A week before Christmas, Loring cabled to his mother that he was on his way back to England; in the spring of 1914 he landed at Southampton and travelled unobtrusively to London while his yacht proceeded to Glasgow for overhauling and repairs. And, from the moment when his cable was received, an unconscious adjustment of relationships began, crystallizing in a series of informal family councils.

Ever since the ultimatum from Surinam, Lady Barbara had not set foot in House of Steynes or Loring House. It was plausible to pretend that in Jim's absence his mother was not entertaining, but on his return all three branches of the family decided that they could not afford the scandal of an open breach and of a Catholic house divided against itself. Lady Crawleigh enlisted the support of Lady Knightrider and made an attack in force on Lady Loring. Thirty years before, the three sisters had, each in her own way, been celebrated; Lady Crawleigh had the good looks, Lady Knightrider the good temper and Lady Loring the brains; and their marriages, one after another, to a Scottish baronet and two of the richest Catholic peers in England were felt to be fundamentally satisfactory. As they had begun, so they went on; Kathleen Knightrider bore a daughter and a son, Eleanor Loring a son and a daughter, Doreen Crawleigh three sons and two daughters, of whom the younger died in infancy. The three husbands were above criticism in life and position; if Sir Charles Knightrider was little more than amateur landscape-gardener and ornithologist, Lord Loring was very nearly at the head of the Catholic laity in England; while Lord Crawleigh's succession of great offices, which he not only filled but adorned, would have satisfied the most ambitious woman. If the individuality of the three wives became merged in their husbands, they still made a strong social combination.

"I hear Jim's on his way home," said Lady Crawleigh without preamble. "When he comes, Eleanor, we shall have to make peace between him and Barbara."

"I'll talk to Jim," answered his mother doubtfully. "But you know how obstinate he is." She was divided between loyalty to her son and pity for her sister, who could not enjoy having to plead like this for her own daughter. "I do hope this will be a lesson to dear Barbara."

"I hope so, too," sighed Lady Crawleigh.

If she spoke without conviction, it was because her brain was giddy with successive shocks. The secret of Dolly May's death was kept for exactly five days after the inquest. Then a gaunt woman, giving no name, demanded to see Barbara and, on hearing that she was in the country, bearded Lord Crawleigh, who promptly threatened her with attentions from the police. All previous courts of enquiry were trivial by comparison with the inquisition now erected; but, as the attack developed, Barbara's resistance developed equally, and she warned her parents that, on the day when she came of age, she would move into a house of her own where she could receive friends of every complexion and practice magic of every colour. If the form of the threat was old, its clarity and vigour were new; Barbara had less than six months to wait for her majority and independence.

Lady Crawleigh was still reeling under the shock of one scandal averted and a second in prospect, when her energies were claimed by a new problem. From an untraced source came the report that Barbara was becoming very intimate with young Waring. He had spent a week-end at the Abbey, unobtrusively burying himself in the smoking-room for most of the time; and Barbara had included him in big and small dinner-parties in Berkeley Square. Save that he was a Protestant with only the few hundreds that he earned, he was unexceptionable; Eton, New College and the bar covered past and present, and for the future he stood second in succession to Penley and his uncle's title; in temperament and character he was reported to be dull and wholly dependable. It was a paradox of Barbara's position, her mother felt, that, when the interlocked Catholic families had been ruled out, she seemed to have no associates except nonentities like Gerald Deganway and John Gaymer, who were family furniture rather than friends, or young politicians, like George Oakleigh, or literary freaks, like Mr. Arden, or the really rather dreadful people like the stout young man with all the cars, Mr. Webster, who was always getting her into one scrape or another: the less said about them, the better. Barbara was lamentably gregarious in her friendships, but in these latter days all girls were allowed so much liberty, they seemed to know so much and to be so intolerant of restraint....

