THUS had Aline, her heart hot for battle in Jimmie's cause, contrived with Connie Deering as subsidiary conspirator. She had lain awake most of the night, thinking of the approaching interview, composing speeches, elaborating arguments, defining her attitude. Her plan of campaign was based on the assumption of immediate hostilities. She had pictured a scornful lady moved to sudden anger at seeing herself trapped, and haughtily refusing to discuss overtures of peace. It was to be war from the first, until she had brought her adversary low; and when the door-handle rattled and the door opened to admit Norma, every nerve in her young body grew tense, and her heart beat like the clapper of a bell.

Norma entered, looked for a moment in smiling surprise at Aline, came quickly forward, and moved by a sudden impulse, a yearning for love, sweetness, freshness, peace—she knew not what—she put her arms round the girl and kissed her.

“My dear Aline, how sweet it is to see you again!”

The poor little girl stood helpless. The bottom was knocked out of her half-childish plan of campaign. There was no scornful lady, no haughty words, no hostilities. She fell to crying. What else could she do?

“There, there! Don't cry, dear,” said Norma soothingly, almost as helpless. Seating herself on a low chair and drawing Aline to her side, she looked up at the piteous face.

“Why should you cry, dear?”

“I did n't know you would be so good to me,” answered Aline, wiping her eyes.

“Why should n't I be good to you? What reason could I have for not being glad to see you?”

“I don't know,” said the girl, with a touch of bitterness. “Things are so different now.”

Norma sighed for answer and thought of her premonition. She was aware that Connie had deliberately planned this interview, but could find no resentment in her heart. The reproach implied in Aline's words she accepted humbly. She was at once too spiritless for anger, and too much excited by the girl's presence for regret at having come. Her eye fell upon the picture leaning against the chair-back, and a conjecture swiftly passed through her mind.

“Mrs. Deering asked me to come and look at a wedding-present,” she said with a smile.

“Did she tell you from whom?” asked Aline, thrusting her handkerchief into her pocket. She had found her nerve again.

“No.”

“It's from Jimmie.”

“Is it that over there?”

Aline caught and misinterpreted an unsteadiness of voice. She threw herself on her knees by Norma's side.

“You won't refuse it, Miss Hardacre. Oh, say you won't refuse it. Jimmie began it ever so long ago. He put everything into it. It would break his heart if you refused it—the heart of the best and beautifullest and tenderest and most wonderful man God ever made.”

Norma touched with her gloved fingers a wisp of hair straying over the girl's forehead.

“How do you know he is all that?”

“How do I know? How do I know the sun shines and the rain falls? It's just so.”

“You have faith, my child,” said Norma, oddly.

“It isn't faith. It's knowledge. You all believe Jimmie has done something horrible. He has n't. I know he hasn't. He couldn't. He couldn't harm a living creature by word or deed. I know he never did it. If I had thought so for one moment, I should have loathed myself so that I would have gone out and killed myself. I know very little about it. I did n't read the newspapers—it's hideous—it's horrible—Jimmie would as soon think of torturing a child. It's not in his nature. He is all love and sweetness and chivalry. If you say he has taken the blame on himself for some great generous purpose—yes. That's Jimmie. That's Jimmie all over. It's cruel—it's monstrous for any one who knows him to think otherwise.”

She had risen from her knees half-way through her passionate speech, and moved about in front of Norma, wringing her hands. She ended in a sob and turned away. Norma lay back in her chair, pale and agitated. The cynical worldling with his piercing vision into men and the pure, ignorant child had arrived at the same conclusion, not after months of thought, but instantly, intuitively. She could make the girl no answer. Aline began again.

“He could n't. You know he could n't. It's something glorious and beautiful he has done and not anything shameful.”

She went on, with little pauses, hurling her short, breathless sentences across the space that separated her from Norma, forgetful of everything save the wrong done to Jimmie. At last Norma rose and went to her.

“Hush, dear!” she said. “There are some things I mustn't talk about. I daren't. You are too young to understand. Mr. Padgate has sent me a wedding-present. Tell him how gladly I accept it and how I shall value it. Let me see the picture.”

Aline, her slight bosom still heaving with the after-storm of emotion, said nothing, but drew the cloth from the canvas. Norma started back in-surprise. She had not anticipated seeing her own portrait.

“Oh, but it is beautiful!” she cried involuntarily.

“Yes—more than beautiful,” said Aline, and mechanically she moved the chair into the full light of the window.

Norma looked at the picture for a long time, stepped back and looked at herself in the mirror of the overmantel, and returned to the picture. And as she looked the soul behind the picture spoke to her. The message delivered, she glanced at Aline.

“It is not I, that woman. I wish to God it were.” She put her hands up to her face, and took a step or two across the room, and repeated a little wildly, “I wish to God it were!”

“It is very, very like you,” said Aline softly, recovering her girl's worship of the other's stately beauty.

Norma caught her by the arm and pointed at the portrait.

“Can't you see the difference?”

