IN after-time Herold's memory of that disastrous night and the succeeding days was that of a peculiarly lucid nightmare in which he seemed to have acted without volition or consciousness of motive. He ate, dressed, drove through the streets on unhappy missions, gave orders, directions, consoled, like an automaton, and sometimes slept exhaustedly. So it seemed to him, looking back. He spared John the first night of misery. The man with his bandaged head slept like a log, and Herold did not wake him. All that could be done he himself had done. It was better for John to gather strength in sleep to face the tragedy on the morrow. And when the morrow came, and Herold broke the news to him, the big man gave way under the shock, and became gentle, and obeyed Herold like a child. Thereafter, for many days, he sat for the hour together with his old aunt, curiously dependent on her; and she, through her deep affection for him, grew singularly silent and practical.

In her unimaginative placidity lay her strength. She mourned for Unity as for her own flesh and blood; but the catastrophe did not shake her even mind, and when John laid his head in her lap and sobbed, all that was beautiful in the woman flowed through the comforting tips of her helpless fingers.

From Herold he learned the unsuspected reason of Unity's crime and sacrifice; and from Unity, too, for a poor little pencil scrawl found in her pocket and addressed to him told him of her love and of her intention to clear the way for his happiness. And when the inquest was over and Unity's body was brought to Kilburn and laid in its coffin in her little room, he watched by it in dumb stupor of anguish.

Herold roused him now and then. Action—nominal action at least—had to be taken by him as surviving protagonist of the tragedy. The morning after the deed the newspapers shrieked the news, giving names in full, raking up memories of the hideous case. They dug, not deep, for motive, and found long-smouldering vengeance. Unity was blackened. John responded to Herold's lash. This must not be. Unity must not go to her grave in public dishonour; truth must be told. So at the inquest, John wild, uncouth, with great strips of sticking-plaster on his head, told truth, and gave a romantic story to a hungry press. It was hateful to lay bare the inmost sacredness and the inmost suffering of his soul to the world's cold and curious gaze, but it had to be done. Unity's name was cleared. When he sat down by Herold's side, the latter grasped his hand, and it was clammy and cold, and he shook throughout his great frame.

Then Herold, driven to mechanical action, as it seemed to him afterward, by a compelling force, dragged John to an inquiry into the evil woman's life. It was Mrs. Oscraft, the full-blown, blowzy bookmaker's wife, the woman's intimate associate for many years, who gave the necessary clue. Horrified by the discovery of the identity of her friend and by the revelation of further iniquities, she lost her head when the men sternly questioned her. She had used her intimacy with Mrs. Risca to cover from her own husband an intrigue of many years' standing. In return, Mrs. Risca had confessed to an intrigue of her own, and demanded, and readily obtained, Mrs. Oscraft's protection. The women worked together. They were inseparable in their outgoings and incomings, but abroad each went her separate way. That was why, ignorant of the truth, Mrs. Oscraft had lied loyally when John Risca had burst into her flat long ago. She had thought she was merely shielding her fellow-sinner from the wrath of a jealous husband. Thus for years, with her cunning, Mrs. Risca had thrown dust in the eyes both of her friend and of the feared and hated wardress whom John had set over her. Under the double cloak she had used her hours of liberty to carry out the set, relentless purpose of her life. To spy on him with exquisite craft had been her secret passion, to strike when the time came the very meaning of her criminal existence.

“And for the last two or three years she gave no trouble and was as gentle as a lamb, so how could I suspect?” Mrs. Bence lamented.

“It 's all over,” said John, stupidly; “it's all over. Nothing matters now.”

To Herold, in after-time, the memories of these days were as those of the doings of another man in his outer semblance. His essential self had been the crazy being who had marched through the mellow Kensington streets with fantastic dreams of murder in his head. At the sight of Unity and the woman lying ghastly on the floor something seemed to snap in his brain, and all the cloudy essence that was he vanished, and a perfect mechanism took its place. When John with wearisome reiteration said: “God bless you, Wallie! God knows what I should have done without you,” it was hard to realize that he had done anything deserving thanks. He was inclined to regard himself—when he had a fugitive moment to regard himself—with abhorrence. He had talked; Unity had acted. And deep down in his soul, only once afterwards in his life to be confessed, dwelt an awful remorse for his responsibility in the matter of Unity's death. But in simple fact no man in times of great convulsion knows himself. He looks back on the man who acted and wonders. The man, surviving the wreck of earthquake, if he be weak, lies prone and calls on God and man to help him; if he be strong, he devotes the intensity of his faculties to the work of rescue, of clearing up debris, of temporary reconstruction, and has no time for self-analysis. It is in reality the essential man in his vigour and courage and nobility and disdain who acts, and the bruised and shattered about him who profit by his help look rightly upon him as a god.

