"My Dear Barbara,

"I have seen so little of you lately that I don't know what your movements are. Are you expecting me at the Abbey next week-end? And shall I find you at Ross House on Friday? I particularly want to talk to you.

"Ever yours,
"Jack Waring."

The letter, written nearly a month after Barbara's Easter party, was Jack's first documentary admission that a state of war had been proclaimed and that he was tardily conscious of it. On returning to London, Barbara invited him to dine, as she had promised; but she invited so many other people at the same time that he had little opportunity of talking to her. In the excitement and rush of the early season, as she darted from dinner to play and from play to ball, it was impossible to catch her in a serious mood. Jack followed at a non-committal distance and tried to get her to himself occasionally for a moment at supper; but, after he had made two of these abortive attempts, she explained with gentle reproof that it was hardly fair to expect her to give up dancing because he himself refused to learn; if he wanted to see her, he could wait and take her home; she would not be later than three or perhaps four.... After two experiments, Jack changed his tactics; he could not stay up all night, if he had to be in court next day at ten o'clock, and there was little intimacy or romance in driving home with a girl who either dropped asleep or treated the taxi as an omnibus for distributing her friends about London.

When they met, her good-humour and friendliness reassured him, but they met so seldom that he made no progress. Letters were unsatisfactory, for he was afraid of saying too much and always wanted to write "without prejudice" at the head of the sheet. She never answered more than one in three; and, though he wrote about himself and his work, she hardly responded to his suggestion that she had a right to know what he was doing and that he had no less a right to expect her to be interested in it. This, he decided, was the fruit of twenty years' spoiling; the effort—if need be, the abasement—must come on his side.

After a week in which he did not meet her at all, Jack convinced himself that love could not be conducted on a limited liability basis; no man achieved passion and saved his face at the same time. It would have been easier to treat marriage like a casual invitation to dinner and to say "Will you marry me? No? Well, it does not matter; I thought I'd just ask you ..."; but a woman was not to be won until she saw that it mattered more than anything else. After deep thought and with momentarily increasing reluctance, he went to an address which he had found in the Morning Post, paid three guineas and for a conscientious hour at a time practised steps and pranced round a studio off the King's Road with two fluffy sisters who taught him a little of dancing and much of humility. From the first they despised his clumsiness and resented his lofty refusal to talk, smoke, drink tea or take them out to dinner; but their dislike and contempt were nothing to his own sense of shame. Once back in the County Club, a man among men, deferentially—as became a young member—asking the chairman of the Wine Committee whether they had enough of the '84 Dow to sell it by the glass, he wondered what Mr. Justice Maitland or old Bertrand Oakleigh would think if they dreamed that he was lately escaped from an abomination called Effie, who revolved in a sticky fog of cheap chocolates, and a vulgarity named Dot, who called him "old boy." If Summertown or Gerry Deganway caught him slinking away from chambers to be told that his knees were too stiff or that he must hold his partner more tightly.... Jack blushed hotly and wondered why he had not been taught to dance as a child.

And for all his pains he got little credit. At his next meeting with Barbara, he chose one of her favourite waltzes and suggested that she might "risk it" with him. In the infinitely small chatter of the tired woman round the walls it was remarked for a week that Jack Waring, who did not usually dance, might very often be seen dancing with Babs Neave. Val Arden accosted him with surprise and congratulated Barbara in his presence on having humanized him.

"But I haven't done anything," she answered.

"You said it was rather pointless for a man to come to a ball, if he didn't dance," Jack pointed out.

"And you did this to please me," she laughed. "How long did it take? Only a fortnight? I wonder how long it would take you to learn bridge. There's such a mob of people everywhere that I've made it a rule never to dance till after supper. George Oakleigh's collecting a table now."

As so often lately, this was not the moment for a man to advance his suit, but Jack could not decide whether Barbara, like all the girls in these restless, neurotic months, was too much excited to be serious or whether she was deliberately tantalizing him and deferring surrender to set a higher value on herself. As secretly as he had learned dancing, he set himself to master the leads and returns of bridge. Starting with "Auction for Beginners," he proceeded painfully to "Advanced Auction Bridge," and challenged his parents and sister to an experimental game during his next week-end at Red Roofs. The experiment was not repeated; Colonel Waring, who carried into bridge the formalism and irritability of a whist-racked youth, told him that he did not seem to have a "card head," and, after a night of helpless anger against the unreasonableness of women, Jack launched his ultimatum to Barbara with an indignant resolve that she should not trifle with him any longer.

