'Est-ce qu'une vie de femme se raconte? elle se sent, elle passe, elle apparait.'—Sainte Beuve.

I

That Sir George Downing should spend the last days of his sojourn in Dorset at Kingpole Farm, a seventeenth-century homestead, where, according to local tradition, Charles II. had spent a night in hiding during his hurried flight after the Battle of Worcester, had been Mrs. Robinson's wish and suggestion. He had welcomed the idea of leaving Monk's Eype with an eagerness which had pained her, though in her heart she was aware that she had thus devised a way out of what had become to them both a most difficult and false situation.

Very soon after Downing's arrival at Monk's Eype Penelope had become acutely conscious of the mistake she had made in asking him to come there. After painful moments spent with him—moments often of embarrassed silence—she had divined, with beating heart and flushed cheek, why all seemed to go ill between them during this time of waiting and of suspense, which she had actually believed would prove a prolongation of the halcyon, dream-like days that had followed their first meeting.

This beautiful, intelligent woman, with her strange half-knowledge of the realities of human life, and the less strange ignorances, which she kept closely hidden from those about her, had often received, especially in her 'Perdita' days, confidences which had inspired her with a deep distaste of those ignoble shifts and ruses which perforce so often surround a passion not in itself ignoble, or in any real sense impure.

She had been glad to assure herself that in this case—that of her own relation to Downing—nothing of the kind need sully the beginnings of what she believed with all her heart would be a noble and lifelong love-story. Accordingly, there had been a tacit pact as to the reserve and restraint which should govern their relations the one to the other during the few weeks of Downing's stay in England.

When the time came they would leave together openly, and with a certain measured dignity, but till then they would be friends, merely friends, not lovers.

But Mrs. Robinson had not considered it essential, or indeed desirable, that there should be no meeting in the interval, and she had seen no reason why her friend's schemes should not have what slender help was possible from the exercise of her woman's wits. Hence she had planned the meeting with David Winfrith; hence she had asked Downing to become one of her guests at Monk's Eype, and after some demur he had reluctantly obeyed.

During the days that had immediately followed his coming, days which saw Downing avoiding rather than seeking his hostess's presence, Penelope often pondered over the words, the first he had uttered when they had found themselves alone: 'I feel like a thief—nay, like a murderer—here!' Extravagant, foolish words, uttered by one whose restraint and wisdom had held for her from the first a curious fascination.

Alas! She knew now how ill-advised she had been to bring him to Monk's Eype, to place him in sharp juxtaposition with her mother, with her cousin Wantley, even with such a girl as Cecily Wake. The very simplicity of the life led by Mrs. Robinson's little circle of unworldly, simple-minded guests made intimate talk between herself and Downing difficult, the more so that feminine instinct kept few her visits to the Beach Room.

Now and again, however, a softened glance from the powerful lined face, a muttered word expressive of deep measureless feeling, the feel of his hand grasping hers, would suddenly seem to prove that everything was indeed as she wished it to be between them, and for a few hours she would feel, if not content, at least at peace.

But even then there was always the haunting thought that some extraneous circumstance—sometimes she wondered if it could have been any foolish, careless word said by Wantley—had modified the close intimacy of their relation.

II

There had been a week of this strain and strange chill between them, when one night Penelope, feeling intolerably sore and full of vague misgivings, suddenly determined to seek Downing out in the Beach Room. It fell about in this wise. After the quiet evening had at last come to an end, she went upstairs with Cecily and old Miss Wake, dismissed Motey, and then returned to the studio, hoping he would come to her there.

But an hour wore itself away, and he did not come.

Mrs. Robinson went out on to the moonlit terrace, and for awhile paced up and down, watching the lights in the villa being put out one by one. She knew that her old nurse would not go to sleep till she, Penelope, were safe in bed; and she felt, though she could not see them, Mrs. Mote's eyes peering down at her, watching this impatient walking up and down in the bright moonlight. But what would once have so keenly annoyed her no longer had power to touch her. She even smiled when the candle in Mrs. Mote's room was extinguished, and the blind carefully and ostentatiously drawn down. She knew well that the old woman would sit behind it, waiting impatiently, full of suspicious anger, till she saw her mistress return from the place whither she was now bound.

As she went down the steps leading to the shore, Penelope, her eyes cast down, pitied herself with the frank self-pity of a child deprived of some longed-for happiness; she had so looked forward to these days with Downing, spent in this beloved place, which she was about to give up, perhaps never to see again, for his sake.

At last, when standing on the strip of dry sand heaped above the wet, glittering expanse stretching out to the dark sea, Penelope came upon the circle of bright light, warring with the moonlit shore below, thrown by Downing's lamp through the window of the Beach Room.

