WEST KENSINGTON relies for romance more upon the eccentricities of individual residents than upon any variety or suggestiveness in the scenery of its streets, which indeed are mostly mere lines of uniform gray or red houses drearily elongated by constriction. Yet the suburb is too near to London for some relics of a former rusticity not to have survived; and it is refreshing for the casual observer of a city's growth to find here and there a row of old cottages, here and there a Georgian house rising from sooty flower-gardens and shadowed by rusty cedars, occasionally even an open space of building land, among the weeds of which ragged hedgerows and patches of degenerate oats still endure.

How Lonsdale Road, where the Caffyns lived, should have come to obtrude itself upon the flimsy architecture of the neighborhood is not so obvious. Situated near what used to be the western terminus of the old brown-and-blue horse-omnibuses, it is a comparatively wide road of detached, double-fronted, three-storied, square houses (so square that after the rows of emaciated residences close by they seem positively squat), built at least thirty years before anybody thought of following the District Railway out here. Each front door is overhung by a heavy portico, the stout pillars of which, painted over and over again according to the purse and fancy of the owner, vary in color from shades of glossy blue and green to drabs and buffs and dingy ivories. The steps, set some ten yards back from the pavement, are flanked by well-grown shrubs; the ground floor is partially below the level of the street, but there are no areas, and only a side entrance marked "Tradesmen" seems to acknowledge the existence of a more humble world.

There are thirty-six houses in Lonsdale Road, not one of which makes any sharper claim for distinction than is conferred by the number plainly marked upon the gas-lamp suspended from the ceiling of its portico. Here are no "Bellevues" or "Ben Lomonds" to set the neighborhood off upon the follies of competitive nomenclature; and although at the back of each house a large oblong garden contains a much better selection of trees and flowering shrubs than the average suburban garden, not even the mild pretentiousness of an appropriate arboreal name is tolerated. Away from the traffic of the main street with its toy dairies and dolls' shops, its omnibuses and helter-skelter of insignificant pedestrians, Lonsdale Road comes to an abrupt end before a tumble-down tarred fence that guards some allotments beside the railway, on the other side of which a high rampart with the outline of cumulus marks the reverse of the panoramic boundary of Earl's Court Exhibition. The road is a thoroughfare for hawkers, policemen, and lovers, because a narrow lane follows the line of the tumble-down fence, leading on one side to the hinterland of West Kensington railway station and on the other gradually widening into a terrace of small red-brick houses, the outworks of similar terraces beyond. Why anybody at least fifty years ago should have built in what must then have been open country or nursery gardens along the North End Road these thirty-six porticoed houses remains inexplicable. Whoever it was may fairly be honored as one of the founders of West Kensington, perhaps second only to the one who divined that by getting it called West Kensington instead of East Fulham or South Hammersmith, and so maintaining in the minds of the professional classes a consciousness of their gentility, he was doing as much for the British Empire as if he had exploited their physique in a new colony.

With whatever romance one might be tempted to embellish the origin of Lonsdale Road on account of an architectural superiority to the streets around, it would be fanciful merely for that to endow it with any influence upon the character of the people who live there. Apart from a house where the drains are bad, that has achieved the reputation of being haunted, because the landlord prefers to let it stay empty rather than spend money on putting the drains in order, Lonsdale Road possesses as unromantic a lot of residences as the most banal of West Kensington streets. The nearest approach to a scandal is the way human beings and cats go courting in the lane at the end; but since the former do not live in Lonsdale Road and the latter are not amenable to any ethical code administered by the police, the residents do not feel the burden of a moral responsibility for their behavior.

Such a dignified road within seven minutes of the railway station had in the year 1881 made a strong appeal to Mr. Gilbert Caffyn, who, having just been appointed assistant secretary to the Church of England Purity Society at the early age of twenty-six, with a salary of £150 a year, was emboldened by his father's death and the inheritance of another £200 a year in brewery shares to persuade Miss Charlotte Doyle that their marriage was immediately feasible. Mr. Caffyn had been all the more anxious to press for a happy conclusion of a two years' engagement because Mrs. Doyle was showing every sign of imminent decease, an event which would eliminate a traditionally unsatisfactory relationship and enrich her daughter with £300 a year of her own. Mr. Caffyn therefore sold a quarter of his shares, purchased a ninety-nine years' lease of 17 Lonsdale Road, the last house on the right-hand side away from the growing traffic of West Kensington, and got married. If No. 17 was nearest the railway, it was also rather larger than the other houses, an important consideration for the assistant secretary of the Church of England Purity Society, who was bound to expect at least as many children as a clergyman. Still, for all its extra windows, it was not a very large house; and when in the year 1902 Mr. Caffyn, now secretary of the Church of England Purity Society, with a salary of £400 a year, looked at his wife, his nine children, his two servants, and himself, he wondered how they all managed to squeeze in. He hoped that his wife, who had been mercifully fallow for seven years, would not have any more children, though it might almost be easier to have more children than to provide for the rapid growing up of those he had already. Why, his eldest son Roland was twenty. The question of his moving into cheap rooms to suit his position as the earner of a guinea a week at a branch bank had been mooted several times already, and Mr. Caffyn had been compelled to turn his study (which he never used) into a bedroom for him and his brother Cecil, now a lanky schoolboy of fifteen, rather than expose himself to the likelihood of having to supplement the bank clerk's salary from his own. Then there was Norah, who was eighteen ... but at this moment Mr. Caffyn realized that he had only eight minutes to catch his train up to Blackfriars, and the problem of Norah was put aside. It was a hot morning in late September, and he had long ceased to enjoy running to catch a train.

The departure of the head of the house shortly after his eldest son was followed by Cecil's hulking off to St. James's with half a dozen books under his arm, then by Agnes's and Edna's chattering down the road like a pair of wagtails to their school, and last of all by Vincent's apprehensive scamper to his school. In comparison with the noise during breakfast, the house was quiet; but Dorothy, the second girl, was fussing in the pantry, and Mrs. Caffyn was fussing in the dining-room, while Gladys and Marjorie, two very pretty children of eight and seven, were reiterating appeals to be allowed to play in the front garden. All these noises, added to the noises made by the servants about their household duties, seemed an indication to Norah Caffyn that she ought to take advantage of such glorious weather to wash her hair. She withdrew to the room shared with Dorothy and, having promised her mother to keep an eye on the children, devoted all her attention to herself. She set about the business of washing her hair with the efficiency she applied to everything personal; it used to annoy her second sister that, while she showed herself so practical in self-adornment, she would always be so wantonly obtuse about household affairs.

"I believe you make muddles on purpose," her sister used to declare.

"I don't want to be domestic, if that's what you mean," Norah would reply.

"Wasting your time always in front of a glass!"

"Sour grapes, my dear! If your hair waved like mine you'd look at yourself often enough."

But this morning Dorothy was making a cake, and Norah was able to linger affectionately over the shampoo, safe from her jealous sneers. When she had dried away with a towel enough of the unbecoming lankness she went over to the open window to recapture from the rich September sun the gold that should flash among her fawn-soft hair. Down below among the laurels and privets of the front garden her two youngest sisters were engaged upon some grubby and laborious task which, though they looked like two fat white rabbits, did not involve, so far as Norah could see, without leaning out of the window, any actual burrowing; and she was much too pleasantly occupied with her own thoughts to take the risk of having to interfere. She had propped against the frame of the wide-open window a looking-glass in which she was admiring herself; but the mirror was not enough, and she often glanced over with a toss of her head to the houses opposite, whence the retired colonel in No. 18 or the young heir of No. 16 might perhaps be able to admire her, too. But Norah was not only occupied in contemplating the beauty of her light-brown hair; she was equally engaged with her heart's desire. For the ninth time in two years she was deep in love, this time so deep indeed that she was trying to bring her mind to bear seriously upon the future and the problem of convincing her father that the affection she had for Wilfred Curlew was something far beyond the capacity of a schoolgirl presented itself anew for urgent solution. Yesterday, when her suitor had joined the family in the dining-room after supper, her father had looked at him with an expression of most discouraging surprise; if he should visit them again to-night, as he probably would, her father might pass from discouraging glances to disagreeable remarks, and might even attempt, when Wilfred was gone, to declare positively that he visited Lonsdale Road too often. Intolerable though it was that she at eighteen should still be exposed to the caprice of paternal taboos, it was obvious that until she made the effort to cut herself free from these antiquated leading-strings she should remain in subjection.

Norah regarded the not very costly engagement-ring of intertwined pansies bedewed with diminutive diamonds. In her own room this ring always adorned the third finger of her left hand, and while she was about the house during the day the third finger of her right hand; but when her father came back from the city it had to be concealed, with old letters and dance programs and moldering flowers, in a basket of girlish keepsakes, the key of which was continually being left on her dressing-table and causing her moments of acute anxiety in the middle of supper. If it was not a valuable ring, it was much the prettiest she had ever possessed, and it seemed to Norah monstrous that a father should have the power to banish such a token of seniority from the admiration of the world. What would happen if after supper to-night she announced her engagement? Some time or other in the future of family events one of the daughters would have to announce her engagement, and who more suitable than herself, the eldest daughter? Was there, after all, so much to be afraid of in her father? Was not this tradition of his fierceness sedulously maintained by her mother for her own protection? When she looked back at the past, Norah could see plainly enough how all these years the mother had hoodwinked her children into respecting the head of the family. He might not be conspicuously less worthy of reverence than the fathers of many other families she knew, but he was certainly not conspicuously more worthy of it. The romantic devotion their mother exacted for him might have been accorded to a parent who resembled George Alexander or Lewis Waller! But as he was—rather short than tall (he was the same height as herself), fussy (the daily paper must remain folded all day while he was at the office, so that he could be helped first to the news as he was helped first to everything else), mean (how could she possibly dress herself on an allowance of £6 5s. a quarter?)—such a parent was not entitled to dispose of his daughter; a daughter was not a newspaper to be kept folded up for his gratification.

