THEY took Jimmie into the house, and Norma, looking neither to right nor left, walked by the side of those carrying him, the front of her embroidered dress smeared with blood. Every time her hands came in contact with the delicate fabric, they left a fresh smear. Of this she was unconscious. She was unconscious too, save in a dull way, of the staring crowd; but she held her head high, and when Morland spoke to her by the drawing-room window through which they passed, she listened to what he had to say, bowed slightly, and went on.

“It is only a flesh wound. If it had been the lung, he would have spat blood. I don't think it is serious.”

He spoke in a curiously apologetic tone, as if anxious to exculpate himself from complicity in the attempted murder.. He was horribly frightened. Two deaths laid in one day at a man's door are enough. The possibility of a third was intolerable. The sense of the unheroic part he had just played was beginning to creep over him like a chilling mist. The consequences of confession, the only means whereby Jimmie could be rehabilitated, loomed in front of him more and more disastrous. It would be presenting himself to the world as a coward as well as a knave. That prospect, too, frightened him. Lastly, there was Norma, white, terror-stricken, metamorphosed in a second into a creature of primitive emotions. Like the other shocks of that unhallowed day, her revelation of unsuspected passions brought him face to face with the unfamiliar; and to the average sensual man the unfamiliar brings with it an atmosphere of the uncanny, the influence to be feared. His attitude, therefore, when he addressed her was ludicrously humble.

She bowed and passed on. By this time she knew that Jimmie was not dead. Morland's words even reassured her. Her breath came hard through her delicate nostrils, and her bosom heaved up and down beneath the open-work bodice with painful quickness. Only a few were allowed to stay in the dining-room, Morland, Mr. Hardacre, Theodore Weever on behalf of the duchess, and one or two others, while the Cosford doctor, who had been invited to the garden-party, made his examination. Norma went through into the hall. At the bottom of the stairs she met Connie in piteous distress.

“Oh, my poor dear, my poor dear, we did n't know! I have just heard all about it. It is terrible!”

Norma put up her hand beseechingly.

“Don't, Connie dear; don't talk of it. I can't bear it. I must be alone. Send me up word what the doctor says.”

She went to her room, sat there and waited. Presently her maid entered with the message from Mrs. Deering. The doctor's report was favourable—the wound not in any way dangerous, the bullet easily extractable. They had carried the patient to his bedroom, and Mrs. Deering had wired for Miss Marden to come down by the first train. Norma dismissed the maid, and tried, in a miserable wonder, to realise all that had happened.

A woman accustomed to many emotions can almost always hold herself in check, if she be of strong will. Experience has taught her the meaning and the danger of those swift rushes of the blood that lead to unreasoning outburst. She is forewarned, forearmed, and can resist or not as occasion demands. But even she is sometimes taken unawares. How much the more likely to give way is the woman who has never felt passionate emotion in her life before. The premonitory symptoms fail to convey the sense of danger to her inexperienced mind. Before the will has time to act she is swept on by a new force, bewildering, irresistible. It becomes an ecstatic madness of joy or grief, and to the otherwise rational being her actions are of no account. This curse of quick responsiveness afflicts men to a less degree. If the first chapters of Genesis could be brought up to date, woman would be endowed, not with an extra rib, but with an extra nerve.

Now that she knew the shooting of Jimmie to be an affair of no great seriousness, her heart sickened at the thought of her wild exhibition of feeling. She heard the sniggering and ridicule in every carriage-load of homeward-bound guests. From the wife of the scrubby curate to the Princess of Herren-Rothbeck, her name was rolled like a delicate morsel on the tongue of every woman in the county. And the inference they could not fail to draw from her action was true—miserably true. But she had only become poignantly aware of things at the moment when she saw the lean haggard man in rusty black covering Jimmie with the revolver. Then all the unrest of soul which she had striven to allay with her mockery, all the disquieting visions of sweet places to which she had scornfully blinded her eyes, all the burning words of passion whose clear echoing had wrapped her body in hateful fever the night before, converged like electric currents into one steady light radiant with significance. Two minutes afterwards, when Jimmie fell, civilisation slipped from her like a loose garment, and primitive woman threw herself by his side. But now, reclothed, she shivered at the memory.

The door opened suddenly, and Mrs. Hardacre entered. There was battle in every line of the hard face and in every movement of the thin, stiff figure. Norma rose from the window where she had been sitting and faced her mother defiantly.

“I know what you are going to say to me. Don't you think you might wait a little? It will keep.”

“It won't. Sit down,” said Mrs. Hardacre between her teeth.

“I prefer to stand for the moment,” said Norma.

