hit enough to go through this affair hell for leather, into the Divorce Court and out into marriage. It came to her at that moment, for the first time, that she liked him,—more than liked him; that he appealed to her and did odd new things to her heart. She felt that she could make her exit from the gang with this man.

As for Arrowsmith, he was sufficiently hard hit to hate Feo for the record that she had made, sufficiently in love with her to resent her kite-tail of indiscriminations. He loved but didn’t like her, and this meant that he would unmagnetize himself as soon as he could and bolt. The bunkers that she had found in his nature were those of fastidiousness, not often belonging to men. But for being the son of Arrowsmith, the iron founder, whose wealth had been quadrupled by the War, he would have been a poet, although he might never have written poetry. As it was, he considered that women should be chaste, and was the object of derision for so early-Victorian an opinion. The usual hobby thus failing, he raced, liking thoroughbreds who played the game. A queer fish, Arrowsmith.

Georgie Malwood came up. She was with her fourth mother-in-law, Mrs. Claude Malwood, whose back view was seventeen, but whose face was older than the Pyramids. And Arrowsmith drifted off to the paddock.

But they lunched and spent the day together and one of the horses, “Mince Pie,” won the fourth race at six to one, beating the favorite by a short head. And so Feo had a good day. They got away ahead of the crowd, except for the people of the theater, who had to dine early and steady down before entering upon the arduous duties of the night, especially those of the chorus who, in these days of Reviews, are called upon to make so many changes of clothes. Art demands many sacrifices.—It had been decided that the Ritz would do for dinner and one of the dancing clubs afterwards. But on the way out Gilbert Macquarie pranced up to Feo, utterly inextinguishable, with a hatband of one club and a tie of another and clothes that would have frightened a steam roller. “Oh, hello, old thing,” he cried, giving one of his choicest wriggles. “How goes it?”

To which Feo replied, with her most courteous insolence, “Out, Mr. Macquarie,” touched Arrowsmith’s arm and went.

But the nasty familiarity of that most poisonous bounder did something queer to Arrowsmith’s physical sense, and he couldn’t for the life of him play conversational ball with Feo on the road home. “To follow that,” he thought, and was nauseated.

But Feo was in her softest, her most feminine mood. After dinner she was going to dance with this man and be held in his arms. It was a delightful surprise to discover that she possessed a heart. She had begun to doubt it. She had been an experimentalist hitherto. And so she didn’t have much to say. And when they emerged from the squalor of Hammersmith and were passing Queen’s Road, Bayswater, the picture of Lola came suddenly into her mind, the girl in love, and she wondered sympathetically how she was getting on. “What shall I wear to-night? I hate those new frocks.—I hope the band plays BohÈme at the Ritz.—No diamonds, just pearls. He’s a pearl man, I think. And I’ll brush Peau d’Espagne through my hair. What a profile he has,—Cupid.”

And she shuddered. She had married a profile, the fool. To be set free was impossible. The British public did not allow its Cabinet Ministers to be divorced.

At Dover Street Arrowsmith sprang from the car. He handed Feo out and rang the doorbell.

“You look white,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

He was grateful for the chance. “That old wound,” he said. “It goes back on me from time to time.”

“That doesn’t mean that you’ll have to chuck tonight?” She was aghast.

“I’m awfully afraid so, if you don’t mind. It means bed, instantly, and a doctor. Do forgive me. I can’t help myself. I wish to God I could.”

She swallowed an indescribable disappointment and said “Good night, then. So sorry. Ring me up in the morning and let me know how you feel.”

But she knew that he wouldn’t. It was written round his mouth. And as she went upstairs she whipped herself and cursed Macquarie and looked back at her kite-tail of indiscriminations with overwhelming regret. Arrowsmith was a pucca man.

V

Ernest Treadwell watched the car come and go.

Lola had given out at home that she was to be away with Lady Feo, but that morning he had seen in the paper that her ladyship was in town. She had “been seen” dining at Hurlingham after the polo match with Major Clive Arrowsmith, D. S. O., late Grenadier Guards. Dying to see Lola, to break the wonderful news that his latest sonnet on Death had been printed by the Westminster Gazette, the first of his efforts to find acceptance in any publication, Treadwell had hurried to Dover Street, had ventured to present himself at the area door and had been told by Ellen that Lola was away on a holiday.

For half an hour he had been walking up and down the street, looking with puzzled and anxious eyes at the house which had always seemed to him to wear a sinister look. If she had not been going away with Lady Feo, why had she said that she was? A holiday,—alone, stolen from her people and from him to whom hitherto she had always told everything? What was the meaning of it?—She, Lola, had not told the truth. The thought blew him into the air, like an explosion. Considering himself, with the egotism of all half-baked socialists, an intellectual from the fact that he read Massingham and quoted Sidney Webb, he boasted of being without faith in God and constitution. He sneered at Patriotism now, and while he stood for Trades-Unionism remained, like all the rest of his kind, an individualist to the marrow. But he had believed in Lola because he loved her and she inspired him, and without her encouragement and praise he knew that he would let go and crash. Just as he had been printed in the Westminster Gazette!