Lady Crawleigh was not at present equal to a struggle on the question of religion. The Church had become unyielding about mixed marriages; that was the wretched Sonia Dainton's excuse for breaking off her engagement to Jim Loring, and, when she had nothing else to disturb her mind, Lady Crawleigh was haunted by the fear that Barbara, who was deplorably lax, would make some terrible scandal by marrying a Protestant without getting a dispensation. Of course, it would not be a true marriage, and no Catholic would consent to know her,—but it was the sort of thing that Babs would do.

The untraced rumour, like many another, travelled far before reaching those most intimately concerned. Jack Waring had devoted so many years to a middle-aged pose and the ostentatious avoidance of all social life that his own friends commented in outspoken amusement on his recantation. In the winter months of 1913 he began to appear at dances, though he still refused to take an active part. "Who's the man with Babs Neave?" quickly became "Who's the man who's always with Babs Neave?" and, before long, "Is anything going to happen about Babs Neave and Jack Waring?" Derision at the fall of a misogynist passed through speculation to resentment.

"Jack simply monopolizes Babs nowadays," complained Summertown one night in the New Year at a dance in his mother's house. He was aggrieved at being unable to attract Barbara's notice and had summoned Deganway, Arden and Oakleigh to a meeting of protest in the smoking-room. "Wonder what she sees in him," he grumbled. "He's a good fellow and all that sort of thing—capital company on a desert island, if you wanted plenty of bar shop, but he's taking all the bubble out of her. I tried to rope her in for my party at the Albert Hall, but, when she heard who was coming, she refused. Damned offensive, I thought. Said that people had been talking about her so much that she had to be very careful. And old Jack nodded—you could see she was doing it to please him; it'll be an awful chuck-away if she marries him."

"She will not marry him," Arden predicted. "If for no other reason, Lady Lilith has still to discover a heart."

"What's she doing it for, then?" asked Oakleigh. "I'm very fond of Jack, he's a thoroughly good fellow, but he's rather a bore."

"What man can choose from among a woman's motives?" demanded Arden. "Perhaps she finds a difficulty in getting rid of him. There was a time when she was certainly intrigued, when she pursued him relentlessly. Perhaps she feels a glow of respectability from his presence; one's cook, if not a cordon bleu, was recommended to one as 'a regular communicant.'... Perhaps she chose him to see what she could make of him, as le Bon Dieu chose the Jews. But she will not marry him.... One has a certain instinct."

He shook his head sagaciously and dismissed the subject. But a new mile-stone had been reached when four men could be found gathering to discuss Jack's marriage to Barbara as even a remote possibility. Similar discussions had for some weeks taken place in little groups round the walls of the ball-rooms. Lady Knightrider, who had known Jack longest and best, confided to a friend that he was an excellent influence, a man who would stand no nonsense from the girl; he was fearless and unmoved by Barbara's tantrums and had once spoken very sensibly when she revived the absurd project of leaving her parents and taking a house by herself. That evening Phyllis Knightrider epitomised and retailed a conversation which she had not been intended to hear by saying to Barbara, as they drove to the dance, "Mother's quite made up her mind that you ought to marry Jack Waring. She says he's the only man she knows who can keep you in order."

The attack was opened three hours later from the opposite flank, when Gerald Deganway put up his eye-glass and stared at Jack with an affectation of shocked gravity.

"My dear, every one's talking about you," he exclaimed. "It's becoming quite a scandal."

"What's becoming a scandal?" asked Jack.

"You and Babs Neave."

"What a pity it is that people can't mind their own business!"

Any one acquainted with Deganway knew better than to take his gossip at face-value, but Jack was amazed to find that he had given material for chatter and speculation even to Deganway. To be a friend of Barbara Neave, as Arden once said, was like going for a walk with an arc-lamp; but they had been frigidly circumspect and restrained. Two week-ends at Crawleigh Abbey, perhaps six dinners in London and twice that number of dances, where he looked in at supper-time and left after an hour, covered their public intimacy. For a moment Jack was roused to violent irritation towards Deganway, then he dismissed the irritation in gratitude for the warning. There was no time to lose, if this kind of nonsense was being talked, and he stationed himself at the door of the ball-room and pounced upon Barbara at the end of the dance.

