"Shall we go down before the crowd?" Jack asked.

"Oh, don't let's miss this!" Barbara begged. "'Dixie, all abo-o-ard for Dixie! Dixie! Take your tickets here for Dixie.'"

"I've found rather a good table in the musicians' gallery," he confided. "If we go now, we shall get it to ourselves."

"Let's go downstairs like everybody else," Barbara proposed hastily. As he revealed each new stage of careful preparation, she dreaded being left alone with him. "Are you very greedy, Jack, or only hungry? I love that one-step. Why did you drag me away in the middle?"

They entered the banqueting-hall to the jig and stamp of rag-time overhead; Barbara was still humming, as she drew off her gloves and sat down opposite him at a corner-table.

"You ought to be grateful to me for getting you a table before the rush starts. I can't stand rag-time, myself. It's killed decent dancing. What are you going to eat, Babs?"

"Oh, anything." She wished that the tables were nearer together and that the room were fuller. They were remote enough for Jack to become very confidential, if he wished; and it was impossible to talk him down, if he formally asked for five minutes of her undivided attention and forbade interruption. She sought inspiration in vain from the vaulted roof and high-placed gallery, the tattered standards hanging in double row into the middle of the room, the rough stone walls half-covered with panelling and the stained-glass windows at either end. To discuss architecture with Jack was unprofitable at any time. "I never expected to see you here," she told him again. "What have you been doing since last we met?"

"When did we meet last?" he asked her once more, with a nonchalance that made her look at him in amazement.

"It was at Ross House, soon after Easter," she answered with rare precision. "Don't you remember?"

"Oh, perfectly. I wanted to be sure that you did. It was hardly an evening that I should forget in a hurry."

Barbara was frightened and relieved at the same time. His deliberation and absence of embarrassment disconcerted her, but, in so far as his manner was vaguely threatening, she was vaguely comforted. If he wanted to punish her, she was well able to take care of herself; and she would far sooner hear reproaches than pleadings, though for once she would soonest of all be spared any kind of altercation.

"And what have you been doing ever since?" she asked again.

"I've just been received into your Church," he answered.

Overhead the music stopped to the accompaniment of a double stamp; it was as though the very orchestra were dumbfounded. After a moment's clapping, it started again, and Barbara sat through the encore with averted eyes and a frown of preoccupation, putting crumbs of bread into her mouth and eating salmon which nauseated her. She was conscious of mental cramp—and of nothing else, save perhaps that Jack was probably looking at her to mark how she received the news. When the music stopped a second time, there came a sound of voices from the stairs; and he glanced apprehensively over his shoulder as the first couples entered with flushed faces, pulling off their gloves and fanning themselves.

"Will you marry me now, Babs?" he whispered.

"I—can't!"

It was something to find that she could speak at all; but, if he began arguing, she was helpless. Rallying in desperation, she beckoned to Arden and Phyllis Knightrider.

"There's a table here," she pointed out. "Come and sit near me, Val, to shew that I'm forgiven for breaking my promise."

"One thought for a moment of starving oneself to death on your doorstep in alleged Oriental fashion," drawled Arden. "It would have entailed distressing privations, however, and one was persuaded by Miss Knightrider against one's more romantic judgement."

If Barbara could create a diversion, Jack determined not to be thrown out of his stride by it. He began to eat his supper with a show of relish which he felt to be incongruous after Barbara's emphatic and unqualified refusal. There was nothing else to do, and it made the absence of conversation less marked. Barbara had sent her salmon away unfinished and, refusing everything else, was beginning to fidget with her gloves; but, if he remained there all night, Jack was resolved to outstay Arden and to keep Barbara there until she had explained herself. In time she allowed him to give her some fruit. With every new couple the high babble of conversation and laughter swelled in volume until they were isolated in their corner. Behind the screen of voices Jack leaned forward and touched her wrist until she looked up.

"You say you can't. Why not?" he asked.

The words and tone were as she remembered them more than two months earlier, but this time there was no escape.

"Because I'm not in love with you."

She nerved herself to look him in the eyes so that he must be convinced in spite of himself. For a moment there was no change of expression; then, though the grouping of the features remained unaltered, the face seemed to stiffen; lines discovered themselves from nose to mouth, and the lips grew set and thin. Barbara gripped the seat of her chair with both hands. Greater even than fear was respect for a man who could control himself; for the first time she wished that she loved him, because he was "bigger"—to use his pet word—than she had thought; she would not mind telling him so, if it would do any good; she would not mind telling him that he was bigger than she was, but nothing could do any good now.

Jack tried to speak, and she saw that he had to sip champagne before the words would come.

"That was not the reason you gave," he said at length.

"It's the true reason."