"For I am beautiful," she assured her reflection. "It's not conceit on my part. Even my girl friends admit that I'm beautiful—yes, beautiful, not just pretty. Father ought to be jolly grateful to have such a beautiful daughter. I'm sure he has no right to expect beautiful children."

A figure moved like a shadow in the depths of one of the rooms in the house opposite, and Norah leaned a little farther out of the window to catch more sunbeams for her hair; but when the figure came into full view she was disgusted to find it was only the servant, who flapped a duster and withdrew without a glance at herself. "If father persists in keeping me hidden away in West Kensington," she grumbled, "he can't expect me to marry a duke. No, I'm eighteen, and I'll marry Wilfred—at least I'll marry him when he can afford to be married, but meanwhile I will be engaged. I'm tired of all this deception." Norah was pondering the virtue of frankness, when she heard a step behind her and, turning round, saw her mother's wonted expression of anxiety and mild disapproval.

"Oh well," said Norah, quickly, to anticipate the reproach on her lips, "this is the only place I can dry my hair. And, mother, I can't wait any longer to be engaged to Wilfred. I'm going to have it out with father to-night."

Mrs. Caffyn looked frightened, which was what Norah intended, for she felt in no mood to argue the propriety of sitting at an open window with her hair down, and had deliberately introduced the larger issue.

"My dear child, I hope you will do nothing of the kind. Father has been very worried during the last month by that horrid theater advertisement which upset Canon Wilbraham so much, and he won't be at all in the right mood."

Norah sighed patiently, avoided pouting, because she had been warned by a girl friend whose opinion she valued against spoiling the shape of her mouth, and with a shrug of her shoulders turned away and went on brushing her hair.

"My dear child," Mrs. Caffyn began, deprecatingly.

"Oh well, I can't sit in any other room! Besides, the kids are playing down below, and I can't keep an eye on them from anywhere else as well as I can from here."

"Playing in the front garden?" repeated Mrs. Caffyn, anxiously. Anything positive done by any of her children always made her anxious, and she hurried across to the window to call down to them. The two little girls had managed to smear themselves from head to foot with grimy garden-mold, and most unreasonably Mrs. Caffyn could not see that their grubbiness was of no importance compared with the question of whether Norah's hair was not always exactly the color of mignonette buds. She began to admonish them from the window, and they defended themselves against her reproaches by calling upon their eldest sister to testify that what they had done they had done with her acquiescence, since she had not uttered a word against their behavior. Norah declared that she could not possibly go down-stairs without undoing all the good of her shampoo, and in the end Mrs. Caffyn, after ringing ineffectually for her second daughter or one of the servants, had to go down herself and rescue Gladys and Marjorie from the temptations of the front garden.

"Thank Heaven for a little peace," sighed Norah to herself. She sat there in a delicious paradise of self-esteem and, looking at herself in the glass, was so much thrilled in the contemplation of her own beauty that she forgot all about her engagement, all about the lack of spectators, all about everything except the way her features conformed to what in women she most admired. She thought compassionately of her mother's faded fairness, and wondered with a frown of esthetic concern why her mother's face was so downy. If her own chin began to show signs of fluffing over like that, she would spend her last halfpenny on removing hairs that actually in some lights glistened like a smear of honey; luckily there was nothing in her own face that she wanted to change. Her mother must have been pretty once, but never more than pretty, because she had blue eyes. How glad she was that with her light hair went deep brown eyes instead of commonplace blue eyes, and that her mouth instead of being rather full and indefinite was a firm bow the beauty of which did not depend upon the freshness of youth. Not that she need fear even the far-off formidable thirties with such a complexion and such teeth. Apart from superfluous hairs her mother's complexion was still good, and even her father had white teeth. Her own nose, straight and small, was neither so straight nor so small as to be insipid, and her chin, tapering exquisitely, was cleft, not dimpled. Dimples seemed to Norah vulgar, and she could not imagine why they were ever considered worthy of admiration. No, with all her perfection of color and form she was mercifully free from the least suggestion of "dolliness"; she was too tall, and had much too good a figure ever to run any risk of that.

"I'm really more beautiful even than I thought, now that I'm looking at myself very critically. And, of course, I shall get more beautiful, especially when I've found out what way my hair suits me best. I shall make all sorts of experiments with it. There's bound to be one way that suits me better than others, if only it isn't too unfashionable. I suppose father hopes secretly that I shall make a brilliant marriage, because even he must realize that I am exceptionally beautiful."

She played condescendingly with the notion of being able to announce that she was engaged to a viscount, and imagined with what awe the family would receive the news.

"However, that's my affair," she decided. "It's not likely father will bring back a viscount to supper. Besides, I'm not mercenary, and if I choose to love a poor man I will. My looks were given to me, not to father, and if he thinks he's going to get the benefit of them he's made a great mistake."

Norah's meditations were suddenly interrupted by the entrance of her sister Dorothy, a dark, pleasant, practical girl of sixteen, who was already so much interested in household affairs that Norah feared her indifference to dress was due to something more than immaturity, was indeed the outcome of an ineradicable propensity toward dowdiness.

"I wish you wouldn't burst into rooms like that," she protested, crossly.

But Dorothy only hummed round the room in search of what she was looking for, and paid no more attention to her elder sister than a bee would have done.

"And if you've got to come up-stairs to our room when you're in the middle of cooking," Norah went on, "you might at least wipe your hands and your arms first. You're covering everything with flour," she grumbled.

"That's better than covering it with powder," retorted Dorothy.

"What a silly remark!"

"Is it, my dear? Sorry the cap fits so well."

Norah turned away from this obtrusive sister in disdain, asking herself for perhaps the thousandth time what purpose in life she was possibly intended to serve. Apart from the fact that she was dark and distinctly not even good-looking, there seemed no excuse for Dorothy's existence, and Norah made up her mind that she would not bother any more about trying to make her dress with good taste; it simply was not worth while.

"Eureka!" cried Dorothy, triumphantly waving an egg-beater.

"What a disgusting thing to leave in a bedroom!" Norah exclaimed.

Her sister courtesied exasperatingly in the doorway for answer, and before Norah could say another word was charging down the stairs three at a time in a series of diminishing thuds.

Norah turned back, with a shudder for her sister's savagery, to the contemplation of her own hair. In a revulsion against the indecency of family life she resolved firmly that, whatever the fuss, she would be engaged to Wilfred Curlew immediately, and that Wilfred himself must at all costs quickly accumulate enough money to enable her to marry him and escape from this den of sisters and brothers and parents.

"If father had only one child, or perhaps two, he might be entitled to interference with our private lives; but when he's got nine, he must expect us to look after ourselves. It's bad enough now when Cecil, Agnes, Edna, and Vincent are all at school and out of the way, at any rate for some of the time, but what will it be like in a few years?"

Norah shrank from the prospect of that overpopulated future for which the temporary emptiness of Lonsdale Road was no consolation, and, removing the mirror from the window-sill, she sat down at her dressing-table and devoted herself to the adjustment of the arcuated pad of mock hair that was an indispensable adjunct to the pompadour style then in vogue.

Norah had just succeeded in achieving what was hitherto her most successful effort with the pompadour when she heard somebody whistling for her from the pavement; going to the window, she saw that it was her friend, Lily Haden, whom she had known and hated at school two years ago, but whom now, by one of those unaccountably abrupt changes of feminine predilection, she liked very much. The new intimacy had only lately been begotten out of a chance rencounter, and perhaps it would never have been born if Roland, her eldest brother, had not condemned Lily from the altitude of his twenty-year-old priggishness and found in Dorothy a supporter of his point of view. That the brother and sister on either side of her should be hostile to a friend of hers was enough to make Norah fond of Lily, who belonged to a type of ethereal blonde that she hoped did not compete too successfully with herself. Occasionally, at the beginning of the new friendship, Norah was assailed by doubts about this, which intensified her prejudice against blue eyes, not to mention excessive slimness and immoderate length of neck. However, though Lily was not really at all interesting, it was impossible to deny that she was something more than pretty, and when, after a few carefully observed walks, Norah discovered that the percentage of people who looked twice at herself exceeded the percentage of those who looked twice at Lily, she was almost inclined to admit that Lily was beautiful. Quite sincerely, therefore, she was able to call down that she was awfully glad to see her friend; quite honestly, too, she was able to admire her standing there on the sunny pavement below.

The fine autumn weather had allowed the young women of West Kensington to prolong their summery charms with brightly tinted dresses, and in all the dull decades of their existence the houses of Lonsdale Road, even in their first lilac-scented May, had perhaps never beheld a truer picture of spring than this autumnal picture now before them of that tall, slim girl in her linen dress of powder-blue swaying gently as a fountain is swayed by the wind, and above her, framed by dingy bricks that intensified the brilliance of the subject, that other girl in a kimono tea-rose hued from many washings, herself like a tea-rose of exquisite color and form. Yet Mrs. Caffyn, when she hurried into Norah's room, could deduce no more from this rebirth of spring in autumn than a cause for the critical stares of neighbors, and begged her either to invite her friend indoors or to come away from the window.

"I wanted to ask Lily to lunch," said Norah, fretfully.

Mrs. Caffyn was in despair at the notion.

"You have plenty of time to talk to her. It's not yet twelve o'clock," she urged, "and with the children coming home from school and having to be got off again it is so difficult to manage with extra people at meals."