Mrs. Hardacre lost her self-control.

“Are we to send you to a madhouse? What do you mean by your blazing folly? Before the whole county—before the duchess—before the princess! Do you know what I have had to go through the last half-hour? Do you know that we may never set foot in Chiltern Towers again? Do you know we are the scandal and the laughing-stock of the county? As if one thing was n't sufficient—for you to crown it by behaving like a hysterical school-girl! Do you know what interpretation every scandal-mongering tabby in the place is putting on your insane conduct?”

“Oh, yes,” said Norma, looking at her mother stonily; “and for once in their spiteful lives they are quite right.”

“What do you mean?” gasped Mrs. Hardacre.

“I think my meaning is obvious.”

“That man—that painter man dressed like a secondhand clothes-dealer—that—that beast?”

Mrs. Hardacre could scarcely trust her senses. The true solution of her daughter's extraordinary behaviour had never crossed her most desperate imaginings. But then she had not had much time for quiet speculatien. The speeding of her hurriedly departing guests had usurped all the wits of the poor lady.

“You have indeed given us a dramatic entertainment, dear Mrs. Hardacre,” Lady FitzHubert had said with a sympathetic smile. “And poor Norma has supplied the curtain. I hope she won't take it too much to heart.”

And Mrs. Hardacre, livid with rage, had had no weapon wherewith to strike her adversary who thus took triumphant vengeance. It had been a half-hour of grievous humiliation. The fount and origin thereof was lying unconscious with a bullet through his shoulder. The subsidiary stream, so to speak, was in her room safe and sound. Human nature, for which she is not deserving of over-blame, had driven Mrs. Hardacre thither. At least she could vent some of her pent-up fury upon her outrageous daughter, who, from Mrs. Hardacre's point of view, indeed owed an explanation of her action and deserved maternal censure. This she was more than prepared to administer. But when she heard Norma calmly say that Lady FitzHubert and the other delighted wreakers of private revenges were entirely in the right, she gasped with amazement.

“That beast!” she repeated with a rising intonation. Norma gave her habitual shrug of the shoulders. With her proud, erect bearing, it was a gesture not ungraceful.

“Considering what I have just admitted, mother, perhaps it would be in better taste not to use such language.”

“I don't understand your admitting it. I don't know what on earth you mean,” said Mrs. Hardacre.

There was a short pause, during which she scanned her daughter's face anxiously as if waiting to see a gleam of reason dawn on it. Norma reflected for a moment. Should she speak or not? She decided to speak. Brutal frankness had ever been her best weapon against her mother. It would probably prevent future wrangling.

“I am sorry I have n't made my meaning clear,” she said, resuming her seat by the window; “and I don't know whether I can make it much clearer. Anyhow, I'll try, mother. I used to think that love was either a school-girl sentimentality, a fiction of the poets, or else the sort of thing that lands married women who don't know how to take care of themselves in the divorce court. I find it is n't. That's all.”

Mrs. Hardacre ran up to the window and faced Norma. “And Morland?”

“It won't break his heart.”

“What won't?”

“The breaking off of our engagement.”

Mrs. Hardacre looked at her daughter in a paralysis of bewilderment.

“The madhouse is the only place for you.”

“Perhaps it is. Anyway I can't marry a man when I care for his intimate friend—and when the intimate friend cares for me. Somehow it's not quite decent. Even you, mother, can see that.”

“So you and the intimate friend have arranged it all between you?”

“Oh, no. He does n't know that I care, and he does n't know that I know that he cares. I'll say that over again if you like. It is quite accurately expressed. And you know I'm not in the habit of lying.”

“And you propose to marry——”

“I don't propose to do anything,” interrupted Norma, quickly. “I at least can wait till he asks me. And now, mother, I've had rather a bad time—don't you think we might stop?”

“It seems to me, my dear Norma, we are only just beginning,” said Mrs. Hardacre.

Norma rose with nervous impatience.

“O heavens, mother,” she said, in the full deep notes of her voice, which were only sounded at rare moments of feeling, “can't you see that I'm in earnest? This man is like no one else I have ever met. I have grown to need him. Do you know what that means? With him I am a changed woman—as God made me, I suppose; natural, fresh, real—” Mrs. Hardacre sat in Norma's vacated chair by the window and stared at her, as she moved about the room. “I somehow feel that I am a woman, after all. I have got something higher than myself that I can fall at the feet of, and that's what every woman craves when she's decent. As for marrying him—I'm not fit to marry him. There is n't any one living who is. That's an end of it, mother. I can't say anything more.”

“And do you propose to go on seeing this person when he recovers?” asked Mrs. Hardacre.

