I 'll never let you inside the house again until you go down on your knees and beg Jimmie's pardon,” cried Aline.

She stood, a slim incarnation of outraged womanhood, with her hand on the knob of the open door. A scared but stubborn youth hesitated on the threshold. Few men, least of all lovers, like being turned out.

“I don't believe you care a hang for me!” he said.

“I don't,” she retorted bravely, but with tremulous lip. “Not a hang, as you call it. I dislike you exceedingly and I don't want to see you any more. I'll never speak to anybody who believes such things of Jimmie.”

“But, my good child,” expostulated Tony Merewether, “they are facts; he never has denied them.”

“He could if he liked.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I know?” Aline repeated scornfully. “That just shows how far we are apart. There's not the slightest reason for talking any more. You have insulted Jimmie and you are going on insulting him. I can't stand by this door forever. I want you to go.”

“Oh, very well, I'll go,” said the young fellow. “But you've behaved damnably to me, Aline—simply damnably.” He strode down the passage and slammed the front door behind him. Aline turned back into the prim little drawing-room where the interview had taken place, and after an attempt to remain composed and dignified, suddenly broke into tears. She could struggle no more against the cruelty of man and the hopelessness of life. It had been a stormy interview. Tony Merewether had come, as her natural protector, to insist upon immediate marriage. A small legacy recently bequeathed to him would enable them to marry with reasonable prudence. Why should they wait? Aline pleaded for time. How could she leave her beloved Jimmie in his blackest hour?

“It's just because I don't think it quite right for you to live here any longer, that I want you to come away at once,” Tony had said.

“Not right to live here? What on earth do you mean?” The luckless lover tried to explain. Aline regarded him icily, and in his confusion and discomfiture he lost the careful wrappings which he had prepared for his words.

“You think that Jimmie is not a fit person for me to associate with?” she had asked in a dangerous tone.

“Yes, since you choose to put it that way,” he had replied, nettled. He believed that women liked a man of spirit and generally yielded to a show of masterfulness. He was very young. Taking up his parable with greater confidence, he showed her the social and moral necessity of immediate recourse to his respectable protection. Naturally he admired her loyalty, he signified, with a magnanimous wave of the hand; but there were certain things girls did not quite comprehend; a man's judgment had to be trusted. He invited her to surrender entirely to his wisdom. The end of it all was his ignominious dismissal. She would not see him until he had begged Jimmie's pardon on his knees.

But now she buried her face in the sofa-cushions and sobbed. It was her first poignant disillusion. Tony, whom she loved with all her heart, was just like everybody else, incapable of pure faith, ready to believe the worst. He was cruel, uncharitable. She would never speak to him again. And the sweet shy dream of her young life was over. It was very tragical.

Jimmie's step coming up the studio stairs caused her to spring from the sofa and frantically dry her eyes before the mirror. The steps advanced along the passage, and soon Jimmie's head appeared at the door.

“Where have you hidden the little watercolour box?” he asked cheerily.

“In the cupboard. On the second shelf,” she replied, without turning round.

He caught sight of the reflection of a tear-stained face, and came and stood by her side.

“Why, you've been crying!”

“I suppose I have,” she admitted with affectionate defiance, looking up into his face. “Why should n't I, if I like? It's not a crime.”

“It's worse—it's a blunder,” he quoted with a smile. “It can't do any one any good, and it makes your pretty nose red. That will spoil your good looks.”

“I wish it would. My looks will never matter to anybody,” she said desperately.

He put his arm round her shoulders, just as he had done since she could remember.

“What has happened to distress you—more than usual?” he added.

She was silent for a moment, and hung her head.

“I've broken off with Tony,” she said in a low voice.

“You'll mend it up with Tony at once, my dear.”

“I'll never marry him,” declared Aline.

“You'll write and tell him that you'll marry him at the very first opportunity. There are reasons why you should, Aline, grave reasons.”

“You wouldn't have me marry any one I dislike intensely?” she flashed.

“Wouldn't you do it to please me, even though you hated him violently? I have been going to speak to you about this. It's high time you were married, dear, and I particularly wish it. So make friends with Tony as soon as ever you can.”

“I never want to see Tony again—until he has gone on his bended knees to you,” said Aline, with a quivering lip. “I don't want to breathe the same air with any one who does n't think of you as I do.”