"You're not really hungry, are you?" she asked, when he suggested that they should have supper together.

"I want to talk with you," he answered.

Barbara started imperceptibly. Jack was less self-possessed than usual; of any other man she would argue from a varied experience that he meditated proposing to her.

"I'll come down, if you like," she answered gently. She always achieved success with Jack when her voice grew caressing and she promised to do a thing, if he liked. "I hope I'm not in disgrace?"

"You? Oh, no. I'm going away on circuit to-morrow, though," he said, tidying away a litter of dirty plates from the only unoccupied table.

"When will you be back?"

Jack helped her to a cutlet as though he were serving out rations, sprinkled his own with salt, cut his roll in two, prospected for a clean glass and poured out some champagne, which he tasted cautiously, with a murmured, "'04 Bollinger! It's a crime to waste that on a ball!" For a man not naturally greedy, supper was very absorbing.

"I shall be away for a week or two," he explained, precipitately adding, "at least."

Barbara's eyes were on his face, but he had no attention to spare from the cutlet.

"Ring me up, when you come back, and suggest a night for dinner," she said.

"I shall have a good deal of work to do when I get back. I've been getting very slack lately. And dissipated; you've been making me keep too late hours."

Barbara sighed wearily.

"As if I 'made' you do anything! Will you be back before Easter?"

"Oh, yes."

"Would you like to come to Crawleigh for Easter?"

He went through the same ceremonial with a second cutlet and then said, without looking up:

"I shall be going to my people for Easter."

Barbara raised her eyebrows and turned half away.

"I apologize," she murmured.

"Why?"

"For bothering you with unwelcome invitations."

This time there was no hesitation, though Jack was conscious that his voice and lips were unsteady.

"It doesn't do much good, does it?" he asked with a lop-sided smile.

"What doesn't?"

"Our meeting."

"I thought you liked being with me; and I thought it gratified your missionary spirit," she added tartly.

"But does it do much good beyond affording a topic of conversation for congenital idiots? I'm looking ahead, Lady Barbara."

"What does that mean?"

Jack glanced at her for the first time. He imagined that he could look her in the eyes without embarrassment; but his hand trembled, and he saw that he had spilt the champagne. She must have seen it, too; she could be in no doubt of his meaning. He had intended to warn her that the congenital idiots were coupling their names; and he had now to warn himself that, if he saw any more of the girl, if she ever again looked at him through smiling, half closed eyes, murmuring that she would do what he wished because he wished it, he was quite capable of making a fool of himself. It would not be serious, because any union between a Catholic and the straitly reared son of bitterly Evangelical parents was unthinkable; it would not be serious, because every one knew that Barbara would soon have seven thousand a year of her own, provided always that she married a Catholic, while he might hope very shortly to be making seven hundred a year, which already had to pay for the rent of chambers and club bedroom, share of clerk, subscription to Law Reports, expenses of circuit, club subscriptions, food, drink, tobacco, clothes and sundries. It would not be serious, but it might be very unsettling.

"You see ... I'm—a practising barrister," he explained. "That means that I work for my living and am looking forward to doing so for the best part of my life."

"And I've been wasting your time? I'm sorry, Jack. I like you, when you're gentle and don't find fault with me. I didn't mean to be selfish."

She had not thought it prudent to use his Christian name since the disastrous night of the Croxton Ball.

"I've loved it," he answered. "I always told you that I thought a tremendous lot of you. But I have to work. I sometimes think that, so long as a man's decently dressed, a girl never bothers to think whether he's got twopence a year or ten thousand," he added with a touch of bitterness.

"Can't you manage Easter at Crawleigh?" she asked.

He picked up his gloves and offered her a cigarette.

"Don't you understand?"

"I don't understand about money; people make such an absurd fuss over it. I understand that, as usual, you're making me ask twice for what most men would give me without asking; and that's sometimes a little humiliating. Still, you say I'm a law unto myself. Will you come?" He still hesitated; and she leaned forward with her hand on his sleeve. "Have I ever refused to do anything you asked?"