And she had not told the truth, even to her people. Where was she? What was she doing? To whom could she go to spend a holiday? She had no other relation than her aunt and she also was in town. Ellen had told him so in answer to his question.—Back into a mind black with jealousy and suspicion—he was without the habit of faith—came the picture of Lola, dressed like a lady, getting out of a taxicab at the shady-looking house in Castleton Terrace. Had she lied to him then?

Dover Street was at the bottom of it all, and her leaving home to become a lady’s maid to such a woman as Lady Feo. She must have caught some of the poison of that association, God knew what! In time of trouble it is always the atheist who is the first to call on God.

He was about to leave the street in which the Fallaray house had now assumed the appearance of a morgue to him when Simpkins came up from the area, with a dull face. After a moment of irresolution he followed and caught the valet up. “Where’s Miss Breezy?” he asked abruptly.

Simpkins was all the more astonished at the question for the trouble on that young cub’s face. He looked him over sharply,—the cheap cap, the too long hair, the big nose, the faulty teeth, the pasty face, the un-athletic body, the awkward feet. Lola was in love. He knew that well enough. But not with this lout, that was certain, poet or no poet. “I don’t know as ’ow I’ve got to answer that question,” he said, just to put him in his place.

“Yes, you have. Where is she?”

“You ought ter know.” He himself knew and as there was no accounting for tastes and Lola had made a friend of this anÆmic hooligan, why didn’t he? He lived round the corner from the shop, anyhow.

“But I don’t know. Neither do her father and mother.”

“What’s that?” Simpkins drew up short. “You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. She went ’ome last Thursday to get a little rest until to-morrer,—Tuesday.”

Treadwell would have cried out, “It isn’t true,” but he loved Lola and was loyal. He had met Simpkins in Queen’s Road, Bayswater, and had seen him on familiar terms with Mr. Breezy, but he was a member of the Fallaray household and as such was not to be let into this—this trouble. Not even the Breezys must be told before Lola had been seen and had given an explanation. They didn’t love her as much as he did,—nor any one else in the world. And so he said, loyalty overmastering his jealousy and fear, “Oh, is that so? I haven’t had time to look in lately. I didn’t know.” And seeing a huge unbelief in Simpkins’s pale eyes, he hurried on to explain. “Being in the neighborhood and having some personal news for Lola, I called at your house. Was surprised to hear that she was away. That’s all. Good night.” And away he went, head forward, left foot turning in, long arms swinging loose.

But he had touched the spring in Simpkins to a jealousy and a fear that were precisely similar to his own. Lola was not at home. Treadwell knew it and had called at Dover Street, expecting to find her there. They had all been told lies because she was doing something of which she was ashamed. The night that she had come in, weeping, dressed like a lady.—The words that had burned into his soul the evening of his proposal,—“so awfully in love with somebody else and it’s a difficult world.—Perhaps I shall never be married and that’s the truth, Simpky. It’s a difficult world.”

“Hi,” he called out. “Hi,” and started after Treadwell, full stride.

But rather than face those searching eyes again, at the back of which there was a curious blaze, Treadwell took to his heels, and followed hard by Simpkins, whose fanatical spirit of protection was stirred to its depths, dodged from one street into another. The curious chase would have ended in Treadwell’s escape but for the sudden intervention, in Vigo Street, of a policeman who slipped out of the entrance to the Albany and caught the boy in his arms.

“Now then, now then,” he said. “What’s all this ’ere?”

And up came Simpkins, blowing badly, with his tie under his left ear. “It’s—it’s alri, Saunders. A friendly race, that’s all. He’s—he’s a paller mine. Well run, Ernie!” And he put his arm round Treadwell’s shoulders, laughing.

And the policeman, whose wind was good, laughed, too, at the sight of those panting men. “Mind wot yer do, Mr. Simpkins,” he said, to the nice little fellow with whom he sometimes took a drink at the bottom of the area steps. “Set up ’eart trouble if yer not careful.”

Set up heart trouble? Simpkins looked with a sudden irony at the boy who also would give his life to Lola. And the look was met and understood. It put them on another footing, they could see.

After a few more words of badinage the policeman mooched off to finish his talk with the tall-hatted keeper of the Albany doorway. And Simpkins said gravely and quietly, “Treadwell, we’ve got to go into this, you and me. We’re in the same boat and Lola’s got ter be—looked after, by both of us.”

Treadwell nodded. “I’m frightened,” he said, without camouflage.

“So am I,” said Simpkins.

And they went off together, slowly, brought into confidence by a mutual heart trouble that had already set up.