But the soul behind the picture had not spoken to Aline. There was love hovering around the pictured woman's lips; happy tenderness and trust and promise mingled in her eyes; in so far as the shadow of a flower-like woman's passion could strain her features, so were her features strained. Yet she looked out of the canvas a proud, queenly woman, capable of heroisms and lofty sacrifice. She was one who loved deeply and demanded love in return. She was warm of the flesh, infinitely pure of the spirit. The face was the face of Norma, but the soul was that of the dream-woman who had come and sat in the sitter's chair and communed with Jimmie as he painted her. And Norma heard her voice. It was an indictment of her life, a judgment and a sentence.

“I am glad you can't, dear,” she said to Aline, regaining her balance. “Tell him I shall prize it above all my wedding-gifts.”

They talked quietly, for a while about Jimmie's affairs, the pilgrimage through southern France and northern Italy, his illness, his work. His poverty Aline was too proud to mention.

“And you, my dear?” asked Norma, kindly.

“I?”

“What about yourself? You are not looking as happy as you were. My dear child,” she said, bending forward earnestly, “do you know that no one has ever come to me with their troubles in all my life—not once. I'm beginning to feel I should be happier if some one did. You have had yours—-I have heard just a little. You see we all have them and we might help each other.”

“You have no troubles, Miss Hardacre,” said Aline, touched. “You are going to be married in a week's time.”

“And you?”

“Never,” said Aline. “Never.”

Suddenly she poured her disastrous little love-story into Norma's ears. It was a wonderful new comfort to the child, this tender magic of the womanly sympathy. Oh! she loved him, of course she loved him, and he loved her; that was the piteous part of it. If Miss Hardacre only knew what it was to have the heart-ache! It was dreadful. And there was no hope.

“And is that all?” asked Norma, when she had lowered the curtain on her tragedy. “You are eating out your heart for him and won't see him just because he won't believe in Jimmie? Listen. I feel sure that he will soon believe in Jimmie. He must. And then you'll be entirely happy.”

When the girl's grateful arms suddenly flung themselves about her, Norma was further on the road to happiness than she had ever travelled before. She yielded herself to the moment's exquisite charm. Behind her whirled a tumult of longing, shame, struggling faith, nameless suspicion. Before her loomed a shivering dread. The actual moment was an isle of enchanted peace.

The clock on a table at the far end of the room chiming six brought her back to the workaday world. She must go home. Morland was coming to dinner; also one or two Cosford people, who had already arrived in town in view of the wedding. She would have to dress with some elaborateness. Her heart grew heavy and cold at the prospect of the dreary party. She rose, looked again at the picture in the fading light. Moved by the irresistible, she turned to Aline.

“I should like to see him—to thank him—before—-before Wednesday. Do you think he would come?”

Aline blushed guiltily. “Jimmie is in the house now,” she said.

“Downstairs?”

“Yes.”

For a moment irresolute, she looked vacantly into the girl's pleading eyes. An odd darkness encompassed her and she saw nothing. The announcement was a shock of crisis. Dimly she knew that she trod the brink of folly and peril. But she had been caught unawares, and she longed stupidly, achingly, for the sight of his face. The words of Aline, eager in defence of her beloved, seemed far away.

“Of course he does n't know you are here. He was to call for me at a quarter to six, and I heard the front door open a little while ago. I brought the picture in a cab, and he is under the impression that Mrs. Deering will ask you to—will do what I have done. Jimmie is perfectly innocent, Miss Hardacre. He had not the remotest idea I was to meet you—not the remotest.”

Norma recovered herself sufficiently to say with a faint smile:

“So this has been a conspiracy between you and Connie Deering?”

Aline caught consent in the tone, and ignored the question.

“Shall I send him up to you?” she asked breathlessly.

“Yes,” said Norma.

There was a girl's glad cry, a girl's impulsive kiss, and Norma was left alone in the room. She had yielded. In a few moments he would be with her—the man who had said, “Her voice haunts me like music heard in sleep... I worship her like a Madonna... I love her as the man of hot blood loves a woman... My soul is a footstool for her to rest her feet upon,” and other flaming words of unforgettable passion; the man for whom one instant of her life had been elemental sex; the man whose love had transfigured her on canvas into the wonder among women that she might have been; the man standing in a slough of infamy, whose rising vapours wreathed themselves into a halo about his head. She clenched her hands and set her teeth, wrestling with herself.

“My God! What kind of a fool am I becoming?” she breathed.

Training, the habit of the mask, came to her aid. Jimmie, entering, saw only the royal lady who had looked kindly upon him in the golden September days. She came to meet him frankly, as one meets an old friend. A new vision revealed to her the heart that leapt into his eyes, as they rested upon her. Mistress of herself, she hardened her own, but smiled and spoke softly.

“It is great good fortune you have come, so that I can thank you,” she said. “But how can I ever thank you—for that?”

“It is a small gift enough,” said Jimmie. “Your acceptance is more than thanks.”

“I shall prize it dearly. It is like nothing that can be bought. It is something out of yourself you are giving me.”

“If you look at it in that light,” said he, “I am happy indeed.”

With a common instinct they went up to the portrait and regarded it side by side. Conventional words passed. He enquired after Morland.

“You have n't seen him for a long time?” she asked hesitatingly.

“Not for a long time.”

“You must have been very lonely.”