"Then the other was a lie? Jim thought it might be, but I said I knew you too well for that. Then you've been lying to me all along? You never intended to marry me?"

"No."

The hateful charge was used as a dispassionate definition. Jack refused to grow angry, and Barbara felt her resistance wearing itself out against him.

"Jack——"

He enjoined silence with the slightest movement of one hand and reflected unhurriedly.

"You always said that money didn't weigh with you.... I gave you every chance of slipping in a friendly warning.... Why did you do this, Barbara? If you never meant to marry me, why did you deliberately——"

While he continued to speak with frozen self-restraint, she felt that she could not bear the end of his sentence.

"How was I to know?" she interrupted; and there was a note of sincerity in her voice, for she had never imagined that he loved her to the point of perjuring himself. "You say you gave me a chance of warning you.... How was I to know? Up to the end—that night at Ross House—you were abusing me and finding fault with me. You dared to tell me you'd said nothing that my father hadn't said a hundred times! If you thought you'd changed me.... You must have been mad; I let you abuse me because it wasn't worth arguing about, I knew I was right, I've proved I was right.... I know I haven't changed you and I never shall. You always despised me so much, you said I was vulgar, shallow, vain, heartless.... Did you expect me to understand that that was your way of shewing that you were in love with me?"

Jack touched his lips with one finger.

"We needn't take the whole room into our confidence," he whispered. "So this was your revenge? I congratulate you, Lady Barbara.... Or were you convincing me of my mistake? Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn't see you hadn't finished eating."

He laid his cigarette beside his plate and turned half round. Every one else seemed to be enjoying himself prodigiously. Twenty shrill-voiced conversations met and struggled; laughter swelled and died away. Some one proposed Jim's health and tried to coerce him into replying. Lady Loring appeared for a moment in the musicians' gallery, smiled contentedly on her handiwork and withdrew. Their lightness of heart was hard to bear, and the ecstasy in Violet's eyes was insupportable. Jack turned back to his own table. He was not going to marry Barbara; if he repeated it often enough, he might come to believe it; he was desperately tired and could not think what to do next.

A sudden hush, followed by a scrape of feet and the creak of moving chairs, greeted the opening bars of a waltz. Plaintive voices enquired for lost gloves, and in another minute Jack and Barbara had the room to themselves. She gripped the chair harder, bracing herself to receive her punishment; and, as he sat half asleep, she could have complimented him on his refined cruelty in making her wait for it. Gradually he seemed to see that the room had emptied, to guess that she expected him to speak; his expression changed, and, with it, her own dumb readiness to take whatever he might choose to mete out. There was still no anger, hardly even resentment; but his mouth was pursed in disgust, as though a toad had leaped on to his plate. Barbara felt herself aflame with desire to justify herself.

"I've finished now, if you want to smoke," she said. "Jack, I don't want to reopen this, you must see that it would be hopeless! You disapprove of everything I do. You may be right: we won't discuss that. I'm a gipsy, and you're—I don't know what you are."

Jack reminded himself again that he was not going to marry Barbara. For three months and more he had never doubted it; when Jim Loring frowned and hesitated and let fall apprehensive uncertainties, he had answered with easy confidence, as though challenged to declare his belief in the solar system. Three minutes, or less, was a short time for readjustment, but he was beginning to repeat the sentence with his brain as well as with his lips. And so far he had not publicly disgraced himself in any way....

"I don't think we'll discuss anything," he said.

Barbara moved her chair, but he did not seem to notice it: he noticed nothing, and the silence was unendurable. She asked for a cigarette, and he gave her one, silently lighting a match.

"I'm—sorry, Jack," she said at last.

"You're losing nothing," he answered.

"I'm sorry for your sake."

"Ah, you can't afford the luxury of a conscience, Lady Barbara."

"I thought you must have seen—after that night at Ross House...." she began hurriedly, but her voice and courage died away. "Lady" Barbara choked her.

"You took pains that I shouldn't see. We needn't go through this again? I took you at your word. You suggested one obstacle—one only,—and I removed it."

As he stood up, she saw him sway and for the first time understood the size of what she had done. She and Jack did not believe that immortal souls existed or could be imperilled, but if there were a jealous God who refused to have His name taken in vain....

"Jack——"

"Shall we go up-stairs?" he asked.

"I haven't finished my cigarette."