VI

But there was no uneasiness in Queen’s Road, Bayswater. John Breezy and his good wife were happy in the belief that their little girl was enjoying the air and scents of the country with her ladyship. They had neither the time nor the desire to dig deeply into the daily papers. To read of the weathercock policy of the overburdened Prime Minister, traditionally, nationally, and mentally unable to deal with the great problems that followed upon each other’s heels, made Breezy blasphemous and brought on an incapacity to sit still. And so he merely glanced at the front page, hoping against hope for a new government headed by such men as Lord Robert Cecil, Lord Derby, Lord Grey and Edmund Fallaray, and for the ignominious downfall of all professional scavengers, titled newspaper owners and mountebanks who were playing ducks and drakes with the honor and the traditions of Parliament. He had no wish to be under the despotism of a Labor Government, having seen that loyalty to leaders was unknown among Trades Unionists and that principles were things which they never had had and never would have the courage to avow.

As for Mrs. Breezy, she never had time for the papers. She didn’t know and didn’t care which party was in power, or the difference between them, and when she heard her husband discuss politics with his friends, burst into a tirade and get red in the face, as every self-respecting man has the right to do, she just folded her hands in her lap, smiled, and said to herself, “Dear old John, what would he do in the millennium, with no government to condemn!” Therefore, these people had not seen in the daily “Chit Chat about Society” the fact that Lady Feo had not left town. They never read those luscious morsels. Because Lady Feo had not left town Aunt Breezy had been too busy to come round on her usual evening, when she would have discovered immediately that Lola was up to something and put the fat in the fire. And so they were happy in their ignorance,—which is, pretty often, the only state in which it is achieved.

Over dinner that night—a scrappy meal, because whenever any one entered the shop Mrs. Breezy ran out to do her best to sell something—the conversation turned to the question of Lola’s marriage, as it frequently did. That public house on the river, with its kitchen garden, still rankled. “You know, John,” said Mrs. Breezy suddenly, “I’ve been thinking it all over. We were wrong to suppose that Lola would ever have married a man like Simpkins.”

“Why? He’s a good fellow, respectable, clean-minded, thinks a good deal of himself and has a nice bit of money stowed away. You don’t want her to become engaged to one of these young fly-by-nights round here, do you,—little clerks who spend all their spare money on clothes, have no ambition, no education and want to get as much as they can for nothing?”

“No,” said Mrs. Breezy. “I certainly do not, though I don’t think it matters what you and I want, my dear. I’ve come to the conclusion that Lola knows what she’s going to do, and we couldn’t make her alter her mind if we went down on our knees to her.”

Breezy was profoundly interested. Many times he had discovered that the little woman who professed to be nothing but a housewife, and very rarely gave forth any definite opinions of her own, said things from time to time which almost blew the roof off the shop. She was possessed of an uncanny intuition, what he regarded almost as second sight, and when she was in that mood he squashed his own egotism and listened to her with his mouth open.

So she went on undisturbed. “What I think is that Lola means to aim high. I’ve worked it out in my mind that she got into the house in Dover Street to learn enough to rise above such men as Simpkins and Ernest Treadwell, so that she could fit herself to marry a gentleman. And I think she’s right. Look at her. Look at those little ankles and wrists and the daintiness of her in every way. She’s not Queen’s Road, Bayswater, and never was. She’s Mayfair from head to foot, mind and body. We’re just accidents in her life, you and I, John, my dear. She will be a great lady, you mark my words.”

Breezy didn’t altogether like being called an accident. He took a good deal of credit for the fact that Lola was Mayfair, as Emily called it, rather well. And he said so, and added, “How about the old de BrÉzÉ blood? You forget that, my being a little jeweler in a small shop. She’s thrown back, that’s what she’s done, and I’ll tell you what it is, missus. She won’t be ashamed of us, whoever she marries. She doesn’t look upon us as accidents, whatever you may do, and if some man who’s A 1 at Lloyd’s falls in love with her and makes her his wife, her old father and mother will be drawn up the ladder after her, if I know anything about Lola. But it’s a dream, just a dream,” hoping that it wasn’t, and only saying so as a sort of insurance against bad luck. It was a new idea and an exciting one, which put that place on the Thames into the discard. Personally he had hitherto regarded the Simpkins proposal in a very favorable light. That little man had more money than he himself could ever make, and, after all, a highly respectable public house on the upper Thames, patronized by really nice people, had been, in his estimation, something not to be sneezed at, by any means.

“Well,” said Mrs. Breezy, “you may call it a dream. I don’t. Lola thinks things out. She’s always thought things out. She became a lady’s maid for a purpose. When she’s finished with that, she’ll move on to something else. I don’t know what, because she keeps things to herself. But she knows more than you and I will ever know. I’ve noticed that often. And when she was here on Sunday, and we walked about the streets, she was no more Lola Breezy than Lady Feo is, and there was something in the way she laid the dinner and insisted on waiting on us which showed me that she knew she wasn’t. She was what country people call ‘fey’ that night. Her body was with us, but her brain and heart and spirit were far out of our reach. I’m certain of that, John, and I’m certain of something else, too. She’s in love, and she knows her man, and he’s a big man, and very soon she’ll have a surprise for us, and it will be a surprise. You mark my words.”