“Why not?”

“I really can't argue with you,” said her mother, mystified. “If you had told me this rubbish yesterday, I should have thought you touched in your wits. To-day it is midsummer madness.”

“Why to-day?” asked Norma.

“The man has shown himself to be such a horrible beast. Of course, if you think confessing to having seduced a girl under infamous circumstances and driven her by his brutality to child-murder and suicide, and blazoning the whole thing out at a fashionable garden-party and getting himself shot for his pains, are idyllic virtues, nothing more can be said. It's a case, as I remarked, for a madhouse.” Norma came and stood before her mother, her brows knitted in perplexity.

“Perhaps I am going crazy—I really don't understand what you are talking about.”

Mrs. Hardacre leant forward in her chair and drew a long breath. A gleam of intelligence came into her eyes as she looked at Norma.

“Do you mean to say you don't know what the row was about before the man fired the shot?”

“No,” said Norma, blankly.

Her mother fell back in her chair and laughed. It was the first moment of enjoyment she had experienced since Stone's black figure had appeared on the terrace. Reaction from strain caused the laughter to ring somewhat sharply. Norma regarded her with an anxious frown.

“Please tell me exactly what you mean.”

“My dear child—it's too funny. I thought you would have been too clever to be taken in by a man like this. I see, you've been imagining him a Galahad—a sort of spotless prophet—though what use you can have for such persons I can't make out. Well, this is what happened.” Embellishing the story here and there with little spiteful adornments, she described with fair accuracy, however, the scene that had occurred. Norma listened stonily.

“This is true?” she asked when her mother had finished.

“Ask any one who was there—your father—Morland.”

“I can't believe it. He is not that sort of man.”

“Is n't he? I knew he was the first time I set eyes on him. Perhaps another time you'll allow me to have some sense—of course, if it is immaterial to you whether a man is a brute—What are you ringing the bell for?”

“I am going to ask Morland to come up here.”

The maid appeared, received Norma's message, and retired. Norma sat by her little writing-table, with her head turned away from her mother, and there was silence between them till the maid returned.

“Mr. King has just driven off to catch the train, miss. He left a note for you.”

Mrs. Hardacre listened with contracted brow. When the maid retired, she bent forward anxiously.

“What does he say?”

“You can read it, mother,” replied Norma, wearily. She held out the note. Mrs. Hardacre came forward and took it from her hand and sat down again.

It ran:

“Dear Norma,—I think it best to run up to town on this afternoon's business. I have only just time to catch the train at Cosford, so you will forgive my not saying good-bye to you more ceremoniously. Take care of poor Jimmie.

“Yours affectionately,

“Morland.”

“Poor Jimmie, indeed!” said Mrs. Hardacre, somewhat relieved at finding the note contained no reference to the part played by Norma. “It's very good of Morland, but I wish he would not mix himself up in this scandal.”

“I can't see what less he could do than look after his friend's interests,” said Norma.

“I wish the man had been shot or hanged before he came down here,” said Mrs. Hardacre, vindictively. “That's the worst of associating with such riff-raff. One never knows what they will do. It will teach you not to pick people out of the gutter and set them in a drawing-room.” Mrs. Hardacre rose. She did not often have the opportunity of triumphing over her daughter. She crossed the room and paused for a moment by Norma, who sat motionless with her chin in her hand, apparently too dismayed to retort.

“I am glad to see symptoms of sanity,” she remarked.

Norma brought down her hand hard upon the table and leaped to her feet and faced her mother.

“I tell you, it's impossible! Impossible! He is not that kind of man. It is some horrible mistake. I will ask him myself. I will get the truth from his own lips.”

“You shall certainly do nothing of the kind,” cried her mother; and in order to have the last word she went out and slammed the door behind her.

Norma sat by the window again. The red September sun was setting, and bathed downs and trees in warm light, and glinted on the spire of a little village church a mile away. Everything it touched was at peace, save the bowed head of the girl, clasped with white fingers which still retained the dull brown marks of blood. Could she believe the revolting story? A woman so driven to desperation must have been cruelly handled. Her sex rose up against the destroyer. Her social training had caused her to regard with cynical indifference ordinary breaches of what is popularly termed the moral law. In the fast, idle set which she generally frequented it was as ordinary for a man to neigh after his neighbour's wife as to try to win his friend's money; as unsurprising for him to keep a mistress as a stud of race-horses; the crime was to marry her. But it was not customary, even in smart society, to drive women to murder their new-born babes and kill themselves. A callous brutality suggested itself, and the contemplation of it touched humanity, sex, essential things. Could she believe the story? She shuddered.

