A SUDDEN apprehension of his bulk (though he was only comparatively massive) overcame John when he stood inside the tiny drawing-room of 83 Camera Square; and it was not until the steam from the tea-pot had materialized into Miss Hamilton, who in a dress of filmy gray floated round him as a cloud swathes a mountain, that he felt at ease.

"Why, how charming of you to keep your word," her well-remembered voice, so soft and deep, was murmuring. "You don't know my mother, do you? Mother, this is Mr. Touchwood, who was so kind to Ida and me on the voyage back from America."

Mrs. Hamilton was one of those mothers that never destroy the prospects of their children by testifying outwardly to what their beauty may one day come: neither in face nor in expression nor in gesture nor in voice did she bear the least resemblance to her daughter. At first John was inclined to compare her to a diminutive clown; but presently he caught sight of some golden mandarins marching across a lacquer cupboard and decided that she resembled a mandarin; after which wherever he looked in the room he seemed to catch sight of her miniature—on the willow-pattern plates, on the mantelpiece in porcelain, and even on the red lacquer bridge that spanned the tea-caddy.

"We've all heard of Mr. Touchwood," she said, picking up a small silver weapon in the shape of a pea-shooter and puffing out her already plump cheeks in a vain effort to extinguish the flame of the spirit-lamp. "And I'm devoted to the drama. Pouf! I think this is a very dull instrument, dear. What would England be without Shakespeare? Pouf! Pouf! One blows and blows and blows and blows till really—well, it has taught me never to regret that I did not learn the flute when there was a question of my having lessons. Pouf! Pouf!"

John offered his services as extinguisher.

"You have to blow very hard," she warned him; and he being determined at all costs to impress Miss Hamilton blew like a knight-errant at the gate of an enchanted castle. It was almost too vigorous a blast: besides extinguishing the flame, it blew several currants from the cake into Mrs. Hamilton's lap, which John in an access of good-will tried to blow off again less successfully.

"Bravo," the old lady exclaimed, clapping her hands. "I'm glad to see that it can be done. But didn't you write The Walls of Jericho? Ah no, I'm thinking of Joshua and his trumpet."

"The Fall of Babylon, mother," Miss Hamilton put in with a smile, in the curves of which quivered a hint of scornfulness.

"Then I was not so far out. The Fall of Babylon to be sure. Oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen."

She beamed at the author encouragingly, who beamed responsively back at her; presently she began to chuckle to herself, and John, hoping that in his wish to be pleasant to Miss Hamilton's mother he was not appearing to be imitating a hen, chuckled back.

"I'm glad you have a sense of humor," she exclaimed, suddenly assuming an intensely serious expression and throwing up her eyebrows like two skipping-ropes.

John, who felt as if he was playing a game, copied her expression as well as he was able.

"I live on it," she pursued. "And thrive moreover. A small income and an ample sense of humor. Yes, for thus one avoids extravagance oneself, but enjoys it in other people."

"And how is Miss Merritt?" John inquired of Miss Hamilton, when he had bowed his appreciation of the witticism. But before she could reply, her mother rattled on: "Miss Merritt will not take Doris to America again. Miss Merritt has written a book called The Aphorisms of Aphrodite."

The old lady's remarkable eyebrows were darting about her forehead like forked lightning while she spoke.

"The Aphorisms of Aphrodite!" she repeated. "A collection of some of the most declassical observations that I have ever encountered." Like a diver's arms the eyebrows drew themselves together for a plunge into unfathomable moral depths.

"My dear mother, lots of people found it very amusing," her daughter protested.

"Miss Merritt," the old lady asserted, "was meant for bookkeeping by double-entry, instead of which she had taken to book-writing by double-entente. The profits may be treble, but the method is base. How did she affect you, Mr. Touchwood?"

"She frightened me," John confessed. "I thought her manner somewhat severe."

"You hear that, Doris? Her ethical exterior frightened him."

"You're both very unfair to Ida. I only wish I had half her talents."

"Wrapped in a napkin," said the old lady, "you have your shorthand."

John's heart leapt.

"Ah, you know shorthand," he could not help ejaculating with manifest pleasure.

"I studied for a time. I think I had vague ideas once of a commercial career," she replied, indifferently.

"The suggestion being," Mrs. Hamilton put in, "that I discouraged her. But how is one to encourage shorthand? If she had learnt the deaf and dumb alphabet I might have put aside half-an-hour every day for conversation. But it is as hard to encourage shorthand as to encourage a person who is talking in his sleep."

John fancied that beneath the indifference of the daughter and the self-conscious humor of the mother he could detect cross-currents of mutual disapproval; he could have sworn that the daughter was beginning to be perpetually aware of her mother's presence.