"Everything seems difficult to manage in this house."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, but you must try to think of other people a little."

"It would be difficult to think of anything else in Lonsdale Road, mother dear. Lily," she called out from the window, "come up and talk to me before the animals come roaring home to be fed."

"Norah dear, I'd rather you didn't refer to your brothers and sisters like that," Mrs. Caffyn rebuked, with an attempt at authority that only made her daughter laugh. It may not have been a pleasant laugh to hear, and Mrs. Caffyn may have been right to leave the room with a shake of the head; but Norah's teeth were so white and regular that it was a delightful laugh to look at, and Norah was so intent on watching its effect in the glass that she did not notice her mother had gone away in vexation. Presently she and Lily were deep in the discussion of pompadour pads, so enthralling a subject that when Norah wanted to talk about her engagement it was nearly dinner-time, and she felt more than ever the injustice of not being able to invite her friend to the family meal.

"I must talk to you about Wilfred," she said. "We must have a long talk, because I'm determined to have it settled."

At that moment, with swinging of satchels and banging of doors and much noisy laughter, Agnes and Edna, getting on, respectively, for thirteen and fourteen, arrived back from the school that not so long ago Norah and Lily had themselves attended.

"But it's impossible to talk now," grumbled Norah; and as if to accentuate the truth of this remark her brother Vincent, aged ten, came tearing down the road, dribbling a tin can before him and intoxicated with the news of having been chosen to play half-back for his class. In another two years, he boasted, he would be in the Eleven.

"Why don't you come round to Shelley Mansions this evening?" Lily suggested. "We've invited some friends in."

One of the stipulations made about Norah's friendship with Lily had been that she should never visit the home of her friend, about whose mother all sorts of queer stories were current in West Kensington. To challenge family opinion on this point seemed to her an excellent preliminary to challenging it more severely by insisting on being openly engaged to Wilfred Curlew. She hesitated for a moment, and then announced that she would come.

"To supper?" Lily asked.

After another moment's hesitation Norah promised firmly that she would, and her friend hurried away just as Cecil, a loutish boy with sleeves and trousers much too short for him, slouched back from St. James's. The house which a little while ago had been gently murmurous with that absorbing conversation about pompadour pads now reverberated with the discordant cries of a large family; an overpowering smell of boiled mutton and caper sauce ousted the perfumes from Norah's room; her eyes flashed with resentment, and she went down-stairs to take her place at table.

II

If Norah had been a journalist like her suitor, Wilfred Curlew, she would have described the resolution she made on that September morning as an epoch-making resolution, for since the effect of it was rapidly and firmly to set her on the path of independence it certainly deserved one of the great antediluvian epithets.

Some months ago the Hadens had moved from their house in Trelawney Road because the landlord was so disobliging—as a matter of fact, he was unwilling to wait any longer for the arrears of rent—and they were now inhabiting Shelley Mansions, a gaunt block of flats built on the frontier of West Kensington to withstand the vulgar hordes of Fulham, and as such considered the ultimate outpost of gentility. Most of the tenants, indeed, like the Foreign Legion, were recruited from people who found that their native land was barred to them for various reasons; but if Shelley Mansions lacked the conveniences of civilized flat-life, such as lifts and hall-porters, they possessed one great convenience that was peculiar in West Kensington—nobody bothered about his neighbor's business. Mrs. Haden's elder daughter, Doris, was no longer at home, having recently gone on the stage and almost immediately afterward married; and the small flat, with two empty spare rooms so useful for boxes, was comparatively much larger than the Caffyns' house in Lonsdale Road, the respectability and solid charms of which were spoiled by overcrowding.

Mr. Haden was supposed to be in Burma; but people in the secure heart of West Kensington used to say that Mr. Haden had never existed, a topic that Norah remembered being debated at school, to the great perplexity of the younger girls, who could not imagine how, if there was no Mr. Haden, there could possibly be a Doris and Lily Haden. Nowadays, with years of added knowledge, Norah would have liked to ask her friend more particularly about her absent father; but she was of a cautious temperament, and decided it was easier to accept the Oriental interior of the Shelley Mansions drawing-room as evidence of the truth of the Burmese legend. Her instinct was always against too much intimacy with anybody, and she rather dreaded the responsibility of a secret that might interfere with the freedom of her relations with Lily. Whatever the origins of the household, she decided it was a much more amusing household than the one in Lonsdale Road, and if No. 17 could have achieved the same atmosphere by banishing Mr. Caffyn to Burma, Norah would willingly have packed him off by the next boat.

Mrs. Haden had a loud voice, an effusive manner, and a complexion like a field of clover seen from the window of a passing train. Her coiffure resembled in shape and texture a tinned pineapple; it was, too, almost the same color, probably on account of experimenting with henna on top of peroxide. Norah's inclination to be shocked at her hostess's appearance was mitigated by the pleasure it gave her in demonstrating that Lily's really golden hair was not more likely to prove permanent. Mrs. Haden earned her living by teaching elocution and by reciting. These recitations were mostly interruptions to the conversation of afternoon parties in private houses; but once a year at the Bijou Theater, Notting Hill, she gave a grand performance advertised in the press, when her own recitations were supplemented by a couple of one-act plays never acted before or since, for the production of which some moderately well-known professional friends used to give their services free in order to help Mrs. Haden and the authors. Notwithstanding her energy, she found it very hard to make both ends meet. Norah distinctly remembered that Doris and Lily Haden had left school on account of unpaid fees, and some of the objections raised now to her friendship with Lily were due to Mrs. Caffyn's knowledge that the tradesmen of West Kensington would not allow even a week's credit to the residents of Shelley Mansions. If Mrs. Haden could have overcome their prejudice, her hospitality would doubtless have been illimitable; with all the difficulties they made, it was extensive enough, and she need not have bothered to consecrate a special day to it. But perhaps it pleased her to think that she owned one of the days of the week, for she used to refer to the fame of her Thursdays with as much pride as if they were family jewels.

It was to one of these enslaved Thursdays that Lily had invited Norah, who at first sat shyly back in a wicker chair within the shade of a palm, afraid, so fiercely did Mrs. Haden fix her during a recitation of "Jack Barrett Went to Quetta," that the creakings of her chair were irritating the reciter. Gradually the general atmosphere of freedom and jollity communicated itself to the strange guest, and when the room was so full of tobacco smoke that it was impossible for anybody to recite or to sing or to dance without being almost asphyxiated, she had no qualms about obeying Mrs. Haden's deafening proclamation that everybody must stay to supper. A young man with a long nose, a long neck, an extravagantly V-shaped waistcoat like a medieval doublet, and a skin like a Blue Dorset cheese attached himself to Norah and advised her to sit close to him because he knew his way about the flat. Presumably the advantage of knowing your way about the flat was that you sat still while other people waited on you, and that you obtained second helpings from dishes that did not go round once. Norah seldom resisted an invitation that enabled her to keep quiet while others worked, not because she was lazy, but because rushing about was inclined to heighten her complexion unbecomingly; moreover, since the young man in the V-shaped waistcoat was enough like her notion of a distinguished actor to rouse a mild interest in him, and not sufficiently unlike a gentleman to destroy that interest, she was ready to listen to the advice he was anxious to give her about all sorts of things, but chiefly about the stage.

"Are you studying with Mrs. Haden?" he asked; and when Norah shook her head he turned to her gravely and said: "Oh, but you ought, you know. They may tell you she's a bit old-fashioned, but don't you believe them. Pearl Haden knows her job in and out, and if you've got any talent she'll produce it. Look at me. I was going out with Ma Huntley this autumn as her second walking gentleman, but she wouldn't offer more than two ten, and, as I told her, I really didn't feel called upon to accept less than three. After all, I can always get seven by waiting, and I didn't see why Ma should have me for two ten, especially as she expected me to find my own wigs and ruffles. No, you take my advice and study with Pearl Haden."

"You really recommend her, do you?" asked Norah, condescendingly.

She had never until that moment thought of going on the stage or of taking lessons in elocution from anybody, but the idea of being able to patronize the mother of a friend appealed to her, and, though she was a little doubtful of the way her brothers and sisters would accept her rendering of "Jack Barrett Went to Quetta," she supposed that Wilfred would admire it. One of the charms of being engaged was the security of admiration it provided.

"Though, of course," continued the gentleman in the V-shaped waistcoat, "with your appearance you oughtn't to have to bother much about anything else."

This was very gratifying to Norah; even if there should be trouble when she got home, the evening would have been worth while for this assurance that her looks were capable of making an impression upon artistic society.

"You really think I ought to go on the stage?" she asked, assuming the manner of a person who for a long while has been trying to make up her mind on this very point.

"Everybody ought to go on the stage," the gentleman in the V-shaped waistcoat enthusiastically announced; "at least, of course, not everybody, but certainly everybody who is obviously cut out for the profession like you. But don't be in a hurry to make up your mind," he added. "You're very young." He must have been nearly twenty-five himself. "There's no need to hurry. I was driven to it."

Norah appeared interested and sympathetic. She really was rather interested, because the idea had passed through her mind that Wilfred might go on the stage. If this young man could earn seven pounds a week, surely Wilfred, who was much better looking, could earn ten pounds a week, in which case they might be married at once.

"What drove you to it?" she asked, and then blushed in confusion; being driven to anything was associated in Norah's mind with drink, and she thought the young man might be embarrassed by her question.

"Oh, a woman!" he replied, in a lofty tone. "But don't let's talk about things that are past and over. Let's eat and drink to-day, for to-morrow—Did you ever read Omar Khayyam? A man in our crowd introduced me to him last year. I tell you, after Omar Khayyam Kipling isn't in it. I suppose you read a good deal of poetry?"