“I have had Aline—and Connie Deering—and my work.”

“Are they sufficient for you?”

“Any human love a man gets he can make fill his life. It's like the grain of mustard-seed.”

Norma felt a thrill of admiration. Not a tone in his voice betrayed complaint, reproach, or bitterness. Instead, he sounded the note of thanksgiving for the love bestowed upon him, of faith in the perfect ordering of the world. She glanced at him, and felt that she had wronged him. No matter what was the solution of the mystery, she knew him to be a sweet-souled man, wonderfully steadfast.

“Your old way,” she replied with a smile, sitting down and motioning him to a chair beside her. “Do you remember that we first met in this very room? You have not changed. Have I?”

“No,” he said gravely, “you were always beautiful, without and within. I told you that then, if you remember. Perhaps, now, you are a little truer to yourself.”

“Do you think so?” she asked, somewhat bitterly.

“Perhaps it is the approach of your great happiness,” blundered Jimmie, in perfect conviction. She was silent. “It has been more to me than I can say,” he went on, “to see you once again—as you are, before your marriage. I wish you many blessings—all that love can bring you.”

“Do you think love is necessary for married happiness?”

“Without it marriage must be a horror,” said Jimmie. For a moment she was on the brink of harsh laughter. Did he sincerely believe she was in love with Morland? She could have hurled the question at him. Will checked the rising hysteria and turned it into other channels.

“Why have you never married? You must have loved somebody once.”

It was a relief to hurt him. The dusk was gathering in the room, and she could scarcely see his face. A Sunday stillness filled the quiet square outside. The hour had its dangers.

“My having loved a woman does not necessarily imply that I could have married her,” said Jimmie.

The evasion irritated her mood, awoke a longing to make him speak. She drew her chair nearer, bent forward, so that the brim of her great hat almost brushed his forehead and the fragrance of her overspread him.

“Do you remember a picture you would n't show me in your studio? You called it a mad painter's dream. You said it was the Ideal Woman.”

“You said so,” replied Jimmie.

“I should like to see it.”

“It is mine no longer to show you,” said Jimmie.

“I think you must have loved that woman very deeply.” She was tempting him as she had tempted no man before, feeling a cruel, senseless joy in it. His voice vibrated.

“Yes. I loved her infinitely.”

“What was she like?”

“Like all the splendid flowers of the earth melted into one rose,” said Jimmie.

“I wish some one had ever said that about me,” she whispered.

“Many must have thought it.”

“She must be a happy woman to be loved by you.”

“By me? Who am I that I could bring happiness to a woman? I have never told her.”

“Why not?” she whispered. “Do you suppose you can love a woman without her knowing it?”

“In what way can the star be cognisant of the moth's desire?” said Jimmie, going back to the refrain of his love.

“You a moth and she a star! You are a man and she is but a trumpery bit of female flesh that on a word would throw herself into your arms.”

“No,” said Jimmie, hoarsely. “No, you don't know what you are saying.”

The temptation to goad him was irresistible.

“We are all of us alike, all of us. Tell her.”

“I dare n't.”

“Tell me who she is.”

She looked at him full, with meaning in her eyes, which glowed like deep moons in the dusk. He brought all his courage into his glance. He was the master. She turned away her head in confusion, reading his love, his strength, his loyalty. A lesser man loving her would have thrown honour to the winds. A curious reverence of him filled her. She felt a small thing beside him. All doubts vanished forever. Her faith in him was as crystal clear as Aline's.

“I have no right to mention her name,” he said after a pause.

Norma leaned back in her chair and passed her handkerchief across her lips.

“Would you do anything in the world she asked you?” she murmured.

“I would go through hell for her,” said Jimmie.

There was another span of silence, tense and painful. Jimmie broke it by saying:

“Why should you concern yourself about my fantastic affairs? They merely belong to dreamland—to the twilight and the stillness. They have no existence in the living world.”

“If I thought so, should I be sitting in the twilight and the stillness listening to you?” she asked. “Or even if I did, may I not enter into dreamland too for a few little minutes before the gates are closed to me forever? Why should you want to shut me out of it? Do you think much love has come my way? Yours are the only lips I have ever heard speak of it.”

“Morland loves you,” said Jimmie, tremulously.

The door opened. The electric light was switched on, showing two pale, passion-drawn faces, and Connie Deering brought her sweet gaiety into the room.

“If I had known you two were sitting in the dark like this, I should have come up earlier. Is n't it nice, Norma, to have Jimmie back again?”

The spell was broken. Norma gave an anxious look at the clock and fled, after hurried farewells.

The mistress of the house arched her pretty eyebrows as she returned to Jimmie.

“Eh bien?”

“Connie—” He cleared his throat. “You have kept my secret?”

“Loyally,” she said. “Have you?”

“I have done my best. God knows I have done my best.”

He sat down, took up a book and began to turn the leaves idly. Connie knelt down before the fire and put on a fresh log. This done, she came to his side. He took her hand and looked up into her face.

“I have n't thanked you, Connie. I do with all my heart.”

She smiled at him with an odd wistfulness.

“You once thanked me in a very pretty manner,” she said. “I think I deserve it again.”