There was little enough of the love-letter in his few words and colourless phrasing, but Barbara felt a tremor as she read them. The letter awaited her, with others, when she came home after a party; she read it first, then poured herself a cup of cocoa, then read the others and came back to it. This, then, was his capitulation to a woman of such ill-repute that he dared not confess to his own parents that he even knew her.

"My dear Jack," she wrote in reply. "Yes, I shall be there on Friday and look forward to seeing you."

It read naturally, but gave her hypercritical mind the sense that she was meeting him half-way; she would not let him say that his broadest hint had been a warning.

"My dear Jack," she tried again. "I've promised faithfully to go to the Marlings on Friday; there's rather a panic there, because poor dear Lady M. thinks that every one will desert her for Ross House—it's her own fault for choosing that night. If I can possibly get away, I shall look in for a few minutes. If not, we shall meet at the Abbey next day. Of course, we're expecting you then."

Though this read even more naturally, Barbara was not wholly satisfied. She left the letter in the hall, then retrieved and carried it into her bedroom to see how it looked by morning light. As she undressed, she saw with surprise that there was an unaccustomed flush on either cheek and that her lips were tightly compressed. Jack had hurt her even more than she appreciated; and he was now going to be taught his lesson. The "haggard Venus".... The sight of her thin face and deep-set, glowing eyes made her feel a tragic actress in spite of herself. She was word-perfect in the scene, for she had rehearsed it every time that his bluff, sweeping condemnation had touched her vanity. No doubt he would still try to be bluff and off-hand, but she was resolved to make him plead humbly and to take back every reproach, one by one.

Barbara sat down before an open window in her bedroom; outside, the silent night was like a hushed and darkened auditorium for her speech.

"But we've nothing in common! You know you hate the life I had. I'm afraid I can't alter it, Jack. You'd take away all my friends, but they interest me; I've got music and books and pictures in common with them. Even if you got over your dislike, you'd hate to sit in a corner while we talked about the things that do mean everything to me. And I'm afraid I should always be shocking you. I've told you that I must have every new experience; I'd sooner be dead than live a sort of half-life, afraid to do this, afraid to do that—just because no one had done it before. I've got too much vitality.... Jack, you've seen eagles in captivity? Well! That's what would happen to me if I couldn't spread my wings and soar, soar, soar.... If I married any one who didn't soar with me. You wouldn't like to hear people say, 'She's grown so old and lifeless since she married.'

"I can't make out how you ever came to fall in love with me, thinking of me as you do. There are hundreds of girls just as pretty—much prettier, in fact. Sally Farwell. Sonia Dainton. I'm vain and I'm not going to pretend that I don't think myself much higher than them, but it's the things which put me higher that you'll never appreciate—never, never, never! You think they're wrong or cheap or vulgar.... Jack, you're in love at present, you're not seeing clearly; but you know in the bottom of your heart that you'll never change me. Well! Do you want to spend the rest of your life with a woman you despise, do you want to despise the mother of your children?... Yes, you actually used the word—it hurt me so much that I'm not likely to forget it—but, if you like, I'll try to forget it, I'll say I forget it.... Of course, I forgive! My dear, this is much too important for us both to have any silly little personal feeling.... And, whenever you say I'm 'big,' I hope it means that I've got a big soul, that I'm generous.... Dear, I'm not asking you to apologize, but you admit you said that I was vulgar? And now you say it's untrue? Well, I haven't changed? It's love.... But love doesn't last for ever. To be happily married, you want common sympathies, common tastes—something that will last for ever, when love's burnt out.

"I suppose I ought to be—flattered that you think well enough of me to want to marry me.... Sometimes you were a little hard on me.... But flattery ... one's own amour propre is so small.... I can't marry you, Jack. No! Nothing you could ever say or do.... How you ever fell in love with me, thinking as you do.... Or did, rather. You don't think quite so badly of me now. But our happiness—for all our lives—No, please, Jack; don't say anything! You must never speak of this again, of course; I think it would be better for us not to meet. It's bound to be difficult, you know ... difficult and painful. I don't mean that you're to cut me in the street, but if we allowed ourselves to drift gradually apart.... And now don't think I'm heartless, if I tell you that you'll get over this. Time heals all things, Jack. You're hurt now; it's as if I'd hit your head and the blood were running into your eyes. But in time.... We'll say good-bye now. You may kiss me, if you like, Jack, but—I think you'd better not. The best thing you can do is to forget all about me."

As she sat in a carved chair, whispering the words to herself, the drama of the scene swept Barbara off her balance and left her breathless. The flush had died out of her cheeks, and all emotion was concentrated in the trembling whisper of her voice and in her eyes, tragic, tortured and black, staring through the window into the silent auditorium of the night.

