Miss Lindon, in pathetic despair, had abandoned her notion of turning Unity into a young lady of young-ladylike accomplishments. She could perform whatever marvels of exquisite sewing Miss Lindon could imagine, but there her proficiency in the elegances came to an end. The girl's tastes, Miss Lindon lamented, were so plebeian! She would sooner make puddings than afternoon calls; she would sooner sweep and dust and polish than read instructive or entertaining literature. In her child-of-the-people's practical way, she had ousted Miss Lindon from the management of the household, thereby coming into conflict with the stern Phoebe, no longer feared, who hitherto had carried out, according to her own fancy, the kind lady's nebulous directions. Miss Lindon sighed, and surrendered her keys, inwardly thankful to be relieved of crushing responsibilities. She had never known how to order dinner for John. If, after agonized searching, she had decided on lamb, and sweet peas and grouse and asparagus, it was only to be told that some or all of them were out of season. And she could never check the laundry-list, so eternally mysterious were the garments worn by man.

Unity was a born economist. As soon as she took over the seals of office, she abolished the easy and expensive system of tradesmen calling for orders. She herself marketed, and that was her great joy. Every day she took her market-bag and busied herself among the shops in the Kilburn High Road, choosing her meat with an uncanny sureness of vision, knocking extortionate pennies off the prices of vegetables, and seeing generally that she had good value for her money. Miss Lindon, accompanying her on one or two of these excursions, was shocked and scared at her temerity. How dared she talk like that to the greengrocer? Unity replied that she would talk to him until he did n't know himself if he gave her any more of his nonsense. She was n't going to allow her guardian to be robbed by any of them, not she; she was up to all their tricks.

“I suppose you thought that was a good lettuce, Auntie?”

“I am no judge, dear,” said Miss Lindon; “but surely you ought n't to have hurt his feelings by saying that its proper place was the dust-bin, and not a respectable shop.”

“He understands me all right,” laughed Unity.

All the tradesmen did, and they respected the shrewdness of the businesslike little plebeian, whom they recognized and treated as one of their own class; and Unity saved her beloved guardian many shillings a week, which was a matter of proud gratification. She held her head high nowadays. She had found herself.

Once chatting casually with Herold, John said with the air of Sir Oracle:

“Unity has got quite a strong character.”

Herold laughed. “Did n't I tell you so nearly three years ago? You would n't believe me.”

“You talked some nonsense about love,” growled John.

“Well, have n't you given it to her in your bearish way? What would you do in this house without her? You'd be utterly miserable.”

“I suppose I should,” said John. “But I wish you would get out of the infernal habit of always being in the right.”

One afternoon—it was the Saturday before Christmas—Unity took the market-bag and went out to do her shopping. Evening had fallen on a thin, black fog. The busy thoroughfare was a bewildering fusion of flare and gloom. The Christmas crowd, eager to purchase or to gladden their eyes with good things unpurchaseable, thronged the pavements—an ordinary, crowd of middle-class folk, careless of the foggy air, enjoying the Christmas promise in shops almost vulgarly replete. A hundred rosetted carcasses in a butcher's shop where ten hung the day before is marvel enough to attract the comfortable loiterer, and the happy butcher's “Buy! Buy!” as he stands in a blaze of light sharpening his knife, is an attraction peculiarly fascinating. What with the stream entering and issuing from shops, the wedges of loiterers glued to shop windows, the two main currents of saunterers, progress was difficult. In the murky roadway motor-omnibuses and carts flashed mysteriously by in endless traffic. All was uproar and ant-heap confusion.

Unity, resolute, squat little figure, made her purchases, and, having made them, lingered, joyously in the throbbing street, her hereditary element. She was never so happy as when rubbing shoulders with her kind. The whistling shop-boy and the giggling work-girl were her congeners. For the sake of her guardian and Aunt Gladys she never spoke to such ungenteel persons, but in their swiftly passing company she had a sense of comfort and comradeship. Often she went out without knowing why. The street called her.