"Or is it due to my obsession that relations should never see too much of each other?" he asked himself. "Yet she knows shorthand—an extraordinary coincidence. What a delightful house you have," he said aloud with as much fervor as would excuse the momentary abstraction into which he had been cast.

"My husband was a sinologue," Mrs. Hamilton announced.

"Was he indeed?" said John, trying to focus the word.

"And the study of Chinese is nearly as exclusive as shorthand," the old lady went on. "But we traveled a great deal in China when I was first married and being upon our honeymoon had but slight need of general conversation."

No wonder she looked like a mandarin.

"And to me their furniture was always more expressive than their language. Hence this house." Her black eyebrows soared like a condor to disappear in the clouds of her snowy hair. "But do not let us talk of China," she continued. "Let us rather talk of the drama. Or will you have another muffin?"

"I think I should prefer the muffin," John admitted.

Presently he noticed that Miss Hamilton was looking surreptitiously at her watch and glancing anxiously at the deepening twilight; she evidently had an appointment elsewhere, and he rose to make his farewells.

"For I'm sure you're wanting to go out," he ventured.

"Doris never cares to stay at home for very long," said her mother; and John was aware once again, this time unmistakably, of the cross-currents of mutual discontent.

"I had promised to meet Ida in Sloane Square."

"On the holy mount of Ida," the old lady quoted; John laughed out of politeness, though he was unable to see the point of the allusion; he might have concluded that after all Mrs. Hamilton was really rather stupid, perhaps even vain and tiresome, had she not immediately afterward proposed that he should give Doris time to get ready and have the benefit of her company along King's Road.

"For I assume you are both going in the same direction," she said, evoking with her eyebrows the suggestion of a signpost.

"My dear mother, Mr. Touchwood doesn't want to be bored with escorting me," her daughter was protesting.

John laughed at the idea of being bored; then he fancied that in such a small room his laughter might have sounded hysterical, and he raised the pitch of his voice to give the impression that he always laughed like that. In the end, after a short argument, Miss Hamilton agreed somewhat ungraciously to let John wait for her. When she was gone to get ready, her mother leaned over and tapped John's arm with a fan.

"I'm getting extremely anxious about Doris," she confided; the eyebrows hovering in her forehead like a hawk about to strike gave her listener the impression that she was really going to say something this time.

"Her health?" he began, anxiously.

"Her health is perfect. It is her independence which worries me. Hence this house! Her father's brother is only too willing to do anything for her, but she declines to be a poor relation. Now such an attitude is ridiculous, because she is a poor relation. To each overture from her uncle she replies with defiance. At one moment she drowns his remarks in a typewriter; at another she flourishes her shorthand in his face; and this summer she fled to America before he had finished what he was saying. Mr. Touchwood, I rely on you!" she exclaimed, thumping him on the shoulder with the fan.

John felt himself to be a very infirm prop for the old lady's ambition, and wobbled in silence while she heaped upon him her aspirations."You are a man of the world. All the world's a stage! Prompt her, my dear Mr. Touchwood, prompt her. You must have had a great experience in prompting. I rely on you. Her uncle must be allowed to help her. For pray appreciate that Doris's independence merely benefits charitable institutions, and in my opinion there is a limit to anonymous benevolence. Perhaps you've heard of the Home for Epileptic Gentlewomen? They can have their fits in peace and comfort entirely because my daughter refuses to accept one penny from her uncle. To a mother, of course, such behavior is unaccountable. And what is so unjust is that she won't allow me to accept a penny either, but has even gone so far as to threaten to live with Miss Merritt if I do. Aphorisms of Aphrodite! I can assure you that there are times when I do not regret that I possess an ample sense of humor. If you were a mother, Mr. Touchwood...."

"I am an uncle," said John, quickly. He was not going to let Mrs. Hamilton monopolize all the privileges of kinship.

"Then who more able to advise a niece? She will listen to you. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. You must remember that she already admires you as a playwright. Insist that in future she must admire you from the stalls instead of from the pit—as now. At present she is pinched. Do not misunderstand me. I speak in metaphors. She is pinched by straitened circumstances just as the women of China are pinched by their shoes. She declines to wear a hobble-skirt; but decline or not, she hobbles through life. She cannot do otherwise, which is why we live here in Camera Square like two spoonfuls of tea in an old caddy!"

"But you know, personally," John protested while the old lady was fanning back her lost breath, "personally, and I am now speaking as an uncle, personally I must confess that independence charms me."

