The unexpected always happens, often inopportunely. Winifred had risen from the ground by the stove and was standing miserably before her easel when a knock was heard at the studio door. She cried, “Come in!” and Kent entered. He was looking rather pale and worn out, his beard sinking ever so little into his cheeks; his eyes were tired. On seeing him Winifred could not restrain a start of surprise.

“Why, Mr. Kent! you here at this hour of the day!”

“Yes; I have just come back from the Museum. I went up to tell them I wasn't coming, as they say in Ireland. The fact is I am feeling lazy and want a few days' slackness.”

“You have been overworking yourself, that's what you have been doing,” said Winifred with kind severity. “Come and sit down by the stove and rest yourself. You want someone to look after you.”

She pulled the chair that Clytie had been occupying a little forward, by way of invitation.

“What a good little creature you are, Winifred,” he said as he sat down. “You always think of other people. Men don't seem able to do it; they are too much wrapped up in themselves. How are you all—you and the children? You must make them invite me to tea soon. I have not seen them for ages.”

“Oh, they are quite well again,” replied Winifred, brightening, “and they have been clamouring for Kent, as they call you. I'll tell them to send you an 'At Home' card. And it must be soon, for you are going abroad. When do you think of starting?”

Kent sighed and looked into the fire.

“I don't quite know yet; I wanted to see Clytie first. Where is she?”

“She has a visitor—in her sitting-room,” replied Winifred somewhat shortly.

But Kent was too absorbed in his own affairs to notice the change of tone.

“Will she be engaged long?”

“Probably.”

“I wanted so much to see her.”

Winifred looked at him for a moment and then came and put her hand lightly on his shoulder.

“You seem so unhappy. Is it about Clytie? You and she have quarrelled or had some difference,—she has not told me what it is,—and I have been so grieved. If I knew, perhaps I might bring things straight.”

“Would you, Winifred?” said Kent eagerly.

“Of course. Don't I love Clytie better than anybody else—and haven't you been a good kind friend to me? I haven't asked her—nor you—why you have stopped being friends, because one shrinks from asking such questions, but I have seen it, and I have been so, so sorry.”

The gentle sympathy touched him. The realisation of the feminine had come to him of late powerfully enough to have overset his old one-sided theories. He knew the value now of a tender word from a woman, and his nature hungered for it.

“Winifred,” he said, half turning in the chair and looking up at her in his honest way, “do you think Clytie could ever care for me—not as a friend—as something nearer?”

Winifred fell back, looked at him aghast, unable to speak, as the light dawned upon her. He mistook her movement, rose, and began to speak hurriedly, pacing the room.

“I couldn't help it—how could I help it? I have struggled against it with all my might. I know I am a fool to think that she can love me, and you are surprised and dismayed, as she was when she saw that I loved her. I would have bit my tongue out then rather than tell her, but I saw she guessed—and that is why our friendship has been broken. I have kept away from her to spare her the pain of it. But it has nearly driven me mad. I can't go abroad with the weight of it upon me. I must see her and let her know everything. Tell me, Winifred, you who are so fine and delicate, I did not wrong her and our friendship by growing to love her better than anything life has. She won't think me unworthy of the trust she gave me, and despise me?”

“Oh, no, no, no!” said Winifred half chokingly. “Your love would honour any girl. Oh, why did you not tell her and plead with her before?”

“Then do you think, Winifred——” began Kent with a sudden joy in his eyes.

“Oh, don't!” cried the girl, interrupting him; “I can't bear it. It is too late! I hate to stab you like this, but you must know it. Clytie is engaged to be married.”

There was a long silence, during which neither looked at the other. Kent was stunned, dazed. He had come prepared for a refusal, but not for such an absolute shattering of all his hopes. He grew very white and stood with his hand on the back of a chair, as if steadying himself.

“How long has she——” he said, at length, huskily.

“Only last night. She told me of it this morning.”

“And the man?”

“Mr. Hammerdyke—Mrs. Farquharson's cousin.”

She went up to him, took his hand, and turned her pure face up to his, the tears standing in her eyes.

“I won't say you will find someone more worthy of you, because you couldn't.”

“I am not fit to tie her shoe-strings. I know that very well,” said poor Kent.

