Roderick drove away from Lady Milmo's in a far more comfortable frame of mind than Sylvester. The evening had been a success. Hitherto, in spite of his conviction that his hold upon Ella was secure, he had been puzzled as to the nature of her feelings towards him. Over the life-work they were to carry out in common she had always glowed; in their purely personal relations she had exhibited a sad lack of emotionality. His vanity had often been piqued by her regarding him less as a man than as the incarnation of an idea. At the same time his own feelings had been simulated to love. He honestly desired her beauty, youth, and wit. As a proof thereof, he had abandoned with entire distaste the latest of the many minor affairs of the heart in which his emotional life had been spent. A breath of something sweeter, purer, nobler, had stirred his soul. The train of courtesans shrank back affrighted, and he walked serene with the higher woman. But desiring her thus uniquely, the man in him craved response. Until to-night she had given none. To-night, however, the statue had grown warm woman. She had avowed her pride in him, had yielded adorably to his caress; before they parted she had given him her lips.

At last he felt the triumph of possession. At last she was his to mould and cherish. A little pleading and their wedded life would dawn with the New Year. He was confident of victory.

Yet his heart sank like lead two days afterwards, when he had dropped a couple of letters into the pillar-box outside his chambers. He stopped and gazed abstractedly at the oblong imperturbable mouth of the red, almost personal thing, to which he had irrevocably intrusted his destiny. For the letters contained cheques to the amount of over three thousand pounds, and the balance at his bankers, on whom they were drawn, consisted mainly of the funds of the Walden Art Colony.

Yet what could he have done? To-morrow the bills, once renewed, with a foolish youngster's name at the back of them, would fall due. His father, to whom he had trusted, had refused help. The forcing of the youngster to pay would at the least create scandal, and scandal would mean loss of reputation, loss of Ella, and general downfall. Misappropriation of the funds saved his credit for a season. It would give him time to urge on his marriage, whilst he cunningly arrested the progress of the Colony. Once married, he was practically master of Ella's fortune. A pretext for obtaining a few thousands, so as to replace the misappropriated sum with his bankers, would easily be found by a man of his resource. Before posting the letters he had felt the half-contemptuous exhilaration of the gambler who bets on a certainty. But now that the bet was entered and made final, doubts and fears began to assail him. He looked two years older as he walked down St. James's Street to his club.

A whisky and apollinaris restored his nerves, so that when young Lathrop, who had backed the bills, came up to him with a long face, he was able to assume his southern manner.

“Dearest of friends—” he began.

“It strikes me, Usher, you'll be the dearest of friends to-morrow,” broke in the young man,—“those confounded bills, you know.”

“Bills!” cried Roderick. “What are you talking to me of bills for? Do you think I am going to let the bloodsuckers feast upon your young and beauteous form? My child, put aside that pessimism which is sapping your youth. Behold, Israel is satisfied.”

He drew his cheque-book from his pocket and showed the counterfoils to the two cheques. Lathrop looked intensely relieved. Then he blushed and stammered. He was devilish sorry; but the time was getting so close. Would Usher have a drink? Roderick assented and drank another whisky and apollinaris.

“You needn't noise abroad the fact of my astounding solvency,” he said, before they parted. “I hope you haven't told any one about the bills.”

“Only Urquhart. I saw him last night,” said the young man.

“You'll be a Metternich yet, Willie,” replied Roderick. As young Lathrop belonged to the diplomatic service, he was dimly conscious that his friend's remark was in some fashion ironical. But Roderick waved him a flourishing adieu and swaggered out of the club.

A man met him on the steps.

“Seen Willie Lathrop lately?”

Roderick looked him squarely between the eyes.

“He 's a braying jackass,” he said.

