CONNIE DEERING was dining that Sunday evening with some friends at the Carlton, an engagement which had caused her to decline an invitation to the Hardacres'. The prospect, however, for once did not appeal to her pleasure-loving soul. She sighed as she stepped into her brougham, and wished as she drove along that she were sitting at home in the tea-gown and tranquillity harmonious with a subdued frame of mind. Problems worried her. What had passed between Norma and Jimmie? Ordinary delicacy had forbidden her questioning, and Jimmie had admitted her no further into his confidence. In that she was disappointed. When a sentimental woman asks for a kiss, she expects something more. She was also half ashamed of herself for asking him to kiss her. A waspish little voice within proclaimed that it was not so much for Jimmie's sake as for her own; that her lifelong fondness for Jimmie had unconsciously slid on to the rails that lead to absurdity. She drew her satin cloak tightly around her as if to suffocate the imp, and returned to her speculation. Something had happened—of that there was no doubt—something serious, agitating. It could be read on both their faces. Had she, who alone knew the hearts of each, done right in bringing them together? What had been her object? Even if a marriage between them had not been too ludicrous for contemplation, it would not have been fair towards her cousin Morland to encourage this intrigue. She vowed she had been a little fool to meddle with such gunpowdery matters. And yet she had acted in all innocence for Jimmie's sake. It was right for Norma to be friends with him again. It was monstrous he should suffer. If he could not marry the woman he loved, at least he could have the happiness of knowing himself no longer a blackened wretch in her eyes. But then, Norma had taken it into her head to love him too. Had she done right? Her thoughts flew round in a vicious circle of irritatingly small circumference, occasionally flying off on the tangent of the solicited kiss.

The first person she met in the vestibule of the Carlton was Theodore Weever. They exchanged greetings, discovered they belonged to the same party. She had come across him frequently of late in the houses that Norma and herself had as common ground. In a general way she liked him; since Norma had told her of his view of the scandal, he had risen high in her estimation; but to-night he seemed to be a link in the drama that perplexed her, and she shrank from him, as from something uncanny. He sat next her at table. His first words were of Jimmie.

“I was buying pictures yesterday from a friend of yours—Padgate.”

In her pleasure Connie forgot her nervousness.

“Why, he never told me.”

“He could scarcely have had time unless he telephoned or telegraphed.”

“He was at my house this afternoon,” she explained.

He carefully peppered his oysters, then turned his imperturbable face towards her.

“So was Miss Hardacre.”

“How do you know that?” she cried, startled.

“I was calling in Devonshire Place. Her mother told me. I am not necromantic.”

His swift uniting of the two names perturbed her. She swallowed her oysters unreflectingly, thus missing one of her little pleasures in life, for she adored oysters.

“Which pictures did you buy?” she asked.

“The one I coveted was not for sale. It was a portrait of Miss Hardacre. I don't think he meant me to see it, but I came upon him unawares. Have you seen it?” They discussed the portrait for a while. Connie repeated her former question. Weever replied that he had bought the picture of the faun looking at the vision of things to come, and the rejected Italian study. Connie expressed her gladness. They contained Jimmie's best work.

“Very fine,” Weever admitted, “but just failing in finish. Nothing like the portrait.”

There was an interval. Connie exchanged remarks with old Colonel Pawley, her right-hand neighbour, who expatiated on the impossibility of consuming Bortsch soup with satisfaction outside Russia. The soup removed, Weever resumed the conversation.

“Have you read your Lamartine thoroughly? I have. I was sentimental once. He says somewhere, Aimer pour Être aimÉ, c'est de l'homme; mais aimer pour aimer, c'est presque de l'ange. I remember where it comes from. It was said of Cecco in 'Graziella.' Our friend Padgate reminds me of Cecco. Do you care much about your cousin Morland King, Mrs. Deering?”

Connie, entirely disconcerted by his manner, looked at him beseechingly.

“Why do you ask me that?”

“Because he is one of the dramatis persona in a pretty little comedy on which the curtain is not yet rung down.”

She greatly dared. “Are you too in the caste?”

Theodore Weever deliberately helped himself to fish before replying. Then with equal deliberation he stared into her flushed and puzzled face.

“I hope so. A leading part, perhaps, if you are the clever and conscientious woman I take you to be.”

“What part has my cousin Morland played?” she asked.

“I must leave you the very simple task of guessing,” said Weever; and he took advantage of her consternation to converse with his left-hand neighbour.

“I have painted a peculiarly successful fan, dear Mrs. Deering,” said Colonel Pawley, in his purring voice. “A wedding-present for our dear Miss Hardacre. I have never been so much pleased with anything before. I should like you to see it. When may I come and show it you?”