This was the first allusion that the girl had made to unhappy things, since they had become common knowledge a month ago. She had conveyed to him by increased tenderness and devotion that she loved him all the more for his suffering, and it had been easy for him to perceive that the main facts of the story were not unknown to her. But hitherto there had been absolute silence on the part of each. He had been greatly puzzled as to the proper course he should take. An interview with Tony Merewether that morning had decided him. It had been short, coldly courteous on the young fellow's side, who merely asked and obtained consent to marry Aline forthwith, and wistfully dignified on Jimmie's.

He sat down on the arm of a chair and took her hand, deeply moved by her passionate faith in him.

“Listen, dear. I am a dishonoured man and it is n't right that you should live with me any longer. Tony, dear good fellow, is no more to blame for what he thinks of me than the crazy wronged man who shot me. But the only way for you to make him think better is to marry him. No, don't interrupt. Stand quietly and let me talk to you. I've been making plans and I should be tremendously upset if there was any difficulty. I'm going to give up the house and studio.”

Aline regarded him in frightened amazement, and then looked round as if the familiar walls and furniture were in danger of incontinent disappearance.

“What?” she gasped.

“I shall give it up and wander about painting abroad, so it's absolutely necessary that you should marry Tony. Otherwise I don't know what on earth I should do with you.”

He swung her hand and looked smilingly into her eyes.

“You see I really am in a hurry to get rid of you,” he added.

Aline gazed at him for a long time, gradually recovering from her stupefaction. Then she withdrew her hand from his clasp and laughed.

“You are talking unadulterated rubbish, Jimmie,” she said.

Upon this declaration she took her stand, and no protest or argument could move her. She withstood triumphantly a siege of several days. Jimmie tried to exert his quasiparental authority. But the submissive little girl, who had always yielded when Jimmie claimed obedience, had given place to a calmly inflexible woman. Jimmie swore that he would not commit the crime of spoiling her life's happiness. She replied, with a toss of her head and a pang of her heart, that her life's happiness had nothing to do with Tony Merewether, and that if it did, the crime would lie at his door and not at Jimmie's.

“As for leaving you alone in the wide world, I would just as soon think of deserting a new-born baby in the street,” she said. “You are not fit to be by yourself. And whether you like it or not, Jimmie, I must stay and look after you.”

At last, by the underhand methods which women often employ for the greater comfort of men, she cajoled him into an admission. The plan of giving up the house had, as its sole object, the forcing of her hand. Victorious, she allowed herself to shed tears over his goodness. Just for her miserable sake he had proposed to turn himself into a homeless wanderer over the face of Europe.

“Do tell me, Jimmie,” she said, “how it feels to be an angel!”

He laughed in his old bright way.

“Very uncomfortable when a tyrannical young woman cuts your wings off.”

“But I do it for your good, Jimmie,” she retorted. “If I did n't, you would be flying about helplessly.”

Thus the clouds that lay around them were lit with tender jesting. During this passage through the darkness he never faltered, serene in his faith, having found triumphant vindication thereof in the devotion of Aline. That he had made a sacrifice greater than any human being had a right to demand of another, he knew full well; he had been driven on to more perilous reefs than he had contemplated; the man whom he had imagined Morland to be would have thrown all planks of safety to the waves in order to rescue him. He felt acutely the pain of his shipwreck; but he did not glorify himself as a martyr: he was satisfied that it was for the worshipped woman's happiness, and that in itself was a reward. His catholic sympathy even found extenuating circumstances in Morland's conduct. Once when Aline inveighed against his desertion, he said in the grave manner in which he delivered himself of his moral maxims:

“We ought never to judge a human being's actions until we know his motives.”

Aline thought the actions were quite sufficient for a working philosophy, but she did not say so. Jimmie half guessed the motives and judged leniently. Though he had lost much that made life sweet to him, his heart remained unchanged, his laugh rang true through the house; and were it not for the loneliness and the dismal blight in her own little soul, Aline would not have realised that any calamitous event had happened.

