WHILE this tragical comedy of the domestic felicities was being enacted, Connie Deering's brougham containing three agitated, silent, human beings was rapidly approaching the scene.

They had made certain of finding Norma at Bryanston Square. The news that she had not arrived disquieted them. Morland anxiously suggested the police. They had a hurried colloquy, Morland and Connie standing on the pavement, Mrs. Hardacre inside the carriage, thrusting her head through the window. Connie falteringly confessed to the meeting of Jimmie and Norma in the afternoon. Something serious had evidently passed between them.

Morland broke into an oath. “By God! That's where she's gone. Damn him!”

“We must get her away at all costs,” said Mrs. Hardacre, tensely.

“I am afraid it is my fault,” said Connie.

“Of course it is,” Mrs. Hardacre replied brutally. “The best you can do is to help us to rescue her.”

They started. The brougham was small, the air heavy, their quest distasteful, its result doubtful. The sense of fretfulness became acute. Mrs. Hardacre gave vent to her maternal feelings. When she touched on the vile seducer of her daughter's affections, Connie turned upon her almost shrewishly.

“This is my carriage, and I am not going to hear my dearest friend abused in it.”

Morland sat silent and worried. When they stopped at the house, he said:

“I think I shall stay outside.”

Connie, angry with him for having damned Jimmie, bent forward.

“Are you afraid of facing Jimmie?” she said with a little note of contempt.

“Certainly not,” he replied viciously.

A few moments later Aline ran into the studio with a scared face.

“Jimmie!”

He went up to her, and she whispered into his ear; then he turned to Norma.

“Your mother and Connie and Morland are upstairs. I don't suppose you are anxious to see them. May I tell them what has happened?”

Norma rose and joined him in the centre of the studio. “I would sooner tell them myself. Can they come down here?”

“If you wish it.”

He gave the order to Aline. Before going, she took him by the arm and swiftly glancing at Norma, asked eagerly:

“What has happened?”

“The wonder of wonders, dear,” said Jimmie.

With a glad cry she ran upstairs and brought down the visitors, who were waiting in the hall.

Jimmie stood by the open door to receive them. Norma retired to the far end of the studio. She held her head high, and felt astonishingly cool and self-possessed. Mrs. Hardacre entered first, and without condescending to look at Jimmie marched straight up to her daughter. Then came Connie and Aline, the girl excited, her arm round her friend's waist. Morland, on entering, drew Jimmie aside.

“So you've bested me,” he said in an angry whisper. “You held the cards, I know. I did n't think you would use them. I wish you joy.”

A sudden flash of pain and indignation lit Jimmie's eyes.

“Good God, man! Have you sunk so low as to accuse me of that? Me?”

He turned away. Morland caught him by the sleeve.

“I say—” he began.

But Jimmie shook him off and went to the side of Norma, who was listening to her mother's opening attack. It was shrill and bitter. When she paused, Norma said stonily:

“I am not going home with you to-night, mother. I sleep at Connie's. She will not refuse me a bed.”

“Your father means what he says.”

“So do I, mother. I can manage pretty well without your protection till I am married. Then I sha'n't need it.”

“Pray whom are you going to marry?” asked Mrs. Hardacre, acidly.

“I should think it was obvious,” said Norma. “Mr. Padgate has done me the very great honour to ask me to be his wife. I have agreed. I am over age and a free agent, so there's nothing more to be said, mother.”

Mrs. Hardacre refused to take the announcement seriously. Her thin lips worked into a smile.

“This is sheer folly, my dear Norma. Over age or not we can't allow you to disgrace yourself and us—”

“We have never had such honour conferred on us in all our lives,” said Norma.

Mrs. Hardacre shrugged her shoulders pityingly.

“Among sane folks it would be a disgrace and a scandal. Even Mr. Padgate would scarcely take advantage of a fit of hysterical folly.” She turned to Jimmie. “I assure you she is hardly responsible for her actions. You are aware what you would be guilty of in bringing her into this—this—?” She paused for a word and waved her hand around.