She tried to speak again, but stopped at an outburst of singing in the hall. "Geor-gie, what did you buy, what did you buy for Maud-ee?" Summertown and Framlingham waltzed into the room and swung recklessly between the tables to an accompaniment of falsetto small-talk. "Jolly floor, what? Have you been to many floors this season?" "Oh, hardly any, Miss Framlingham. I'm quite a little country mouse. Here, I say, what's the matter with this table?" Summertown subsided by the door, and Framlingham scoured the neighbourhood for food and drink. Their noise and high spirits were disturbing, but after one impatient glance over his shoulder Jack turned round and looked at Barbara. She was sitting lost in thought, with her chin on her hand, staring at the bubbles as they rose in her glass—puzzled but at ease. The long, exacting season had made her more haggard than ever, but Jack had learned to love and yearn for this wan, fragile beauty; her eyes were bigger and darker than usual, and a faint languor gave her added dignity. If he went on looking at her, Jack felt that he might strangle her in a passionate gust of jealousy and self-pity.

The horn of a car sounded through the open windows, and he looked at his watch.

"Lady Knightrider wants to leave early," he said. "We've got rather a long drive to Raglan."

"Don't go for a minute, Jack. I've got something to say to you."

It was that imperilling of soul—if there were souls and if they could be imperilled. Reparation was needed, but, unless she promised to marry him.... He would hardly want to marry her now....

"Can you spare me another cigarette?" she asked.

He handed her his case and sat down, waiting without a change of expression. Since he was not going to marry Barbara, everything else seemed wonderfully trivial. He rather hoped that she was not going to explain or apologize, because he was too tired for a scene, too tired to argue, too tired even to nod or say "yes" and "no" in the right place.... There was no point in sitting there, if she had nothing to say. And three hours earlier he had decided that, all things considered, it would be more proper not to announce their engagement until he had Lord Crawleigh's formal assent....

There was a sound of other voices in the hall, and George Oakleigh appeared in the doorway. He looked anxiously round the room and pounced upon the bachelor supper-party at his elbow. After a moment's earnest whispering, Summertown banged his fist on the table until the glasses rang.

"Not to put too fine a point on it, Hell," he cried. "One good thing—you're in this, too, Charles, my lad."

Framlingham emptied his glass and refilled it unhurriedly.

"To declare war in the middle of supper is not the act of a gentleman," he pronounced.

The phrase drove away Jack's mental drowsiness; Barbara forgot that she was even trying to think of anything to say; both sat upright. The possibility of war had long faded from their minds, and they welcomed it as a distraction.

"Is it declared?" Jack asked.

"Not yet," answered Oakleigh. "And we'll hope it won't be. But things are looking pretty serious, and Summertown's uncle has called with a car to fetch him back to barracks. I'm going to mobilize all of our soldiers, but I don't want any fuss, or we shall spoil Jim's party. Help to keep things going."

He hurried away, and Barbara looked blankly at Jack. "War!" she murmured. He said nothing; but his eyes, dull a moment before, were shining with excitement. He looked at his watch and rose quickly to his feet.

"Good-bye, Lady Barbara."

"But you're not a soldier!"

"I must get back to London. I'm going to ask Summertown for a seat in his car and then I must have a word with Lady Knightrider."

He hurried away with scant ceremony, leaving Barbara standing by the table. She began to collect her gloves and handkerchief, then sat down and tried to think dispassionately. It did not matter that she was beaten and that he could add "liar" and "coquette" to his other charges. He would never tell any one how she had behaved.... But he had run away without punishing her, and she wanted to be punished. Punished by him; she could not hand herself over to Providence. For a moment she tried to persuade herself that he was lying. But Jack was incapable of lying. Yet for weeks he must have lied with a grim and sanctimonious face. The world was standing on its head! She pictured his methodical, deliberate conversion—the first interview and first lie, the elaborate instruction in ritual and doctrine until he had told enough lies to convince the priest, the final reception into the Church with a final lie that would infallibly imperil a man's soul, if there were such things....

One sentimental idiot had shot big game in Uganda, when she would not marry him. Another had kept his bed for a week, pretending a broken heart. Jack said little; but, as she squandered his devotion, she felt that it would never come again. Perhaps her fear of him was the shell of love; certainly she would not have wasted ten minutes on a man who meant nothing to her. "Di'monds an' pearls.... Di'monds an' pearl I have thrown away wid both hands—and fwhat have I left? Oh, fwhat have I left?" The words came in one of Kipling's stories, surely.... But she could not remember.

The hall filled again with the sound of voices, and she hurried out rather than let herself be seen sitting alone and unexplained. Six young officers were hastily wrapping themselves in overcoats and golf-cloaks under the patronizing direction of Val Arden.

"They cast lots for one's raiment," he observed to Barbara, "and Summertown had the good fortune to draw one's violet-silk surtout. One could not wish it a worthier occupant. There used to be an inside pocket, and one recalls putting into it a trifle of cognac. They also serve who only stand the drinks."

Summertown was being dressed by his sister, who looked frightened in spite of his easy flow of facetious reassurance.