One other of Jimmie's friends maintained relations with him. This was Connie Deering. She had gone abroad soon after the disaster, and moved by various feelings for which she rather forbade her impulsive self to account, had written one or two oddly expressed letters. In the first one she had touched lightly upon the difficult subject. She would not have believed a word of it, if she had not heard it from his own lips. If he would write to her and say that it was all a lie, she would accept his word implicitly. He was either a god or a devil—a remark that filled Jimmie with considerable alarm. A shrewd brain was inside the pretty butterfly head. In his reply he ignored the question, an example which Connie followed in her second letter. This consisted mainly in a rambling account of the beauty of Stresa and the comforts and excellent cuisine of the hotel by the lake; but a postscript informed him that Norma was travelling about with her for an indefinite period, and that she had heard nothing of Morland, who having easily won his election was now probably busy with the beginning of the autumn session. Jimmie, unversed in the postscriptal ways of women, accepted the information as merely the literal statement of facts. A wiser man would have grasped the delicate implication that the relations between the affianced pair were so strained that an interval of separation had seemed desirable.

The unshaken faith of the man in the ultimate righteousness of things kept him serene; but the young girl who had no special faith, save in the perfect righteousness of Jimmie and the dastardly unrighteousness of the world in general and of Mr. Anthony Merewether in particular, found it difficult to live in these high altitudes of philosophy. Indeed she was a very miserable little girl when Jimmie was not by, and pined, and cried her heart out, and grew thin and pale and sharp-tempered, and filled her guardian with much concern. At last Jimmie took heroic measures. Without Aline's knowledge he summoned Tony Merewether to an interview. The young man came. Jimmie received him in the studio, begged him to take a seat, and rang the bell. The middle-aged housekeeper ran down in some perturbation at the unusual summons, for it was Jimmie's habit to shout up the stairs, generally to Aline, for anything he wanted. She received his instructions. Miss Aline would oblige him by coming down at once. During the interval of waiting he talked to Mr. Merewether of indifferent things, flattering himself on a sudden development of the diplomatic faculty. Aline ran into the room, and stopped short at the sight of the young man, uttering a little cry of indignant surprise. Jimmie cleared his throat, but the oration that he had prepared was never delivered. Aline marched straight up to the offending lover.

“I don't see you on your knees,” she said.

Tony, who was entirely unexpectant of this uncompromising attitude, having taken it for granted that by some means or other the way had been made smooth for him, retorted somewhat sharply:

“You're not likely to.”

“Then I wonder,” said Aline, “at your audacity in coming to this house.” She turned and marched back to the door, her little figure very erect and her dark eyes blazing. Jimmie intercepted her.

“Tony came at my request, my child.”

For the first and only time in her life she cast a look of anger upon Jimmie.

“Let me pass, please,” she said, like an outraged princess; and waving Jimmie aside, she made the exit of offended majesty.

The two men looked stupidly at each other. Their position was ignominious.

“I did it for the best, my boy,” said Jimmie, taking up a pipe which he began to fill mechanically. He was just the kind creature of happier days. The young fellow's heart was touched. After a minute's silence he committed a passionate indiscretion.

“I wish to God you would tell me there is something hidden beneath this ghastly story, and that it's quite different from what it appears to be!”

Jimmie drew himself up and looked the young man between the eyes.

“That's a question I discuss with no human being,” said he.

“I beg your pardon,” said Tony Merewether, in sincere apology. “I would not have taken such a liberty if it had n't been a matter of life and death for me. Perhaps you think I ought to do more or less as Aline asks me; but she is too precious to purchase with an infernal lie. I'm hanged if I'll do it, and I don't think you're the man to misunderstand my frankness.”

Jimmie had lit his pipe during the foregoing speech. He drew two or three meditative puffs.

“Have as little to do with lies, my boy, as ever you can,” said he. “And cheer up, all is sure to come right in the end.”

He was sunk in reflection for a long time after the young man had gone, and again for a long time after Aline had done remorseful penance for her loss of temper. Then he went out for a walk and brought back something in his pocket. At dinner-time he was unusually preoccupied. When the meal was over, he fished up a black bottle from beneath the table, and going to the sideboard, came back with a couple of wineglasses. Aline watched him as though he were performing some rite in black magic.

“This is rich fruity port,” said he, filling the glasses. “Evans, the grocer, told me I should get nothing like it at the price in London. You are to drink it. It will do you good.”