“Hovel?” suggested Jimmie, grimly. “Yes. I am aware of it. Miss Hardacre must not consider herself bound by anything she has said to-night.”

Connie Deering, who had come up waiting for a chance to speak, her forget-me-not eyes curiously hard and dangerous, broke in quickly:

“Why did you say even Mr. Padgate, Mrs. Hardacre?”

“Mr. Padgate has a reputation—” said Mrs. Hardacre, with an expressive gesture.

“Jimmie—”

He checked his advocate. “Please, no more.”

“I should think not, indeed! Are you coming, Norma?”

“You had better go,” said Jimmie, softly. “Why quarrel with your parents? To-morrow, a week, a month hence you can tell me your wishes. I set you quite free.”

Norma made a movement of impatience.

“Don't make me say things I should regret—I am not going to change my mind. No, mother, I am not coming.”

Morland had not said a word, but stood in the background, hating himself. Only Connie's taunt had caused him to enter this maddeningly false position. He knew that his accusation, though he believed it true at the time, was false and base. Jimmie was true gold. He had not betrayed him. Connie, when Jimmie had checked her, went across to Morland.

“Do you believe that Jimmie deserves his reputation?” she said for his ears alone.

“I don't know,” he answered moodily, kicking at a hassock.

“I do know,” she said, “and it's damnable.”

A quick glance exchanged completed her assurance. He saw that she knew, and despised him. For a few moments he lost consciousness of externals in alarmed contemplation of this new thing—a self openly despised by one of his equals. Mrs. Hardacre's voice aroused him. She was saying her final words to Norma.

“I leave you. When you are in the gutter with this person, don't come to ask me for help. You can encanailler yourself as much as you like, for all I care. This adventurer—”

Jimmie interposed in his grand manner.

“Pray remember, Mrs. Hardacre, that for the moment you are my guest.”

“Your guest!” For the second time that evening she had been rebuked. Her eyes glittered with spite and fury. She lost control. “Your guest! If I went to rescue my daughter from a house of ill fame, should I regard myself as a guest of the keeper? How dare you? How do I know what does n't go on in this house? That girl over there—”

Norma sprang forward and gripped her by the arm.

“Mother!”

She shook herself free. “How do I know? How do you know? The man's name stinks over England. No decent woman has anything to do with him. Have you forgotten last autumn? That beastly affair? If you choose to succeed the other woman—”

“Oh, damn it!” burst out Morland, suddenly. “This is more than I can stand. Have you forgotten what I told you a week ago?”

The venomous woman was brought to a full stop. She stared helplessly at Morland, drawing quick panting breaths. She had forgotten that he was in the room.

The cynicism was too gross even for him. There are limits to every man's baseness and cowardice. Moreover, his secret was known. To proclaim it himself was a more heroic escape than to let it be revealed with killing contempt by another. The two forces converged suddenly, and found their resultant in his outburst. It was characteristic of him that there should be two motives, though which one was the stronger it were hard to say—most likely revolt at the cynicism, for he was not a depraved man.

Norma looked swiftly from one to the other.

“What did you tell my mother a week ago?”

Jimmie picked up Morland's crush-hat that lay on the table and thrust it into his hand.

“Oh, that's enough, my dear good fellow. Don't talk about those horrible things. Mrs. Hardacre would like to be going. You had better see her home. Good-night.”

He pushed him, as he spoke, gently towards Mrs. Hardacre, who was already moving towards the door. But Norma came up.

“I insist upon knowing,” she said.

“No, no,” said Jimmie, in an agitated voice. “Let the dead past bury its dead. Don't rake up old horrors.”

Morland cleared himself away from Jimmie.

“My God! You are a good man. I've been an infernal blackguard. Everybody had better know. If Jimmie hadn't taken it upon himself, that madman would have shot me. He would have hit the right man. I wish to heaven he had.”

Norma grew white.

“And this is what you told my mother?”

“I thought I ought to,” said Morland, looking away from the anxious faces around him.