"Bless you, I'm all right!" he cried. "They wouldn't hurt a little thing like me, I should run away between their feet and get taken prisoner. You'll hear of me next as the regimental pet of the Death's Head Hussars. By the way, does anybody know who we're supposed to be fighting? My jolly old uncle never let that out—sly old dog! Good-bye, Babs! See you again soon."

As they shook hands, she suddenly remembered the scene in Webster's rooms when Jack, under the spell of Madame Hilary, talked of a war, which was hanging over their heads, and of his own instant death.

"Oh, my dear, I wish you weren't going!" she cried with such emotion that Sally Farwell stared at her.

"So do I. 'Haven't finished supper yet. Charles, my lad, d'you think that, if we went back for just a little one, we could manage to get left behind?"

Barbara turned quickly and walked towards the door. She knew that Summertown would be killed.... Her scepticism was a schoolgirl's; she refused to believe things because she was too ignorant to understand them. For aught she knew, there might be a Soul of Man, for which Man could be held to account....

Jack was talking earnestly by the steps, an overcoat and rug over one arm.

"I know nothing about the army," she heard Oakleigh say. "But any one of these fellows would tell you. Or you can try O'Rane. He was saying after dinner—in all seriousness—that, if Austria declared war, he'd raise a Foreign Legion and go and fight for Servia. He was through one of the Balkan wars, you know. But I can't believe there will be any fighting; it's on too big a scale, you'll have the whole world in flames. In your place I should do nothing for the present."

"But, if we are brought in, we shall have to raise every man we can lay hands on. I am partly trained; I was in the corps at Eton."

"I shall believe in war when I see it."

Barbara walked past them down the steps. She had not tried to catch Jack's eye; but he had seen her, and she hoped that he would follow her. The broad terrace was littered with chairs, as the deck of a steamer might be; but the night was turning cold, and she walked to the stone steps at the end without seeing any one. Then she heard the sound of an engine starting, and a muffled procession marched to the car. The murmur of subdued altercation reached her. "Charles, my lad, you're taking up too much room...." "I'm all right, I'll sit on the floor."... "That's a goodish hat Phil's wearing! Phil, if you perch on the radiator, you'll lend tone to the party...."

She watched Jack coming slowly down the steps. An apology would be merely insulting. There was only one possible reparation, and, though he might not accept it, she must at least offer it; if he flung it back at her, she would feel less guilty. Another hour, and she could think this to rights. But George was already calling the roll.

"Come along, Jack! You're keeping the whole show waiting," cried Summertown. "'The stars are setting, and the caravan starts for the Dawn of Nothing. Oh, make haste!' Or words to that effect."

Barbara took a step forward, as Jack shook hands with Oakleigh and ran across the terrace to the car. He might wound her vanity again, if she could solace her soul with the knowledge that she had promised him all that she had to give.

"Jack!"

Her voice was a timid whisper; the audience of jostling, laughing young officers daunted her. What would they think of her, standing alone on the terrace, running up to the car and insisting that she must speak to Jack?

George came down the steps and slammed the door. "Right away!" she heard, and the car moved slowly towards her. At the corner of the terrace the head-lights swung dazzlingly on to her, and she threw up her arm as though they would blind her. Some one began to sing, "Dixie! All aboard for Dixie!" A voice murmured drowsily, "Dry up! I want to go to sleep." The gears changed with a grind; Barbara looked up to see a single red tail-light.

"Jack! Before you go! I want to speak to you!"

She was calling with all her strength now, but the beat of the engine drowned her voice.

"Jack! Please, Jack!"

She hurried down the stone steps at the end of the terrace and ran a few paces along the drive, repeating his name with a sob and stretching out her arms to the vanishing pin-point of red light.

George was still standing in the door-way when she returned at a limp. For a moment she was afraid to speak lest she began to cry.

"I've got a stone in my shoe," she announced at length.

He smiled and offered her his arm.

"You're looking tired, Barbara. Have you had any supper?"

Only the kind and well-intentioned could ask innocent questions which hurt like the thrust of a needle under a finger-nail. At one time it seemed as though she would never escape from the banqueting-hall.

"I've had supper, thanks," she answered, resting one hand on his shoulder, as she felt for the stone in her shoe. Then she remembered a similar act and attitude, when she and Jack stood breathless at the end of the Croxton village street on the night of their first meeting; and she limped to a chair. "It's dreadful to see all those boys going off. I feel that some of them will never come back."

"But we aren't even at war yet," George protested.

"Everybody seems to think we soon shall be. Didn't I hear Jack Waring talking to you about trying to get a commission?"

"Well, he wants to be prepared, of course. It's a military family, you see."