And when she got up to answer the tinkle of the bell on the shop door, she left the fat John Breezy quivering with excitement and a sort of awe. Emily was not much of a talker, but when she started she said more in two minutes than other women say in a week. And after he had told himself how good it would be for his little girl to win great happiness, he put both his pale hands on the table, and heaved a tremendous sigh. “Oh, my God,” he said. “And if she could help us to get out of this shop, never to see a watch again, to be no longer the slave of that damned little bell, to go away and live in the country, and grow things, and listen to the birds, and watch the sunsets.”

VII

At that moment George Lytham drove his car through the gates of Chilton Park and up to the old house. He asked for Mr. Fallaray, was shown into the library and paced up and down the room with his hands deep in his pockets, but with his chin high, his eyes gleaming and a curious smile about his mouth.

The moment had come for which he had been waiting since the Armistice, for which he had been working with all his energy since he had got back into civilian clothes. He had left London and driven down to Whitecross on a wave of exhilaration. There had been a meeting at his office at which all the men of his party had been present,—young men, ex-soldiers and sailors temporarily commissioned, who had come out of the great catastrophe to look things straight in the face. “Fallaray is our man,” they had all said unanimously. “Where is he?” And Lytham, who was his friend, had been sent to fetch him and bring him back to London that night. The time was ripe for action.

But when the door opened and Fallaray strolled in—he had never seen him stroll before—George drew up short, amazed.—But this was not Fallaray. This was not the man he had seen the previous Friday with rounded shoulders, haggard face and eyes in the back of his head. Here was one who looked like a younger brother of Fallaray, a care-free younger brother, sun-tanned, irresponsible, playing with life.

“My dear Fallaray,” he said, hardly knowing what to say, “what have you done to yourself?”

And Fallaray sent out a ringing laugh and clapped young Lochinvar on the shoulder. “You notice the change, eh? It’s wonderful, wonderful. I say to myself all day long how wonderful it is.” And he flung his hands up and laughed again and threw himself into a chair and stuck his long legs out. “But what the devil do you want?” he asked lightly, enjoying the opportunity of showing the serious man who came out of a future that he himself had forgotten that he was beginning to revel in his past. “I said that some one would jolly soon see the wreckage on the shore of my Eden and send out a rescue party, and here you are.”

Lytham didn’t understand. The words were Greek to him and the attitude so surprising that it awakened in him a sort of irritation. Good God, hadn’t this man, who meant so much to them, read the papers? Wasn’t he aware of the fact that the time had arrived in the history of politics when a strong concerted effort might put a new face upon everything? “Look here, Fallaray,” he said, “let’s talk sense.”

“My dear chap,” said Fallaray, “you’ve come to the wrong man for that. I know nothing about sense, and what’s more, I don’t want to. Talk romance to me, quote poetry, tell me your dreams, turn somersaults, but don’t come here and expect any sense from me. I’ve given it up.”

But Lytham was not to be put off. He said to himself, “The air of this place has gone to Fallaray’s head. He needed a holiday. The reaction has played a trick upon him. He’s pulling my leg.” He drew up a chair and leaned forward eagerly and put his hand on Fallaray’s knee. “All right, old boy,” he said. “Have your joke, but come down from the ether in which you’re floating and listen to facts. The wily little P. M. who’s been between the devil and the deep sea for a couple of years is getting rattled. With the capitalists pushing him one way and the labor leaders shouldering him the other, he’s losing his feet. The by-elections show the way the wind’s blowing in the country and they’ve made a draught in Downing Street. Trust a Celt as a political barometer.”

“There’s been no wind here, George,” said Fallaray, putting his hands behind his head. “Golden days, my dear fellow, golden days, with the gentlest of breezes.”

But Lytham ignored the interruption. In five minutes, if he knew his man, he would have Fallaray sitting up straight. “Our anti-waste men are winning every seat they stand for,” he went on, “and this means the nucleus of a new party, our party. The country is behind us, Fallaray, and if we keep our heads and get down to work, the next general election will not be a walk-over for the labor men but for us. Lloyd George is on his last legs, in spite of his newspapers, and with him the Coalitionists disappear to a man. As for Trades-Unionism, the coal strike has proved that it oscillates between communism and socialism, the nationalizing of everything—mines, railways, land, capital—and the country doesn’t like it and isn’t ready for it. The way, therefore, is easy if we organize at once under a leader who has won the reputation for honesty, and that leader is yourself. But there is not a moment to waste. My car is outside. Drive up with me now and meet us to-morrow morning. Unanimously we look to you.” He sprang to his feet and made a gesture towards the door.

But Fallaray settled more comfortably into his chair and crossed one long leg over the other. “Do you know your Hood?” he asked.

“Hood?—Why?”

“Listen to this:

“‘Peace and rest at length have come,

All the day’s long toil is past,

And each heart is whispering Home,

Home at last.’”

“But what has that got to do with it?”

“That’s my answer to you, George.” And Fallaray waved his hand, as though the question was settled.

If Lytham had been older or younger, and if his admiration and esteem for Fallaray had not become so deep-rooted, he must have broken out into a torrent of incredulity and impatience. What he did, instead, persuading himself, easily enough, that his friend had not recovered from his recent disappointments, although he had obviously benefited in health, was to go over the whole ground again, more quietly and in greater detail, and to wind up with the assertion that Fallaray was essential to the cause.