It was only after John had visited the house of death, where, according to law, the bodies both of slayer and slain had to lie, and had seen the pinched, common face, swathed in decent linen, of the girl who for his sake had charged her soul with murder and taken her own life, and after he had driven away, stunned with grief and carrying with him, at his feet in the taxi-cab, the useless kit-bag packed by the poor child with Heaven knows what idea of its getting to its destination, and had staggered to the comfort of the foolish old lady's outstretched arms and received her benediction, futilely spoken, divinely unspoken—it was only then that, raising haggard eyes, all the more haggard under the brow-reaching bandage he still wore, he asked the question:

“What about Stella? She is bound to learn.”

“I wrote to her last night,” said Herold. “I prepared her for the shock as best I could.”

A gleam of rational thought flitted across John Risca's mind.

“You remembered her at such a time, with all you had to do? You 're a wonderful man, Wallie. No one else would have done it.”

“Are you in a fit state of mind,” said Herold, “to understand what has happened? I tried to tell you this morning,”—as he had done fitfully,—“but it was no use. You grasped nothing.”

“Go on now,” said John. “I 'm listening.”

So Herold, amid the fripperies of Miss Lindon's drawing-room, told the story of his summons to the Channel House some time ago—Good God!—He caught himself up sharply—it was only yesterday! and of his talk with Stellamaris in the garden, and of her encounter with the evil woman, and of the poison that had crept to the roots of Stella's being.

John shivered, and clenched impotent fists. Stella left alone on the cliff-edge with that murderous hag! Stella's ears polluted by that infamous tale! If only he had known it! Why did she hide it from him?

It was well the murderess was dead, but, merciful Heaven, at what a price!

“Listen,” said Herold, gravely, checking his outburst; and he told of his meetings with Unity,—it was essential that John should know,—of her almost mystical worship of Stellamaris, of their discovery of the revolver—

“Poor child!” cried John, “I bought it soon after I went to Kilburn. I took it out the other day and played with a temptation I knew I should n't succumb to. I should never have had the pluck.”

Herold continued, telling him all he knew—all save that of which he stood self-accused, and which for the present was a matter between him and his Maker. And Miss Lindon, fondling on her lap a wheezy pug, the successor to the Dandy of former days who had been gathered to his fathers long ago, listened in placid bewilderment to the strange story of love and crime.

“I 'm sure I don't understand how people think of such things, let alone do them,” she sighed.

“You must accept the fact, dear Miss Lindon,” said Herold, gently.

“God's will be done,” she murmured, which in the circumstances was as relevant a thing as the poor lady could have uttered. But John sat hunched up in a bamboo chair that creaked under his weight, and scarcely spoke a word. He felt very unimportant by the side of Unity—Unity with whose strong, passionate soul he had dwelt in blind ignorance. And Unity was dead, lying stark and white in the alien house.

After a long silence he roused himself.

“You wrote to Stella, you said?”

“Yes,” replied Herold.

“What will happen to her?”

“I don't know.”

John groaned. “If only I had protected her as I ought to have done! If only I had protected both of them!”

He relapsed again into silence, burying his face in his hands. Presently Miss Lindon put the pug tenderly on the ground, rose, and stood by his chair.

“My poor boy,” she said, “do you love her so much?”

“She's dead,” said John.

Herold shook him by the shoulder. “Nonsense, man. Pull yourself together.”

John raised a drawn face.

“What did you ask? I was thinking about Unity.”

That day, the day after the tragedy, Stellamaris faced life, in its nakedness, stripped, so it appeared to her, of every rag of mystery.

She had breakfasted as usual in her room, bathed and dressed, and looked wistfully over her disowning sea. Then, as she was preparing to go downstairs, Morris had brought in Herold's letter, scribbled so nervously and shakenly that at first she was at a loss to decipher it. Gradually it became terribly clear: Unity was dead; the woman was dead; Unity had killed the woman and then killed herself.

“Details of everything but the truth will be given in the morning papers,” Herold wrote; “but you must know the truth from the first—as I know it. Unity has given her life to save those she loved—you and John—from the woman. She has laid down her life for you. Never forget that as long as you live.”