They walked upstairs together and stood in the doorway of the ball-room. Colonel Farwell's car had come and gone very unobtrusively; no one seemed to miss the absentees, and Loring and Mayhew, O'Rane and Arden were holding the party together with tireless energy and zest. At three o'clock Lady Knightrider and those who had long distances to cover reluctantly sent for their cars, but the house-party and its near neighbours danced indefatigably. At sunrise the curtains were flung aside and the lights turned out; the last of many suppers was eaten on the terrace at half-past four, and at five O'Rane organized a slow march-past of the remaining cars in honour of Loring and Violet who stood on the top of the steps, bowing with weary joyousness their acknowledgement of the last toast.

Barbara had been compelled at first to do her share of dancing, but, when the band escaped to catch an early train back to London, she took possession of the piano. It was again horribly like that first night at Croxton, when Jack sat in some embarrassment by her side on the dais; but at least she was not expected to talk or to pretend that she was enjoying herself. When Arden joined her, she resigned the piano to him and slipped upstairs to her room. She was down again a moment later, trying to decide whether it was more intolerable to be with others or alone. Her room was too tranquil and cool; she had been so happy, as she dressed, so determined to enjoy herself;—and she had nothing on her mind. Through the open window she heard Arden's hand and voice at the piano, punctuated by burst of cheering from the strip of drive under the terrace. The engines of the cars thrashed and beat, then grew calm and jerked into sound again as one after another shot forward; Loring and Violet were hoarse but inexhaustibly happy, and, as Barbara ran downstairs, she told herself that she too wanted to congratulate them again; in their present state they were too rare to be wasted.

"What's the next item, Jim?" panted O'Rane, as she came on to the terrace. His hair was disordered, his shirt and collar crumpled and his arms full of the champagne glasses which the departing guests had tossed to him after the final toast. But he was ready to go through the night's revelry from the beginning. "I'll race you to the river and back!"

"My little man, I assure you that you will do no such thing," Loring answered. "If any one wants to dance any more, you can play to them; if any one wants anything more to eat and drink, you can supply their wants. I think it's high time we were all in bed. You're certainly going indoors before you catch cold," he said to Violet. "And you, Sally. And you, Babs."

He rounded them up until Barbara alone remained behind with the chill wind of early morning beating on her bare shoulders and chest and blowing unchecked through her gossamer clothes. After the earlier insufferable heat, this cold air with its burden of dew and night-scented stock wrapped itself round her body like a bandage laid on burning flesh. It purified, too, like a mountain torrent of melting snow pouring over her arms and breast. Some girl in a book—it was by Gissing, but she could not remember names to-night—had bathed naked in the sea by moonlight—to cleanse her spirit because she had suffered men to touch her body; this wind, as yet unwarmed by the orange sun of dawn, served her in place of the kindly sea....

"If you want triple pneumonia, Babs, that's the way to get it," said Loring.

His voice suggested a new train of thought, and she pursued it without answering. Some young wife in a book—it was by Balzac, but she could not remember names to-night—broke her heart because she fancied that her husband had ceased to love her; no longer caring for life, she worked herself into a violent sweat and stood in the dew by the brink of a pond until she had given herself consumption.... But to take refuge in suicide was to shew that you were unfit to have been born, that you were unequal to life; this, even this night of horror, was a thing to be mastered; Barbara luxuriated in life as a thing to be dominated and enchained like a destroying flood or fire....

"It's such a wonderful morning, Jim," she said, as she turned.

"Yes, but, as we've managed to get through one whole night without quarrelling, don't catch a chill at the end and put the blame on me. I thought, all things considered, that it went off very well."

"I suppose so.... Jim, when I'm responsible for a thing, I never put the blame on other people. You can't deny me courage."

"My dear girl, I can't remember a single occasion on which you've taken the blame for anything. Perhaps you'll reply that you never were to blame for anything, and we might argue about that for a very long time. Come to bed; you're shivering."

She walked with him into the house and looked wonderingly at the clock, while he barred the door behind them. Six! It seemed hardly worth while going to bed....

"Are you tired, Jim? Too tired to smoke a cigarette and listen to me blaming myself?"

Loring's heart seemed to sink. He had seen her with Jack and he had listened to an eager but unconvincing story designed to shew that, in Jack's eyes, it made all the difference in the world whether he motored to Gloucester and arrived in London in time for breakfast or breakfasted at the Castle or in Raglan and returned to London by a morning train.

"I'll listen—with pleasure," he said.

Barbara looked for a comfortable seat and led the way to a sofa in the smoking-room.

"I believe Jack Waring has discussed me with you?" she began.

"I think he's told me everything that was to be told," answered Loring.