And Jack, who called her theatrical, never admitted that she could act....

The wind set her shivering, and she pulled the curtains together. The rehearsal had excited her, and, when she got into bed, there were gestures, which she felt she could improve, and phrases, which stood in need of polish. Jack would not appreciate the subtilty of the scene; he would go away—perhaps not quite so well satisfied with himself, but vaguely grateful for her gentleness in blunting the edge of disappointment. He would feel sure that she had been very wise, very maternal; and, if any one questioned him out of curiosity or a desire to be sympathetic, her bitterest critic would become her staunchest champion. "It was rather a wipe in the eye for me," she could imagine his saying, "because I was very hard hit; I am still. After all, there's no one to compare with her.... But I thought she behaved awfully well; and it couldn't have been easy for her; I'm not really sure that she didn't feel it more than I did—I mean, she saw I wasn't enjoying myself much and she did everything she could.... I was conscious at the time that I'd never loved her so much, I'd never appreciated what I was losing until I lost her. Of course, I always knew that she was big...."

Many men had proposed to her, but none had done justice to his opportunity. She wondered how Jack would begin.... Men never troubled about a setting—or a time; they procrastinated and procrastinated until the car was at the door or the train was starting. If she were in his place, there would be splendour of setting and superb eloquence of rolling, romantic phrases. There was colour in the world when Cyrano de Bergerac swung down the street, quarrelling and making love, or when he stood dying and already preparing his bow to the Court of Heaven. But nowadays all emotion was starved; men were ashamed even of emotion's gestures, the bloom and the beauty of language. Barbara picked up a volume of Shakespeare and read where the book opened of its own accord. "Put off your maiden blushes; avouch the thoughts of your heart with the looks of an empress; take me by the hand, and say 'Harry of England, I am thine': which word thou shalt no sooner bless mine ear withal, but I will tell thee aloud 'England is thine, Ireland is thine, France is thine, and Henry Plantagenet is thine; who, though I speak it before his face, if he be no fellow with the best king, thou shalt find the best king of good fellows.' Come, your answer in broken music.... You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate: there is more eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the tongues of the French council."

Barbara sat up in bed, clasping her hands round her knees and thinking of days when colour still shone in the world and when she made a part of it. India still lived gorgeously. She could still conjure up her triumphant arrival at Bombay, the roll of the saluting guns, the guard of honour, the lined streets and majestic progress of the new viceroy....

On the evening of the ball she was careful to dress in such fashion that she should not seem to have taken any extra care, but her maid looked at her with undisguised admiration, and at dinner Lady Crawleigh woke to articulate enthusiasm. Barbara smiled to herself, as she put on her cloak and fastened a spray of orchids in her dress. Every one seemed eager and excited: her mother had more than once brought Jack's name into conversation without venturing farther: and, of course, all the world loved a lover. From Phyllis Knightrider she knew that her aunts looked with hope and relief on the determined, steady young man who had at last been found to keep her in order. She wondered what they would say when he disappeared without explanation.... She wondered how Jack would begin and whether he would come first to Lady Marling's to make sure of not missing her. Catching sight of herself in a mirror, she smiled again, though she was beginning to feel a little nervous. She wondered how Jack had been spending the first part of the evening....

At half-past eleven he arrived to find her surrounded by four men of whom each claimed that she had promised him the next dance.

"I came to see if you were thinking of starting for Ross House," Jack explained. "Have you got your car here?"

"Mother's taken it on," she answered. "But Sir Deryk—you know Sir Deryk Lancing, don't you? Mr. Waring—Sir Deryk's offered me his. We'll give you a lift."

Jack hid his disappointment under an adequate bow and accompanied her downstairs. Young Lancing's presence disquieted him. Though numberless men made rival calls on her, there had so far been no serious cause for jealousy; but Lancing had so much in his favour that Jack felt an insane desire to establish something discreditable against him. He was young, healthy, good-looking and highly gifted; Barbara had more than once quoted him as an authority on music; he was something of an archÆologist; and his black-figure pottery at Aston Ripley was no less famous than his collection of eighteenth-century miniatures. He was worth between twenty and twenty-five million pounds, he was a baronet; and he was unmarried. Their tastes harmonized; every one would say that it was a most suitable alliance. And some would whisper that she had come very near to throwing herself away on Jack Waring. People ought not to be allowed to be so rich....