"Music hath charms," said Mrs. Hamilton. "Who will deny it? And independence with the indefinite article before it also hath charms; but independence with no article at all, independence, the abstract noun, though it may be a public virtue, is a private vice. Vesuvius lends variety to the Bay of Naples; but a tufted mole on a woman's cheek affects the observer with abhorrence, like a woolly caterpillar lurking in the heart of a rose. Let us distinguish between the state and the individual. Do, my dear Mr. Touchwood, let us always preserve a distinction between wild nature and human nature."

John was determined not to give way, and he once more firmly asserted his admiration for independence.

"All the world's a stage," said Mrs. Hamilton. "Yes, and all the men and women merely players; yet life, Mr. Touchwood, is not a play. I have realized that since my husband died. The widow of a sinologue has much to realize. At first I hoped that Doris would marry. But she has never wanted to marry. Men proposed in shoals. But as I always said to them, 'What is the use of proposing to my daughter? She will never marry.'"

For the first time John began to pay a deep and respectful attention to the conversation.

"Really I should have thought," he began; but he stopped himself abruptly, for he felt that it was not quite chivalrous for him to appraise Miss Hamilton's matrimonial chances. "No doubt Miss Hamilton is very critical," he substituted.

"She would criticize anybody," the old lady exclaimed. "From the Creator of us all in general to her own mother in particular she would criticize anybody. Anybody that is, except Miss Merritt. Do not suppose, for instance, that she will not criticize you."

"Oh, I have no hope of escaping," John said.

"But pay no attention and continue to advise her. Really, when I think that on account of her obstinacy a number of epileptic females are enjoying luxurious convulsions while I am compelled to alternate between muffins and scones every day of the week, though I never know which I like better, really I resent our unnecessary poverty. As I say to her, whether we accept her uncle's offer or not, we are always poor relations; so we may as well be comfortably off poor relations."

"Don't you suppose that perhaps her uncle is all the fonder of her because of this independence?" John suggested. "I think I should be."

"But what is the use of that?" Mrs. Hamilton demanded. "Nothing is so bad for people as stunted affection. My husband spent all his patrimony—he was a younger son—everything he had in fact upon his passion for Chinese—well, not quite everything, for he was able to leave me a small income, which I share with Doris. Pray remember that I have never denied her anything that I could afford. Although she has many times plotted with her friend Ida Merritt to earn her own living, I have never once encouraged her in such a step. The idea to me has always been painful. A sense of humor has carried me through life; but Doris, alas, is infected with gloom. Whether it is living in London or whether it is reading Nietzsche I don't know, but she is infested with gloom. Therefore when I heard of her meeting you I was glad; I was almost reconciled to the notion of that vulgar descent upon America. Pray do not imagine that I am trying to flatter: you should be used to public approbation by now. John Hamilton is her uncle's name, and he has a delightful estate near the Mull of Kintyre—Glencockic House—some of the rents of which provide carpets for the fits of epileptic gentlewomen and some the children of indigent tradesmen in Ayr with colonial opportunities. Yet his sister-in-law must choose every morning between muffins and scones."

John tried unsuccessfully to change the conversation; he even went so far as to ask the old lady questions about her adventures in China, although it was one of the rules of his conduct never to expose himself unnecessarily to the reminiscences of travelers.

"Yes, yes," she would reply, impatiently, "the bells in the temple gardens are delicious. Ding-dong! ding-dong! But, as I was saying, unless Doris sees her way to be at any rate outwardly gracious ..." and so it went on until Doris herself, dressed in that misty green Harris tweed of the Murmania, came in to say that she was ready.

"My dear child," her mother protested. "The streets of London are empty on Sunday evening, but they are not a Highland moor. What queer notions of dress you do have, to be sure."

"Ida and I are going out to supper with some friends of hers in Norwood, and I want to keep warm in the train."

"One of the aphorisms of Aphrodite, I suppose, to wear a Norfolk-jacket—or should I say a Norwood jacket?—on Sunday evening. You must excuse her, Mr. Touchwood."

John was by this time thoroughly bored by the old lady's witticisms and delighted to leave her to fan herself in the firelight, while he and her daughter walked along toward King's Road.

"No sign of a taxi," said John, whose mind was running on shorthand, though he was much too shy to raise the topic for a second time. "You don't mind going as far as Sloane Square by motor-bus?"

A moment later they were climbing to the outside of a motor-bus; when John pulled the waterproof rug over their knees and felt the wind in his face while they swayed together and apart in the rapid motion, he could easily have fancied that they were once again upon the Atlantic.

"I often think of our crossing," he said in what he hoped was an harmonious mixture of small talk and sentiment.

"So do I."

He tried to turn eagerly round, but was unable to do so on account of having fastened the strap of the rug.