Having thus conveyed an answer to the implied question and given vent to his anger at the same time, he hailed a cab and drove to Pont Street. It was a foggy, murky day. Already the lights had appeared in shop windows, and, where they streamed, the pavement and roadway glistened in brown slime. Impressionable to external surroundings, Roderick shivered and drew his fur coat closer round him. The world wore an air of hopeless depression. On such a day no human undertaking could prosper. It was only his intellectual contempt for superstition that restrained him from turning round and driving back to his club. The dreary stretch of Sloane Street seemed interminable. At last he arrived and was shown up to the drawing-room. Lady Milmo, Ella, and a lady visitor were having afternoon tea. He exerted himself to amuse in his usual way, but his efforts resulted in failure. When should he be able to see Ella alone? The lady visitor seemed resolved to outstay him. She plied him with questions concerning the Colony. He replied vaguely. Realisation of the project was a long way off. To start such a concern otherwise than on a sound financial basis was magnificent, but it was not business. He was thinking of a last appeal to the public. Ella listened, somewhat out of spirits. Roderick's pessimistic utterances argued loss of faith in the Colony. He caught her glance fixed upon him with perturbed questioning, and his depression deepened.

At last they were alone. He cleared his throat and plunged into the midst of things. Speech restored his confidence. He made an eloquent appeal. He loved her, worshipped her; the deferring of their marriage to an indefinite date was making his heart sick, robbing him of energy and the joy of life. Christmas it must be. He hinted at personages waiting for their marriage to subscribe largely to the fund. What had the marriage to do with it? Well, he was an artist, a Bohemian; his very class did not inspire confidence. But his marriage would set upon him the seal of irreproachable responsibility. He pleaded desperately, the restoration of the three thousand pounds being his paramount and imperative aim. His heart sank at the coldness with which she received his fervour. His ear detected the note of insincerity, to which he felt conscious she, too, was sensitive.

“I can't marry you yet, Roderick,” she said, at length, wearily. “I can't. It means too much.”

“Then you don't love me,” he exclaimed, starting to his feet. The old dramatic device did not succeed.

“Sometimes I do,” she said. “At others—I don't know—I shall love you wholly when we realise our dreams.”

“That will be the Great Never Never,” he replied tragically, “for when did man ever realise his dreams?”

The dressing gong sounded through the house. She rose and put out her hand.

“You must be patient with me, Roderick. Usually you understand so finely; can't you understand now?”

“I understand that you are a woman of an imperious will, to which it will always be my pride to bow,” he responded.

There was no help for it. No more pleading could move her that afternoon. He had to take his leave. When the drawing-room door shut behind him, his expression changed, and he descended the stairs cursing the Colony and all who were concerned therein. He went back to his club, dined, lost fifty pounds at cards, and went to bed morose and miserable.

The next morning he was greatly surprised by a visit from Sylvester. He was sitting in the well-lit corner room of his chambers, which he had converted into a studio, in front of the new picture he was painting from Ella's conception. His heart was not in it. No good could ever come from such tame propriety. And there he sat in an armchair, his legs extended compass-wise, glowering at the picture, when Sylvester came in.

“What fog has driven you here, camarado?” he cried. “You have arrived in season. This beastly world is standing on its head, and I don't know what to make of it. Sit down and have some absinthe, the only true comfort the devil has vouchsafed us.”

He pointed to a glass of the opalescent liquid by his side. Sylvester declined the consolation.

“I want to have a little talk with you about your marriage,” said he.

“Oh, damn my marriage!” exclaimed Roderick, irritably. “I tell you the idiot world is gyrating indecently on its occiput; my engagement with the rest of things.”

“Is it broken off?” inquired Sylvester, hopefully.

“The same thing. Postponed to the Millennium.”

“The Colonial Millennium—?”