"A good deal," Norah admitted. "At least, I used to read a good deal."

This was true; she had read several volumes at school under the menaces of the literature mistress.

"Well, if I may offer you some advice," said the young man, "go on reading poetry. I may as well confess right out that poetry has been my salvation. Have some more of this shape? It's a little soft, but the flavor's excellent." After supper Norah took Lily aside and told her she must go home at once.

"But, Norah," protested the daughter of the flat, without being able to conceal a slight inflection of scorn, "the evening's only just beginning. Lots of people come in after supper always."

Norah resented Lily's tone of superiority; but inasmuch as this was her first experiment in open defiance, she decided not to go too far this time, especially as she was not quite sure how far her father's unreasonableness might not extend.

"Cyril Vavasour will see you home," said Lily. "He's awfully gone on you. He told me you were one of the most beautiful girls he'd ever met."

Norah could not help feeling flattered by such a testimonial from one whose experience among women had evidently been immense, and though she might have expected a superlative without qualification from somebody who met her in a West Kensington drawing-room, she realized that she must expect a slight qualification from a world-wanderer like Mr. Vavasour. A few minutes later Norah and her appreciative new acquaintance descended the echoing steps of Shelley Mansions and were soon safe from any suggestion of Fulham in the landscape and walking slowly through the familiar streets of West Kensington, which in the autumnal mistiness looked grave and imposing. The sky was clear above them, and a fat, yellow moon was rolling along behind a battlement of chimney-tops.

"O moon of my delight who know'st no wane!" quoted Mr. Vavasour, in a devout apostrophe.

Perhaps it was because he imagined himself in a Persian garden much farther away from West Kensington than even Fulham was that he allowed himself to take Norah's arm; nor did she make any objection. After all, he considered her one of the most beautiful girls he had ever met, and, being engaged to be married, she could allow her arm to be taken without danger or loss of dignity.

"And so you really advise me to go on the stage?" she asked, as if she would insinuate that the taking of her arm was only a gesture of interrogation.

"Absolutely," Mr. Vavasour replied.

"Yes, but of course my father's awfully old-fashioned, and he may think I oughtn't to go on the stage."

"Too much exposed to temptation and all that, I suppose?" suggested Mr. Vavasour.

"Oh no," said Norah, irritably, withdrawing her arm. "I didn't mean that. I meant he might think the family wouldn't like it."

She had intended to give the impression of belonging to a poor but noble family without giving the impression of being snobbish, and she was rather annoyed with Mr. Vavasour for not understanding at once what she meant.

"Oh, but people from the best families go on the stage nowadays," he assured her.

"Yes, I suppose they do," Norah agreed.

"And of course you could always change your name," he added.

"Yes, of course I could do that," she admitted.

"I changed mine, for instance," he told her.

"I like the name Vavasour."

"Yes, I rather liked it myself," he said; but he did not volunteer his own name, and she did not ask him to reveal what Howards or Montagus had plucked him forever from their family tree. In any case this was not the moment to embark on fresh confidences, for they were approaching the main street and Norah was almost sure that the figure standing at the corner of Lonsdale Road on the other side was her eldest brother, Roland.

"Don't come any farther," she said. "Perhaps we'll meet again at Lily's some day."

"We shall," Mr. Vavasour announced, with conviction. "Good night." He swept his hat from his head with a flourish and Norah shook hands with him. She had been rather afraid all the way back that he would try to kiss her good night, but gentle blood and the bright arc-lamp under which they were standing combined to deter him, and they parted as ceremoniously as if his V-shaped waistcoat was really a medieval doublet.

"Oh, it was you," said Roland.

"How do you mean it was me? Who did you think it was?"

"Do you know what the time is? Half past ten!"

"Thanks very much," said Norah, sarcastically. "The wrist-watch you gave me at Christmas is not yet broken."

"Don't be silly, Norah," he protested. "Father's in an awful wax. I've been hanging about here for the last half-hour, because I couldn't stand it."

They were walking quickly down Lonsdale Road, and Norah was thinking how clumsily he walked compared with Mr. Vavasour and yet how much better looking he was.

"Did Wilfred come?" she asked.

Her brother nodded. "Yes, but I told him you weren't in, and he went off in a bit of a gloom."

They had reached the gate of No. 17 by now, and the house seemed to Norah unreasonably hushed for this hour of the evening. Beyond the railway line the sky was lit up with the glare of the Exhibition, and the music that the military band was playing—it was a selection from "The Earl and the Girl"—was distinctly audible.

"Why should father object to my going out in the evening?" she asked, turning to her brother sharply. "He used to object to your smoking."

Roland removed from his mouth the large pipe and thought ponderously for a minute. It was quite true that only two years ago his father had objected to his smoking, and that with great difficulty he had been able to persuade him that bank clerks always smoked. Since that struggle his father had yielded him a grudging admission that he was grown up. The long years before he should be a bank manager rose like a huge array of black clouds before his vision, and though he disapproved of sisters acting on their own initiative, something in this autumnal night—perhaps it was only the sound of the distant band—created in him a sudden sympathy with any aspirations to freedom. Perhaps, if Norah had encouraged him at that moment, he would have stood up for her independence; but he felt that his company only irritated her and without a word he led the way up the steps, dimly aware that he and she had already set foot upon the diverging paths of their lives.

The dining-room had been cleared for action. Ordinarily at this hour the room was full of young people playing billiards on the convertible dining-table; but to-night the table had not been uncovered, the children had all gone to bed, and Mr. Caffyn was reading the Daily Telegraph, not as one might have supposed with enjoyment of the unusual peace, but, on the contrary, in a vague annoyance that his perusal of the leading article was not being interrupted by the butt-end of a cue or the chronicle of London Day by Day being punctuated by billiard-balls leaping into his lap. His patriarchal feelings had, in fact, been deeply wounded by his daughter's behavior, and though for the first time in months he had been able to put on his slippers without having to hold up a noisy game while they were being looked for, he was not at all grateful.

"I've had my supper," Norah informed him, brightly.

This really annoyed Mr. Caffyn extremely, for he had been looking forward to telling his daughter that her supper had been kept waiting until ten o'clock, when it had finally been removed in order to allow the servants to go to bed. At this moment Mrs. Caffyn, who had hurried down-stairs to the kitchen as soon as she heard Norah coming, arrived in the dining-room with a tray.

"She's had her supper," said Mr. Caffyn, indignantly.

"Oh, I was afraid—" his wife began.

"Oh no, she's had her supper," said Mr. Caffyn. "Good Heavens! I don't know what the world's coming to!"

Since her father was making a cosmic affair of her behavior in going out to supper without leave, Norah decided to give him something to worry about in earnest, and, seating herself in the arm-chair on the other side of the fireplace, she prepared to argue with him. Mrs. Caffyn began to murmur about going to bed and talking things over when father came back from the office to-morrow, but Norah waved aside all procrastination.

"I want to talk about my engagement," she began.

Roland, who had just reached the door, stopped. Wilfred Curlew was a friend of his; in fact, it was he who had first brought him to the house, and though he knew that anything in the nature of an engagement between him and one of his sisters was ridiculous, he hoped that a soothing testimony from him would prevent Wilfred's final exclusion from the family circle.

"Norah, dear child, it isn't nice to begin playing jokes upon your father at this hour, especially when he isn't very pleased with you," Mrs. Caffyn said, waving her eyes in the direction of the door.

"I'm not at all sleepy," said Norah, coldly. "And I'm not joking. I want to know if father is going to let Wilfred and me be openly engaged?" she persisted, holding up her left hand so that the gaslight illuminated the ring upon the third finger.

"And who may Wilfred be?" demanded Mr. Caffyn.

This seemed to Roland a suitable moment for his intervention, and, though he had for some time been aware that his father was growing impatient of their habitual visitor, he pretended to accept this attitude of Olympian ignorance and reminded him that Wilfred was a friend who sometimes came in during the evening.

"You said once, if you remember, that he was rather a clever fellow. As a matter of fact he's doing well, you know, considering that he's not long gone in for journalism. He's just been taken on the staff of the Evening Herald. He's been doing that murder in Kentish Town."

Mr. Caffyn rose from his chair and with an elaborate assumption of irony inquired if his daughter proposed to engage herself on the strength of a murder in Kentish Town. Norah had got up when her father did and was listening with a contemptuous expression while he dilated on the folly of long engagements.

"Yes, but I don't intend it to be a long engagement," Norah proclaimed, when he paused for a moment to chew his heavy mustache. "I intend to get married."

Mr. Caffyn swung round upon his heels and faced his daughter.

"This, I suppose, is the result of the education I've given you. Insolence and defiance! Don't say another word or you'll make me lose my temper. Not another word. Norah, I insist on silence. Do you hear me? You have grievously disappointed my fondest hopes. I have not been a strict father. Indeed, I have been too indulgent. But I never imagined my daughter capable of a folly like this. If I'd thought, twenty-one years ago, when I bought this house with the idea of creating a happy home for you all, that I should be repaid like this I would have.... I would have...."

But Mr. Caffyn's apodosis was never divulged, because, seized with an access of rage, he turned out the gas and hurried from the room. In the hall he shouted back to know if his wife was going to sit up all night. Mrs. Caffyn hurried after her husband as fast as she was able across the darkened room.

"I'm coming, dear, now. Yes, dear, I'm coming now. Ouch! My knee!... I'm sure Norah will be more sensible in the morning," she was heard murmuring on her way up-stairs.