"Well, in Camera Square, wouldn't you?" she murmured.

"You're not happy there?" In order to cover his embarrassment at finding he had asked what she might consider an impertinent question John turned away to fasten the rug more tightly, which nearly kept him from turning around again at all.

"Don't let's talk about me," she begged, dismissing the subject with a curt little laugh. "How fast they do drive on Sunday."

"Yes, the streets are empty," he agreed. Good heavens, at this rate they would be at Sloane Square in five minutes, and he might just as well never have called on her. What did it matter if the streets were empty? They were not half as empty as this conversation.

"I'm working hard," he began.

"Lucky you!"

"At least when I say I'm working hard," he corrected himself, "I mean that I have been working hard. Just at present I'm rather worried by family matters."

"Poor man, I sympathize with you."

She might sympathize with him; but on this motor-bus her manner was so detached that nobody could have guessed it, John thought, and he had looked at her every time a street-lamp illuminated her expression.

"I often think of our crossing," he repeated. "I'm sure it would be a great pity to let our friendship fade out into nothing. Won't you lunch with me one day?"

"With pleasure."

"Wednesday at Princes? Or no, better say the Carlton Grill."

"Thanks so much."

"It's not easy to talk on a motor-bus, is it?" John suggested.

"No, it's like trying to talk to somebody whom you're seeing off in a train."

"I hope you'll enjoy your evening. You'll remember me to Miss Merritt?"

"Of course."

Sloane Square opened ahead of them; but at any rate, John congratulated himself, he had managed to arrange a lunch for Wednesday and need no longer reproach himself for a complete deadlock.

"I must hurry," she warned him when they had descended to the pavement.

"Wednesday at one o'clock then."

He would have liked to detain her with elaborate instructions about the exact spot on the carpet where she would find him waiting for her on Wednesday; but she had shaken him lightly by the hand and crossed the road before he could decide between the entrance in Regent Street and the entrance in Pall Mall.

"It is becoming every day more evident, Mrs. Worfolk," John told his housekeeper after supper that evening, "that I must begin to look about for a secretary."

"Yes, sir," she agreed, cheerfully. "There's lots of deserving young fellows would be glad of the job, I'm shaw."

John left it at that, acknowledged Mrs. Worfolk's wishes for his night's repose, poured himself out a whisky and soda, and settled himself down to read a gilded work at fifteen shillings net entitled Fifteen Famous Forgers. When he had read three shillings' worth, he decided that the only crime which possessed a literary interest for anybody outside the principals was murder, and went to bed early in order to prepare for the painful interview at Staple Inn next morning.

Stephen Crutchley, the celebrated architect, was some years older than John, old enough in fact to have been severely affected by the esthetic movement in his early twenties; he had a secret belief that was nourished both by his pre-eminence in Gothic design and by his wife's lilies and languors that he formed a link with the Pre-Raphaelites. His legs were excessively short, but short though they were one of them had managed to remain an inch shorter than the other, which in conjunction with a ponderous body made his gait something between a limp and a shamble. He had a long ragged beard which looked as if he had dropped egg or cigarette-ash on it according to whether the person who was deciding its color thought it was more gray or more yellow. His appearance was usually referred to by paragraph writers as leonine, and he much regretted that his beard was turning gray so soon, when what the same writers called his "tawny mane of hair" was still unwithered. He affected the Bohemian costume of the 'eighties, that is to say the velvet jacket, the flowered silk waistcoat, and the unknotted tie of deep crimson or old gold kept in place by a prelate's ring; he lunched every day at the Arts Club, and since he was making at least £6000 a year, he did not bother to go back to his office in the afternoon. John had met him first soon after his father's death in 1890 somewhere in Northamptonshire where Crutchley was restoring a church—his first big job—and where John was editing temporarily a local paper. In those days John reacting from dog-biscuits was every bit as romantic as he was now; he and the young architect had often talked the sun up and spoken ecstatically of another medieval renaissance, of the nobility of handicrafts and of the glory of the guilds. Later on, when John in the reaction from journalism embarked upon realistic novels, Crutchley was inclined to quarrel with him as a renegade, and even went so far as to send him a volume of Browning's poems with The Lost Leader heavily marked in red pencil. Considering that Crutchley was making more money with his gargoyles than himself with his novels John resented the accusation of having deserted his friend for a handful of silver; and as for the ribbon which he was accused of putting in his coat, John thought that the architect was the last person to underline such an accusation, when himself for the advancement of his work had joined every ecclesiastical society from the English Church Union to the Alcuin Club. There was not a ritualistic parson in the land who wanted with or without a faculty to erect a rood or reredos but turned to Crutchley for his design, principally because his watch-chain jingled with religious labels; although to do him justice, even when he was making £6000 a year he continued to attend Choral Eucharists as regularly as ever. When John abandoned realistic novels and made a success as a romantic playwright his friend welcomed him back to the Gothic fold with emotion and enthusiasm.