"Including to-night?" It was an idle question, for Jim would have been more Rhadamanthine if Jack had described the last disillusionment. "Well, you know he asked me to marry him; and I refused, because he wasn't a Catholic. He is a Catholic now—in name; he asked me again to-night, and I refused again."

"Why?"

Men preserved a rare sex-loyalty. Loring's tone was Jack's; his face was setting with the same rigidity, and he would shew as little mercy.

"I didn't feel I was in love with him."

"Were you ever in love with him? A good many people thought you were."

Barbara pondered deeply over her answer.

"I could never be in love with any one who wasn't gentle with me.... I—rather admired Jack, because he was clean and honest and had the courage to say things that I'd have hit another man for——"

"But you were afraid of him," Loring murmured. "Go on! You wanted to shew him how wrong he was——"

"I owed it to myself to shew him what I was really like, not what the halfpenny press thinks I am. He fell in love; and then, when he asked me to marry him, I lost my head——"

"But you never told him that you weren't in love with him," Loring interrupted again.

Barbara's eyes fell.

"I'd lost my nerve as well as my head," she sighed. "He'd have thought so much worse of me. I didn't see him after that until to-night; I hoped it was all over. I told him again that I couldn't marry him and then I told him the truth—that I wasn't in love with him. And then—then he saw everything.... Jim, I'm not asking for mercy from him or you or any one; I'm telling you the truth and I want to be judged on that. Until to-night I honestly didn't know how bad it was, I didn't know that I was anything more than some one who attracted him——"

"You accursed women never do!" Loring broke in. "Well, go on! You played with him and led him on and checked him till he proposed—men, hard-headed men who aren't drunk, don't propose when they're merely 'attracted'—he proposed, and you told him an extremely ingenious lie which I should have thought your extravagant superstition might have kept you from telling. Then! Then, when he pays you the compliment of thinking you a woman of honour, you admit it's a lie. Go on, Barbara!"

She shook her head slowly and leaned wearily forward, resting her chin on her hand.

"It's no good, Jim. If any one hits you often enough in the same place, you cease to feel. You want to hurt me—I don't wonder!—but you can't; I'm too bruised. No, he said hardly anything. It wasn't necessary to say anything; he knew...."

Loring strode to the table, picked up a cigarette and flung it back into the box. He found that Barbara was watching him with wonder in her eyes and waited till his indignation was under control.

"And so you got a new emotion," he sneered. "Two, in fact. You played cat and mouse with a man's happiness; and then you had the morbid pleasure of letting yourself be flayed alive.... I should think it will be your last emotion for some time."

"As you like, Jim. But it'll be easier if I tell you everything and then let you criticize.... Jack hardly said a word. It was sinking in; and it was sinking in with me, too. I'm not a coward, Jim——"

"Oh, leave your vile little posturings out!"

"I'm not a coward," she repeated patiently. "Standing out there a moment ago, I thought how easy it would be to get pneumonia and die and end everything—Don't say 'another emotion'! A coward would have. But I'd decided to accept the consequences. I was on the point of telling Jack he could marry me, if he wanted to, when that car came and everybody started running about.... I tried to catch him before he left, I ran after the car.... That's all, Jim."

Looking at her, he saw that she was indeed too much bruised to feel.

"And now?" he asked.

Barbara shook her head hopelessly and stared across the room out of the window.

"He can do what he likes with me. He can marry me and beat me. He can sit—dear God! he can sit as he sat to-night, looking at me as though I were a bundle of rags and sores that had thrown its arms round him. He can tell people.... Or he can keep me to himself and sneer and torture me when he's in the mood. He can take me and break my heart and fling me away after a week, if he likes. There's nothing, nothing I won't do!"

Her vehemence startled him for a moment, but her tone and phrasing were too rhetorical to be convincing.

"I admire your capacity for getting the last ounce even out of repentance," Loring murmured.

For a moment Barbara did not seem to have heard him; then she got up and walked out of the smoking-room and across the hall to a studded oak door. She rattled the handle for a moment and then came back.

"Where's the key of the chapel?" she demanded. "You believe in something, I suppose? And I suppose you admit that even I would stop short of some things. Give me the key! I'll swear to you on the image of the Blessed Virgin——"

"I don't think I should dip any deeper into that kind of thing if I were you."

"I'll swear by anything! You see those two matches? That's the sign of the Cross. I swear by the Cross that I'll offer myself to Jack! And he can do what he likes with me."

"Wouldn't it be rather a waste of breath to talk like this to Jack?"

"You mean I'm not in earnest? I swear to you, Jim, that I'll beg him to marry me, if he still wants to."

The clock struck half-past six, and Loring shivered.

"I wish to God you'd died before you ever met him!" he muttered. "What the devil's the good of telling me all this?"