Aline, still penitent, obeyed meekly.

“How could you be so extravagant, Jimmie?” she said in mild protest. “It must have cost quite three shillings.”

“And sixpence,” said Jimmie, unabashed. He lifted up his glass. “Now here's to our Wanderjahr, or as much of it as we can run to.”

“Whatever do you mean, Jimmie?”

“I mean my dear,” said he, “that we are going to take a knapsack, a tambourine and a flute, and appropriate ribbons for our costumes, and beg our way through southern Europe.”

He explained and developed his plan, the result of his meditations, in his laughing picturesque way. They were doing nothing but eating expensive fog in November London. A diet of sunshine and garlic would be cheaper. They would walk under the olive-trees and drift about on lagoons, and whisper with dead ages in the moonlit gloom of crumbling palaces. They would go over hills on donkeys. They would steep their souls in Perugino, Del Sarto, Giorgione. They would teach the gaunt Italian flea to respect British Keating's powder. They would fraternise with the beautiful maidens of Arles and sit on the top of Giotto's Campanile. They would do all kinds of impossible things. Afford it? Of course they could. Had he not received his just dues from the princess and sold two pictures a week or two ago? At this point he fell thinking for a couple of dreamy minutes.

“I meant to give you a carriage, dear,” he said at last in mild apology. “I'm afraid it will have to be a third-class one.”

“A fourth or fifth would be good enough for me,” cried Aline. “Or I could walk all the way with you. Don't I know you have planned it out just for my sake?”

“Rubbish, my dear,” said Jimmie, holding the precious wine to the light. “I'm taking you because I don't see how I can leave you behind. You have no idea what an abominable nuisance you'll be.”

Aline laughed a joyous laugh which did Jimmie good to hear, and came behind his chair and put her arms about his neck, behaving foolishly as a young girl penetrated with the sense of the loved one's goodness is privileged to do. What she said is of infinitesimal importance, but it lifted care from Jimmie's heart and made him as happy as a child. Like two children, they discussed the project; and Aline fetching from the top shelf of the bookcase in Jimmie's bedroom a forlorn, dusty, yellow-paged Continental Bradshaw, twenty years old, they looked up phantom trains that had long ceased running, speculated on the merits of dead-and-gone hotels, and plunged into the fairyland of anachronistic information.

A few days were enough for Jimmie's simple arrangements; and then began the pilgrimage of these two, each bearing a burden, a heart-ache, a pain from which there was no escaping, but each bearing it with a certain splendour of courage that made life beautiful to the other. For the girl suffered keenly, as Jimmie knew. She had given a passionate heart for good and all to the handsome young fellow who had refused to bow the knee to the man whom he had every reason to consider a blackguard. They had come together, youth to youth, as naturally as two young birds in the first mating-season; but, fortunately or unfortunately for Aline, she was not a bird, but a human being of unalterable affections and indomitable character. She had the glorious faith, quia incredibile, in Jimmie, and rather than swerve aside from it she would have walked on knife edges all the rest of her days. So she scorned the pain, and scorned herself for feeling it when she saw the serenity with which he bore his cross. Dimly she felt that if the truth were known he would stand forth heroically, not infamously. She had revered him as a child does its father; but in that sweet and pure relationship of theirs, she had also watched him with the minute, jealous solicitude that a mother devotes to an only child who is incapable of looking after itself. Nothing in his character had escaped her. She knew both his strength and his enchanting weaknesses. To her trained eyes, he was all but transparent; and of late her quickened vision had read in letters of fire across his heart, “The desire of the moth for the star.”