“Oh, that is foolish,” she said, with a wan smile. “But there isn't another girl like Clytie in the world; and you will always think kindly of her, and help her if she wants help, won't you? You won't turn from her and hate her, as I have heard men often do—for I don't think you are like such men.”

“I would give up everything I had in life to save her one hour's pain,” said Kent. “I have been a fool,—I see it now,—oh! not in having loved her—not that. It is a blessed privilege—I can't explain, for you would not understand. I shall always love her, Winifred; no other woman can be to me what Clytie has been—and might have been. I shall leave by the early boat tomorrow morning, so you will not see me for three or four months. When I return—perhaps you'll let me come and talk to you a little sometimes.”

“Oh, it will comfort me,” said Winifred, “for am I not losing her too?”

He bade her good-bye, exacting before he left a promise that she would not let Clytie know of what had passed between them.

He went downstairs, anxious to escape from the house, to get into the open air. In the entrance passage the side door leading into the shop was open and Mrs. Gurkins was standing by the threshold. Kent stopped for a moment to acquaint her with the fact of his sudden departure next day. He would keep on the rooms, which must be scrupulously locked up during his absence. Since his first intimacy with Clytie he had imperceptibly grown more amenable to feminine interference in his domestic arrangements, and Mrs. Gurkins no longer had her former terror of invading his domain. But she was still in enough awe of him to promise faithfully to execute his desires. To talk on these trivial matters was a relief from the terrible strain of the last few moments, although he wondered a little how he could lend them coherent attention. He was listening with waning interest to some final irrelevancies on the part of his landlady when a man ran down the stairs and strode quickly past him in the passage. A glance was sufficient to tell Kent who Clytie's visitor was—it had not occurred to him before to conjecture. His heart sank as he realised the splendid physique and proud, masterful bearing of his rival. Ordinarily the least observant of men in such matters, Kent noted the careless ease with which he wore his faultless attire. The patent-leather boots, the new silk hat, the well-cut frock-coat with an orchid in the buttonhole, the new gray SuÈde gloves grasped along with a gold-mounted malacca—all seemed to belong to the man naturally, to be the world's fit adjuncts to the gifts of nature. Smiling to himself and humming a song, he seemed the personification of the joy and strength, the success and luxury of life.

“I am not that man's match,” thought Kent bitterly, thus falling, as all men must do at times, a little below himself.

The front door slammed behind Hammerdyke. Kent waited for a moment, gave a few vague general directions, and then went out into the street. He felt stronger now that he had to struggle against real and tangible trouble instead of the intangible doubts and fears that had set him off his balance. The single-hearted loyalty of his nature, that had caused him to regard his love for Clytie as treason against her unsuspecting friendship, and had thus placed him in the weakness of a false position, now gave him strength to face fearlessly life and its responsibilities. But time alone could assuage the pain and bitterness of it all. He strung himself together and walked briskly through the bright, frosty air towards the home of his mother and sister in Notting Hill. There was sincere affection between mother and son, sister and brother; but neither of the quiet, contented women knew much of his life or sympathised with his ambitions. Mrs. Kent's hopeless wish was that he would marry some good, sensible girl who would keep his house tidy, provide him with decent meals, and bring bright children's faces around his knee. This conception bounded her horizon of a man's happiness; as she knew that her son would never appear within it, she regarded him with wistful, unhelpful affection. Agatha, with the younger generation's superior grasp of things, looked upon him as a soft-hearted eccentric who deserved to be humoured. For many years, therefore, Kent had ceased to share with them any of his inner life, not because he loved them less than during his boyhood, but because their mental attitudes precluded confidence. They were women, they could not understand. When he entered the house he left his own interests outside and plunged, in his rough, hearty way, into theirs. He gave his whole attention to accounts of Cousin Henrietta's baby, Uncle William's gout, the leakages of the cistern, and the turpitudes of the cook. In matters such as the cistern he gave practical help; in others, such as the baby, he overflowed with sympathetic though alarming suggestions. His own life was seldom touched upon. With finer natures—Clytie, Winifred, Wither—that divined the strong purpose underlying his eccentricities, and met him halfway with their sympathy, he was generous in his confidence; but to others, proud, shy, and reserved. So Mrs. Kent and Agatha knew nothing of Clytie, little of his scientific work, and only vaguely of his duties at the Museum.