"I don't think you have," said Jack slowly. "I—shall be delighted to come."

He drove her home that night, wondering what she meant by saying in such a context that she was a law unto herself. As the taxi left Berkeley Square, he half thought of driving to the Temple and talking to Eric Lane. But he had nothing to say and did not know what he wanted. He was elated and a little frightened; never before had he so sorely needed cold, brutal advice; and this question, which he did not yet dare to define, was one which he would have to solve by himself. As he undressed, he wondered what Barbara was doing, what she had meant, whether she had meant anything....

He was away from London for three weeks; and in that time he unhurriedly made up his mind to marry her. Lying awake in his berth on the night train to Newcastle, he decided that he must have fallen in love with her at the Croxton ball. As a bachelor his responsibilities and troubles were confined within the four walls of his bedroom at a very comfortable club; he lived like a prince on four or five hundred a year; and he had never needed the companionship of a woman—least of all, of a woman whom he had instinctively avoided for three years and who quarrelled with him daily when they had at last met. He appreciated now that they quarrelled because he could not bear to see her cheapening herself, because he was already in love with her.

And she must have fallen in love with him at the same time; though he lectured her until she broke down and cried, she begged him to come back and give her another chance. The night when she first invited him to dine with her marked her transition to certainty, but it was only when they were parting that their two certainties engaged and interlocked. While he pronged his cutlet and sprinkled it with salt, eyes prudently averted, each discovered that the other was becoming a habit; he liked her sudden petulance and sudden softening, her restless changes and lightning vitality; and he wondered in sudden humility what she, with her charm and quickness, could see in him. Her family, hitherto friendly, would be disappointed; for she could marry any one, and they would murmur that she had thrown herself away on a poor man who might, indeed, gamble his way into silk, but would never rise to the Bench, the Appeal Court or the House of Lords. She would forfeit her godfather's fortune by marrying a Protestant; and, if they were to live at all, the Crawleighs must come to their aid. Perhaps the Crawleighs disliked mixed marriages as much as the Warings....

Jack turned on the light and frowned at the imitation maple-wood compartment. He must be prepared for a struggle. Imprimis the theological history of the Warings began with Zachary Macaulay, diverged into abolitionism, collected and tidied itself under Lord John Russell and the No-Popery movement and came to an inglorious and unseen end, when the family purged itself politically of a whig taint. Mr. Kensit was a tough, awkward mouthful, and, in the absence of a more restrained leader, the Warings did their good to Protestantism by stealth. The colonel fought an honourable fight for the Geneva gown; he talked of "clergymen" and "communion-tables," where others lisped papistically of "priests" and "altars"; and there were heated and unconvincing arguments in the vicarage library about the ornaments rubric. But, if they no longer took a part in public ecclesiastical controversy, the family would choke at Barbara's name. The colonel was vaguely disquieted when Jack, under the guidance of Jim Loring, drifted into "that Catholic set" (he refrained from calling them Papists out of consideration for Jack's feelings, but he frequently abbreviated their definition to "R. C's"); to marry an "R. C." was hardly more venial than to marry a black woman or to wear a ring in one's nose. And since this insolent Ne temere decree....

Jack had heard it quoted, but had never sought enlightenment lest he should pour oil on the sinking fires. Colonel Waring treated religious controversy as his safety-valve and needed no encouragement. But it was time for Jack to find out where he stood.

Val Arden was discovered unexpectedly in the hotel at Leeds, and Jack invited him to dine with the bar mess after the first day of the Assizes.

"One was persuaded to deliver a lecture," the novelist explained. "The hard-headed men of the West Riding will think twice before repeating the venture; but it was an experience for them, and one escaped with one's life. The North is very remote. One is still remembered in London? Yes? One's friends are in reasonable health?"

"They're bearing up," Jack answered. "Jim Loring's back in England."

"A sadder and a wiser man, one hears. Well, if a man wants romance, he must be prepared to pay for it. One feels that it is worth the inconvenience of three years' exile not to be married to Sonia Dainton. You know the full sad story? No? It should be a lesson."