To all of which Fallaray listened with a sort of respectful interest but without the slightest enthusiasm, and remained lolling in his chair. He might have been a Buckinghamshire Squire who knew no language but his own, hearing a Frenchman holding forth for no apparent reason on Napoleon. He watched his friend’s mouth, appraised his occasional gestures, ran his eyes with liking over his well-knit body and found his voice pleasant to the ear. Beyond that, nothing.

Lytham began to feel like a man who throws stones into a lake. All his points seemed to disappear into an unruffled and indifferent surface of water. It was incomprehensible. It was also indescribably baffling. What on earth had come over this man who, until a few days before, had been burning with a desire to reconstruct and working himself into a condition of nervous exhaustion in an endeavor to pull his country out of chaos?

“Well,” he said, after an extraordinary pause, during which everything seemed to have fallen flat. “What are you going to do?”

“But I’ve told you, my dear George,” said Fallaray, with a long sigh of happiness. “I have found a home, at last.”

“You mean that you are going to let us down?”

“I mean that I am going to live my own life.”

“That you’re out of politics?”

“Yes. My resignation goes in to-morrow.”

“My God! Why?”

Fallaray got up and went to the window. He stood for a moment looking out at a corner of the terrace where several steps led down to a fountain in which, out of an urn held in the hands of a weather-worn boy, water was flowing, colored like a rainbow by the evening sun.

And Lytham followed him, wondering whether he had gone off his head, become feeble-minded as the result of overstrain. And then he saw Lola sitting on the edge of the fountain, with her face tilted up, her hands clasped round one of her knees and her golden hair gleaming.

And there both men remained, gazing,—Fallaray with a smile of possession, of infinite pride and pleasure; Lytham with an expression of profound amazement and quick understanding.

“So it’s a woman,” he thought. And as he continued to look, another picture of that girl came back into his mind. He had seen her before. He had turned as she had passed him somewhere and caught his breath. He remembered to have said to himself as she had walked away, “Eve, come to life! Some poor devil of an Adam will go to hell for her.”—The Carlton—Chalfont—the foyer with its little cases of glittering jewels, the long strip of carpet leading to the stairs of the dining room—the palms—the orchestra. It all came back.—Well, this might be a form of madness in a man of Fallaray’s age and womanless life, but, thank God, it was one with which he could deal. It was physical, not mental, as he had feared. Fallaray might very well play Adam without going into hell.

“Can’t you combine the two,” he said. “Politics and that girl? It’s been done before. It’s being done every day. The one is helped by the other.”

But Fallaray shook his head. “I am not going to do it,” he said. “I have had a surfeit of one and nothing of the other. Take it from me finally, George,—I am out of the political game. I think I should have been out of it in any case, because I came here acknowledging failure, fed up, nauseated. I am not the man to juggle with intrigues, to say one thing to placate the capitalists to-day and another to fool labor to-morrow. It isn’t my way and I shall not be missed. On the contrary, my resignation will be accepted with eagerness. I am going to begin all over again, free, perfectly firm in my belief that there are better men to do my job. I was a bull in a china shop, and it will remain a china shop, whether it’s run by one party or another. It’s the system. Nothing can alter it. I couldn’t, you and your party won’t be able to. It’s gone too far. It’s a cancer. It will kill the country. And so I’m out. I consider that I have earned the right to love and make a home. Row off from my Eden, my dear fellow, and leave me in peace. I am not going to be rescued.”

“We’ll see about that,” thought Lytham. “This is not Fallaray who speaks. It’s the man of forty suddenly hit by passion. I’ll fight that girl to the last gasp. We must have this man, we must.”

He turned away, deeply disappointed at the queer tangent at which his chief had gone off, bitterly annoyed to find that here was a fight within a fight at a time when unity was vital. He was himself a perfectly normal creature who regarded the rustle of silk as one of the necessities, like golf and tobacco, but to sacrifice a career or let down a cause for the sake of a woman was to him an act of unimaginable weakness and folly. If only Fallaray had been younger or older, or, better still, had been contentedly married to Feo! Cursed bad luck that he had been caught at forty.—But, struck with an idea in which he could see immediate possibilities, he stopped on his way to the door and went back to Fallaray. To work it out in his usual energetic way he must use strategy and appear to accept his friend’s decision as irreparable. “All right,” he said. “You know best. I’ll argue no more. But as there’s no need now for me to dash back to town, mayn’t I linger with you in Arcadia for a couple of hours?”

Fallaray was delighted. Lola was to dine at Lady Cheyne’s, and he would be alone. It would be very jolly to have George to dinner, especially as he saw the futility of argument and recognized an ultimatum. “Stay and have some food,” he said. “I’ve much to tell you. But will you let me leave you for ten minutes?”

That was precisely what young Lochinvar intended to do before he drove away,—speak to that woman.