“The wedding is fixed for two o'clock on Wednesday,” said Connie, answering like a woman in a dream. The bright room, the crowd of diners, the music, the voice of the old man by her side, all faded from her senses, eclipsed by the ghastly light that dawned upon her. Only one meaning could be attached to Weever's insinuations. A touch on the arm brought her back to her surroundings with a start. It was Colonel Pawley.

“I hope there is nothing—” he began, in a tone of great concern.

“No, nothing. Really nothing. Do forgive me,” she interrupted in confusion. “You were telling me something. Oh, I'm dreadfully sorry.”

“It was about the fan,” said Colonel Pawley, sadly.

“A fan?”

“Yes, for dear Miss Hardacre—a wedding-present.”

She listened to a repetition of the previous remarks and to a description of the painting, and this time replied coherently. She would be delighted to see both the fan and himself to-morrow morning. The kind old man launched into a prothalamion. The happy couple were a splendidly matched pair—Norma the perfect type of aristocratic English beauty; Morland a representative specimen of the British gentleman, the safeguard of the empire, a man, a thorough good fellow, incapable of dishonour, a landed proprietor. He had sketched out a little wedding-song which he would like to present with the fan. Might he show that, too, to Mrs. Deering?

It was a dreadful dinner. On each side the distressing topic hemmed her in. In vain she tried to make her old friend talk of travel or gastronomy or the comforts of his club; perverse fate brought him always back to Norma's wedding. She was forced to listen, for to Weever she dared not address a remark. She longed for escape, for solitude wherein to envisage her dismay. No suspicion of Morland's complicity in the scandal had crossed her mind. Even now it seemed preposterous for a man of honour to have so acted towards his dearest and most loyal friend, to say nothing of the unhappy things that had gone before. Suddenly, towards the end of dinner, she revolted. She turned to Weever.

“I don't believe a word of it.”

“Of what, dear lady?”

“Of what you have told me about Morland and Jimmie Padgate.”

“I have told you nothing—absolutely nothing,” he replied in his expressionless way. “Please remember that. I don't go about libelling my acquaintances.”

“I shall go and ask Morland straight,” she said with spirit.

“Au succÈs,” said Weever.

Dinner over, the little party went into the lounge. The screened light fell pleasantly on palms and pretty dresses, and made the place reposeful after the glare of the dining-room, whose red and white and gold still gleamed through the door above the steps. The red-coated band played a seductive, almost digestive air. A circle of comfortable chairs reserved by the host, invited the contented diner to languorous ease and restful gossip. It was the part of a Carlton dinner that Connie usually enjoyed the most. She still took her pleasures whole-heartedly, wherein lay much of her charm. The world, as Jimmie once told her, had not rubbed the dust off her wings. But to-night the sweet after-dinner hour was filled with fears and agitations, and while the party was settling down, she begged release from her host on the score of headache, and made her escape.

She would carry out her threat to Weever. She would see Morland before she slept, and ask him to free her from this intolerable suspicion. She was a loyal, simple woman, for all her inconsequent ways and close experience of the insincerities of life; devoted to her friends, a champion of their causes; loving to believe the best, disturbed beyond due measure at being forced to believe the worst. Jimmie had most of her heart, more of it than she dared confess. But there were places in it both for Norma and for Morland. The latter was her cousin. She had known him all her life. To believe him to have played this sorry part in what it pleased Theodore Weever to call a pretty comedy was very real pain to the little lady. Her headache was no pretence. No spirit of curiosity or interference drove her to the Hardacres', where she knew she would find Morland; rather a desire to rid herself of a nightmare. Granted the possibility of baseness on Morland's part, all the dark places in the lamentable business became light. That was the maddening part of Weever's solution. And would it apply to the puzzle of the afternoon? Had Norma known? Had Jimmie told her? The pair had been agitated enough for anything to have happened. Theodore Weever, too, had calmly avowed himself an actor in the comedy. What part was he playing? She shivered at the conjecture. He looked like a pale mummy, she thought confusedly, holding in his dull eyes the inscrutable wisdom of the Sphinx. Meanwhile the horses were proceeding at a funereal pace. She pulled the checkstring and bade the coachman drive faster.

The scene that met her eyes when the servant showed her into the Hardacres' drawing-room was unexpected. Instead of the ordinary after-dinner gathering, only Mr. and Mrs. Hardacre and Morland were in the room. The master of the house, very red, very puffy, sat in an armchair before the fire, tugging at his mean little red moustache. Mrs. Hardacre, her face haggard with anxiety, stood apart with Morland, whose heavy features wore an expression of worry, apology, and indignation curiously blended. On a clear space of carpet a couple of yards from the door lay some strings of large pearls. Connie looked from one to the other of the three people who had evidently been interrupted in the midst of an anxious discussion. Here, again, something had happened.