"You and I, John, are almost the only ones left," the architect had said, feelingly.

"Come, come, Stephen, you mustn't talk as if I was William de Morgan. I'm not yet forty, and you're not yet forty-five," John had replied, slightly nettled by this ascription of them to a bygone period.

Yet with all his absurdities and affectations Stephen was a fine fellow and a fine architect, and when soon after this he had agreed to take Hugh into his office John would have forgiven him if he had chosen to perambulate Chelsea in doublet and hose.

Thinking of Stephen as he had known him for twenty years John had no qualms when on Monday morning he ascended the winding stone steps that led up to his office in the oldest portion of Staple Inn; nor apparently had Hugh, who came in as jauntily as ever and greeted his brother with genial self-possession.

"I thought you'd blow in this morning. I betted Aubrey half-a-dollar that you'd blow in. He tells me you went off in rather a bad temper on Saturday night. But you were quite right, Johnnie; that port of George's is not good. You were quite right. I shall always respect your verdict on wine in future."

"This is not the moment to talk about wine," said John, angrily.

"I'm afraid that owing to George and his confounded elderberry ink I didn't put my case quite as clearly as I ought to have done," Hugh went on, serenely. "But don't worry. As soon as you've settled with Stevie, I shall tell you all about it. I think you'll be thrilled. It's a pity you've moved into Wardour Street, or you might have made a good story out of it."

One of the clerks came back with an invitation for John to follow him into Mr. Crutchley's own room, and he was glad to escape from his brother's airy impenitence.

"Wonderful how Stevie acts up to the part, isn't it?" commented Hugh, when he saw John looking round him at the timbered rooms with their ancient furniture and medieval blazonries through which they were passing.

"I prefer to see Crutchley alone," said John, coldly. "No doubt he will send for you when your presence is required."

Hugh nodded amiably and went over to his desk in one of the latticed oriel windows, the noise of the Holborn traffic surging in through which reminded the listener that these perfectly medieval rooms were in the heart of modern London.

"I should rather like to live in chambers here myself," thought John. "I believe they would give me the very atmosphere I require for Joan of Arc; and I should be close to the theaters."

This project appealed to him more than ever when he entered the architect's inmost sanctum, which containing nothing that did not belong to the best period of whatever it was, wrought iron or carved wood or embroidered stuff, impressed John's eye for a scenic effect. Nor was there too much of it: the room was austere, not even so full as a Carpaccio interior. Modernity here wore a figleaf; wax candles were burned instead of gas or electric light; and even the telephone was enshrined in a Florentine casket. When the oaken door covered with huge nails and floriated hinges was closed, John sat down upon what is called a Glastonbury chair and gazed at his friend who was seated upon a gilt throne under a canopy of faded azure that was embroidered with golden unicorns, wyverns, and other fabulous monsters in a pasture of silver fleurs-de-lys.

"Have a cigar," said the Master, as he liked to be called, pushing across the refectory table that had come out of an old Flemish monastery a primitive box painted with scenes of saintly temptations, but lined with cedar wood and packed full of fat Corona Coronas.

"It seems hardly appropriate to smoke cigars in this room," John observed. "Even a churchwarden-pipe would be an anachronism here."

"Yes, yes," Stephen assented, tossing back his hair with the authentic Vikingly gesture. "But cigars are the chief consolation we have for being compelled to exist in this modern world. I haven't seen you, John, since you returned from America. How's work?"

"Lucretia went splendidly in New York. And I'm in the middle of Joan of Arc now."

"I'm glad, I'm glad," the architect growled as fiercely as one of the great Victorians. "But for Heaven's sake get the coats right. Theatrical heraldry is shocking. And get the ecclesiastical details right. Theatrical ritual is worse. But I'm glad you're giving 'em Joan of Arc. Keep it up, keep it up. The modern drama wants disinfecting."

"I suppose you wouldn't care to advise me about the costumes and processions and all that," John suggested, offering his friend a pinch of his romantic Sanitas.

"Yes, I will. Of course, I will. But I must have a free hand. An absolutely free hand, John. I won't have any confounded play-actor trying to tell me that it doesn't matter if a bishop in the fifteenth century does wear a sixteenth century miter, because it's more effective from the gallery. Eh? I know them. You know them. A free hand or you can burn Joan on an asbestos gasfire, and I won't help you."