He watched Fallaray join Lola at the fountain, give her his hand and wander off among the rose trees, wearing what he called the fatuous smile of the middle-aged man in love. And then, so that he might obtain a point or two for future use, he rang the bell for Elmer. The butler and he had known each other for years. He would answer a few nonchalant questions without reserve. “Good afternoon, Elmer,” he said, when the old man came in.

“Good afternoon to you, Sir.” He might have been an actor who in palmy days had played Hamlet at Bristol.

“I’m staying to an early dinner with Mr. Fallaray. A whiskey and soda would go down rather well in the meantime.”

“Certainly, Sir.”

“Oh, and Elmer.”

“Sir?” His turn and the respectful familiar angle of his head were only possible to actors of the good old school.

“The name of the charming lady who has so kindly helped to brighten up Mr. Fallaray’s week-end.”

“Madame de BrÉzÉ, Sir.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” He had never heard it before. Married then, or a widow. French. ’Um. “And she is staying with——”

“Lady Cheyne, Sir.”

“Oh, yes,—that house——”

“A stone’s throw from the gate in the wall, Sir. You can see the roof from this window.”

“Thanks very much, Elmer. How’s your son getting on now?”

“Very well indeed, Sir, thank you, owing to your kindness.”

“A very good fellow,—a first-rate soldier. One of our best junior officers. Not too much soda, then.”

“No, Sir.” He left the room like an elderly sun-beam.

“Good!” said George Lytham. “Get off early, hang about by the gate, intercept this young woman on her way back to Fallaray and see what her game is. That’s the idea.”

And he sat down, lit a cigarette and picked up a copy of Hood that lay open on the table. His eyes fell on some marked lines.

“Peace and rest at length have come,

All the day’s long toil is past,

And each heart is whispering Home,

Home at last.”

And he thought of Feo whom he had seen several nights running with Arrowsmith and before that, for a series of years, with Dick, Tom and Harry. Never with Fallaray.

“Poor devil,” he thought. “He’s been too long without it. It won’t be easy to rescue him now.”

VIII

And at the gate in the wall Fallaray held Lola close in his arms and kissed her, again and again.

“My little Lola,” he said softly, “how wonderful you are,—how wonderful all this is. You had been in the air all round me for weeks. I used to see your eyes among the stars looking down at me when I left the House. I used to wake at night and feel them upon me all warm about my heart. Lots of times, like the wings of a bird, they flashed between me and my work. And the tingle of your hand that never left me ran through my veins like fire. I could have stopped dead that night at the Savoy and followed you away. And when I found you weeping in the corridor in Dover Street I was confused and bewildered because then I was old and I was fighting against you for the cause. De BrÉzÉ, de BrÉzÉ,—the name used to come to me, suddenly, like the forerunner of rain to a dried-up plant. And at last I got away and came down here, as I know now, to throw off my useless years and go back, past all the milestones on a long road, and wait for you. And then you heard my cry and opened the gate and walked among those stone figures of my life and gave me back my youth.”

“With love and adoration and long-deferred hope,” she said and crept closer to his heart. “I love you. I love you. I’ve always loved you. And if I’d never found you, I should have waited for you on the other side of the Bridge,—loving you still.”

“My dear—who am I to deserve this?”

“You are Fallaray. Who else?”

And he laughed at that and held up her face and kissed her lips and said, “No. I’m no longer Fallaray, that husk of a man, emptying his energy on the ribs of chaos. I’m Edmund the boy, transformed to adolescence. I’m Any Man in love.”

And again she went closer, feeling the far-off shudder of thunder, with a new-born fear of opening the gate in the wall. “Who was that man who came to see you?”

“Young Lochinvar,—Lytham. He’s interested in politics.”

“What did he want to see you about?”

“Nothing.” And he brushed away the lingering recollection with his hand.

“No. Tell me. I want to know.”

“I forget.” And he laughed and kissed her once again.

“But in any case you have to go back to-morrow?”

He shook his head and ran his fingers over her hair.

“But you said you’d have to,—that night.”

“Did I? I forget.” And he put his hand over her heart and held it there.

And again there came that thunder shudder, and she eyed the gate with fear. “Did he want you to go back to-night? Tell me; I’ve got to know.” And she drew away a little—a very little—in order to force her point.

But he drew her back and kissed her eyes. “Don’t look like that,” he said. “What’s it matter? Let him want. I’m not going back. I’m never going back. If George Lytham were multiplied by a hundred thousand and they all landed on my island with grappling irons, I’d laugh them back to sea. They shan’t have me. I’ve given them all I had. I’ve found my youth and I’ll enjoy it, here, anywhere, with you.” He stretched out and opened the gate. “And now, I must let you go, my sweet. But don’t be longer than you can help. Get dinner over quickly and come back to me again. Wear that silver frock and I’ll wait for you on the terrace, as I did before. I want to be surprised again as you shimmer among those cold stones.” He let her go.

And she went through the gate and stood irresolute, as the shudder came again. With a little cry she turned and flung her arms round his neck as though she were saying, “Good-by.”

And yet there was only a cloud as big as a man’s hand in that clear sky.