At dinner he weighted his gossip and airy moralizing with serviceable information. Jack learned that a Catholic could only obtain dispensation for a mixed marriage, if the non-Catholic undertook that all the children of the marriage should be brought up in the Catholic faith. It seemed an unequal stipulation, but the only alternative was for the Catholic to defy the Church and to renounce his faith, which was no less unequal. When Arden was gone to bed, Jack surveyed the problem from the standpoint of his family, of Barbara and of himself. There would be a bitter fight at Red Roofs and another at Crawleigh Abbey; but the alternative was to give up Barbara. Neither of them submitted easily to opposition.

He returned to London a few days before Easter, only concerned to wonder how a man prepared the ground before asking a girl to marry him; he had talked vaguely of admiration, but he had never made love to Barbara. And he must find out whether the Crawleighs regarded him as a persona grata. And he must explain to Barbara his financial position and the kind of life that a barrister led; and they must have a talk about this religious business....

Barbara herself, and the party which she had gathered for Easter at the Abbey, gave him generous opportunity. With Loring and his sister,—both persuaded by their mother "to give Babs one last chance"—with Summertown and Sally Farwell, Pentyre, Victor Knightrider, Gerald Deganway, Charles Framlingham and a leavening of the Crawleighs' official friends to entertain one another, there was no difficulty in slipping away unobserved. So long as Barbara distributed herself equitably at luncheon and dinner, no one seemed to miss her at other times; and, as Jack did not play bridge, some one had to talk to him in the evenings.

She welcomed him with the mood and language of their last night together in London.

"Well, I hope the practising barrister made a lot of money," she said to him the first evening after dinner.

"I had rather a good assize," he answered. "My fair share at Leeds and more than my fair share at Newcastle. In money, it wouldn't seem much to you, but I'm quite pleased."

A word of congratulation launched him on a conscientious survey of his fees and cases from the delivery of his first brief. In succeeding conversation he threw further slabs of information at her by schedule, talking of himself with simple-minded absorption. Finance was polished off the first night; the Waring family, three times sub-divided, occupied the following day, and with healthy relentlessness he overhauled Catholicism in particular and revealed religion in general.

The conversation, if one-sided and monotonous, was at least amicable until a smouldering brand from the theological bonfire, waved to life in the kindling breeze of personality, set her ablaze.

"Of course, the whole bag of tricks wants overhauling," said Jack of the Established Church and its liturgy. "When a fellow's ordained, he says he believes all sorts of things that he doesn't, really. Every congregation mouths responses like so many parrots, but if you tackled any single member with a plain question, he'd have to admit that he didn't believe the whole business exactly as it's set out in the pleadings. Well, I've got a legal mind. If you say Christ descended into Hell and on the third day rose again from the dead and ascended into Heaven, I want to know if you mean it literally or figuratively? That's one of the beauties of your Church; you don't admit any doubt or vagueness."

murmured Barbara.

"You believe that?"

"It was a quotation. I'm sorry."

"It's a logical point of view. With us you pick and choose. In the marriage service it's becoming the fashion for a girl to say she'll 'love and honour' her husband. Now, the Prayer Book says, 'love, honour and obey.' If I were a parson, I'd refuse to go on with the service until she'd said 'obey.'"

"But if she doesn't mean to?" asked Barbara. "I think it's degrading."

"If it comes to a tussle, the woman has to give in; so why is she degraded by recognizing it and promising beforehand?"

"She doesn't have to. You couldn't make me—even with a dog-whip."

Though he affected a laugh, Jack had many times regretted the phrase. Barbara kept it in the forefront of her memory and persistently threw it down as a challenge to herself, when her natural independence flagged.

"You'd obey me without that. You can't have two captains on one ship. I don't suppose that any modern husband goes about saying, 'I order you to do this'; he tries to dovetail their two lives into one——"

"Then there wouldn't be much obedience, if I always got my own way."

"That you certainly wouldn't do!" he laughed.

"What d'you mean?"