"Your help would be so much appreciated," John assured him, "that I can promise you an absolutely short hand."

The architect stared at the dramatist.

"What did I say? I mean free hand—extraordinary slip," John laughed a little awkwardly. "Yes, your name, Stephen, is just what we shall require to persuade the skeptical that it is worth while making another attempt with Joan of Arc. I can promise you some fine opportunities. I've got a particularly effective tableau to show the miserable condition of France before the play begins. The curtain will rise upon the rearguard of an army marching out of a city, heavy snow will fall, and above the silence you will hear the howling of the wolves following in the track of the troops. This is an historical fact. I may even introduce several wolves upon the stage. But I rather doubt if trained wolves are procurable, although at a pinch we could use large dogs—but don't let me run away with my own work like this. I did not come here this morning to talk about Joan of Arc, but about my brother Hugh."

John rose from his chair and walked nervously up and down the room, while Stephen Crutchley managed to exaggerate a slight roughness at the back of his throat into a violent fit of coughing.

"I see you feel it as much as I do," John murmured, while the architect continued to express his overwrought feelings in bronchial spasms.

"I would have spared you this," the architect managed to gasp at last.

"I'm sure you would," said John, warmly. "But since in what I hope was a genuine impulse of contrition not entirely dictated by motives of self-interest Hugh has confessed his crime to me, I am come here this morning confident that you will allow me to—in other words—what was the exact sum? I shall of course remove him from your tutelage this morning."

John's eloquence was not spontaneous; he had rehearsed this speech on the way from Hampstead that morning, and he was agreeably surprised to find that he had been able owing to his friend's coughing-fit to reproduce nearly all of it. He had so often been robbed of a prepared oration by some unexpected turn of the conversation that he felt now much happier than he ought under the weight of a family scandal.

"Your generosity...." he continued.

"No, no," interrupted the architect, "it is you who are generous."

The two romantics gazed at one another with an expression of nobility that required no words to enhance it.

"We can afford to be generous," said John, which was perfectly true, though the reference was to worth of character rather than to worth of capital.

"Eighty-one pounds six and eightpence," Crutchley murmured. "But I blame myself. I should not have left an old check book lying about. It was careless—it was, I do not hesitate to say so, criminally careless. But you know my attitude towards money. I am radically incapable of dealing with money."

"Of course you are," John assented with conviction. "So am I. Money with me is merely a means to an end."

"Exactly what it is with me," the architect declared. "Money in itself conveys nothing to me. What I always say to my clients is that if they want the best work they must pay for it. It's the work that counts, not the money."

"Precisely my own attitude," John agreed. "What people will not understand is that an artist charges a high price when he does not want to do the work. If people insist on his doing it, they must expect to pay."

"And of course," the architect added, "we owe it to our fellows to sustain the dignity of our professions. Art in England has already been too much cheapened."

"You've kept all your old enthusiasms," John told his friend. "It's splendid to find a man who is not spoilt by success. Eighty-one pounds you said? I've brought my check book."

"Eighty-one pounds six and eightpence, yes. It was like you, John, to come forward in this way. But I wish you could have been spared. You understand, don't you, that I intended to say nothing about it and to blame myself in silence for my carelessness? On the other hand, I could not treat your brother with my former confidence. This terrible business disturbed our whole relationship."

"I am not going to enlarge on my feelings," said John as he handed the architect the stolen sum. "But you will understand them. I believe the shock has aged me. I seem to have lost some of my self-reliance. Only this morning I was thinking to myself that I must really get a private secretary."

"You certainly should have one," the architect agreed.

"Yes, I must. The only thing is that since this dreadful escapade of Hugh's I feel that an unbusinesslike creature such as I am ought not to put himself in the hands of a young man. What is your experience of women? From a business point of view, I mean."

"I think that a woman would do your work much better than a man," said the architect, decidedly.

"So do I. I'm very glad to have your advice though."

After this John felt no more reluctant at parting with eighty-one pounds six and eightpence than he would have felt in paying a specialist two guineas for advising him to take a long rest when he wanted to take a long rest. His friend's aloofness from money had raised to a higher level what might easily have been a most unpleasant transaction: not even one of his heroes could have extricated himself from an involved situation more poetically and more sympathetically. It now only remained to dispose of the villain.

"Shall we have Hugh in?" John asked.

"I wish I could keep him with me," the architect sighed. "But I don't think I have a right to consult my personal feelings. We must consider his behavior in itself."

"In any case," said John, quickly, "I have made arrangements about his future; he is going to be a mahogany-planter in British Honduras."