Mrs. Hardacre shook hands with her mechanically. Mr. Hardacre apologised for not rising. That infernal gout again, he explained, pointing to the slashed slipper of a foot resting on a hassock. Norma had made it worse. He had been infernally upset.

“Norma?” Connie turned and looked inquiringly at the other two.

“Oh, an awful scene,” said Morland, gloomily. “I wish to heaven you had been here. You might have done something.”

“Perhaps you might bring her to her senses now, though I doubt it. I think she has gone crazy,” said Mrs. Hardacre.

“But what has occurred?”

“She declares she won't marry me, that's all. There's my wedding-present on the floor. Tore it from her neck as she made her exit. I don't know what's going to happen!”

“Where is she now?”

“Up in her room smashing the rest of her wedding-presents, I suppose,” said Mrs. Hardacre.

“Eh, what? Can't do that. All locked up downstairs in the library,” came from the chair by the fire.

“Oh, don't make idiotic remarks, Benjamin,” snapped his wife, viciously.

The air was electric with irritation. Connie, a peacemaker at heart, forgot her mission in the face of the new development of affairs, and spoke soothingly. Norma could not break off the engagement three days before the wedding. Such things were not done. She would come round. It was merely an attack of nerves. They refused to be comforted.

“God knows what it is,” said Morland. “I thought things were perfectly square between us. She was n't cordial before dinner, I'll admit; but she let me put those beads round her neck. I asked her to wear them all the evening, as there were only the four of us.”

“The Spencer-Temples sent an excuse this afternoon,” Mrs. Hardacre explained.

“She agreed,” Morland continued. “She wore them through dinner. Then everything any one of us said seemed to get on her nerves. I talked about the House. She withered me up with sarcasm. We talked about the wedding. She begged us, for God's sake, to talk of something else. We tried, so as to pacify her. But of course it was hardly possible. I said I had met Lord Monzie yesterday—told me he and his wife were coming on Wednesday. She asked whether Ascherberg and the rest of Monzie's crew of money-lenders, harlots, and fools were coming too. I defended Monzie. He's a friend of mine and a very decent sort. She shrugged her shoulders. You know her way. Mrs. Hardacre changed the subject. After dinner I saw her alone for a bit in the drawing-room. She asked me to take back the pearls. Said they were throttling her. Had n't we better reconsider the whole matter? There was still time. That was the beginning of it. Mr. and Mrs. Hardacre came up. We did all we knew. Used every argument. People invited. Bishop to perform ceremony. Duchess actually coming. Society expected us. The scandal. Her infernally bad treatment of myself. No good. Whatever we said only made her worse. Ended up with a diatribe against society. She was sick of its lies and its rottenness. She was going to have no more of it. She would breathe fresh pure air.

“The Lord knows what she did n't say. All of us came in for it. Said shocking things about her mother. Said I did n't love her, had never loved her. A loveless marriage was horrible. Of course I am in love with her. You all know that. I said so. She would n't listen. Went on with her harangue. We could n't stop her. She would n't marry me for all the bishops and duchesses in the world. At last I lost my temper and said it was my intention to marry her, and marry me she should. Don't you think I was quite right? She lost hers, I suppose, tore off the pearls, made a sort of peroration, declaring she would sooner die than commit the infamy of marrying me—and that's the end of it.”

He threw out his hands in desperation and turned away. His account of events from his point of view was accurate. To him, as to Norma's parents, her final revolt appeared the arbitrary act of unreason. They still smarted resentfully under her lashes, incapable of realising the sins for which they were flagellated.

If she had remained at home that afternoon and continued to practise insensibility, she would probably have followed the line of least resistance during the evening. Or, on the other hand, if she could have been alone, a night's fevered sleeplessness would have caused dull reaction in the morning. The cold contempt for things outside her, which had served for strength, was now gone, leaving a helpless woman to be swayed by passion or led spiritless by convention. The heroic in her needed the double spur. Passion shook her; miserable bondage, claiming her, drove her to rebellion. She rose to sublime heights, undreamed of in her earth-bound philosophy.

She had gone into the street after her interview with Jimmie, white, palpitating, torn. Though the man had spoken tremulous words, it was the unspoken, the wave of longing and all unspeakable things in whose heaving bosom they had been caught, that mattered. The Garden of Enchantment had thrown wide its gates; she had been admitted within its infinitely reaching vistas, and flowers of the spirit had bared their hearts before her eyes. Dressing, she strove to kill the memory, to deafen her ears to the haunting music, to clear her brain of the intoxication. A thing hardly a woman, hardly a coherent entity, but half marble, half-consuming fire, stood before Morland, as he clasped the pearl necklace around her throat. The touch of it against her skin caused a shudder. Up to then sensation had blotted out thought. But now the brain worked with startling lucidity. There was yet time to escape from the thraldom. The Idea gathered strength from every word and incident during the meal. The commonness, sordidness, emptiness of the life behind and around and before her were revealed in the unpitying searchlight of an awakened soul.