The sight affected her curiously. For a moment she felt as if she must turn back; after all, he was engaged upon matters of great moment, perhaps of even greater moment to himself than the question of their relation the one to the other. She suddenly felt ashamed of disturbing him at his work—real work which she knew must be done before he went back to town.

But the window, through which streamed out the shaft of greenish-white light, was wide open, and soon Downing heard, mingling with the surge of the sea, the sound, the unmistakable dragging sound, of a woman's long clinging skirt.

He got up, opened the door, and, coming out took her in his arms and drew her silently back with him into the Beach Room. Then, bending down, his lips met and trembled on hers, and Penelope, her resentment gone, felt her eyes fill with tears.

A kiss, so trifling a gift on the part of some women as to be scarcely worth the moments lost in the giving and receiving, is with other women, indeed with many other women, the forerunner of complete surrender.

In her thirty years of life two men only had kissed Penelope Wantley—the one Winfrith, the other Downing.

To-night there came to her with amazing clearness the vision of a garden, ill-cared for, deserted, but oh! how beautiful, stretching behind a Savoy inn in the mountainous country about Pol les Thermes. There she and Downing, drawn—driven—to one another by a trembling, irresistible impulse, had kissed for the first time, and for a moment, then as now, she had lain in his arms, looking up at him with piteous, questioning eyes. How long ago that morning seemed, and yet how few had been the kisses in between!

Suddenly she felt him loosen his grip of her shoulders; and he held her away from himself, at arms' length, as deliberately, in the tone of one who has a right to an answer, he asked her a certain question regarding herself and Melancthon Robinson.

She was pained and startled, reluctant to tell that which she had always kept secret, and which she believed—so little are we aware that most things concerning us are known to all our world—had never been suspected. But she admitted his right to question her, and found time to whisper to her secret self, 'My answer must surely make him glad'; and so, her eyes lowering before his piercing, insistent gaze, she told him the truth.

But, as he heard her, Downing relaxed his hold on her, and with something like a groan he said: 'Why did I not know this before? Why should I have had to wait till now to learn such a thing from you?' And as she, surprised and distressed, hesitated, not knowing what to say, he to her amazement turned away, and in a preoccupied tone, even with a smile, said suddenly: 'Go. Go now, my dear. It is too late for you to be down here. I have work to finish to-night.' Then he opened the door, and, with no further word or gesture of affection, shut her out in what seemed for the moment utter darkness.

But as she slowly began groping her way up the steps, sick at heart, bewildered by the strangeness, by the coldness, of his manner, the door of the Beach Room again opened, and she heard him calling her back with a hoarse, eager cry.

She hesitated, then turned to see his tall, lean figure filling up the doorway, and outlined for a moment against the bright lamplit room, before he strode across the sand to where she stood, trembling.

Once more he took her in his arms, once more he murmured the words of broken, passionate endearment for which her heart had hungered, only, however, at last again to say, but no longer with a smile: 'Go. Go now, my beloved—for I am only a man after all—only a man as other men are.'

Then for some days Penelope had found him again become strangely cold and alien. She had felt the situation between them intolerable, and suddenly she had suggested the sojourn at Kingpole Farm. And on the eve of his departure Downing again seemed to become instinct with the mysterious ardour he had shown from the first moment they had met, from the flash of time during which their eyes had exchanged their first long, intimate, probing look.

Mrs. Mote had followed, with foreboding, agonizing jealousy, this interlude of days in a drama of which she had seen the first, and of which she was beginning to divine the last, act.

It is not the apparently inevitable sin, so much as the apparently avoidable folly, which most distresses those onlookers who truly love the sinners and the foolish. During those still summer days the old nurse felt she could have borne anything but this strange beguilement of her mistress, by one whom the maid regarded as having outlived the age when men make women happy. The sight of Mrs. Robinson, with whom, to Motey's doting eyes, time had stood still, hanging on his words, having eyes only for this man, who, though no longer young, yet seemed even older than his age, struck the watcher as monstrous because unnatural.

So far, Mrs. Mote had been unselfish in her repugnance for the irrevocable step towards which she felt Penelope to be drifting, but of late a nearer and more personal terror had taken possession of the old woman. She was beginning to suspect that she herself was to have no part in Mrs. Robinson's new life, and the suspicion drove her nearly beside herself with anger and impotent distress.

Many incidents, of themselves trifling, had instilled this suspicion in her mind. Mrs. Robinson was trying to do for herself all the things that Motey, first as nurse, and later as maid, had always done for her. Sitting in her own room, next door to that of her mistress, and feeling too proud and sore to come unless sent for, Mrs. Mote would hear the opening and shutting of cupboards and drawers, the seeking and the putting away by Penelope—this last an almost incredible portent—of her own hat, veil, gloves, and shoes!