IX

No one, it might be thought, could hear to think at the narrow table in Lady Cheyne’s house. Those natural, childlike creatures who, if they had ever learned the artificialities forget them, talked, argued, sang and screamed each other down all at the same time. They could not really be musicians if they didn’t.

Zalouhou, whose only preparations for dinner consisted in bushing out his tie and hair, sat at his hostess’ left; Willy Pouff, in an evening suit borrowed from a waiter friend who had gone to a hospital with a poisoned hand, on her right. Lola, at the end of the table, sat between Valdemar Varvascho and Max Wachevsky, who had remembered, oddly enough, to wash their faces, though Varvascho’s beard had grown darkly during the day. Both the women had changed and made up for artificial light. The result of Anna Stezzel’s hour was remarkable, as well, perhaps, as somewhat disconcerting. A voluptuous person, with hair as black as a wet starling, she had plastered her face with a thick coating of white stuff on which her lips resembled blood stains in the snow. Her beaded evening gown saved the company from panic merely by an accident and disclosed also the whole wide expanse of a rather yellow back. Regina Spatz was built on Zuluesque lines, too, but more by luck than judgment a white blouse tempered her amazing ampleness. She had used henna on her hair so that it might have been fungus in a tropic sea and sat in a perpetual blush of indiscriminate rouge. Salo Impf was wedged against her side and looked like a Hudson River tugboat under the lee of the Aquitania.

Like all fat women, Lady Cheyne was devoted to eating and had long since decided to let herself go. “One can only live once,” she said, in self-defense; “and how does one know that there’ll be peas and potatoes in the next world.” The dinner, to the loudly expressed satisfaction of the musicians, was substantial and excellent. Each course was received with a volley of welcome, expressed in several languages. The hard exercise of singing, playing, gesticulating, praising and breathing deeply gave these children of the exuberant Muse the best of appetites. It was a shattering meal.

But Lola could hear herself think, for all that. She sat smiling and nodding. Her body went through the proper mechanics, but her spirit was outside the gate in the wall, trembling. There was a cloud in the sky, already. Fallaray was going to make her more important than his work, and she had not come to him for that. Her mÉtier was to bring into his loveless life the rustle of silk,—love, tenderness, flattery, refreshment, softness, beauty, laughter, adoration, which would send him out of her secret nest strengthened, humanized, eager, optimistic. She must fail lamentably if the effect of her absorbed him to the elimination of everything that made him necessary to the man who had come from London and to all that he represented. George Lytham, of Reconstruction, the organizer of the Anti-waste Party,—she had heard him discussed by Lady Feo. Without Fallaray he might be left leaderless,—because of her.

She went upstairs as soon as she could to put on the silver frock. There had been no time to change before dinner. Fallaray had kissed her so often that she had been late. She was joined immediately by Lady, Cheyne, who was anxious. She had seen something in Lola’s eyes.

“What is it, my dear?” she asked. “I’m worried about you.”

And Lola went to her, as to a mother, and shut her eyes and gave a little cry that seemed to come from her soul.

“There’s something wrong!—Has he hurt you? Tell me.”

And Lola said, “Oh, no. He would never hurt me, never. He loves me. But I may be hurting him, and that’s so very much worse.”

“I don’t understand. You mean—his reputation? But what if you are? We’re all too precious careful to guard the reputations of our politicians, to help them along in their petty careers.”

“But he isn’t a politician, and he isn’t working for a career.” She drew away sharply. No one must have a word against Fallaray.

“Well, what is it then? I want you to be happy. I want this to be a Great Romance. And, good Heavens, my darling, it’s only three days old.”

Lola spoke through tears. Yes, it was only three days old. “He may love me too much,” she said. “I may become more important than his work.”

Lady Cheyne’s anxiety left her, like smoke. And she gave a laugh and drew what she called that old-fashioned child into her arms again. “My dear,” she said, “don’t let that distress you. Make yourself more important than his work. Encourage him to love you more than himself. He’ll be different from most men if he is capable of that! But perhaps happiness is something new in his life, and I shouldn’t wonder, with Lady Feo for a wife.”

It never occurred to Lola to ask her friend how she had discovered the secret. She listened eagerly to her sophistries, trying to persuade herself that they were true.

“Get him to take you away. There are beautiful places to go to, and he never will be missed. There’ll be a paragraph,—‘ill-health causes the resignation of Mr. Fallaray’; the clubs will talk, but the people will believe the papers, and presently Lady Feo will sue for divorce, desertion. A nice thing,—she being the deserter! And you and he,—what do you care? Is happiness so cheap that you can throw it away, either of you? If he loves you, that’s his career, and a very much better one than leading parties and making empty promises and becoming Prime Minister. If he loves you well enough to sacrifice all that, for the sake of womanhood see that he does it, and you will build a bigger statue for him than any that he could win.”

And she kissed her little de BrÉzÉ, who seemed to have undergone a perfectly natural crise de neuf, being so much in love, and patted her on the shoulder. “Take an old woman’s advice, my pet. If you’ve won that man, keep him. He’ll live to thank you for it one of these days.”

