EVERY one knew that the marriage arranged between Morland King and Norma Hardacre would not take place. It was announced in the “Times” and “Morning Post” on the Tuesday morning; those bidden to the wedding received hurried messages, and a day or two later the wedding-gifts were returned to the senders, who stored them up for some happier pair. But the new engagement upon which Norma had entered remained a secret. Norma herself did not desire to complete the banquet of gossip she had afforded society, and Mrs. Hardacre was not anxious to fill to overflowing the cup of her own humiliation. The stricken lady maintained a discreet reserve. The lovers had quarrelled, Norma had broken off the match and would not be going out for some time. She even defied the duchess, who commanded an explicit statement of reasons. Her grace retorted severely that she ought to have brought her daughter up better, and signified that this was the second time Norma had behaved with scandalous want of consideration for her august convenience. “She shall not have the opportunity of doing it again. I dislike being mixed up in scandals,” said the duchess; and Mrs. Hardacre saw the gates of Wiltshire House and Chiltern Towers closed to her forever. But of the impossible painter wretch she spoke not a word, hoping desperately that in some mysterious fashion the God of her fathers would avert this crowning disgrace from them and would lead Norma forth again into the paths of decency and virtue. As for her husband, he stormily refused to speak or hear the outcast's name. He had done with her. She should never sleep again beneath the roof she had dishonoured. He would not allow her a penny. He would cut her out of his will. She had dragged him in the mud, and by heaven! she could go to the devil! It took much to rouse the passions of the feeble, mean-faced little man; but once they were roused, he had the snarling tenacity of the fox. Mrs. Hardacre did not tell him of Morland's confession and the rehabilitation of his rival. The memory of her stunning humiliation brought on a feeling akin to physical nausea. She strove to bury it deep down in her sub-consciousness, beneath all the other unhallowed memories. There were none quite so rank. On the other hand, her husband's vilification of the detested creature was a source of consolation which she had no desire to choke. Why should she deny herself this comfort. The supreme joy of vitriol throwing was not countenanced in her social sphere. At odd times she regretted that she was a lady.

While the black fog of depression darkened Devonshire Place, in neighbouring parts of London the days were radiant. A thousand suns glorified the heavens and the breaths of a thousand springs perfumed the air. It was a period of exaggeration, unreality, a page out of a fairy tale lived and relived. Norma abandoned herself to the intoxication, heedless of the fog in Devonshire Place, and the decent grey of the world elsewhere. She refused to think or speculate. Rose veils shrouded the future; the present was a fantasy of delight. For material things, food, shelter, raiment, she had no concern. Connie fed and housed her, making her the thrice welcome guest, the beloved sister. From society she withdrew altogether. Visitors paid calls, odd people were entertained at meals, the routine of a wealthy woman's establishment proceeded in its ordinary course, and Norma's presence in the house remained unknown and unsuspected. She was there in hiding. The world was given to understand that she was in Cornwall. Even common life had thus its air of romance and mystery. Being as it were a fugitive, she had no engagements. There was a glorious incongruity in the position. She regarded the beginnings of the London season with the amused detachment of a disembodied spirit revisiting the scenes of which it once made a part. Morning, afternoon, and evening she was free—an exhilarating novelty. Nobody wanted to see her save Jimmie; save him she wanted to see nobody.

They met every day—sometimes in the sitting-room on the ground floor which Connie had set apart for her guest's exclusive use, and sometimes in Jimmie's studio. Now and then, when the weather was fine, they walked together in sweet places unfrequented by the fashionable world, Regent's Park and Hampstead Heath, fresh woods and pastures new to Norma, who had heard of the heath vaguely as an undesirable common where the lower orders wore each other's hats and shied at cocoanuts. Its smiling loneliness and April beauty, seen perhaps through the artist's eyes, enchanted her. Jimmie pointed out its undulations; like a bosom, said he, swelling with the first breaths of pure air on its release from London.