"If I hadn't told you, nobody'd have known. Jack wouldn't tell. I wanted to commit myself before I had time to go back. Now I'll give the whole of my life trying to make him happy, to atoning...."

Loring caught her wrists and gripped them.

"Leave him alone!" he cried. "It would be suicide if you married after this."

"If he wants me...." Barbara began again. "Jim, can't you see that I'm trying to save my soul? He can have everything. I'm quite young, and he can have all my youth and life, my looks, anything that I've got, anything that I am. He can take it all—or he can fling it all back at me."

She stretched out her hands to him. Loring pulled her to her feet and led her to the door.

"Leave him alone!" he repeated roughly.

Barbara left by the ten o'clock train, while the rest of the house-party was still in bed. Her maid was well used to sudden changes of plan, but she ventured to point out that the family was at the Abbey and that the house in Berkeley Square was closed.

"Well, it will have to be opened, then," said Barbara.

She had not gone to bed, and there were dark rings round her eyes; but she was clear-headed and determined. Her maid tried to tempt her with breakfast before their long drive, but Barbara did not want to eat until she had seen Jack. In the train she could hardly keep her eyes open; but, until she had seen Jack, she did not want to sleep. Every one seemed to be hurrying to London, as though there would be later news of the war there; and she heard a far away babble of what Lichnowski had said, what Kuhlmann had proposed for localizing the war.... But she was wondering only what Jack was about. The luncheon-car attendant slid open the door, but she shook her head at him; the idea of food nauseated her, and she was glad to have the compartment to herself for half an hour.

When her fellow-travellers returned, they found her with her head against the window and her arms limply by her side. One of them hurried away for water, and, when she shivered and opened her eyes, some one had laid her flat on the seat, and a voice—the first kind voice that she had heard for days—was saying:

"Carriage a bit hot for you? Or perhaps you're not a good traveller. I'm a doctor—or used to be. Just going up to see if the War Office wants volunteers in case of war. I saw you didn't come along to lunch; when did you last have anything to eat?"

"I've really forgotten," Barbara answered.

"I thought so. Well, a cup of coffee and a biscuit, eh? And I'll try to get you a little more room."

He whispered to the men who were standing in the corridor and distributed them in the other compartments until he and Barbara were alone. After the coffee she felt less sick and from Swindon to London she was able to get some sleep. At Paddington the doctor wanted to take her home, but she protested that her maid could do all that was necessary, and he left her with an urgent recommendation to bed.

Barbara thanked him for all his kindness and ordered two taxis. One took the maid and the luggage to Berkeley Square; in the other she drove to the County Club and enquired bravely for Mr. Waring. The porter replied that he had left the club immediately after luncheon, and she made her way to the Temple. Hitherto she had not dreamed that there would be any difficulty in finding him; but Middle Temple Lane, narrow, cold and almost empty, daunted her. It was the first of August, and the rows of names painted at the foot of each staircase looked ownerless and impersonal as grave-yard head-stones in the general desolation. As she pattered up two flights of stone steps to Jack's chambers, the giddiness which had overtaken her in the train returned and stopped her short with a pain in her side. The walls were advancing and retiring, the banisters swayed and the floor of the landing heaved gently like a pitching boat.

When she felt steadier, she knocked at the door and waited patiently until she heard feet shuffling in the distance. A pink-faced elderly man informed her that Mr. Waring had gone away for the Long Vacation; he spoke with a strong Cockney accent, and Barbara decided that he must be the clerk with whom she had contended by telephone and whom she had imagined to be obsequious and yet sinister, with red eyes, short hair and bitten nails, a second Uriah Heep.

"Do you know where I can find him?" she asked.

"The first address he give me was at Raglan——"

"Ah, but he came back to London last night. He's not been here to-day?"

"No, miss."

"Do you know his address in Hampshire? Do you think you could telephone to find out whether he's there?"

The clerk scratched his head and referred to a list of numbers pinned in the passage by the telephone. Barbara had disturbed his afternoon sleep, but she was an uncommonly pretty young woman, some one to relieve the monotony of the moribund chambers; expensively dressed, too, and one who would liberally repay a little trouble. His curiosity was whetted by her coming to see young Waring; still waters ran deep....

"If you'll come in and sit down, miss," he suggested hospitably. "What nime shall I siy?"

"Lady Barbara Neave. You needn't—I mean, I don't want to speak to him. It's just the address."

"I see. Had the pleasure o' talking to you once before on the 'phone, my lidy."

"Ah, yes."