She sat for some moments quite still, paralyzed by the new horror that had sprung from this false, flower-decked earth to shake her by the throat. The world was terrifyingly relentless. She read the awful words again. Bit by bit feeling returned. Her flesh was constricted in a cold and finely wrought net. She grew faint, put her hand to her brow and found it damp. She stumbled to her bed by the great west window and threw herself down. Constable, lying on the hearth-rug, staggered to his feet and thrust his old head on her bosom and regarded her with mournful and inquiring eyes. She caressed him mechanically. Suddenly she sprang up as a swift memory smote her. Once she lay there by the window, and the dog was there by the bed, and there by the door stood the ungainly figure of a girl of her own age. Was it possible that that ungainly child whom she had seen and talked to then, whom a few weeks ago she had kissed, could have committed this deed of blood? She rose again to her feet, pushed the old dog aside blindly, and hid her eyes from the light of day. The girl was human, utterly human at those two meetings. Of what unknown, devastating forces, were human beings, then, composed?

She took up the letter again. “Unity has given her life to save those she loved—you and John—from the woman. She has laid down her life for you. Never forget that as long as you live.”

Walter Herold said that. It must be true. Through all of yesterday's welter of misery, after he had left her, she had clung despairingly to him. There was no God, but there was Walter Herold. Her pride had dismissed him with profession of disbelief, but in her heart she had believed him. Not that she had pardoned John Risca, not that she had recovered her faith in him, not that she had believed in Unity. Her virginal soul, tainted by the woman, had shrunk from thoughts of the pair; but despite her fierce determination to believe in neither God nor man, she had been compelled to believe in Herold. She had stood up against him and fought with him and had bitten and rent him, and he had conquered, and she had felt maddenedly angered, triumphantly glad. The whole world could be as false as hell, but in it there was one clear spirit speaking truth.

She went to the southern window, rested her elbows on the sill, and pressed the finger-tips of both hands against her forehead. The soft south-west wind, bringing the salt from the dancing sea, played about her hair. Unity had laid down her life to save those she loved. So had Christ done—given his life for humanity. But Christ had not killed a human being, no matter how murderous, and had not taken his own life. No, no; she must not mix up things irreconcilable. She faced the room again. What did people do when they killed? What were the common, practical steps that they took to gain their ends? Her mind suddenly grew vague. Herold had spoken of newspapers. She must see them; she must know everything. Life was deadly conflict, and knowledge the only weapon. For a few seconds she stood in the middle of the room, her young bosom heaving, her dark eyes wide with the diamond glints in their depths. Life was a deadly conflict. She would fight, she would conquer. Others miserably weaker than herself survived. Pride and race and splendid purity of soul sheathed her in cold armour. A jingle, separated from context, came into her mind, and in many ways it was a child's mind:

Then spake Sir Thomas Howard,

“ 'Fore God, I am no coward.”

“'Fore God, I am no coward,” she repeated, and with her delicate head erect she went out and down the stairs and entered the dining-room.

There she found Sir Oliver and Lady Blount sitting at a neglected breakfast. The old faces strove pitifully to smile. Stella kissed them in turn, and with her hand lingering on the old man's arm, she gave him Herold's letter.

“Is it in the newspapers?” she asked.

“What, what, my dear?” said Sir Oliver, adjusting his glasses on his nose with fumbling fingers.

She looked from one to the other. Then her eyes fell on the morning papers lying on the table. They were folded so that a great head-line stared hideously.

“Oh, darling, don't read it—for Heaven's sake do n't read it,” cried Lady Blount, clutching the nearer newspaper.

But Stella took up the other. “I must, dearest,” she said very gently. “Walter has written to me; but he could not tell me everything.”

She moved to the window that overlooked the pleasant garden, and with steady eyes read the vulgar and soul-withering report, while the two old people, head to head, puzzled out Herold's scrawl.

When she had finished, she laid the paper quietly at the foot of the table and came and stood between them, revolted by the callous publication of names, almost physically sickened by the realistic picture of the scene, her head whirling. She caught hold of the back of Sir Oliver's chair.

“The newspaper lies,” she said, “but it does n't know any better. Walter tells us why she did it.”

Sir Oliver, elbow on table, held the letter in his shaking grasp. It dropped, and his head sank on his hand.

“It's too horrible!” he said in a weak voice. “I don't understand anything at all about it. I don't understand what Walter means. And all that old beastly story revived. It's damnable!”

He looked quite broken, his querulous self-assertion gone. Lady Blount, too, gave way, and stretched out an imploring and pathetic arm, which, as Stella moved a step or two toward her, fell around the slim, standing figure. She laid her cheek against Stella and cried miserably.

“O my darling, my precious one, if we could only spare you all this! Walter should n't have written. O my darling, what are we to do! What are we to do!”

And then Stellamaris saw once more that Great High Excellency and Most Exquisite Auntship, for all their love of her, were of the weak ones of the world, and she looked down with a new and life-giving feeling of pity upon the bowed gray heads.