The sights and sounds of it provided an ever-changing, ever-exciting drama. A street accident, a fallen horse, a drunken man, held her fascinated. And tonight the abnormal life of the street afforded an extra thrill of exhilaration; there was so much to see. At last she found her progress blocked by a crowd hanging about a confectioner's window. She wormed her way through, and was rewarded by the enthralling spectacle of a huge clock-work figure of Father Christmas, who drew from his wallet the shop's special plum-pudding at ninepence-halfpenny a pound. It was mighty fine, and Unity never heeded the tossing and buffeting of the admiring crowd..The light shone hard on the ring of pink faces framed by the blackness beyond. Then eager sight-seers jostled her into the background.

Suddenly she felt a sharp and awful pain in her side. She shrieked aloud and turned. The baffling figure of a woman in black hurrying into the maw of the darkness met her eyes before the startled crowd closed about her. She put her hand instinctively to the tortured spot, and drew out from her flesh a long hat-pin; then she fainted.

An assistant in the shop, coming out to know the cause of the hubbub, recognized her and had her brought indoors. The policeman on the beat soon shouldered his way in. They put poor Unity on a shutter, covered her with rugs, and, followed by a tail of idlers, bore her to the house.

John came home soon afterwards and found an agitated Aunt Gladys in process of being reassured by a kindly doctor that Unity was not dead. The wound, though ugly and painful, was little more than flesh deep. The hat-pin had glanced off a corset bone and penetrated obliquely. Straightly driven, however, it would have been a deadly thrust. Of the murderous intent there could hardly be any doubt. A sergeant of police was also waiting for John; but John let him wait, and rushed in his bull-like way upstairs.

Unity, who had long since recovered consciousness, lay in bed, her wound tended, a cheerful fire lit, and Phoebe in attendance. John dismissed the latter with a gesture and flung himself on his knees by the head of the bed.

“'My God! child, what has happened?”

For all the difference of surroundings,—the pretty room and fine linen,—the common little face on the pillow was singularly like that which he had seen in the orphanage infirmary. But there was a deeper trust in the girl's eyes, for they were lit with a flash of joy at his great distress.

She recounted simply what had occurred.

“You saw the woman disappear?”

“I think so. It was all so quick.”

It was a woman's stab. What man would use a hat-pin? And there could be only one woman alive who would stab Unity.

“Did you recognize her?”

His voice was hoarse, and his rugged face full of pain. She regarded him steadily.

“No, Guardian.”

“It was not—she?”

“No,” said Unity.

“Are you sure?”

Unity clenched her hands and turned away, and her eyes grew hard.

“If it was, I should have known her.”

John rose to his feet and stood over her, his arms folded, and looked at her from beneath his heavy brows. Unity met his gaze. And so they remained for a second or two, and each knew that the other knew who had dealt the blow.

“It was n't her,” said Unity.

The words were stamped with finality. John, meeting the girl's set gaze, had a glimpse of rocky strata far beneath. No process of question invented by man would induce her to unsay the words.

“There's a police sergeant downstairs,” said he.

“I did n't see no woman either,” said Unity, significantly.

And John did not notice her unusual relapse into orphanage speech.

Soon afterward he left her and joined the sergeant in the hall. The policeman asked the stereotyped questions. John replied that Miss Blake—it was, as far as he knew, the first time he had given Unity her full style and title, and the name sounded odd in his ears—that Miss Blake had seen nothing of her assailant and could give no information whatever.

“You suspect nobody?”

“Nobody at all,” said John, decisively. “You need n't trouble to pursue the matter any further, for the wound luckily is trifling, and in any case I should not prosecute.”

“As you please, sir,” said the Sergeant.

“Good evening, and thank you,” said John.

“This is the hat-pin, sir.”

“You can leave it with me,” said John.

He went into his study and examined the thing. It was of common make, the head being a ball of black glass. A million such are sold in cheap shops.