Even more significant was the fact that of late Penelope had become so considerate, so tender, of the old woman who had always been about her. How happy a sharp, impatient word would now have made Mrs. Mote! But no such word was ever uttered. Instead, Mrs. Robinson had actually suggested that her maid should have a holiday. 'Me? A holiday? and what should I do with a holiday?' Motey had repeated, bewildered, and then with painful sarcasm had added, 'I suppose, ma'am, that is why you are learning to do your own hair?'

She had watched her enemy's departure for Kingpole Farm with sombre eyes and sinking heart, wondering what this unexpected happening might portend to her mistress.

The day after that which had seen Downing leaving Monk's Eype, Mrs. Robinson had found her riding-habit, and also a short skirt she often wore when driving herself, laid out with some elaboration. 'I have everything ready,' had said the old nurse sourly, 'for there will be many rides and drives now, I reckon.' And Penelope, forgetting her new gentleness, had exclaimed angrily: 'Motey, you are intolerable! Put those things away at once!'

In most people's lives there has come, at times, a sequence of days, full of deep calm without, full of inward strife and disturbance within.

The departure of Sir George Downing from Monk's Eype brought no peace to the two women to whom his presence there had been of moment. Mrs. Mote believed that his going heralded some immediate change in Mrs. Robinson's life; as far as possible she never let her mistress out of her sight, and the tarrying of Penelope from the villa an hour later than she had been expected to do, more than once threw the old nurse into a state of abject alarm. But Motey, during those still days, had lost the clue to her nursling's heart and mind.

For some days and nights after Downing had left her, and she had deliberately denied herself the solace of his letters, Mrs. Robinson was haunted by the thought—sometimes, it seemed, by the actual physical presence—of her first love, David Winfrith.

The memory of the hours spent by her with him at Shagisham constantly recurred, bringing a strange mingling of triumph and pain. How badly she had behaved to him that day! how treacherously! it might almost be said, how wantonly! And yet, at the time, during that moment when she had come close to him, and uttered those plaintive words which had so greatly moved him, Downing for the moment had been blotted out of her memory, so intense had been her desire to bring Winfrith back to his old allegiance.

Now, looking back at the little scene, she knew that she had succeeded in her wish—but at what a cost! And in a few weeks, she could now count the time by days, it would become the business of Winfrith's life to forget her. She knew how his narrow, upright mind would judge her action; with what utter condemnation and horror he would remember that conversation held between them, especially that portion of it which concerned Sir George Downing.

The knowledge that Winfrith must in time realize how ill she had used him that day brought keen humiliation in its train. 'I have been far more married to him than I was to poor Melancthon!' she cried half aloud to herself during one of the restless, unhappy nights, spent by her in thinking over the past and considering the present; and the thought had come into her mind: 'If I had married David, and then if he, instead of Melancthon, had died, how much happier I should be to-day than I am now!'

But even as she had uttered the words, and though believing herself to be the only creature awake in the still house, Penelope in the darkness had blushed violently, marvelling to find herself capable of having conceived so monstrous an idea.

It added to Mrs. Robinson's unrest and disquiet to know, as she had done through Wantley, now—oh, irony!—the only link between herself and Kingpole Farm, that Downing and Winfrith had met more than once. The interviews, or so she gathered from her cousin, had been, from Downing's point of view, satisfactory, but she longed feverishly to know more—to learn how David Winfrith had comported himself, what impression he had made on the older man.

It was significant that Penelope never gave a thought as to how Downing had impressed Winfrith. To her mind the matter could not admit of doubt—his personality must dominate all those with whom it came into contact.

Neither man knew of her relation, past or present, to the other. Still, she felt a longing to be assured that all had gone well between them. It added to her vague discomfort that Wantley, when telling her of what had been the first meeting between the two men, had given her a quick, penetrating look from out his half-closed eyes, and then had glanced away in obvious embarrassment.

Well, she would soon have to see Winfrith, for on him she counted—and she never saw the refinement of cruelty involved—to make smooth, as regarded certain material matters, the path before her.

Mrs. Robinson wished to begin her new life stripped, as far as might be possible, of all that must recall to her that which had come and gone since she was Penelope Wantley. She hoped that by giving up the great fortune left by her husband, she might blot out the recollection, not only of poor Melancthon Robinson, for whose memory she had ever felt a certain impatient kindliness, but also of David Winfrith, to whom her tie of late years had been so close, though of that she had told Downing nothing.