“Yes. You are quite right, fratello mio, to keep clear of women and their works. No man can ever fathom their infinite incomprehensibility. Look here—” He rose and marched about the studio, burning with a sense of his wrongs and led by the instinct of his temperament to give vent to his grievances. “I love that girl with an imbecile passion. Art is great, but love is greater. I would make a holocaust of all that is dear to me in the world in the sacred name of Art. Am I not ready to expatriate myself? Have I not been working like Sisyphus for months? But I can't throw my elemental sex into the blaze. Six months' waiting is enough for all but anchorites. Do I look like an anchorite? I urge her to fix the marriage at Christmas. She's as hard as your Philistine's head. We must wait until the Colony is a fait accompli. How is it going to be accomplished without money?”

“I thought the scheme was getting along famously,” interposed Sylvester.

“So did I, but it isn't. It hasn't appealed to the imagination of this haggis-brained public, and so funds remain stationary. As if this worry and disappointment isn't enough for a man! Point d'argent, point de Suisse. No money, no colony. No colony, no marriage. The two things could never be connected save in the ineffable convolutions of the feminine brain.”

“I see,” said Sylvester. “It is hard lines on you.”

He was intensely relieved by Roderick's confidences; could afford even to be magnanimous. Since his avowal to Ella of hostile intentions, he had felt it his duty to inform Roderick of his attitude. He had come this morning prepared to make a declaration of war. There were several little things he had learned incidentally of Roderick's past career, with which he had intended to confront him. The memory of Mr. Snodgrass informing the small boy that he was going to begin came into his mind as he mounted the stairs, and he smiled grimly. But, after all, no one had ever questioned the chivalry of Mr. Snodgrass's motives. His first words on entering were an announcement of the object of his visit. Roderick had implicitly declared that object to be futile. To proceed further would be to attack a fallen man. To express satisfaction would be to triumph over a foe's discomfiture. He therefore expressed conventional sympathy. It was hard lines.

Roderick caught up the phrase and wove it into a fugue of indignant lamentation. Luck never came his way. The stars in their courses had fought against him since his cradle.

“Some men's touch turns everything to gold; mine to brass and deuced gimcrack brass at that. I've never loved a dear gazelle; but if I had, the disastrous animal would have got mange or delirium tremens and turned round and bitten me and given me hydrophobia. I suppose it's because of my general nefariousness. I wish I had been an austere embodiment of the seven deadly virtues like you, amigo. Then I should have waxed fat and prosperous. But there,” he added, lighting a cigar, “that's enough. I don't know why I'm washing you in this torrent of my discontent.”

“If it has done you any good, I am not sorry to have heard it,” said Sylvester. “As for the Colony, I never did think much of the idea, you know. It is outside the sphere of practical affairs altogether. Besides, you could never stay more than a month away from Piccadilly.”

“It meant a means of livelihood for this profitless child of nature, anyway,” said Roderick, watching the wreaths of his cigar-smoke.

“Pardon me if I take a liberty,” said Sylvester, “but I was under the impression that your father made you a good allowance.”

Roderick stared at him for a moment and then laughed loud.

“You don't know Usher senior. How much the old man has, or where the devil it all came from, I have no idea; but I don't get any of it. And when he descends to realms below, he'll bequeath it all to a home for decayed postage-stamp collectors. No; I get what I earn. The Colony was a fixed income.”

“Well, you'll have to settle down to something else,” said Sylvester, consolingly.

“And meanwhile you can go and persuade our fair enthusiast that the Colony is all a fizzle and that she must shed happiness upon the head of your devoted friend at Christmas!”

“I don't think I can do that,” said Sylvester, drily. He pulled out his watch, announced his departure. Roderick shook his hand effusively.

“But, by the way,” said he, “you haven't told me what you came for—my marriage—?”

“Oh, after what you've said about the matter that can wait,” replied Sylvester, hurriedly, and he left his friend to his artistic solitude.

Roderick felt somewhat ashamed and somewhat relieved after his burst of confidence. To cry defeat after the first reverse seemed the part of a craven. Thus were women not won. He determined to return to the attack, to choose his time more wisely. A week later he caught Ella in a brighter mood. He had exerted himself to please, to kindle her enthusiasms, which shone from cheeks and eyes. He struck the personal chord, watched eagerly, seemed to perceive it vibrate through her. Then he urged once more. She changed suddenly, held out a warning hand.