The dressing-gong sounded through the house. Her maid entered, drew the curtains, and lit the gas; then was dismissed. Norma would not go down to dinner. A little food and drink in her own room would be all that she could swallow.

Later, Connie Deering, who had changed her dress, tapped at the door and was bidden to enter. A quantity of powder vainly strove to hide the traces of recent tears on her pretty face. She was a swollen-featured, piteous little butterfly.

“How is he?” asked Norma.

“Better, much better. They have taken out the bullet. There is no danger, and he has recovered consciousness. I almost wish he hadn't. Oh, Norma dear—”

She broke down and sat on the bed and sobbed. Norma came up and laid her hand on her shoulder.

“Surely you don't believe this ghastly story?”

The fair head nodded above the handkerchief. A voice came from-below it.

“I must—it's horrible—Jimmie, of all men! I thought his life was so sweet and clean—almost like a good woman's—I can't understand it. If he is as bad as this, what must other men be like? I feel as if I shall never be able to look a man in the face again.”

“But why should you take it for granted that he has done this?” asked Norma, tonelessly.

Mrs. Deering raised her face and looked at her friend in blue-eyed dismay.

“I did n't take it for granted. He told me so himself. Otherwise do you think I should have believed it?”

“He told you so himself! When?”

“A short while ago. I went into his room. I could n't help it—I felt as if I should have gone mad if I didn't know the truth. Parsons was there with him. She said I could come in. He smiled at me in his old way, and that smile is enough to make any woman fall in love with him. 'You've been crying, Connie,' he said. 'That's very foolish of you.' So I began to cry more. You would have cried if you had heard him. I asked him how he was feeling. He said he had never felt so well in his life. Then I blurted it out. I know I was a beast, but it was more than I could stand. 'Tell me that this madman's story was all lies.' He looked at me queerly, waited for a second or two, and then moved his head. 'It's all true,' he said, 'all true.' 'But you must have some explanation!' I cried. He shut his eyes as if he were tired and said I must take the facts as they were. Then Parsons came up and said I mustn't excite him, and sent me out of the room. But I did n't want to hear any more. I had heard enough, had n't I?”

Norma, as she listened to the little lady's tale, felt her heart grow cold and heavy. Doubt was no longer possible. The man himself had spoken. He had not even pleaded extenuating circumstances; had merely admitted the plain, brutal facts. He had gone under a feigned name, seduced an honest girl, abandoned her, driven her to tragedy. It was all too simple to need explanation.

“But what are we to do, dear?” cried Connie, as Norma made no remark, but stood motionless and silent.

“I think we had better drop his acquaintance,” she replied with bitter irony.

Connie flinched at the tone, being a tender-natured woman. She retorted with some spirit:

“I don't believe you have any heart at all, Norma. And I thought you cared for him.”

“You thought I cared for him?” Norma repeated slowly and cuttingly while her eyes hardened. “What right had you to form such an opinion?”

“People can form any opinions they like, my dear,” said Connie. “That was mine. And on the terrace this afternoon you know you cared. If ever a woman gave herself away over a man, it was Norma Hardacre.”

“It was n't Norma Hardacre, I assure you. It was a despicable fool whom I will ask you to forget. My mother was for putting it into a madhouse. She was quite right. Anyhow it has ceased to exist and I am the real Norma Hardacre again. Humanity is afflicted, it seems, periodically with a peculiar disease. It turns men into beasts and women into idiots. I have quite recovered, my dear Connie, and if you'll kindly go down and ask them to keep dinner back for five minutes, I'll dress and come down.”

She rang the bell for her maid. Connie rose from the bed. She longed to make some appeal to the other's softer nature for her own sake, as she had held Jimmie very dear and felt the need of sympathy in her trouble and disillusion.

But knowing that from the rock of that cynical mood no water would gush forth for any one's magic, she recognised the inefficacy of her own guileless arts, and forbore to exercise them. She sighed for answer. By chance her glance fell upon Norma's skirt. Human instinct, not altogether feminine, seized upon the trivial.

“Why, whatever have you been doing to your dress?”

Norma looked down, and for the first time noticed the disfiguring smears of blood.

“I must have spilt something,” she said, turning away quickly, and beginning to unfasten the hooks and eyes of her neckband.

“I hope it will come out,” said Connie. “It's such a pretty frock.”

As soon as she was alone, Norma looked at the stains with unutterable repulsion. She tore off the dress feverishly and threw it into a corner. When her maid entered in response to her summons, she pointed to the shapeless heap of crÊpe and embroidery.

“Take that away and burn it,” she said.