Most of all she loved to drive up to St. John's Wood after dinner and burst upon him unexpectedly. The new Bohemian freedom of it all was a part of the queer delicious life. She laughed in anticipation at his cry of delighted welcome. When she heard it, her eyes grew soft. To lift her veil and hang back her head to receive his kiss on her lips was an ever-new sensation. The intimacy had a bewildering sweetness. To complete it she threw aside gloves and jacket and unpinned her hat, a battered gilt Empire mirror over the long table serving her to guide the necessary touches to her hair. Although she did not repeat the little comedy of the shirt which had been inspired by the exaltation of a rare moment, yet she sat in Aline's chair, now called her own, and knitted at a silk tie she was making for him. She had learned the art from her aunt in Cornwall, and she brought the materials in a little black silk bag slung to her wrist. The housewifely avocation fitted in with the fairy tale. Jimmie smoked and talked, the most responsive and least tiring of companions. His allusive speech, that of the imaginative and cultured man, in itself brought her into a world different from the one she had left. His simplicity, his ignorance of the ways of women, his delight at the little discoveries she allowed him to make, gave it a touch of Arcadia. In passionate moments there was the unfamiliar, poetic, rhapsodic in his utterance which turned the world into a corner of heaven. And so the magic hours passed.

“I do believe I have found a soul,” she remarked on one of these evenings, “and that's why I must be so immoderately happy. I'm like a child with a new toy.”

She was unconscious of the instinctive, pitiless analysis of herself; and Jimmie, drunk with the wonder of her, did not heed the warning.

Of their future life together they only spoke as happy lovers in the rosy mist shed about them by the veil. They dwelt in the glamour of the fairy tale, where the princess who marries the shepherd lives not only happy ever afterwards, but also delicately dressed and daintily environed, her chief occupation being to tie silk bows round the lambs' necks, and to serve to her husband the whitest of bread and the whitest of cheese with the whitest of hands. Their forecast of the future might have been an Idyll of Theocritus.

“You will be the inspiration of all my pictures, dear,” said Jimmie.

“I will sit for you as a model, if I am good enough.”

“Good enough!” Language crumbled into meaningless vocables before her infinite perfection. “I have had a little talent. You will give me genius.”

“I will also give you your dinner.” She laughed adorably. “Do you know Connie told me I must learn to cook. I had my first lesson this morning in her kitchen—a most poetic way of doing sweetbreads. Do you like sweetbreads?”

“Now I come to think of it, I do. Enormously. I wonder why Aline never has them.”

“We'll have some—our first lunch—at home.”

“And you will cook them?” cried the enraptured man.

She nodded. “In a most becoming white apron. You'll see.”

“You'll be like a goddess taking her turn preparing the daily ambrosia for Olympus!” said Jimmie.

On another occasion they spoke of summer holidays. They would take a little cottage in the country. It would have honeysuckle over the porch, and beds of mignonette under the windows, and an old-fashioned garden full of stocks and hollyhocks and sunflowers. There would be doves and bees. They would go out early and come home with the dew on their feet. They would drink warm milk from the cow. They would go a hay-making. Norma's idea of the pastoral pathetically resembled that of the Petit Trianon.

The magic of the present with its sincerity of passionate worship on the part of the man, and its satisfaction of a soul's hunger on the part of the woman, was in itself enough to blind their eyes to the possible prose of the future. Another interest, one of the sweetest of outside interests that can bind two lovers together, helped to fix their serious thoughts to the immediate hour. Side by side with their romance grew up another, vitally interwoven with it for a spell and now springing clear into independent life. The two children Aline and Tony Merewether had found each other again, and the fresh beauty of their young loves lit the deeper passion of the older pair with the light of spring sunrise. In precious little moments of confidence Aline opened to Norma her heart's dewy happiness, and what Norma in delicate honour could divulge she told to Jimmie, who in his turn had his little tale to bear. More and more was existence like the last page of a fairy book.

The reconciliation of the younger folk had been a very simple matter. It was the doing of Connie Deering. The morning after Morland's confession she summoned Tony Merewether to an interview. He arrived wondering. She asked him point blank:

“Are you still in love with Aline Marden or have you forgotten all about her?”

The young fellow declared his undying affection.

“Are you aware that you have treated her shamefully?” she said severely.

“I am the most miserable dog unhung,” exclaimed the youth. He certainly looked miserable, thin, and worried. He gave his view of the position. Connie's heart went out to him.