“You shouldn't have done it,” said Jimmie, in a low voice. He was bent like a guilty person.

Norma went to the door and opened it.

“Kindly see my mother into a cab.”

“Please take the brougham,” said Connie. “Norma and I will take a cab later.”

Morland made a movement as if to speak to Jimmie. Norma intercepted him, waved her hand towards her mother, who stood motionless.

“Go. Please go,” she said in a constrained voice. “Take the brougham. She will catch cold while you are whistling for a cab—and you will be the sooner gone.”

Mrs. Hardacre, stunned by the utter disaster that she had brought about, mechanically obeyed Morland's gesture and passed through the open door, without looking at her daughter. As Morland passed her, he plucked up a little courage.

“We both lied for your sake,” he said; which might have been an apology or a tribute. Norma gave no sign that she had heard him.

Jimmie followed them upstairs and opened the front door. He put out his hand to Morland, who took it and said “Good-night” in a shamefaced way. Mrs. Hardacre stepped into the brougham like a somnambulist. Morland did not accompany her. He had seen enough of Mrs. Hardacre for the rest of his life.

When Jimmie went down to the studio, he saw Norma and Connie bending over a chair in the far corner. Aline had fainted.

They administered what restoratives were to hand—water and Connie's smelling-salts—and took the girl up to her bedroom, where she was left in charge of Mrs. Deering. Jimmie and Norma returned to the studio. The preoccupation of tending Aline, whose joy in the utter vindication of her splendid faith had been too sudden a strain upon an overwrought nervous system, had been welcomed almost as a relief to the emotional tenseness. They had not spoken of the things that were uppermost.

They sat down in their former places, without exchanging a remark. Jimmie took up his pipe from the table by his side, and knocked the ashes into the ash-tray and blew through it to clear it. Then he began to fill it from his old tobacco-pouch, clumsy as all covered pouches are and rough with faded clumps of moss-roses and forget-me-nots worked by Aline years before.

“Why don't you go on with the sewing?” he said.

She waited a second or two before answering, and when she spoke did not trust herself to look at him.

“I ought to say something, I know,” she said in a low voice. “But there are things one can't talk of, only feel.”

“We never need talk of them,” said Jimmie. “They are over and done with. Old, forgotten, far-off things now.”

“Are they? You don't understand. They will always remain. They make up your life. You are too big for such as me altogether. By rights I should be on my knees before you. Thank God, I did n't wait until I learned all this, but came to you in faith. I feel poor enough to hug that to myself as a virtue.”

“I am very glad you believed in me,” said Jimmie, laying down the unlit pipe which he had been fondling. “I would n't be human if I did n't—but you must n't exaggerate. Exposure would have ruined Morland's career, and I thought it would go near breaking your heart. To me, an insignificant devil, what did it matter?”

“Did n't my love for you matter? Did n't all that you have suffered matter? Oh, don't minimise what you have done. I am afraid of you. Your thoughts are not my thoughts, and your ways not my ways. You will always be among the stars while I am crawling about the earth.”

Jimmie rose hurriedly and fell at her feet, and took both her hands and placed them against his cheeks.

“My dear,” he said, moved to his depths. “My dear. My wonderful, worshipped, God-sent dear. You are wrong—utterly wrong. I am only a poor fool of a man, as you will soon find out, whose one merit is to love you. I would sell my body and my soul for you. If I made a little sacrifice for the love of you, what have you done tonight for me—the sacrifice of all the splendour and grace of life?”

“The lies and the rottenness,” said Norma, with a shiver. “Did you comprehend my mother?”

He took her hands from his face and kissed her fingers.

“Dear, those are the unhappy, far-off things. Let us forget them. They never happened. Only one thing in the world has ever happened. You have come to me, Norma,” he said softly, speaking her name for the first tremulous time, “Norma!”

Their eyes met, and then their lips. The world stood still for a space. She sighed and looked at him.

“You will have to teach me many things,” she said. “You will have to begin at the very beginning.”