"Of course I don't use mahogany much in my work, but if ever ..." the architect was beginning, when John waved aside his kindly intentions.

"The impulse is generous, Stephen, but I should prefer that so far as you are concerned Hugh should always be as if he had never been. In fact, I'm bound to say frankly that I'm glad you do not use mahogany in your work. I'm glad that I've chosen a career for Hugh which will cut him completely off from what to me will always be the painful associations of architecture."

While they were waiting for the sinner to come in, John tried to remember the name of the mahogany-planter whom he had met in the Murmania; but he could get no nearer to it than a vague notion that it might have been Raikes, and he decided to leave out for the present any allusion to British Honduras.

Hugh entered his chief's room without a blush: he could not have bowed his head, however sincere his repentance, because his collars would not permit the least abasement; though at least, his brother thought, he might have had the decency not to sit down until he was invited, and when he did sit down not to pull up his trousers in that aggressive way and expose those very defiant socks.

Stephen Crutchley rose from his throne and shambled over to the fireplace, leaning against the stone hood of which he took up an attitude that would have abashed anybody but Hugh.

"Touchwood," he began, "no doubt you have already guessed why I have asked you to speak to me."

Hugh nodded encouragingly.

"I do not wish to enlarge upon the circumstances of your behavior, because your brother, my old friend, has come forward to shield you from the consequences. Nor do I propose to animadvert upon the forgery itself. However lightly you embarked upon it, I don't doubt that by now you have sufficiently realized its gravity. What tempted you to commit this crime I do not hope to guess; but I fear that such a device for obtaining money must have been inspired by debts, whether for cards or for horse-racing, or perhaps even for women I do not pretend to know."

"Add waistcoats and whisky and you've got the motive," Hugh chirped. "I say, I think your trousers are scorching," he added on a note of anxious consideration.

"I do not propose to enlarge on any of these topics," said the architect, moving away from the fire and sniffing irritably the faint odor of overheated homespun. "What I do wish to enlarge upon is your brother's generosity in coming forward like this. Naturally I who have known him for twenty years expected nothing else, because he is a man of ideals, a writer of whom we are all proud, from whom we all expect great things and—however I am not going to enlarge upon his obvious qualities. What I do wish to say is that he and I have decided that after this business you must leave me. I don't suppose that you expected to remain; nor, even if you could, do I suppose that you would wish to remain. Perhaps you are not enough in sympathy with my aspirations for the future of English architecture to regret our parting; but I hope that this lesson you have had will be the means of bringing you to an appreciation of what your brother has done for you and that in British Honduras you will behave in such a way as to justify his generosity. Touchwood, good-by! I did not expect when you came to me three years ago that our last farewell would be fraught—would be so unpleasant."

John was probably much more profoundly moved by Crutchley's sermon than Hugh; indeed he was so much moved that he rose to supplement it with one of his own in which he said the same things about the architect that the architect had said about him, after which the two romantics looked at each other admiringly, while they waited for Hugh to reply.

"I suppose I ought to say I'm very sorry and all that," Hugh managed to mutter at last. "Good-by, Mr. Crutchley, and jolly good luck. I'll just toddle through the office and say good-by to all the boys, John, and then I dare say you'll be ready for lunch."

He swaggered out of the room; when the two friends were left together they turned aside with mutual sympathy from the topic of Hugh to discuss Joan of Arc and a new transept that Crutchley was designing. When the culprit put his head round the door and called out to John that he was ready, the two old friends shook hands affectionately and parted with an increased regard for each other and themselves.

"Look here, what's all this about British Honduras?" Hugh asked indignantly when he and his brother had passed under the arched entry of Staple Inn and were walking along Holborn. "I see you're bent on gratifying your appetite for romance even in the choice of a colony. British Honduras! British humbug!"

"I prefer not do discuss anything except your immediate future," said John.

"It's such an extraordinary place to hit on," Hugh grunted in a tone of irritated perplexity."

"The immediate future," John repeated, sharply. "To-night you will go down to Hampshire and if you wish for any more help from me, you will remain there in the strictest seclusion until I have time to settle your ultimate future."

"Oh, I shan't at all mind a few weeks in Hampshire. What I'm grumbling at is British Honduras. I shall rather enjoy Hampshire in fact. Who's there at present?"

John told him, and Hugh made a grimace.

"I shall have to jolly them up a bit. However it's a good job that Laurence has lost his faith. I shall be spared his Chloral Eucharists, anyway. Where are we going to lunch?"

"Hugh!" exclaimed his outraged brother stopping short in the middle of the crowded pavement. "Have you no sense of shame at all? Are you utterly callous?"