He had no doubt as to the owner. She had spied upon him craftily, bided her time, and had then struck. He had not seen her since the day they had met in Maida Vale and he had unceremoniously packed her home, and for the last few months she had not molested him. Now came this unforeseen, dastardly attack.

He rang for Phoebe, gave a message for Miss Lindon, and went out with an ugly look on his face. A taxicab whirled him swiftly across London to Amelia Mansions in the Fulham Road. Mrs. Bence answered his ring. He stepped into the hall, and in his blundering way strode down the passage. The woman checked him.

“Mrs. Rawlings is n't in, sir. She is with Mrs. Oscraft, the lady down-stairs.”

He turned abruptly.

“Has she been out this afternoon?”

“She went out to lunch with Mrs. Oscraft and came back with her an hour ago.”

He drew the hat-pin from the inside of his overcoat, where he had stuck it. “Do you recognize this?”

The woman looked puzzled. “No, sir,” she said. “Mrs. Rawlings has n't any like it?”

Mrs. Bence inspected the pin. “No, I'm sure. If she had, I would have known.” She saw the trouble in his face. “What has happened, sir?”

He told her briefly. The woman knitted a perplexed brow.

“I don't see how it could have been her, sir,” she said. “She's nearly always with Mrs. Oscraft, and very seldom goes out by herself, and to-day, as I 've said, she went out and came back with her. And I'm sure she has n't had a hat-pin like that in use.”

“What exactly is this Mrs. Oscraft?” he asked. Mrs. Bence added to his vague knowledge. Her husband was a book-maker, very often absent from home, having to frequent race-meetings and taverns and other such resorts of his trade. She had many friends, male and female, of the same kidney, a crew rowdy and vulgar, but otherwise harmless. She and Mrs. Rawlings had become inseparable.

“I 'll go down and see her,” said John.

Mrs. Oscraft, an overblown blonde, floppily attired, opened the door of her flat.

“Hello! Who are you?” she asked.

He explained that he was the husband of Mrs. Rawlings.

“So you are. She 's got a portrait of you. Besides, I 've seen you here. She 's in the drawing-room. Come along in and have a whisky and soda or a glass of champagne.”

He declined. “I owe you a thousand apologies for intruding,” said he, “but if you would answer me just one question, I should be greatly obliged.”

“Fire away,” said the lady. “Won't you really come in?”

“No, thank you,” said John. “Will you tell me where my wife has been this afternoon?”

“With me all the time,” said Mrs. Oscraft, promptly. “We 've been doing Christmas shopping in Kensington High Street, and only just got back.”

“She did n't go near Kilburn?”

“Lord bless you, no!” said the lady. “Look here, would you like to see her?”

“No,” said John. He apologized again, and bade her good evening. He descended the stone stairs with a bewildered feeling that he had made a fool of himself; and Mrs. Oscraft, as soon as the door was shut, put her thumb to her nose and twiddled her fingers in the traditional gesture of derision.

John went away sore and angry, like a bull that, charging at a man, unexpectedly butts up against a stone wall. He had no reason for disbelieving Mrs. Oscraft, and the hat-pin was not his wife's. Yet who but his wife could have been the aggressor? It might have been an accident. It might have been a man—such cases are not uncommon—with the stabbing and cutting mania. Unity's fleeting glimpse of the woman in black might have been a trick of shadow in the lamplit fog. Yet in the deed he felt the hand of the revengeful and cruel woman. He was baffled.

On his way home he called on Herold, whom he found at dinner.

“I shall never know a moment's peace of mind,” he said gloomily, after they had discussed the matter, “until she is put under restraint. If she did n't do it, as you make out—” Herold held to the theory that a person could not be in two places, Kensington and Kilbum, at the same time—“she is quite capable of it.”

“It's a mercy,” said Herold, “that you did not see her and tax her with the offence, and so put the idea into her head.”

“I believe she did it all the same,” said John, obstinately.

“But why should Mrs. Oscraft have lied? Mrs. Bence saw them go out and come in together. You can't suppose the other woman was an accomplice. It's absurd.”