Jack looked down the long drawing-room and reflected before answering. It was the last night of his visit to Crawleigh Abbey, and he was hardly prepared for a declaration. Though he had conscientiously put Barbara in possession of all material information, she had received it without comment. In four days he had not brought her any nearer; sometimes it seemed as if she were not trying to help him, and all that he had achieved was to fall four days more in love with her. Instinctively he felt that this was not the most favourable time for a parade of authority; but he had defined his attitude towards every other relevant issue, and it was tidier not to leave his task unfinished. Before marriage or immediately after, he would have to indicate certain people whom he did not care for her to meet, certain things that he did not care for her to do. The theatrical connection, for instance, would have to be cut; Colonel Waring often said that, thirty years ago, an actress was never received at the big houses. Now there was a considerable group, ranging from Manders at the top to quarter-bred anonymities at the bottom, who regarded her as belonging to their world.

"If you were married to me, I should change your mode of life—drastically," he answered.

"What do you find so very unsatisfactory in it?"

Her tone was in itself a warning; but, if she challenged him to make out his case, Jack could not refuse the challenge.

"You're too big for your company," he began from the familiar text. "Take me as a typical case. I knew of you years before I knew you; and I—on account of your friends, you know—I'd have gone miles to avoid meeting you. To me—and the world at large—you were simply a girl who forced yourself into the limelight and got up to mischief with people that you simply ought never to have known. Since I've got to know you and like you, by Jove, I'd give ten years of my life to get unsaid the sort of things I used to hear about you. I remember thinking, before I met you, 'If she were my sister....'"

"What kind of things did you hear?" asked Barbara quietly.

"I needn't particularize," he answered.

Barbara shrugged her shoulders and relaxed her attention, only to concentrate it again as she found him particularizing in merciless detail. There were crimes, misdemeanours and sins of the spirit. The stolen car, the mangled chauffeur and the endless, unforgettable inquest were dragged to the light; Jack spared her the coroner's rasping comments, but he could not resist another allusion to the Surinam cable. There was a raided roulette-party, when Summertown had helped her into safety by the fire-escape. (She found time to wonder how he had heard of it; either Val Arden or Summertown was running up a bill against himself.) There was an embarrassing encounter at a night club, where she had gone with Sir Adolf Erckmann's party: all would have been well, if Sonia Dainton had not come with Webster and if Webster had not been drunk. As it was, there had been the makings of unpleasantness. George Oakleigh had taken Sonia home, Webster had become quite helpless; and, in trying to dispose of him, they had all attracted a good deal of notice. Then there was the episode of Madame Hilary. So much for the crimes.

"You take a great interest in the movements of some one you despise," commented Barbara. She wondered why she consented to listen to him, but she was unequal to the self-denial of going away while she was being discussed.

"My dear girl, these things fly from one end of London to the other almost before you've done them. You won't recognize how well known you are! D'you appreciate that I should let myself in for a first-class row with my people, if I told them that we were friends? All rot, of course; but there you are."

After the crimes, the misdemeanours—the innocent things which she was "too big" to do. The one tiresome phrase was reinforced by others as insistent and tiresome. Some one—probably his stiff little sister—had taught him the word "grisette." "That may be all very well for a grisette, but you...." Some one—probably his mother—had divided a girl's behaviour into what was "hoydenish" and what was not; Barbara felt that she had all the markings of a pedigree hoyden. He contributed a few phrases of his own, assuring her gravely that this or that was "simply not done, you know;" and, as other men drew breath before embarking on a new sentence, he introduced every new count in the indictment with an apology that was but a veiled further reproach. "I expect you think I'm an awful prude.... I may be old-fashioned, but I've always been brought up to believe...."

After the misdemeanours, the sins of the spirit.

"You admit that you're frightfully vain and spoiled," he began pleasantly. "You admit that you expect every one to do exactly what you want without even being asked...." He traced the deleterious effect of such vanity on her character. Whatever was going on—from a pageant to a sale of work—she must be in it; her photograph must be in every paper. And, when there was no opportunity for public display, she made it, forced it. Hence this chain of escapades; it was self-advertisement, and, God knew, she was too big for that sort of thing.