"Look here, Johnnie, don't start in again on that. I know you had to take that line with Stevie, and you'll do me the justice of admitting that I backed you up; but when we're alone, do chuck all that. I'm very grateful to you for forking out—by the way, I hope you noticed the nice little touch in the sum? Eighty-one pounds six and eightpence. The six and eightpence was for my lawyer."

"Do you adopt this sickeningly cynical attitude," John besought. "Forgery is not a joke."

"Well, this forgery was," Hugh contradicted. "You see, I got hold of Stevie's old check book and found he had quite a decent little account in Croydon. So I faked his signature—you know how to do that?"

"I don't want to know."

"You copy the signature upside down. Yes, that's the way. Then old Aubrey disguised himself with blue glasses and presented the check at the bank, just allowing himself five minutes to catch the train back to town. I was waiting at the station in no end of a funk. But it was all right. The clerk blinked for a minute, but old Aubrey blinked back at him as cool as you please, and he shoveled out the gold. Aubrey came jingling on to the platform like a milk-can just as the train was starting."

"I wish to hear no more."

"And then I found that Stevie was cocking his eye at this check book and scratching his head and looking at me and—well, he suspected me. The fact of the matter is that Stevie's as keen on his cash as anybody. I suppose this is a side account for the benefit of some little lady or other."

"Silence," John commanded.

"And then I lost my nerve, so that when Stevie started questioning me about his check book I must have looked embarrassed."

"I'm surprised to hear that," John put in, bitterly.

"Yes, I dare say I could have bluffed it out, because I'd taken the precaution to cash the check through Aubrey whom Stevie knows nothing about. But I don't know. I lost my nerve. Well, thanks very much for stumping up, Johnnie; I'm only glad you got so much pleasure out of it yourself."

"What do you mean—pleasure?"

"Shut up—don't pretend you didn't enjoy yourself, you old Pharisee. Look here where are we going to lunch? I'm carrying a bag full of instruments, you know."

John told Hugh that he declined to lunch with him in his present mood of bravado, and at the corner of Chancery Lane they parted.

"Mind," John warned him, "if you wish for any help from me you are to remain for the present at Ambles."

"My dear chap, I don't want to remain anywhere else; but I wish you could appreciate the way in which the dark and bloody deed was done, as one of your characters would say. You haven't uttered a word of congratulation. After all, it took some pluck, you know, and the signature was an absolutely perfect fake—perfect. The only thing that failed was my nerve afterwards. But I suppose I should be steadier another time."

John hurried away in a rage and walked up the Strand muttering:

"What was the name of that mahogany-planter? Was it Raikes or wasn't it? I must find his card."

It was not until he had posted the following letter that he recovered some of his wonted serenity.

36 CHURCH ROW,
Hampstead, N.W.,
Nov. 28, 1910.

My dear Miss Hamilton,—In case I am too shy to broach the subject at lunch on Wednesday I am writing to ask you beforehand if in your wildest dreams you have ever dreamt that you could be a private secretary. I have for a long time been wanting a secretary, and as you often spoke with interest of my work I am in hopes that the idea will not be distasteful to you. I should not have dared to ask you if you had not mentioned shorthand yesterday and if Mrs. Hamilton had not said something about your typewriting. This seems to indicate that at any rate you have considered the question of secretarial work. The fact of the matter is that in addition to my plays I am much worried by family affairs, so much so that I am kept from my own work and really require not merely mechanical assistance, but also advice on many subjects on which a woman is competent to advise.

I gathered also from your mother's conversation that you yourself were sometimes harassed by family problems and I thought that perhaps you might welcome an excuse to get away from them for awhile.

My notions of the salary that one ought to offer a private secretary are extremely vague. Possibly our friend Miss Merritt would negotiate the business side, which to me as an author is always very unpleasant. I should of course accept whatever Miss Merritt proposed without hesitation. My idea was that you would work with me every morning at Hampstead. I have never yet attempted dictation myself, but I feel that I could do it after a little practice. Then I thought you could lunch with me, and that after lunch we could work on the materials—that is to say that I should give you a list of things I wanted to know, which you would search for either in my own library or at the British Museum. Does this strike you as too heavy a task? Perhaps Miss Merritt will advise you on this matter too.

If Mrs. Hamilton is opposed to the idea, possibly I might call upon her and explain personally my point of view. In the meantime I am looking forward to our lunch and hoping very much that you will set my mind at rest by accepting the post. I think I told you I was working on a play with Joan of Arc as the central figure. It is interesting, because I am determined not to fall into the temptation of introducing a factitious love-interest, which in my opinion spoilt Schiller's version.

Yours sincerely,
JOHN TOUCHWOOD.