He walked up Sloane Street and through the park, thinking of his great loss, trying to scheme out his future, in which Clytie would only be a memory. When he arrived at his mother's house he paused for a moment, as if literally to unstrap the burden of care from his shoulders and leave it outside the front door. Then he entered and greeted his mother and sister in his bluff, cheery way. He remained with them a couple of hours, during which he performed a few odd jobs about the house which he had promised to attend to, and then took his leave. Mrs. Kent was solicitous as to his health, besought him not to work too hard nor to come back with a German wife. She could not quite see the reason of his sudden departure. Why the country should waste its money in sending him abroad to study old coins she, in her placid utilitarianism, could not imagine. However, she bade him a motherly farewell, hoped from her heart that he would have a pleasant holiday, although she could not refrain from expressing a regret that he would not return in time to superintend the spring-cleaning.

When the door closed behind him he picked up his burden and walked doggedly away with it, mechanically, not heeding his direction. He suddenly found that he had come, contrary to his intention, diagonally across the park to Hyde Park Corner. It was past five o'clock. Wither would be in his club. He would go and say good-bye, for Wither was very dear to him.

The little man was giving some directions to the hall porter when Kent appeared.

“My dear, good creature!” he cried, “what have you been doing to yourself? You are as white as a ghost. You want some whiskey or brandy, probably both. Come down to the smoking-room and have some.”

“I am a bit overdone,” replied Kent, “and perhaps I have been walking too much to-day. But I don't want any brandy.”

“Oh, but you've got to,” said Wither, and entering the smoking-room, he gave the order to a waiter.

“I have come to say good-bye, Teddy,” said Kent as soon as they were seated in a quiet corner. “I am off to-morrow morning.”

“The deuce you are! Well, so much the better. A sound friend abroad is more comfortable for all parties than a sick friend at home. Have they given you your three months?”

“Yes—on full pay.”

“Lucky dog. And while you are flirting around the capitals of Europe we poor devils will have to be slaving away in this grimy and sooty metropolis. In the good fortune of one's friends there is always something devilishly obnoxious. Why is the eternal order of things so mismanaged that you should have a good time and I not? Here is your brandy. Drink it and look more human.”

Kent did as he was bidden. The stimulant, which he needed, revived him. Wither guessed that something untoward had occurred. He had a woman's intuition, this bright-eyed, cynical little being, and he rattled on in his light way to save Kent the strain of making conversation.

“Have a cigarette?” he asked, taking out his case. “No? Well, smoke your pipe. I can't understand how anyone but a horny-palated son of toil can smoke a pipe. By the way, what do you think a girl sent me by way of a present this morning?”

“I don't know,” said Kent. “A hymn book?”

“No; a cigarette holder—mouthpiece, you know. I wrote and told her it was very pretty and I would keep it in memory of her to my dying day; but as for using it, I should just as soon think of kissing her through a respirator.”

“That was unkind,” said Kent, laughing in spite of himself, tickled at the idea.

“Lord bless you, no,” replied Wither oracularly from the depths of his armchair. “It is wholesome to check this frenzy of profusion now and then. When a woman once begins to give she never knows where to stop. When she has exhausted her imagination she gives away herself. It's embarrassing sometimes, for one can't put half a dozen women away in a drawer with the rest of the odds and ends. Oh, no; a little fatherly repression does a world of good to the ingenuous and enthusiastic. I don't pretend to be moral, but I am not without kindly instincts.”

He chuckled sardonically and began to turn over the pages of Punch. Kent smoked on in silence, cheered a little by the familiar chatter.

“Teddy,” he said at last, “you seem to hear all the gossip about town; do you know anything about a man called Hammerdyke?”

“Thornton Hammerdyke—man from Africa—explorer?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, rather. One of the greatest devils unhung,” replied Wither cheerfully.

“What do you mean?” cried Kent in an agitated voice, starting forward and gripping the arms of his chair. “Take care what you are saying. It is a matter of life and death to—to somebody. What do you know about him? Tell me.”

Wither arched his eyebrows in surprise, and became serious. Then his quick intuition supplied him with the reason for Kent's agitation.