"I suppose he thinks I shall go on living with him forever," exclaimed Norah, savagely throwing herself down into her father's arm-chair. "In my opinion most parents are fit to be only children. Light the gas again, Roland; I want to write a note to Wilfred."

III

By the time morning was come Norah had decided that she would rather go on the stage than be engaged to Wilfred Curlew. The extraordinary thing was that she should never have realized, before her conversation with Mr. Vavasour, how obviously the stage was indicated as the right career for her. It was true that she had never until now seriously contemplated a career, and the mild way she had accepted herself merely as the most important member of a large family was sufficient answer to the silly accusations made by her father last night. Perhaps he would begin to appreciate her now when he was on the point of losing her; perhaps he would regret that he had ever suggested she was indifferent to the claims of family life; in future she should take care to be indifferent to everybody's feelings except her own; she would teach her father a lesson. It never entered Norah's head that there would be any difficulty about going on the stage apart from paternal opposition, and she wondered how many famous people had owed their careers to a fortuitous event like her meeting with Mr. Vavasour. At any rate, it would not be more difficult to obtain her father's permission to embark on this suddenly conceived adventure than it would be to obtain his permission to wear on the third finger of her left hand the rather cheap ring that was the outward sign of her intention to marry Wilfred. Confronted by the two alternatives—success in the theater and matrimony with Wilfred—she felt that success was much the less remote of the two; in fact, the more she thought about it the farther away receded matrimony and the more clearly defined became success. "I don't want to be a great actress," she explained to herself; "I want to be a successful actress." She half made up her mind to go out and talk to Lily about the new project, but on second thoughts she decided not to alarm her parents by any prospect so definite as would be implied in availing herself of the practical assistance that Lily and her mother could afford her in carrying out her plan. It would be more tactful to present as alternatives the definite fact of being engaged to Wilfred or the indefinite idea of being able some time or other in the future to adopt the stage as a profession. The more Norah thought about Wilfred the less in love with him she felt, and the less in love with him she felt the easier would be her task to-night. In her note she had told him to come in after supper, as usual, but she had not said a word about her intention to precipitate their affair. Would it impress her father if she and Wilfred were to meet him at the station and approach the subject before supper? No, on the whole, she decided, it would be more prudent to provoke the final scene otherwise, and her heart quickened slightly at the thought of the surprise she was going to spring upon the family that evening.

Norah was unusually pleasant to everybody all day: she gave Vincent some sweets that she did not like herself; she offered to take Gladys and Marjorie for a walk in Kensington Gardens, because a rumor had reached her of a wonderful display of hats in one of the big shops in Kensington High Street. She noticed that when her father came back from the office he seemed to have forgotten about the scene of last night, and she saw her mother's spirits rising at the prospect of an undisturbed evening. After supper Mr. Caffyn sat down as usual in his arm-chair; Gladys and Marjorie, tired after their long walk and exhausted with the contemplation of shop-windows in which they had perceived nothing to interest themselves, went off to bed without trying for a moment's grace. The upper leaves of the dining-table were removed, and a party of billiards was made up with Norah and Cecil matched against Roland and Dorothy; Vincent was allowed to chalk the tips of the cues, Agnes and Edna to quarrel over the marking. Mrs. Caffyn, with a sigh of relief for the comfortable wheels on which the evening was running, took the arm-chair opposite her husband and read with unusual concentration what she imagined was yesterday's morning paper, but which, as a matter of fact, was the morning paper of a month ago. Soon the front-door bell rang, and a friend of Roland's, called Arthur Drake, with whom Norah had been in love for a week about a year ago and of whom Dorothy was slightly enamoured at the present, came in full of a new round game for the billiard-table that he had just learned in another house. Cecil went off to his home-work and left Arthur to explain the new game—a complicated invention in which five small skittles, a cork, and a bell suspended from the gas-bracket each played a part. Mr. Caffyn fended off the butt-ends of the cues that were continually bumping into him amid a great deal of shouting and laughter; Agnes trod on her mother's corn; Vincent grazed his knuckles in fielding a billiard-ball that was bound for his father's head.

"And where's old Wilfred?" Arthur Drake suddenly inquired.

Another ring at the front door answered his question and Norah's suitor came in. He was a loose-jointed young man of about twenty-two, with tumbled wavy hair, bright gray eyes, and a trick, when he was feeling shy, of supporting with one arm the small of his back. His long, dogmatic chin was balanced by an irregular and humorous mouth; his personality was attractive, and if he had earned five times as much as he earned as reporter on the staff of the Evening Herald, or even if he had been paid for the fierce and satirical articles he wrote on the condition of modern society for a socialist weekly called The Red Lamp, he might not have been considered an unsuitable mate for Norah. As it was, Mr. Caffyn looked up at him with as much abhorrence as he would have betrayed at the entrance into his dining-room of the dog that his children were always threatening to procure and the purchase of which he was constantly forbidding. Wilfred tried hard to lose himself in the round game, and whenever he was called upon to make a shot from the corner where Mr. Caffyn was sitting he did so with such unwillingness to disturb Mr. Caffyn that he always missed it. Every time he found an opportunity to pass Norah in the narrow gangway between the wall and the table he tried to squeeze her hand; and he did his best by bribing Vincent with some horse-chestnuts he had collected that morning at Kew, where his work had taken him to investigate an alleged outrage in the Temperate House, to inspire Vincent with an unquenchable desire to play Up Jenkins. Norah, however, had a plan of her own that made the notion of occasionally clasping Wilfred's hand under the table during Up Jenkins seem colorless, and Wilfred, who in his most optimistic prevision of the evening had not counted upon more than two or three kisses snatched by ruse, suddenly found himself invited by her to abandon the game and come into the drawing-room next door.

The drawing-room of No. 17 was invested every Wednesday afternoon by a quantity of punctilious ladies who came to call on Mrs. Caffyn. Owing to the number of its ornaments and the flimsiness of its furniture, it was not considered a suitable room for general use; moreover, as secretary of the Church of England Purity Society, it occasionally fell to Mr. Caffyn's lot to interview various clergymen there on confidential matters, and in a house like 17 Lonsdale Road, worn and torn by children, it was essential to preserve one room in a condition of gelid perfection. So rarely was the room used that the over-worked servants had not bothered to draw the curtains at dusk, and when Wilfred and Norah retired into its seclusion the chilly gloom was accentuated by the street-lamps gleaming through the bare lime-trees at the end of the garden. Norah told her lover to light the gas, and not even the sickly green incandescence availed to make her appear less beautiful to him in this desert of ugly knickknacks.

"No, don't pull the curtains," she said, quickly, "and don't kiss me here, because people might see you from the street. I didn't ask you to come in here to make love."

Perhaps a sense of the theater had always been dormant in Norah, for she went on as if she were making a set speech; but Wilfred was much too deep in love to let the cynicism upon which he plumed himself apply to her, and he listened humbly.

"We can't go on like this forever," she wound up. "We must be engaged openly. I told father that last night, but he won't hear of it, so what are we to do?"

"Darling, I'm ready to do anything."

"Oh, anything!" she repeated, petulantly. "What is anything? He'll be here in a minute, and you've got to tell him that unless he consents to our being engaged you'll persuade me to elope."

"Do you think he'd give way then?" Wilfred asked, doubtfully. He was very much in love with Norah, but he could not help remembering that he, too, had a father who, after an argument every Sunday evening, still allowed him ten shillings a week for pocket-money. If he were to elope, he should not only be certain to lose that supplement to his own earnings, but he should also involve in deeper discredit the profession he had adopted instead of the law, which Mr. Curlew, senior, had designed him to enter by way of the office of an old friend who was a solicitor.

Norah wished that her father would come in and interrupt what should have been a passionate scene, but which was in reality as cold as the room where it was being played. She watched herself and Wilfred, whom the incandescent gas did not set off to advantage, in the large mirror that formed the over-mantel of the fireplace, and she realized now, as she had never realized before in her life, how amazingly she stood out from her surroundings.

"You haven't kissed me once this evening," Wilfred began; but she shook herself free from his tentative embrace, and with one eye on the door for her father's entrance and the other on the mirror, or rather with both eyes at one moment on the door and immediately afterward on the mirror—a movement which displayed their brilliancy and depth—she went on enumerating to her suitor the material difficulties that made their engagement so hopeless.

"But I'm getting on," he insisted. "The editor was very pleased with the way I handled that Kentish Town murder. They don't consider me at all a dud in Fleet Street. I'm sure I give everybody in this house quite a wrong impression of myself because I feel nervous and awkward when I'm here; but I don't think there's really much doubt that in another couple of years I shall be in quite a different position financially. Besides, I hope to do original work, and if a friend of mine can raise the money to start this new weekly—"

"Oh, if, if, if!" interrupted Norah, impatiently.

"Norah, don't you love me any more?"

"Of course I love you," she said. "Don't be so stupid."

"You seem different to-night."

"You wouldn't like me to be always the same, would you?"

"No, but—" He broke off, and turned away with a sigh to regard the melancholy street-lamps twinkling through the lime-trees at the end of the garden.

"I think it's I who ought to be angry, not you," said Norah. "I offered to marry you at once, and you instantly began to make excuses."

"Norah!" protested the young man.

"Oh, how I hate everything!" she burst out, looking round her with a sharper consciousness than she had ever experienced before of the drawing-room's ugliness and life's banality. At this moment Mrs. Caffyn put her head timidly round the door.

"You'd better come back to the dining-room, dear," she advised. "I think father's just noticed you're not there."

"That's exactly what I meant him to do."

"Norah!" exclaimed her mother, in a shocked voice. "What has come over you these last two days?"