And finally, when Lola slipped into the twilight in her silver frock, there didn’t seem to be a single cloud in the sky. Only an evening star. What Lady Cheyne had said she believed because she wanted to believe it, because this Great Romance was only three days old and hope had been so long deferred.—She stopped in the old garden and picked a rose and pulled its thorns off so that she might give it to Fallaray, and she lingered for a moment taking in the scents and the quiet sounds of that most lovely evening,—more lovely and more unclouded even than that other one, which was locked in her memory. And then she went along the path through the corner of a wood. A rabbit disappeared into the undergrowth, but the fairies were not out yet, and there was no one to spy. Was happiness so cheap that she could throw it away,—his and her own? “If you’ve won that man, keep him.” She danced all the rest of the way and over the side road to the gate in the wall,—early, after all, by half an hour. She would wait outside until she heard Fallaray’s quick step and watch the star. “I’ll get him to take me away,” she thought. “There are beautiful places to go to, and he never will be missed.”

She turned quickly, hearing some one on the road. She saw a car drawn up a little distance away, and a man come swinging towards her.

It was young Lochinvar.

X

“Madame de BrÉzÉ,” he said, standing bareheaded, “my name is Lytham. May I ask you to be so kind as to give me ten minutes?”

“Twenty,” she answered, with the smile that she had flashed at Chalfont that night at the Savoy. “I have just that much to spare.”

“Thank you.” But now that he was there, after all his strategy, after saying good-by to Fallaray, driving all the way down the hill from Whitecross and up again into that side road, he didn’t know how to begin, or where. This girl! God,—how disordering a quality of sex! No wonder she had shattered poor old Fallaray.

“Shall we walk along the lane? It turns a little way up and you can see the cross cut in the hill.”

“Yes,” he said. “But there are so many crosses, aren’t there, and they’re all cut on somebody’s hill.” He saw that she looked at him sharply and was glad. Quick to take points, evidently. This interview would not be quite so difficult, after all.

“You came down from town to see Edmund?” She called him by his Christian name to show this man where he stood.

“On the most urgent business,” he said, “I saw you sitting at the side of the fountain. It’s a dear old place.”

She was not beautiful, and she was not sophisticated. That way of dragging in Fallaray’s Christian name was childish in its naÏvetÉ. But all about her there was something so fresh and young, so sublimely unselfconscious, so disturbingly feminine, so appealing in its essence of womanhood that he had to pay her tribute and measure his words. He would hate to hurt this girl. De BrÉzÉ—Madame de BrÉzÉ—how was it that he hadn’t heard of her before? She knew Chalfont. She was staying with Poppy Cheyne. Fallaray had met her somewhere. Odd that he had missed her in the crowd.

“I’ll come to the point, if I may,” he said. “And I must bore you a little with a disquisition on the state of affairs.”

“I’m interested in politics,” she said, with a forlorn attempt to keep a high head.

“Then perhaps you know what’s happened, to a certain extent, although probably not as much as those of us who stand in the wings of the political stage and see the actors without their make-up,—not a pretty sight, sometimes.”

“Well?” But the cloud had returned and blotted out the evening star, and there was the shudder of distant thunder again.

“Well, the people are turning against the old gang, at last. The Prime Minister has only his favorites and parasites and newspapers left with him. The Unionists are scared stiff by the sudden uprising of the Anti-waste Party and Labor has been drained of its fighting funds. The Liberals have withered. There is one great cry for honest government, relief from crushing taxation, a fair reward for hard work, and new leadership that will make the future safe from new wars. We must have Fallaray. He’s the only man. I came here this evening to fetch him. He refuses to come because of you. What are you going to do?”

As he drew up short and faced her, she looked like a deer surrounded by dogs. He was sorry, but this was no time for fooling. What stuff was this girl made of? Had she the gift of self-sacrifice as well as the magnetism of sex? Or was she just a female, who would cling to what she had won, self before everything?

“I love him,” she said.

Well, it was good to know that, but was that an answer? “Yes,” he said. “Well?” He would like to have added “But does he love you and can you keep him after passion is dead,—a man like Fallaray, who, after all, is forty.” But he hadn’t the courage or the desire to hurt.

“And because I love him he must go,” she said.

He leaned forward and seized her hand. He was surprised, delighted, and a little awed. She had gone as white as a lily. “You will see to that? You will use all your influence to give him back to us?” He could hardly believe his ears and his eyes.

“All my influence,” she said, standing very straight.

He bent down and touched her hand with his lips.

They were at the gate. They heard steps on the other side of the wall.

“Go,” she said, “quickly.”

But before he went he bowed, as to a queen.

And then Lola heard the voice again, harshly. “Go on, de BrÉzÉ, go on. Don’t be weak. Stick to your guns. You have him in the palm of your hand.”

But she shook her head. “But I’m not de BrÉzÉ. I’ve only tried to be. I’m Lola Breezy of Queen’s Road, Bayswater, and this is love.”

She opened the gate and went in to Fallaray.