“Suppose I told you that everything was cleared up and you could go to Aline with a light conscience?”

“I should go crazy with happiness!” he cried, springing to his feet.

“Aline deserves a sane husband. She is one in a thousand.”

“She is one in twenty thousand million!”

“There she goes, hand in hand with Jimmie Padgate. It's to tell you that I've asked you to come. I hope you'll let them both know you're aware of it.”

Satisfied that he was worthy of her confidence, she told him briefly what had occurred.

“And now what are you going to do?” she asked, smiling.

“Do? I'll go on my knees. I'll grovel at his feet. I'll ask him to make me a door-mat. I'll do any mortal thing Aline tells me.”

“Well, go now and do your penance and be happy,” Connie said, holding out her hand.

“I don't know how I can thank you, Mrs. Deering,” he cried. “You are the most gracious woman that ever lived!”

A few moments later an impassioned youth was speeding in a hansom cab to Friary Grove. But Connie, with the memory of his clear-cut, radiant young face haunting her, sighed. Chance decreed that the very moment should bring her a letter from Jimmie, written that morning, full of his wonder and gratitude. She sighed again, pathetically, foolishly, unreasonably feeling left out in the cold.

“I wonder whether it would do me good to cry,” she said, half aloud. But the footman entering with the announcement that the carriage which was to take her to her dressmaker was at the door, settled the question. She had to content herself with sighs.

Tony Merewether did not go on his knees, as Aline had ordained; but he made his apology in so frank and manly a way that Jimmie forgave him at once. Besides, said he, what had he to forgive?

“I feel like Didymus,” said Tony.

Jimmie laughed as he clapped him on the shoulder and pushed him out of the studio.

“You had better cultivate the feeling. He became a saint eventually. Aline will help to make you one.”

If plain indication of another's infirmities can tend to qualify him for canonisation, Aline certainly justified Jimmie's statement. She did not confer her pardon so readily on the doubting disciple. His offence had been too rank. It was not merely a question of his saying a credo and then taking her into his arms. She exacted much penance before she permitted this blissful consummation. He had to woo and protest and humble himself exceedingly. But when she had reduced him to a proper state of penitence, she gave him plenary absolution and yielded to his kiss, as she had been yearning to do since the beginning of the interview. After that she settled down to her infinite delight. Nothing was lacking in the new rapturous scheme of existence. The glory of Jimmie was vindicated. Tony had come back to her. The bars to their marriage had vanished. Not only was Tony a man of substance with the legacy of eight thousand pounds that had been left him, and therefore able to support as many wives as the Grand Turk, but Jimmie no longer had to be provided for. The wonder of wonders had happened; she could surrender her precious charge with a free conscience and a heart bursting with gratitude.

Thus the happiness of each pair of lovers caught a reflection from that of the other, and its colour was rendered ever so little fictitious, unreal. The light of spring sunrise, exquisite though it is, invests things with a glamour which the light of noon dispels. The spectacle of the young romance unfolding itself before the eyes of Jimmie and Norma completed their delicious sense of the idyllic; but the illusive atmosphere thus created caused them to view their own romance in slightly false perspective. Essentially it was a drama of conflict—themselves against the pettinesses and uglinesses of the world; apparently it was a pastoral among spring flowers.

Another cause that contributed to Norma's unconcern for the future was her exaggerated sense of the man's loftiness of soul. Instead of viewing him as a lovable creature capable of the chivalrous and the heroic and afforded by a happy fate an opportunity of displaying these qualities—for the opportunity makes the hero as much as it does the thief—she grovelled whole-sexedly before an impossible idol imbued with impossible divinity. While knitting silk ties and devising with him the preparation of foodstuffs (which she did not realise he would not be able to afford) she was conscious of a grace in the trifling, all the more precious because of these little earthly things midway between the empyrean and the abyss which they respectively inhabited. In the deeply human love of each was a touch of the fantastic. To Jimmie she was the Princess of Wonderland, the rare Lady of Dreams; to Norma he appeared little less than a god.

She was talking one evening with Connie Deering in a somewhat exalted strain of her own unworthiness and Jimmie's condescension, when the little lady broke into an unwonted expression of impatience.