Wilfred was supporting the small of his back in an unsuccessful effort to look at ease, and Norah was wondering more than ever how she could ever have fancied herself in love with him. How awkward he appeared standing there, almost—she hesitated a moment before she allowed herself to think the worst it was possible to think of anybody—almost common! She looked half apprehensively at Wilfred to see if he had divined her unspoken thought. She would not like him to know that she was thinking him—almost common; he might never get over it. She was sure he was particularly sensitive on that point because in The Red Lamp he was always declaiming against snobbery.

Suddenly they heard the dining-room door open, and Mrs. Caffyn had barely time to breathe an agonized, "Oh, dear, what did I tell you would happen?" before the head of the house came in. Upon the dining-room an appalled silence must have fallen when Mr. Caffyn rose from his chair, and one could fancy the frightened players, cues in hands, huddled against the wall in dread of the imminent catastrophe. The whole house was electric as before an impending storm, and above the stillness the mutter of a passing omnibus sounded like remote thunder. With so much atmospheric help Mr. Caffyn ought to have been able to achieve something more impressive than his, "Oh, you're in here, are you? I wish you wouldn't light the gas in the drawing-room when there's no need for it."

"I thought you wouldn't like us to sit in the dark," Norah murmured, primly.

"Don't deliberately misunderstand me. You know perfectly well what I mean. Moreover, I don't think it's nice for the children; it may put all sorts of ideas into their young heads."

Inasmuch as Mr. Caffyn was secretary of the Church of England Purity Society with private means of his own, while his daughter's suitor was an agnostic journalist who had never yet earned more than thirty-five shillings in one week, it is perhaps not astonishing that the young man should have begun to apologize for lighting the gas needlessly. To Norah, however, these apologies sounded infinitely pusillanimous; from having been very much in love yesterday morning she had already reached indifference, and this final exhibition of cowardice brought her to the point of positively disliking Wilfred. Nevertheless, she managed somehow to impress her father with her intention to die rather than give him up, and after an argument of about ten minutes, in the course of which Norah did all the talking, her father all the shouting, and her mother and suitor all the fidgeting, Mr. Caffyn was at last sufficiently exasperated and ordered Wilfred Curlew to leave the house immediately. In spite of Mrs. Caffyn's entreaties the pitch of her husband's voice had been so piercing that he had probably managed not merely to put ideas into the heads of the children still in the dining-room, but even to corrupt the dreams of the sleeping innocents up-stairs.

"Gilbert dear," his wife besought. "The servants!"

"I pay my servants to attend to me, not to my affairs," said Mr. Caffyn, majestically. His wife might have replied that under the terms of their marriage contract it was she who paid the servants out of her own money; but having been married twenty-one years she had long ceased to derive any satisfaction from putting herself in the right. Poor Wilfred, finding that he must either say something to break the silence which had succeeded Mr. Caffyn's denunciation of his behavior or retire, preferred to retire, and with one arm firmly wedged into the small of his back he stumbled awkwardly down the hall to the front door. Norah made no attempt to alleviate the discomfiture of his exit; but Arthur Drake, with a chivalry, or, to put it at its lowest valuation, with a social tact that amazed her, covered Wilfred's retreat by such a display of farewell courtesies as made even the practical Dorothy pause and consider if there might not be something in love, after all.

"Bolt the door," Mr. Caffyn commanded. "And be sure that the chain is properly fastened."

Then rather at a loss how to maintain the level of his majesty and wrath, he luckily discovered that Vincent had not yet gone to bed, and exhorted the assembled family to tell him if he paid £8 a term to Mr. Randell for Vincent to grow up into a pot-boy or a billiard-marker. Cecil, the recent winner of a senior scholarship at St. James's, had been grinding at his home-work in the bedroom, and he came out into the hall at this moment to plead pathetically for a few doors to be shut. His father improved the occasion by holding up Cecil as a moral example to the rest of the family, who were made to feel that if Gilbert Caffyn had not produced Cecil Caffyn, Gilbert Caffyn's life would have been wasted. The more he descanted upon Cecil's diligence and dutifulness the more sheepish Cecil himself became, so that with every fresh encomium his sleeves revealed another inch of ink-stained cuff. The only way to stop Mr. Caffyn and restore Cecil to the algebraical problem from which he had been raped by the noise outside his room seemed to be for everybody to go to bed. Agnes and Edna, their heads stuffed full of new ideas, went giggling up-stairs, whither Dorothy, yawning very elaborately, followed them. Roland decided that Cecil groaning over an algebra problem would be more endurable than having to listen to a renewal of the argument between Norah and his father, and he, too, retired. The gradual melting away of the audience quieted Mr. Caffyn, who, when he had lowered or extinguished all the gas-jets except those in the dining-room, felt that he had shown himself master of his own house, and returned to his arm-chair with the intention of nodding over the minor news in the paper until he was ready for bed himself. Norah, however, in spite of her mother's prods and whispered protests, brought him sharply back to the matter in dispute.

"Suppose I insist on being engaged to Wilfred?" she began.

"Good Heavens!" cried Mr. Caffyn. "Am I never to be allowed a little bit of peace? Here am I working all day to keep you clothed and fed, and every night of my life is made a burden to me. You don't appreciate what it is to have a father like me." His wife patted him soothingly and flatteringly upon the shoulder as if she would assure him that they all really appreciated the quality of his fatherhood very much. "Why, I know fathers," went on Mr. Caffyn, indignantly, "who spend every evening at their clubs, and upon my soul, I don't blame them. I was talking to the Bishop of Chelsea to-day. He came into the office to consult me about the scandalous language used at the whelk-stalls in Walham Road on Saturday nights—we're taking up the question with the municipal authorities. He told me I looked tired out. 'You look tired out, Mr. Caffyn,' he said. 'I am tired out, my lord,' I answered. And he was very sympathetic."

"You hear that, Norah dear?" said Mrs. Caffyn, twitching her fingers with nervousness. "Now don't worry your father any more."

"As soon as he answers my question I sha'n't worry him any more. Suppose I insist on being engaged to Wilfred Curlew? Suppose I run away and get married to him?"

"Have you any conception what marriage means?" demanded Mr. Caffyn. "Do you realize that I waited two years to marry your mother, and that I didn't propose to her until it was quite evident that my poor father must soon die? I suppose you don't want me to die, do you? Don't imagine that my death will make any difference, please."

"Gilbert, Gilbert!" begged his wife.

"Well, really, nowadays children behave in such an extraordinary fashion that it wouldn't surprise me at all to hear Norah was counting on my death."

"Gilbert, Gilbert!" she repeated, and looked in agony at the gas, as if she expected it to turn blue at such a horrible suggestion.

"If I don't marry Wilfred," Norah went on, "I must earn my own living."

"How?" inquired her father, with an assumption of blustering incredulity.

"By going on the stage."

"On the stage?" he repeated. "Do you realize that only yesterday I had to deal with the question of our attitude toward the posters of several theaters?"

"That wouldn't have anything to do with me," said Norah.

"But how are you going on the stage?" her father continued.

"I should try to get an engagement."

"Oh, would you, indeed? Ha-ha! Your mind seems to be running on engagements, my child. However, this engagement is even more visionary and improbable than the other one," said Mr. Caffyn, with a laugh. "I'm afraid you think it's easier than it is, my dear girl. I have a little experience of the stage—I regret to say chiefly of its worst side—and I can assure you that it's not at all easy, really."

"But if I can get an engagement?" persisted Norah.

"Why, in that case we'll talk about it," said her father. "Yes, yes, there'll be plenty of time to talk about that later on. And now if you have no objection I should like to read what Mr. Balfour is saying about Protection. It's a pity you don't try to take some interest in the affairs of your country instead of— However, I suppose that's too much to expect from the younger generation."

"I must have your promise," Norah insisted. "If I write to Wilfred to-night and tell him he mustn't come to the house any more, will you let me go on the stage?"

"We'll see about it," parried Mr. Caffyn.

"No, I must have a definite promise."

"Must, Norah? Do, dear child, remember that you're speaking to your father," murmured her mother.

"Oh, that's the modern way we bring up our children," said Mr. Caffyn. "Before I know where I am I shall have Vincent ordering me up to bed."

His wife laughed with such conjugal enthusiasm at his joke that the last vestige of Mr. Caffyn's ill humor disappeared, and, being suddenly struck with the extreme beauty of his eldest daughter as she waited there bright-eyed in expectation of his answer, he promised her that if she would break off all communication with that confounded young Curlew and could obtain an engagement for herself, he would probably not create any difficulties. Her face lit up with satisfaction and, bending over, she kissed her father on the forehead with as much good will as a young woman kisses an elderly lover who has promised her some diamonds she has long desired.

IV

Norah kept her word and wrote a letter to Wilfred Curlew in which she pointed out the impossibility of embarking on a prolonged and quite indefinite engagement, wished him good luck for the future, and made it clear that she did not intend to have anything more to do with him. The portion of the letter on which she most prided herself was the postscript: "Don't think that I bear you any ill will. I don't." The peace that had lately fallen over South Africa left Wilfred no opportunity of putting his despair at the service of his country; but Norah's behavior benefited the young journalist in the long run by teaching him to mistrust human nature as much as God, a useful lesson for a democrat. Norah, having disembarrassed herself of her suitor, set out in earnest to get on the stage and confided her ambition to Lily. Mrs. Haden's advice was asked, and Norah as a friend of her daughter was given lessons in elocution and deportment without being charged a penny. Mrs. Haden demonstrated to her that she stood very little chance of getting on the stage until she could recite "Jack Barrett Went to Quetta" or "Soldier, Soldier, Come from the Wars" with what she called as much intention as herself; in other words, until the story of Jack Barrett was awarded as much pomp of utterance as the Messenger's speech in Hippolytus and the demobilized soldier greeted with Ophelia's driveling whine. Mrs. Haden would not allow that her pupil's looks were nearly as important as her ability to mouth Rudyard Kipling—perhaps, the pupil thought, because her mistress had a pretty daughter of her own. September deepened to October, October dimmed to November while Norah was wrestling with her dread of seeming ridiculous and was acquiring the unnatural diction that was to be of such value to her first appearance. The lessons came to an abrupt end soon after Mrs. Haden had begun upon her deportment, which to Norah seemed to consist of holding her hands as if she were waiting to rinse them after eating bread and treacle, and of sitting down on a chair as if she had burst one suspender and expected the other to go every minute. One morning when she arrived at Shelley Mansions for her lesson Lily came to the door of the flat and with fearful backward glances cried out that her mother was lying dead in bed.