“I only spoke idle gossip,” he said, “and I have the misfortune to be hyperbolical at times. The man has had some dealings with our office and that is how I come to know anything about him. Don't you remember he got into a row for wholesale slaughter of niggers on one of his expeditions? He cleared himself all right, of course, by proving mutiny, self-defence, and that sort of thing.”

“I remember the incident now,” said Kent. “It was in the papers.”

“Well, his public character is cleared,” said Wither, “and he is a good deal of a lion these days; but fellows who have served with him take the niggers' side of the question, and wonder how he remained a day among them without being torn to pieces. That's all I know about him, which you see is not much. My dear old boy,” he continued earnestly as Kent sat silent, staring in front of him, “is that the reason why you are starting so suddenly? Is it all fixed up? No chance?”

Kent nodded moodily.

“I suppose not. I was going to ask her this morning when I learned she had engaged herself—only last night—to this man. And I have seen him. Devil or not, he is a man.”

Wither bit his lip. For the moment he was at a loss for an expression of sympathy, somewhat uneasy as to the line he should adopt. What was the use of making Kent more miserable by telling him other ugly stories he had heard concerning Hammerdyke if either were powerless to prevent the marriage from taking place? Besides, it was only idle gossip after all, and in the serious affairs of life Wither was honourable and conscientious.

Suddenly Kent broke out:

“Oh, my God, Teddy, I don't care a little damn about myself,—I can worry along, as I did before—better, for it is something to have loved her,—if only she is happy. But if this man is not fit for her, if this horrible gossip of yours is true, she will be entering into a life of misery,—I know her,—and I shall feel as if I had not put out my hand to stop her.”

“Everyone must dree his own weird, my dear old boy,” said Wither. “And while he's doing it neither you nor anyone else can interfere with much profit. Make your mind easy about yourself and your responsibilities. You could not go to her and say, 'I hear the man you are going to marry is a blackguard; have me instead.' In the first place, your pride would not allow you, and in the second, if she cared about him, she wouldn't believe you, but would marry him all the sooner to prove her faith in him. It is the way of women when they are worth anything.”

“Yes; Clytie would do just that,” said Kent. “I think even a man would, if he loved a woman.”

“Well,” said Wither, “it is no use making yourself miserable about it. The wise man guards against indulgence in things that upset his moral as well as his physical digestion. But wisdom was never much your forte, friend John.”

Kent stayed and dined with Wither and then returned alone to the King's Road. He had already made certain preparations for travel; the few final arrangements did not take long. As he passed by Clytie's sitting-room door he noticed that it was ajar, a sign that she was out. In the old days,—less than two months ago, but far away for all that,—he had been accustomed to run down on such occasions, at about half-past ten or eleven, and stir up the fire. Since her return from Durdleham this little token of intimacy had gone with the rest. But on this evening the desire came over him to perform this service for her once more, for the last time. He crept down the stairs on tip-toe, in case she should have come in without his knowledge. But the door was still ajar, the room was vacant. The fire had burned down very low, only a few glowing coals at the bottom of the grate. He returned to his own rooms and fetched some wood and paper, and kneeling down, built up a satisfactory fire. At first, however, the wood would not burn; it had to be dried by repeated conflagrations of paper, and the blaze had to be induced by much cunning coaxing. It was just beginning to flare merrily up the chimney when the sudden slam of the street door below aroused him to a sense of his position. He left the room and fled quickly up the stairs. Outside his door he listened. It was Clytie, arriving home somewhat early. He was disappointed, a little humiliated. The freshness had gone from his sad little pleasure, for he had not wished her to guess that he had been down. Now the act seemed clumsy, in bad taste, as if he had been forcing his attentions on her. He went into his sitting-room with a heart heavier than before, and continued his preparations for departure. He had packed up his portmanteau and was now stowing away his papers and valuable odds and ends that he wished to remain under lock and key during his absence.

Suddenly a step was heard on the stair that made his heart stand still, and Clytie appeared at the door.

“Can I come in?”