“My dear child, every foolish woman is a valet to her hero. You would like to clean his boots, wouldn't you?”

“My dear Connie,” cried Norma, alarmed, “whatever is the matter?”

“I think you two had better get married as quickly as possible. It is getting on one's nerves.”

Norma stiffened. “I am sorry—” she began.

Connie interrupted her. “Don't be silly. There's nothing for you to be sorry about.” She brightened and laughed, realising the construction Norma had put upon her words. “I am only advising you for your good. I had half an hour's solitary imprisonment with Theodore Weever this afternoon. He always takes it out of me. It's like having a bath with an electric eel. He called this afternoon to get news of you.”

“Of me?” asked Norma serenely, settling herself in the depths of her chair.

“He is like an eel,” Connie exclaimed with a shiver. “He's the coldest-blooded thing I've ever come across. I told you about the dinner at the Carlton, did n't I? It appears that he reckoned on my doing just what I rushed off to do. It makes me so angry!” she cried with feminine emphasis on the last word. “Of course he did n't tell me so brutally—he has a horrid snake-like method of insinuation. He had counted on my getting at the truth which he had guessed and so stopping the marriage. 'I'm a true prophet,' he said. 'I knew that marriage would never come off.'”

“So he told me,” said Norma. “Do you know, there must be some goodness in him to have perceived the goodness in Jimmie.”

“I believe he's a disembodied spirit without either goodness or badness—a sort of non-moral monster.” Connie was given to hyperbole in her likes and dislikes. She continued her tale. He had come to ask her advice. Now that Miss Hardacre was free, did Mrs. Deering think he might press his suit with advantage? His stay in Europe was drawing to a close. He would like to take back with him to New York either Miss Hardacre or a definite refusal.

“'You certainly cannot take back Miss Hardacre,' I said, 'because she is going to marry Jimmie Padgate.' I thought this would annihilate him. But do you think he moved a muscle? Not he.”

“What did he say?” asked Norma, lazily amused.

“'This is getting somewhat monotonous,'” replied Connie.

Norma laughed. “Nothing else?”

“He began to talk about theatres. He has the most disconcerting way of changing the conversation. But on leaving he sent his congratulations to you, and said that you were always to remember that you were the wife specially designed for him by Providence.”

“You dear thing,” said Norma, “and did that get on your nerves?”

“Would n't it get on yours?”

Norma shook her head. “I have n't any nerves for things to get on. People don't have nerves when they're happy.”

“And are you happy, really, really happy?”

“I am deliciously happy,” said Norma.

She went to bed laughing at the discomfiture of Weever and the remoteness of him and of the days last summer when she first met him among the Monzies' disreputable crowd. He belonged to a former state of existence. Jimmie's portrait, which had been put for two or three reasons in her bedroom, caught her attention. She looked at it with a dreamy smile for a long time, and then turned to the glass. Made curiously happy by what she saw there, she kissed her fingers to the portrait.

“He is the better prophet,” she said.

But Connie's advice as to the desirability of a speedy marriage remained in her mind. Jimmie with characteristic diffidence had not yet suggested definite arrangements. She was gifted with so much insight as to apprehend the reasons for his lack of initiative. His very worship of her, his overwhelming sense of goddess-conferred boon in her every smile and condescension, precluded the asking of favours. So far it was she who had arranged their daily life. It was she who had established the custom of the studio visits, and she had taken off her hat and had inaugurated the comedy of the domestic felicities of her own accord. She treasured this worship in her heart as a priceless thing, all the more exquisite because it lay by the side of the knowledge of her own unworthiness. The sacrifice of maidenly modesty in proposing instead of coyly yielding was at once a delicious penance for hypocritical assumption of superiority, and a salve to her pride as a beautiful and desirable woman. It was with a glorious sureness of relation, therefore, that she asked him the next day if he had thought of a date for their marriage.

“There is no reason for a long engagement that I can see,” she added, with a blush which she felt, and was tremulously happy at feeling.

“I was waiting for you to say, dear,” he replied, his arm around her. “I dared not ask.”

She laughed the deep laugh of a woman's happiness.

“I knew you would say that,” she murmured. “Let it be some time next month.”