"Dead?" echoed Norah, irritably. She was always irritated by a sudden alarm. "I wish you wouldn't—" She was going to say "play jokes," but she saw that Lily was speaking the truth, and, having been taught by Mrs. Haden how to suit the action to the word, the expression to the emotion, she contrived to look sympathetic.

"She must have died of heart, the doctor says. I went to see why she didn't ring for her tea and she didn't answer, and when I thought she was asleep she was really dead."

Norah shuddered.

"I'm awfully sorry I've disturbed you in the middle of all this," she murmured.

"But I'm glad you've come," said Lily.

"It's awfully sweet of you, my dear, to be glad; but I wouldn't dream of worrying you at such a moment. And don't stand there shivering in your nightgown. Take my advice and dress yourself. It will distract your mind from other things. You must come round and see me this afternoon, and I'll try to cheer you up. I shall stay in for you. Don't forget."

Norah hurried away from Shelley Mansions, thinking while she walked home how easily this untoward event in the Haden household might hasten the achievement of her own ambition. Lily would obviously have to do something at once, and it would be nice for her to have a companion with whom she could start her career upon the stage. Norah had not intended to take any definite steps until her nineteenth birthday in March, but she was anxious to show her sympathy with Lily, and it was much kinder, really, to make useful plans for the future than to hang about the stricken flat, getting in everybody's light. If Lily came this afternoon they would be able to discuss ways and means; it would be splendid for Lily to be taken right out of herself; it would be nice to invite her after the funeral to come and stay in Lonsdale Road, so that they could talk over things comfortably without always having to go out in this wet weather; yet such an excellent suggestion would be opposed by the family on the ground that there was no room for a stranger. How intolerable that the existence of so many brothers and sisters should interfere with the claims of friendship! Perhaps she could persuade Dorothy to sleep with Gladys and Marjorie for a week or two. She and Lily should have so much to talk over, and if Dorothy were in the room with them it would be an awful bore. Full of schemes for Lily's benefit, she approached her sister on the subject of giving up her bed.

"Anything more you'd like?" asked Dorothy, indignantly.

"I think," said Norah, "that you are without exception the most selfish girl I ever met in all my life."

Dorothy grunted at this accusation, but she refused to surrender her bed, and Norah soon gave up talking in general terms about people who were afraid to expose themselves to a little inconvenience for the sake of doing a kind action, because Lily arrived next day with the news that her sister had obtained leave to be "off" for a week and was advising her to do everything she could to get an engagement as soon as possible. There were problems of arrears of rent and unpaid bills from the solution of which it would be advantageous for Lily to escape by going on tour. The few personal possessions of their mother the sisters would divide between them, and the undertaker was to be satisfied at the expense of a fishmonger who, being new to West Kensington, had let Mrs. Haden run an account.

"And your father?" Norah could not help asking; but Lily avoided a reply, and Norah, who had been too well brought up to ask twice, formed her own conclusions.

"Anyway, my dear," she assured her friend, "you can count on me. I hadn't intended to do anything definite until I was nineteen, but of course I'm not going to desert you. So we'll go and interview managers together."

"Doris advises me to try Walter Keal," said Lily. "Dick—her husband—has given me a letter for him which may be useful, he says."

"Who's Walter Keal?"

"Don't you know?" exclaimed Lily. "He sends out all the Vanity shows."

Norah bit her lips in mortification. She hated not to know things and decided to avoid meeting Doris, who as a professional actress of at least a year's standing would be likely to patronize her.

"You see," Lily went on, "he'll be sending out 'Miss Elsie of Chelsea' at the end of December, and if we could get in the chorus we should be all right till June."

"The chorus?" echoed Norah, disdainfully. "I never thought of joining the chorus of a musical comedy."

"It might only be for a few months, and when you're with Walter Keal there's always the chance of getting to the Vanity."

"A Vanity girl!" repeated Norah, scornfully. "For everybody to look at!"

Lily told her friend that it was better to be looked at as a Vanity girl than to spend her life looking at other people from a window in West Kensington.

"But I can't sing," Norah objected.

"Sing! Who ever heard of a chorus-girl that could sing?"

The lowly position of a Vanity girl was not proof against the alchemy of Norah's self-esteem; she made up her mind to renounce Pinero and all his works and go into musical comedy.

When the two friends reached the small street off Leicester Square and saw extending up the steps of the building in which the offices of Mr. Walter Keal were situated an endless queue of girls waiting to interview the manager, Norah was discouraged.

"Oh, he has lots of companies," Lily explained. Then she addressed herself to a dirty-faced man with a collar much too large for him who was in charge of the entrance.

"You give me your letter, and it'll be all right."

"But it's for Mr. Keal himself," Lily protested.

"That's all right, my dear; your turn'll come."

The women immediately in front looked round indignantly at Lily, and Norah, who was beginning to feel self-conscious, begged her not to make a fuss. This was advice Lily always found easy to take, and, the introduction from her brother-in-law stowed away in the dirty-faced man's pocket, she and Norah took their places in the queue. Every ten minutes or so a good-looking girl, obviously well pleased with herself, would descend briskly from the glooms above; but mostly at intervals of about thirty seconds depressed women, powdering their noses as nonchalantly as possible, came down more slowly. Foot by foot Norah and Lily, who by now had a trail of women behind them, struggled higher up the steps. There was a continuous murmur of sibilant talk punctuated by shrill laughter, and the atmosphere, thickly flavored with cheap scent, perspiration, damp, clothes, and cigarette smoke, grew more oppressive with each step of the ascent. At last they turned the corner of the first landing and saw ahead of them a shorter flight; half-way up this, another landing crowded with girls came into view, the three doors opening on which were inscribed "Walter Keal's Touring Companies" in white paint; a muffled sound of typewriting seemed auspiciously business-like amid this babbling, bedraggled, powdered mass of anxious women. By the central door another dirty-faced man was ushering in the aspirants one at a time.

"We ought to have given my letter to him," said Lily.

"Well, don't go back for it now," Norah begged, looking in dismay at the throng behind.

They must have been waiting over two hours when at last they found themselves face to face with the janitor. A bell tinkled as a bright figure emerged from the door on the left and hurried away down the steps without regarding the envious glances of the unadmitted; immediately afterward the door in front of them opened, and they passed through to the office.

"One at a time," the janitor called; but Norah quickly shut the door behind them, and she and Lily were simultaneously presented for the inspection of Mr. Walter Keal.

The office was furnished with a large roll-top desk, three chairs, and a table littered with papers which a dowdy woman in pince-nez was trying to put in some kind of order. The walls were hung with playbills; the room was heavy with cigar smoke. Mr. Walter Keal, a florid, clean-shaven man with a diamond pin in his cravat, a Malmaison carnation in his buttonhole, and a silk hat on the back of his head, was bending over the desk without paying the least attention to the new-comers. Standing behind him in an attitude that combined deference toward Mr. Keal with insolence toward the rest of the world was a young man of Jewish appearance who stared critically at the two girls.

"You don't remember me, Mr. Keal," began Lily, timidly. "I was introduced to you once in the Strand by my brother-in-law, Richard Granville."

"I'm sure you were," interrupted Mr. Keal, curtly; but when he looked up and saw that Lily was pretty he changed his tone. "That's all right; don't be frightened. I've met so many girls in my time. Well, what can I do for you?"

"I had a letter of introduction from my brother-in-law, Mr. Granville," Lily began again.

"Never heard of the gentleman," said Mr. Keal.

Norah, feeling that she and Lily stood once more on an equality, came forward with assurance.

"We thought you were choosing girls for the chorus in 'Miss Elsie of Chelsea.'"

"Full up," the manager snapped.

The Jewish young man bent over and whispered something to his master, who took a long look at the girls.

"However, I might find you two extra places. What experience have you had? None, eh? Can you sing? You think so. Um—yes—all girls think they can sing. Well, I'll give you a chance, but I can't offer more than a guinea a week of seven performances. If you don't like to take that, there are plenty who will and be grateful. It's my Number One company."

Norah did not wait for Lily, but accepted for both of them.

"Are they going to let us have the club in Lisle Street, Fitzmaurice?" the manager turned to inquire of his assistant.

"Yes, Mr. Keal. The club has arranged to lend their concert-room every morning and afternoon this week, but if you want any evening calls we shall have to make other arrangements."

"But —— it all," Mr. Keal exclaimed, "when are we going to get the stage?"

"They won't be able to let us have it till the week before Christmas."

"That's a nice ruddy job," grumbled Mr. Keal. "All right, dears," he said, "go in there and get your contracts." He pointed to the room adjoining, where, amid an infernal rattle of typewriters, Lily and Norah sold their untried talents to Mr. Keal for a guinea a week of seven performances, extra matinÉes to be paid for at half rate, and a fortnight's salary in lieu of notice to be considered just. When she took up the pen to sign the contract Norah paused.