“I know it is,” said John. “But the absurd often turns up in a churchwarden's unhumorous kit of reality in this Bedlam of a world.”

They argued until it was time for Herold to go to his theatre, when John went home and ate a belated dinner in such a black mood that Miss Lindon dared not question him.

And that was the end of the matter. Unity's wound healed after a few days, and sturdily refusing Phoebe's protection on her walks abroad, she resumed her marketing in the Kilburn High Road. John called on the district inspector of police and obtained the ready promise that folks running amuck with hatpins should be summarily arrested and that his house and ward should be placed under special supervision.

It was characteristic of the terms of dumb confidence on which John and Unity lived together that neither of them referred again to the possible perpetrator of the outrage. When she became aware that the policemen in this district always kept her respectfully in sight and, on passing her, saluted, she knew that her guardian had so ordained things. One day in the New Year she entered his study, and stood at attention.

“Please, Guardian, may I have half-a-crown?”

He fished the coin out of his trousers' pocket and handed it to her.

“I don't want it for myself,” she said.

She had her allowance for pin-money, which she was too proud to exceed. As a matter of fact, she hoarded her pennies in the top of an old coffee-pot and out of her savings bought not only finery for herself, but startling birthday and Christmas presents for her guardian and Aunt Gladys. It was astonishing what Unity could do with elevenpence three farthings.

John, knowing her ways, smiled.

“What do you want it for, then?”

“I'm going to give it to my best policeman,” she said, and marched out of the room.

That was her only acknowledgement of her appreciation of the measures he had taken to ensure her safety. He understood, and, when telling Herold of the incident, called her, after the loose way of man, “a rum kid.” Of the obvious he was aware, and it pleased him; but subtler manifestations escaped his notice. It never occurred to him that it was more than a pleasing accident of domestic life when, on letting himself into the house with his latch-key, he should find Unity, drab and stolid, her cheeks and snub nose and prominent forehead shining in the unladylike way deplored by Miss Lindon, as if polished with yellow soap, and her skimpy hair bunched up ungracefully, with patient, unchanging eyes, awaiting him in the little hall, her hands already outstretched to take hat and stick and to help him off with his overcoat. Yet ninety-nine times out of a hundred it happened. He did not notice the orderly confusion wrought by the ingenuity of sleepless nights out of the chaos of his study. Wishes—just the poor, commonplace little wishes of household life—what could poor, commonplace little Unity, with her limited soul-horizon, do more for him? wishes vaguely formulated in his mind he found quickly and effectively realized, and worried, hard-working, honest man that he was, he took the practical comforts sometimes as a matter of course, now and then with a careless word of thanks, and never dreamed—how could he?—of the passionate endeavour whereby these poor, commonplace little things came to pass.

There can be as much beautiful expenditure of soul—as beautiful in the eyes of God, to whom, as to any philosopher with a working idea of infinity, the fall of a rose-petal must be as important as the fall of an empire—in the warming of a man's slippers before the fire by the woman who loves him as in all the heroisms of all the Joans of Arc and the Charlotte Cordays and the window-breaking, policeman-scratching, forcibly fed female martyrs of modern London that have ever existed. It is a proposition as incontrovertible as any elementary theorem of Euclid you please; but so essentially unphilosophic is man, to say nothing of woman,—for a man would sooner break stones, play bridge, go bankrupt, slaughter his wife and family, or wear a straw hat with a frock-coat than brace his mind to think—that this self-evident truth passes him by unrecognized, unperceived, unguessed.

The volcanic forces of life—essentially such as act and react between man and woman—lie hidden deep down in the soul's unknown and unsuspected cauldron, and their outward manifestations are only here and there a puff of smoke so fine and blue that it merges at once into the caressing air. The good, easy man plants his vines on the mountain-side. The sky is serene, the sun fills his grapes with joyousness. Then comes eruption, and the smiling slope is smitten into the grin of a black death's-head.