This intention of material renouncement had not been imagined in the first instance by Penelope—the Robinson fortune had cost her so little and had been hers so long! But Downing, during one of their first intimate talks and discussions concerning the future, had assumed that, on her return to England, she would at once begin arranging for its dispersion, and she had instantly accepted the idea, and felt herself eager to act on it. Indeed, she had said after a short pause, and it was the first time that she had mentioned to this new friend and still unfamiliar lover, the oldest of her friends and the most familiar of her lovers, 'David Winfrith will help me about it all.'

'The new Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs?' he had asked, and she had answered quickly: 'Yes, his father is one of the trustees of the Settlement, and he has helped me a good deal over it.'

No more had then been said, and since her return to England Mrs. Robinson had done nothing concerning the matter.

But now she must bestir herself, see Winfrith, and that soon. He knew all about her affairs, and she intended that he should help her to hasten the inevitable formalities. As to what she was to say to him, how to offer, to one so matter-of-fact and clear-headed, any adequate reason for her proposed action, she trusted to her wit and to his obtuseness. He had often found the courage to tell her that some adequate provision should be made by her for the Melancthon Settlement, and that, as matters stood, too much was left to her own conscience and her own generosity. Well, she would now remind him of his unpalatable advice, and tell him that at last she was about to follow it.

Penelope also found time, during the days which followed Downing's departure, to think of her mother—to wonder, with tightened throat, how Lady Wantley would meet the ordeal coming so swiftly to meet and overwhelm her.

Even with those whose thoughts, emotions, and consciences seemed channelled in the narrowest grooves it is often difficult to foresee with what eyes, both of the body and of the soul, they will view any given set of circumstances. Lady Wantley had always seemed extremely wide-minded, in some ways nebulously so; but this had been in a measure owing, so Penelope now reminded herself, to the fact that she had lived a life so spiritually detached from those about her.

Since her husband's death the mother's loyalty to her only child had been unswerving, and she seemed to have transferred to Penelope the unquestioning trust she had felt in Penelope's father.

Old friends, including Mr. Julius Gumberg, had ventured to remonstrate, and very seriously, when the lovely, impulsive girl had announced her sudden engagement, after a strangely short acquaintance, to Melancthon Robinson; but Lady Wantley—and her daughter, looking back in after years, had often wondered sorely, with a shuddering retrospection, that it had been so—had seemed quite content, quite certain, that her beloved child was being Divinely guided.

She had accepted, with the same curious detachment, the fact of Penelope's widowhood, and during the years which followed had encouraged her daughter to lead the life that suited her best, looking on with indulgent eyes while Mrs. Robinson enjoyed what she always later recalled as the 'Perdita' stage of her existence.

This had been the period when the girl-widow, released from the bondage into which she had entered so lightly, returned with intense zest to the delightful frivolous world of which she had seen but little before her marriage. For three or four years Mrs. Robinson enjoyed all that this delicately dissipated section of society could give her in the way of lightly balanced emotion and fresh sensation, and her mother had been apparently in no wise shocked or surprised that it should be so.

Then had followed a period of travel, when the young widow had seen something of a wider world. Finally, Penelope had settled down to the life of which we know—still, when she was in London, seeing something of the gay, light-hearted circle of men and women who had once surrounded 'Perdita' with the pleasant and not insincere flattery they are ever ready to bestow on any and every human being who for the moment interests and amuses them. Mrs. Robinson had retained her place, as it were her niche, among them. They still delighted in 'Perdita's' beauty, and in her exceptional artistic gift; also—and she would have felt indeed angered and disgusted had she known it—her reputed wealth, which was by no means so great as was rumoured, played its part in keeping up her prestige with a world which is apt to become at times painfully aware of the value of money.

On the other hand, David Winfrith was not loved among these men and women who considered high living thoroughly compatible with—indeed, an almost indispensable adjunct to—high thinking. Winfrith took a grim pleasure in acting as kill-joy to certain kinds of human sport to which they were addicted, and, worse than that, he positively bored them! And so, when Mrs. Robinson, having drawn him once more into her innocent, but none the less dangerous, toils, had again formed with him an absorbing and intimate friendship, certain of her acquaintances were no longer as eager to be with her as they had once been, and they considered that their dear 'Perdita' was making herself slightly ridiculous.

Another reason why Mrs. Robinson found it impossible to divine how her mother would regard what she was now on the eve of doing, was because the younger woman knew well how her father would have regarded such a union as that which she was contemplating.

Lord Wantley had not been in the habit, as his wife had always been, of looking at life and those about him with charitable ambiguity; and there was no doubt as to how the great philanthropist, who had been in his lifetime a pillar of the Low Church party, regarded the slightest deviation from the moral law. Penelope now remembered with great discomfort and prevision of pain that concerning actual matters of life and conduct Lady Wantley's 'doxy' had always been, so far as she knew it, her husband's 'doxy.'