He strode bare-headed on to the pavement, feeling helpless and trying to persuade himself that he was only nervous. As they drove to Ross House, he watched and listened to Lancing and Barbara, envying them their ease and wondering whether it was fair for two people to exclude the third from conversation by choosing an impossible subject. Rimski-Korsakoff ... Ivan le Terrible ... Chaliapin.... While Barbara got rid of her cloak, he consciously tried to make friends with Lancing; they had apparently been at Eton together and had overlapped at Oxford. There was no harm in the fellow; though he was unutterably bored and made no attempt to hide it, he could not be dismissed as a conceited ass.... Barbara took an unconscionable time to shed one cloak.... And, when she returned to the hall, a newly arriving horde was already engulfing her.

"The first one's mine, isn't it?" Jack called out anxiously. "You promised it me in the car."

The anxiety was almost hysterical, and other people must be noticing it.

"Yes. And then Sir Deryk," answered Barbara. "Then Jack Summertown. Then Gerry. George?" She gave Oakleigh a quick smile over an undulating sea of heads and held up four fingers. "No, missing four! Jim? Missing five! What an appalling crowd! I don't see any prospect of supper."

"May I have that with you—after Jim Loring?" asked Jack. Then he lowered his voice. "I don't see much prospect of that talk with you."

The voice was peevish, and other people must be noticing that, too.

"My dear, you'll have enough of me this week-end. Take me upstairs before I'm trampled to death."

As they pressed forward to the door of the ball-room, Jack gripped the banisters to make sure that he was awake. At one moment he was staring at the broad shoulders of the man in front of him, the next down his collar; fluttering hands tidied away vagrant wisps of hair and buttoned gloves. Waves of scent met and blended with the dominant sweetness of the carnations which wound in clustering chains about the banisters. Above and before them boomed a far-away voice, announcing names; and between the shrill clatter of surprised recognitions came the strangulated music of a frantic band.

"You'll certainly be trampled to death, if you try to get inside," said Jack. "Let's sit it out somewhere."

She nodded, but, when he had shaken hands with the Duchess of Ross and was trying to cleave a passage, Barbara was deep in conversation with a pale, underhung youth; and he felt a second twinge of jealousy. She talked until the music stopped, while Jack fingered his tie and strove vainly to keep out of other people's way.

"You know him, don't you?" Barbara asked, when at last the rapt conversation came to an end. "My cousin, Johnnie Carstairs. He's been out in Rome for the last three years, but now he's being transferred to the Foreign Office."

Jack nodded without speaking and continued to look for standing-room. After his letter it was almost inconceivable that she should not know what he wanted to tell her; yet she light-heartedly abandoned him for a cousin whom she could see at any time, talking as though the fellow were on his way to the scaffold; and their promised moment together was relegated to the end of the evening; and in this hurly-burly it was almost too much to expect that they could find an inch of space or a minute of uninterrupted conversation.

"I can see one chair at the far end, if we can get through to it," he said.

"The music's starting," she answered doubtfully. "We'd better get back, I think."

"No, they're playing the same thing. It's only an encore."

"Oh, then do let me have it with Johnnie! I haven't seen him for such ages. You don't mind?"

She had spied a thinning in the crowd and was half-way to the ball-room door before he had an answer ready. Noting the number of the dance, Jack went downstairs and tried to be philosophical over a cigar; but his nerves were unsteady, and, though there was an endless hour and a half to wait, he had to hurry back every few minutes to make sure that he was not missing the promise of supper with Barbara. It was irritating to be so restless—and doubly irritating to feel that others were noticing it. Jim Loring came into the smoking-room and settled himself for a comfortable talk, only to find that his companion had run away unceremoniously in mid-sentence. These people had no sense of the important; life to them was powder and patches and dance music—less than that, for they stayed up half the night to smoke furtive cigars and ostentatiously shut their ears to the dance music. And Barbara was flitting from one man to another, when their two lives were in the balance.

In one of his wanderings to and from the ball-room Jack found Deryk Lancing, ticket in hand, by the cloak-room.

"You off?" he asked with secret relief.

"Yes, this sort of thing bores me stiff. Can I drop you anywhere?"

"Well, I'm booked for supper with Lady Barbara."

"Oh, you might remind her that she cut me."

He moved away, whistling drearily to himself and leaving Jack grateful for his absence. There was no rivalry to fear from Lancing. Gerald Deganway came up, swinging his eye-glass distractedly and calling for his hat.