At first Barbara listened in amazement; then she became so angry that her attention wandered, as she debated whether to stalk out of the room or to turn on him with all her resources of invective. But to run away was to spare him his punishment. He should apologize for each word, on his knees. And when he had made recantation, he could go.

"If you were my wife, I should have to change all that," he ended.

Barbara touched her cheeks and was surprised to find them cool.

"You've—rather made mincemeat of me," she sighed, because a sigh loosed some of her pent anger, and she could not be sure of her speaking voice. "Jack, in addition to the vanity, do you think I've got any pride?... Let's go and see how the others are getting on. It's such a pity you don't play bridge."

As he got up, Jack touched her hand.

"I say, have I said anything to offend you?"

"A fly isn't 'offended' when some boy pulls its legs out one by one. Please let go my hand, Jack! You must admit I've listened patiently; I've not said a word in my defence—I suppose you think there's nothing to be said;—but I don't feel I can stand any more.... Or do you want to make me cry again?"

Her eyes opened and shut quickly; and, by the time that she turned to him, they were filled with tears.

"Barbara! It had to be said some time! But I honestly didn't mean to hurt you. Listen——"

"Not in my own house! I do count for something here! Don't make me cry! Don't humiliate me before all of them! It's only to-night. You need never see me again."

Her sudden abasement inflamed him as though he had struck her and she were begging for mercy.

"Barbara! forgive me! I want to say something to you." Though both were speaking almost in whispers, there was a change in his voice. Barbara looked at him mistily through a film of tears and saw that he was going to ask her to marry him before she was ready. When the time came, it should be of her choosing; and they would not be at one end of a room with three bridge-tables at the other.

"No! I want to talk to you. May I? It's my turn, Jack." As she smiled at him, a tear trickled down her cheek, and she brushed it away with her hand. He stared at her without understanding, for, though she could be regal or pathetic, she seemed incapable of ill-temper or resentment. "Don't you see that, with father, I was brought up in the limelight since I was a child? Try to imagine how much I've always done and then tell me if I'm likely to be content with—well, the very domestic life you say your sister leads. Remember, too, that I've a passion for some things, which you could never understand. You don't like Sir Adolf, no more do I, but I'd go anywhere for good music. And, more than that, I'd be friends with any one, if he had temperament and interested me. I want the whole of life.... If a thing's not wrong, I don't care whether it's unconventional: if there's nothing wrong in roulette, if I play it under my father's eyes at Monte Carlo, I'll play it in London; and, if there's a silly law to drive an innocent thing under ground, I'll play it under ground. 'Publish and be damned. Your affectionate Wellington.' I admire people who are too big to mind what's said in the servants' hall.... But don't let's wrangle on our last night! I'm sorry if I've disappointed you."

As she took a step towards the bridge-tables, Jack felt that he was losing her; yet he would only stultify himself by an apology.

"I'm afraid I don't put things very happily," he compromised.

"No more than that?"

"Well, it's your turn now."

"I could never criticize one of my guests."

She gave him time to see that no reply was possible, then took another step towards the bridge players. More strongly than ever he felt that he was losing her.

"I hope I shall be one of your guests again, Barbara."

She shook her head and smiled with tired gentleness. Jack discovered that she was capable, in her quiet passages, of great dignity, which contributed to his general conception of her as "big" and punished him more completely than if she had lost her temper and made a scene.

"But you can't like hurting me.... And I've tried to be so sweet to you. You don't want to come again?"

"But I do."

He hoped to hear her say "Why?" so that he could recover ground and secure a good jumping-off place for their next meeting.

"Then I'll ask you. I told you at Croxton that I loved doing what people asked. We shall be coming up to London next week. But I shall never make you see my point of view."

"I think I've made you see mine."

Barbara turned away without answering, and Jack interpreted her silence as surrender. She whispered good-night to her mother and went to her room for fear of insulting him in public. Everything could be forgiven except this last blatant, avowed assumption that he had bullied her into submission. His punishment became a matter of duty.