He could scarcely find words to greet her. Now that their good comradeship was at an end, above all, now that she was lifted beyond his sphere, she held a different position in his eyes. She looked beautiful, queenly. Her rich hair and colouring, the pale blue of her dress, struck a note of exquisite brightness in the gloomy, half-dismantled room. He removed some books from his writing-chair and pulled it towards her.

“How good of you to come!” was all he could say.

“How good of you to look after my fire!” said Clytie.

“I did not want you to know——”

“Why not?”

“Oh, a sentiment,” he replied. “We are governed a great deal by such things.”

“It touched me so,” said Clytie. “I could not help coming up to thank you, as you are going away early in the morning.”

“Ah! Winifred told you?”

“Yes; she said you had come to bid good-bye.”

Kent felt bound to fall in with Winifred's friendly fable, although his honesty shrank a little from accepting what was not its due.

“There is always something sad in leave-taking,” said Clytie.

The remark was trite and commonplace; but so is a kiss or a grasp of the hand or the words “Good-bye, dear,” themselves. The original generally brings more titillation than comfort.

“This leave-taking is sadder than most—to me,” said Kent.

“And to me too,” said Clytie. “It marks the end of the old life—a very pleasant one. Kent,” she went on after a short reflective pause, “I want to tell you something: I reproached you a little in my heart—last month. I don't now. I haven't the right. Winifred said she had let you know of my engagement. If our parting had not come from you, it would have come now from me.”

“I see now; it was bound to come sooner or later,” replied Kent, much moved. “Oh, my God! what puppets we are. But I wish you happiness, from my heart, in your new life. You will always be to me the one woman whom”—he was going to add, “I could love,” but he checked himself and quickly substituted, “who has taught me what there is in women.”

“Ah, my dear Kent,” returned Clytie with a touch of her brightness and charm, “there will be someone nicer than I who will teach you better. You, too, must have happiness, you know. You will marry soon——”

“I marry!” cried Kent, wheeling round to face her. “How can you say that!”

They looked at one another, each misunderstanding. He was wounded at her treating his love as a thing of no account. She was puzzled at his implied contradiction of her theory.

“I thought I had discovered the reason for your wishing to break off our intimacy—but I find I was wrong.”

“I don't understand,” said Kent, agitated. “I acted foolishly, very foolishly and rudely. Yet I only did it to save you pain. To break with you cost me the dearest thing I had in the world. Surely you must be aware of that.”

“You did not break it because you suddenly—during my absence—wished to form other ties?”

A light broke upon Kent, like a flash of lightning over a desolate wilderness. All of this heart-burning, then, was for nothing. She had never suspected that he loved her. A sense of the futility of things crushed him for a moment.

“I am not a man to fall in love readily,” he replied in a low voice.

“Then,” said Clytie earnestly, “I am at fault. Why did you not answer my letter? Why did you shun me? Why were you so constrained when we met? Why did you tear yourself out of my daily life?”

Kent turned away his face, so that she should not see him as he fought out within himself a great battle. Had these words only been spoken a day or two ago he would have poured out his love to her in all its honesty and strength. But now she was bound to another irrevocably—now indeed it would give her pain to hear what he foolishly thought would have given her pain to hear before. Then he was restrained by misinterpretation of the meaning of the passion that had come surging into his blood. Now he was held back by finer feelings, ignorant perhaps, quixotic, but such as work in man to the shaping of his nobleness.

“It was something I would rather not speak of,” he said at last—“something in my own life. I might have told you then; I was wrong not to; I did it for the best. I can't now. This seems like a cheap way of making mysteries,—perhaps it is one, not very big,—but it is better that it should be one to you. It was no fault of mine, believe me. You do believe me, Clytie, when I say that it was bitter for me to give up your friendship, don't you?”

“Yes, Kent,” exclaimed Clytie, “I do believe that you are everything that is true and tender and loyal. You don't know what strength and comfort your sympathy and your brave, frank way of looking at things have been to me. I have wronged you—forgive me.”

She rose, held out her hand to him. He took it and raised it to his lips very gently. Her eyes grew a little moist.

“You are treating me like a foolish woman, and not en bon camarade,” she said in a low voice.

“You are no longer my bon camarade,” he replied. “You are my very dear lady, whom I will serve till the hour of my death.”

A moment or two afterwards she was gone. The next morning Kent left England.