"My dear, this sort of thing's killing me, positively killing me!" he simpered. "This is my third ball to-night, and I've got to go to two more. The Marlings, the Tavitons, this place, the Fenwicks—Oh, no! I've been to the Fenwicks; I'm almost sure I started there. I shall be such a wreck to-morrow, a mere bundle of nerves! But Helen Crossleigh will never forgive me, if I disappoint her. You don't look as if you were enjoying yourself much. I believe some one who shall be nameless has cut you! I believe that's it."

He laughed shrilly and dug Jack roguishly in the ribs with the gold knob of his cane; then set a resplendent hat at a jaunty angle and fluttered through the hall, murmuring, "Taxi! Oh, some one must get me a taxi! I shall break down and cry, if I don't get a taxi."

Jack watched him smilingly but with cold rage in his heart. If he had to wait hour after hour, fretting with nervousness and fuming with impatience, he might at least have been spared the inane facetiousness of Deganway.

"A little more of this, and something will happen to my brain," he growled to Val Arden.

"It is the chatter of the Bandar-Log, aimless, restless, incomplete," was the answer.

Jack nodded and tried to smile; but it was no matter for jest when he remembered that he had himself chosen this time and place for asking Barbara to marry him.

"One is reminded of our good Lewis Carroll's White Rabbit," Arden observed, as he watched Deganway's flurried exit. "You play piquet? No? One would have challenged you to a game. As against bridge, the absence of vulgar abuse is noteworthy and welcome.... One likes to see the young people enjoying themselves, but these entertainments are only moderately amusing. One looked to Lady Lilith in old days to create a diversion, but your dire friendship has sobered her. Of course, one has one's bed...."

He sighed and tossed down the ticket for his hat. So many people were leaving that Jack looked apprehensively at his watch and hurried upstairs. Only one dance separated him from supper with Barbara; but, when the music began, she had forgotten her promise, and he had to stand for a quarter of an hour while she waltzed with Charles Framlingham. As he went forward to claim her at the end, Summertown advanced from another corner and forestalled him. There was nothing new in such behaviour, and Jack realized that he would only look ridiculous, if he shewed impatience or jealousy; but he felt that he was losing his temper and that she saw it. The heat of the house tired him, and he was hungry.

"Wait one more, Jack, and then you may take me home," she called out, as she swept past him.

"Aren't you going to have any supper?"

"Oh, I'd quite forgotten about that."

She passed out of earshot, breathlessly and with shining eyes. If she remembered that he wanted to talk with her alone, if she guessed what he was going to say, he could not understand her behaviour; it was very feminine, but it was also rude and extraordinarily inconsiderate, exasperating him without in any way intensifying his love; if she thought that he wanted simply to compete with Deganway in vapidness or Arden in affectation, well, she was a fool; he had given her the broadest hints. He caught sight of himself in a strip of looking-glass and found that he was frowning; without that signal he knew that he had lost his temper.

"I forget everything, when I'm dancing," was Barbara's nearest approach to an apology on her return. "I promised to have supper with this child, too; let's all go down together."

She went on ahead of them before he could say anything; and, as Summertown shewed no sign of yielding to a prior claimant, Jack pulled off his gloves with careful deliberation and followed her into the dining-room. Though he tried to overcome his ill-humour, their minds were not in tune with his. Barbara prattled unceasingly, Summertown kept up a monologue of his own, and, when they tried to infect him with their own lightness of heart, he could only nod or shake his head or smile in dumb fury that she could play with him in the presence of a spectator. Women, he decided, must be innately cruel, for, though she was clearly trying to anger him, it was not mere mischievousness.

"I must have one more dance with this child," she cried at the end of supper, with a glance of invitation at Summertown.

"Then I don't think I shall wait," said Jack.

The tempo of her dialogue was retarded for half a beat but her expression was unchanged.

"Oh, but didn't you say you'd got a message for me or something?"

"I can give it you at the Abbey to-morrow."

She looked at him with amused surprise.

"Jack, you're not grumpy with me because I cut your dance—or, at least, you say so? You may have another, and this child can come later. Let's go somewhere where it's cooler and where I can have a cigarette."

It was a trifling encounter, but, inasmuch as she saw that he had lost his temper, Jack felt worsted. He swore that he would keep control of himself, however much she exasperated him. He was less tired and more certain of himself than before supper, and for some reason his nervousness had transferred itself to her. The change was apparent from the moment that they were quit of Summertown. She became tense in manner and a little frightened, no longer laughing; and he ceased to fancy that his hints could have been wasted on her.

"Where are we likely to be undisturbed?" he asked, as they hurried purposefully up the stairs. "You know this house better than I do."

"Oh—anywhere," she answered rather breathlessly.