She pleaded with Morland for release. The necklace choked her. She unclasped it. He refused to take it back. She was his. He loved her. Her conduct was an outrage on his affections. She dared him to an expression of passionate feeling. He failed miserably, and her anger grew. Unhappily he spoke of an outrage upon Society. She fastened on the phrase. His affection and Society! One was worth the other. Society—the Mumbo Jumbo—the grotesque false god to which women were offered up in senseless sacrifice! Her mother instanced the bishop and the duchess as avatars of the divinity. Norma poured scorn on the hierarchy. Mrs. Hardacre implored her daughter by her love for her not to humiliate her thus in the world's eyes. She struck the falsest of notes. Norma turned on her, superb, dramatic, holding the three in speechless dismay. Love! what love had been given her that she should return? She had grown honest. The gods of that house were no longer her gods. They were paltry and dishonoured, shams and hypocrisies. Once she worshipped them. To that she had been trained from her cradle. Her nurses dangled the shams before her eyes. The women who taught her bent fawning knees before the shrines of the false gods. A mother's love? what had she learned from her mother? To simper and harden her heart. That the envy of other simpering hardened women was the ultimate good. That the dazzling end of a young girl's career was to capture some man of rank and fortune—that when she was married her lofty duty was to wear smarter clothes, give smarter parties, and to inveigle to her house by any base and despicable means smarter people than her friends. What had she learned from her mother? To let men of infamous lives leer at her because they had title or fortune. To pay court to shameless women in the hope of getting to know still more shameless men who might dishonour her with their name. She had never been young—never, never, with a young girl's freshness of heart. She spoke venom and was praised for wit. She was the finished product of a vapid world. Her whole existence had been an intricate elaboration of shams—miserable, empty, despicable futilities. How dared her mother stand before her and talk of love?

Then a quick angry scene, a crisp thud of the pearls on the floor, a stormy exit—and that, as Morland said, was the end of it. The three were left staring at each other in angry bewilderment.

In the face of this disaster Connie could not find it in her heart to reproach Morland, still less to hint at Theodore Weever's insinuation. Rather did she reproach herself for being the cause of the catastrophe, and she was smitten with a sense of guilt when Mrs. Hardacre turned upon her accusingly.

“She had tea with you, did n't she? Did you notice anything wrong?”

“She didn't seem quite herself—was nervous and strange,” said Connie, diplomatically. “I think I had better go up and talk to her,” she added after an anxious pause.

“Yes, do, for God's sake, Connie,” said Morland.

She nodded, smiled the ghost of her bright smile, and, glad of escape, went upstairs. The three sat in gloomy silence, broken only by Mr. Hardacre's maledictions on his gout. It was a bitter hour for them.

In a few moments Connie burst into the room, with a letter in her hand. She looked scared.

“We can't find her. She's not in the house.”

“Not in the house!” shrieked Mrs. Hardacre.

Morland brought his hand down heavily on the piano.

“I heard the front door slam half an hour ago!”

“This is addressed to you, Mrs. Hardacre. It was stuck in her looking-glass.”

Mrs. Hardacre opened the note with shaky fingers. It ran:

“I mean what I say. I had better leave you all, at least till after Wednesday. My stopping here would be more than you or I could stand.”

Mr. Hardacre staggered with a gasp of pain to his feet, and his weak eyes glared savagely out of his puffy red face.

“Damme, she must come back! If she does n't sleep here to-night, I'll cut her off. I won't have anything more to do with her. She has got to come back.”

“All right. Go and tell her, then,” retorted his wife. “Where do you suppose you are going to find her?”

“Oh, she is sure to have gone to my house,” said Connie. “But suppose she has n't,” said Morland, anxiously. “She was in such a state that anything is possible.”

“Come with me if you like. The brougham is here.”

“And you go too, Eliza, and bring her home with you, d' ye hear?” cried Mr. Hardacre. “If you don't, she'll never set foot in my house again. I'm damned if she shall!”

His wife looked at him queerly for a moment; then she meekly answered:

“Very well, Benjamin.”

Once only during their long married life had she flouted him when he had spoken to her like that. Then in ungovernable fury he had thrown a boot at her head.

Mr. Hardacre glared at Morland and Connie, and scrambled cursing into his chair.