“Not that again, Roderick,” she said. “You must not make me dread your coming. Some women yield to insistence; it only hardens me. I thought you knew me better.”

“Then the Colony shall start at Christmas; I swear it,” he cried magniloquently, and the remainder of the interview flowed more smoothly.

It is all very well to command events. But whether they will obey is a different matter. During the last few weeks Roderick had succeeded in his design to quash the Colony in so far as to alienate several hesitating supporters. To win these back was no easy matter. Moreover, his old power of persuasion seemed to have failed him. There was a period when he had deluded himself into the belief that the Colony was a practicable scheme. But the moment it had appeared contrary to his own interest and he had regarded it dispassionately, he despised it from the depths of his soul as an inane chimera. To have to simulate a burnt out enthusiasm was irksome; he failed to carry conviction. And meanwhile he was a prey to gnawing anxiety. How was he to replace the three thousand pounds? He anathematised the feminine temperament.

The feminine temperament, however, was not in that state of dispassionate, yet unreasoning decision in which he imagined it to be. These were unhappy days for Ella. She seemed to have become to herself a vague entity wandering in a land of shadows, forced by some unknown power therein to wander, and finding her only hope of salvation in one elusive light that gleamed fitfully in the distance. Her aunt, being a practical woman, was quick to notice the habitual contraction of her brow and the wearied preoccupation in her eyes. Nowadays she openly mocked at the Colony. On such occasions Ella fired up, defended it with the fierceness of a forlorn hope. Lady Milmo was puzzled. She even went the length of consulting Sylvester, surprising him considerably by a morning call in Weymouth Street.

“The Colony's a fraud, and she knows it's a fraud,” she said, in the vernacular of her class. “And yet she pins her immortal soul to it. Why doesn't she marry the man and be done with it? But no—she won't do that. She's making herself ill because the Colony isn't likely to come off, which is distinctly good business, and what on earth she can find to interest her in the rubbishy scheme, goodness only knows. If she only painted, or wrote poetry, or out-Wagnered Wagner in immortal tunelessness, one could perhaps understand. But she's no more artistic than you are.”

“I know I'm a Philistine,” smiled Sylvester, at the tribute of the artless lady. “Is that why you 've come to me?”

“Oh, you know what I mean,” returned Lady Milmo. “Now can't you put some sense into her, or get that dear Mr. Lanyon to do so? It's my impression she isn't in love with him one little bit.”

“Then, for Heaven's sake, my dear Lady Milmo,” said Sylvester, earnestly, “do all you can to impress that fact upon him!”

“I should be glad if the engagement were broken off,” said Lady Milmo, reflectively.

“So would all the true friends of Ella Defries,” replied Sylvester.

Lady Milmo arched her eyebrows. She looked at him for a moment quizzically.

“Is that purely a disinterested remark, Dr. Lanyon?”

“I would not marry one single woman that is now living on this earth,” said Sylvester.

“Why, whatever have we poor creatures done to you? There are some men, I know, who look upon women as a disease, but I'm sure you 're not one.”

Sylvester scanned his finger nails,—a trick he had caught from his father.

“One marriage is enough for a man, Lady Milmo,” he said in a low voice.

Lady Milmo was conscious of an indiscretion. She escaped adroitly and led the talk back to Roderick.

“I think we'd better get this silly affair of Ella's broken off, don't you?” she said at parting.

“If you could manage it, my father and myself would be exceedingly grateful to you,” he replied.

Lady Milmo was driving away, her kind head filled with schemes for Ella's extrication, when, at the block at Oxford Circus, she caught sight of a news-vendor wearing as an apron the coloured bill of an early edition of an evening paper. Across it in enormous capitals ran the startling legend, “Sudden Death of Sir Decimus Bland.”

“The best thing the pompous old idiot has ever done in his life!” said Lady Milmo.