So they travelled through the world, hand in hand, as it were, and drank together of its beauty. They were memorable journeyings. Sleeping-cars and palatial hotels and the luxuries of modern travel were not for them. Aline, who knew that Jimmie, as far as he himself was concerned, would have slept upon wood quite as cheerfully as upon feathers, but for her sake would have royally commanded down, held the purse-strings and dictated the expenditure. They had long, wonderful third-class journeys, stopping at every wayside station, at each having some picturesque change of company in the ever-crowded, evil-smelling, wooden-seated compartment. She laughed at Jimmie's fears as to her discomfort; protested with energetic sincerity that this was the only way in the world to travel with enjoyment. It was a never-failing interest to see Jimmie disarm the suspicion of peasants by his sympathetic knowledge of their interests, to listen to his arguments with the chance-met curÉ, perspiring and polite, or the mild young soldier in a brass helmet a size too big for him. In France she understood what they were saying, and maintained a proper protectorate over Jimmie by means of a rough and ready acquaintance with the vernacular. But in Italy she was dumb, could only regard Jimmie in open-mouthed astonishment and admiration. He spoke Italian. She had known him all her life and never suspected this accomplishment. It required some tact to keep him in his proper position as interpreter and restrain him from acting on his own initiative. In the towns they put up at little humble hostelries in by-streets and in country-places at rough inns, eating rude fare and drinking sour wine with great content. The more they economised the longer would the idyllic vagabondage last.

Through southern France and northern Italy they wandered without fixed plans, going from place to place as humour seized them, seeking the sunshine. At last it seemed to be their normal existence. London with its pain and its passion grew remote like the remembered anguish of a dream. Few communications reached them. The local newspaper gave them all the tidings they needed of the great world. It was a life free from vexation. The decaying splendour of the larger cities with their treasure-houses of painting and sculpture and their majestic palaces profoundly stirred the young girl's imagination and widened her conceptions and sympathies. But she loved best to arrive by a crazy, old-world diligence at some little townlet built on a sunny hillside, whose crumbling walls were the haunts of lizards and birds and strange wild-flowers; and having rested and eaten at the dark little albergo, smelling of wine and garlic and all Italian smells, to saunter out with Jimmie through the narrow, ill-paved, clattering streets alive with brown children and dark-eyed mothers, and men sitting on doorsteps violently gesticulating and screaming over the game of morra, and to explore the impossible place from end to end. A step or two when they desired it would bring them to the sudden peace of the mediaeval church, with its memories of Romanesque tradition and faint stirrings of Gothic curiously reflecting the faith of its builders; the rough, weather-beaten casket of one flawless gem of art, a Virgin smiling over the child on her lap at many generations of worshippers, superbly eternal and yet quaintly woman. And then they would pass out of the chilly streets and down the declivitous pathways below the town and sit together on the hillside, in a sun-baked spot sheltered from the wind. This Aline, vaguely conscious of the Infinite, called “hanging on the edge of Nowhere.”

One day, on such a hillside Jimmie had been painting three brown-faced children whom he had cajoled into posing for him, while Aline looked on dreamily. The urchins, dismissed with a few halfpennies, bowed polite thanks, the two boys taking off their caps with the air of ragged princes, and scampered away like rabbits out of sight.

“There!” cried Jimmie, throwing down his brush and holding out the little panel at arm's length. “I have never done anything so good in all my life! Have n't I got it? Is n't it better than ten cathedralfuls of sermons? Is n't it the quintessence of happiness, the perfect trust in the sweet earth to yield them its goodness? Could any one after seeing that dare say the world was only a dank and dismal prison where men do nothing but sit and hear each other groan? Look at it, Aline. What do you think of it?”

“It's just lovely, Jimmie,” said Aline.

“If I painted a pink hippopotamus standing on its head, you would say it was lovely. Why did n't you tell me that arm was out of drawing?”

He took up his brush and made the necessary correction. Aline laughed.

“Do you know one of the few things I can remember my father saying was about you?”

“God bless my soul,” said Jimmie. “I had almost forgotten you ever had a father—dear old chap! What did he say?”

“I remember him telling you that one day you would die of incurable optimism. For years I used to think it was some horrible disease, and I used to whisper in my prayers, 'O God, please cure Jimmie of optimism,' and sometimes lie awake at nights thinking of it.”

“Well, do you think your prayer has been answered?” asked Jimmie, amused.

She shifted herself a little nearer him and put her hand on his knee.

“Thank goodness, no. You've got it as bad as ever—and I believe I've caught it.” Then, between a sob and a laugh, she added:

“Oh, Jimmie dear, your stupid old head could never tell you what you have done for me since we have been abroad. If I had stayed at home I think I should have died of—of—of malignant pessimism. You will never, never, never understand.”

“And will you ever understand what you have done for me, my child?” said Jimmie, gravely. “We won't talk about these things. They are best in our hearts.”