"You've put your own name, Lily," she said, doubtfully.

"Oh, I can't be bothered to think of a new name. Besides, my own is quite a good one for the stage."

"Yes, but I ought to change mine. I think I shall call myself Dorothy Lonsdale. Do you like that?"

"You've got a sister called Dorothy. Won't she be rather annoyed?"

Norah tried to think of another name, but she was confused by the noise of the typewriters, and at last she ejaculated, impatiently:

"Oh, bother, I must be Dorothy! I've always known it would suit me much better than her. I shouldn't mind if she called herself Norah. Besides, I sha'n't be Dorothy Caffyn, so what does it matter?"

They were told that their contracts would be handed to them at the rehearsal called for to-morrow morning at the Hungarian Artistes' Club, Lisle Street, Leicester Square.

"How easy it is, really," said Norah, when she and Lily were going down-stairs again, past the line of tired women still waiting to be admitted. "Though I thought his language was rather disgusting. Didn't you?"

"I didn't notice it," said Lily. "But you'll have to get used to bad language on the stage."

"I shall never get used to it," Norah vowed, with a disdainful glance at a particularly common-looking girl who, tossing the feathers in her hat like a defiant savage, called out:

"God! Flo, look at Mrs. Walter Keal coming down-stairs."

The girls round her laughed, and Norah hurried past angrily. She had been intending to patronize Lily; after that remark it was not so easy.

Just as they reached the foot of the first flight of steps the dirty-faced janitor bawled over the balustrade, "Mr. Keal can't see any more ladies to-day."

Sighs of disappointment and murmurs of indignation rose from the actresses; then they turned wearily round and prepared to encounter the December rain.

"You'd better come and call for me to-morrow," said Norah, "so that we can go to the rehearsal together. Think of me to-night when I'm trying to explain to father what I've done."

"Will he be very angry?"

"Yes, I expect he will, and though I know how to manage him it's always a nuisance having to argue," said Norah. "You're lucky not to have a father."

Lily looked at her friend quickly and suspiciously.

"I mean you're lucky to be quite on your own," she explained.

The moment Mr. Caffyn came home from the city that evening Norah revealed to him that she had got an engagement in a touring company and reminded him of his promise. As she had expected, he tried to go back on his word, and even brought up the old objection to a daughter of his going on the stage.

"Nobody will know that I'm your daughter," she said. "I shall change my name, of course."

"But people are sure to hear about it," Mr. Caffyn argued.

Norah pulled him up suddenly.

"It's no good going on about it, father. I've got an engagement and I'm going to accept it. If you try to prevent me I shall do something much worse."

Mr. Caffyn's dislike of the stage may not have been as deep as he pretended, or he may have thought that his daughter really intended to do something desperate and that he might be called upon to support her in married life, which would be more expensive than supporting her on the stage. Moreover, she seemed so confident that perhaps he might never have to support her on the stage, and what a delightful solution of her future that would be! After all, she was the eldest of six girls, and six girls rapidly growing up might become too much even for the secretary of the Church of England Purity Society to control successfully.

Mrs. Caffyn melted into tears at the idea of her eldest daughter's earning her own living, and Norah decided to profit by maternal weakness.

"The only thing, mother dear, is that I shall be very poor."

"Darling child!"

"You see, I don't like to ask father to make me a larger allowance than he makes at present."

"Oh no," agreed Mrs. Caffyn, apprehensively. "I beg you won't ask him to do that."

"So my idea was—" Norah began. She paused for a moment to think how she could express herself most tactfully. "Mother, you have a certain amount of money of your own, haven't you?"

"Yes, dear."

"And I suppose it's really you who makes me my allowance of twenty-five pounds a year? What I thought was that perhaps you'd rather give me a lump sum now when it would be more useful than go on paying me an allowance. Another thing is that I should hate to feel I was coming into money when you died, and, of course, if you gave me my money now I shouldn't feel that."

"My dear child, how am I to find any large sum of money now? It's very sweet of you to put it in that way, but you don't understand how difficult these matters are."

"How much money have you got of your own?" asked Norah.

Mrs. Caffyn thought this was rather an improper question; but Norah was looking so very grown up that she did not like to elude the answer as she had been wont to elude many answers of many childish questions through all these years of married life.

"Well, dear," she said, with the air of one who was revealing a dangerous family secret, "I suppose you're old enough to hear these things now. I have three hundred pounds a year of my own—at least, when I say of my own, you mustn't think that means three hundred a year to spend on myself. Your father is very just, and though he helps me as much as he is able, all the money is taken up in household expenses."

"Well, twenty-five pounds a year," said Norah, "at five per cent. is the interest on five hundred pounds."

"Is it, dear?" asked her mother, in a frightened voice.

"If you give me five hundred pounds now you wouldn't have to pay me twenty-five pounds a year. And if you lived for another twenty-five years you'd save one hundred and twenty-five pounds that way."

Mrs. Caffyn looked as if she would soon faint at these rapid calculations.

"How am I to get five hundred pounds?" she asked, hopelessly.

"You must go and see the manager of your bank."

"But Roland is a clerk in my bank," Mrs. Caffyn objected. "And what would he say?"

"Roland!" repeated Norah, with scorn. "You don't suppose Roland knows everything that goes on in the bank?"

"No, I suppose he doesn't," agreed Mrs. Caffyn, wonderingly.

"If you like I'll go and see the bank manager," Norah offered. "He took rather a fancy to me, I remember, when he came to supper with us once."

"Norah, how recklessly you talk!" protested Mrs. Caffyn. But Norah was firm and she did not rest until she had persuaded her mother to ask for an interview with the manager, to whom she made herself so charming and with whom she argued so convincingly that in the end she succeeded in obtaining the £500.

"Though what your father will say I don't like to think, dear," said Mrs. Caffyn, as she tremblingly mounted an omnibus to go home.

"I don't see why father should know anything about it, and if he does he can't say anything. It's your money."

"Let's hope he'll never find out," Mrs. Caffyn sighed, though she had little hope really of escaping from detection in what she felt was something perilously like a clever bank robbery—the sort of thing one read about in illustrated magazines.

Norah determined to be very cautious at rehearsals and she advised Lily to be the same.

"Of course, we shall gradually make friends with the other girls, but don't let's be in too much of a hurry, especially as we've got each other. And if you take my advice you'll be very reserved with the men."

Since Norah had found how easy it was to get on the stage her opinion of Mr. Vavasour had sunk, and since she had found how easy it was to get out of love her opinion of men in general had sunk. On the other hand, her opinion of herself as an actress and as a woman had risen proportionately. Meanwhile the rehearsals proceeded as rehearsals do, and the No. I company of "Miss Elsie of Chelsea" was harried from club-room to club-room, from suburban theater to metropolitan theater, until it was ready to charm the city of Manchester on Boxing Night.

On Christmas Eve, the last evening that Norah would spend at home for some time, she decided in an access of honesty to tell Dorothy that she had taken her name for purposes of the stage. Most unreasonably, Dorothy protested loudly against this, and it transpired in the course of the dispute that she had all her life resented being the only one of the family who had not been given two names. Norah's own second name, Charlotte, which was also her mother's, had never struck her before as anything in the nature of an asset, but now with much generosity she offered to lend it to Dorothy, who refused it as scornfully as she could without hurting her mother's feelings.

"Why couldn't you have taken Lina or Florence or Amy or Maud?" Dorothy demanded. These were the second names of the other sisters. "And, anyway, what's the matter with your own name?"

"I don't know," said Norah. "Dorothy Lonsdale struck me as a good combination, and the more I think of it the better I like it."

"Lonsdale," everybody repeated. "Are you going to call yourself Lonsdale?"

"It's the family name," Norah reminded them.

This was quite true; Lonsdale had been the maiden name of Mrs. Caffyn's mother, who, according to a family legend, had been a distant kinswoman of Lord Cleveden. Indeed, before Mr. Caffyn was married he had often used this connection to overcome his father's opposition to a long engagement. When he had bought the house in Lonsdale Road he had liked to think for a while that in a way he was doing something to restore the prestige of a distant collateral branch; the transaction had possessed a flavor of winning back an old estate. Naturally, as he grew older, he ceased to attach the same importance to mere birth, especially when he found that he did not require any self-assertion to get on perfectly well with the bishops who came to consult him about diocesan scandals. Therefore he was inclined to take his eldest daughter's part and applaud her choice of a stage name.

"But suppose I wanted to go on the stage myself?" Dorothy insisted. "I might want to use my own name."

"Well, so you could," Norah urged. "You could be Miss Dorothy Caffyn. But you won't go on the stage, so what's the good of arguing like that? Anyway, I've signed the contract as Dorothy Lonsdale, so there's nothing to be done. I can't change."

"I do think it's mean of you," expostulated the real Dorothy, bursting into tears.

Norah would not allow anybody to come and see her off at Euston on Christmas morning, and Mr. Caffyn, who did not at all like the idea of a four-wheeler's waiting outside his house on such a day, helped his daughter's plans by marshaling the whole family for church half an hour earlier than usual, so that the farewells were said indoors. Lily had left the flat a fortnight ago and, having been staying in some Bloomsbury lodgings recommended by her sister, was to meet her friend at the station. At a quarter to eleven, amid the clangor of church bells, the cab of Norah Caffyn turned out of Lonsdale Road into the main street of West Kensington, and at noon on the platform at Euston Miss Lily Haden wished a Merry Christmas to Miss Dorothy Lonsdale.