Barbara walked into a shabby room with two scarred writing tables, a threadbare carpet and four hard little armchairs. One wall was covered by a book-case filled with Law Reports, old, discoloured volumes of the "Annual Practice" and standard works on Pleading, Criminal Law and Procedure, Real Property and the like. A few pounds would have freshened the dingy room out of recognition and perhaps even given it a personal note, but Jack was insensible to beauty and ugliness alike; he noticed the peeling yellow wall-paper as little as he noticed the intoxicating afternoon sun on the river; he had nothing in common with her.... She remembered the promise which she had made to herself and began to look at the papers on his table—long, white bundles tied with pink tape and engrossed with old-fashioned lettering which she could hardly read. These must be briefs, set out to look imposing, for many were grey with dust. There was an unexplained red sack, embroidered with his initials and fastened with a red cord; and a small black box with his name in white letters, containing an absurd wig. This was his life, a life which absorbed him....

Outside in the passage the clerk began a sing-song monologue.

"Trunks, miss, please. Trunks, if—you—please. Is that Trunks? I want Lashmar four seven. This is Holborn double four nine double-two. No! Nine! Double-four nine double-two. Thank you." He shuffled into the room and smiled familiarly at Barbara. "They'll call me when I'm through. Now may I get you a cup of tea, me lidy?"

Barbara thanked him, but refused the tea. The Cockney accent was intensified when he spoke on the telephone, and it reminded her once again of the winter afternoon when she had tried to drag Jack away from a consultation, the afternoon of her visit to Webster's flat. If she had stopped then, there would now be nothing to regret or to repair. Her fatal step was to invite him to dinner that night merely because she wanted the support of some one solid and well-balanced. Since that day she had never been able to decide how she felt towards him; she had been unable to tell Loring a few hours before. If, instead of always frightening her, he could have shewn a little gentleness.... George Oakleigh, to whom she was nothing, always helped her into a cloak as though she were the most fragile and precious thing in the world; and she became rebellious and reckless, when any one was harsh to her. Jack would order her home after a ball like a drill-sergeant; George came up two minutes later and said, "I wonder whether you'll let me take you home? You're looking so white and tired." It was more than a difference of manner. Jack never realized that a girl could be hungry for tenderness, but love was nothing without affection.... And love was always easier to give than affection.

The telephone rang, and the clerk reported that Mr. Waring was not in Hampshire nor expected there for nearly another week. As Barbara walked downstairs and drove home, she tried to think of any means of getting into touch with him which her tired brain had not already suggested. At worst she could always write, but she wanted to throw her pride at his feet to be trampled and bruised, she wanted to look him in the eyes without flinching or begging for mercy....

In the train it seemed as if the whole world were coming to London, but London was now empty of every one that she wanted to see. Summertown, who might have useful information, could not be found in his rooms or in barracks; Framlingham was "expected back any minute." She called a second time at the County Club, but Jack had not returned. And, after dining by herself in her bare, half-resurrected bedroom, she telephoned with carefully disguised voice. At the third failure, she abandoned his club; to welcome humiliation from Jack was hardly the same thing as to accept it from hall-porters and page-boys....

Though she was a night's sleep in arrears, she could not lie still in bed. An old French clock with a squeaking, high note that reminded her absurdly of Jack's clerk, struck midnight, one and two. She turned on the light and reached for her writing-case.

"I don't apologize, because no apology is adequate; I don't seek forgiveness, for, though I honour and admire and wonder at you and your devotion to some one who never deserved a thousandth part of it, I don't believe any one has the greatness of soul to forgive me. I am writing to say that, if you still want me, I will do whatever you ask. I can never make amends. But I will try with all my heart and soul and mind and strength.

Barbara."

She threw the letter into the writing-case and turned the key. A second sleepless night followed the first, but she was buoyed up by excitement and the sense of a purpose to fulfil. The Sunday papers dragged war from the middle-distance into the foreground, and, as she walked in a parched and unfamiliar Park before luncheon, she felt that Jim would not be able to keep away from London much longer. On Monday morning she heard that he was returning next day, and on Tuesday afternoon she called at Loring House.

"Jim, I don't care what you think of me, but you've got to help me," she began.

He saw a pinched face lit by feverishly bright eyes, whose pupils contracted and dilated as he looked into them.

"I'm afraid this has rather come home to roost, Babs," he said gently. "I'm sorry; honestly, I am."

She was so broken-spirited that he found himself drawing her to him and kissing her forehead. At the touch of his lips her muscles relaxed until he was supporting her weight with one arm.

"Ah, kiss my eyes, Jim!" she whispered. "They're aching so terribly! I want to sleep; and I'm haunted.... What am I to do? I can't find him!"

"I shouldn't try to. Babs, you know Jack always had the pride of the devil; he's probably very sore. And this is the first time that a woman has played any kind of trick on him; I don't suppose it'll be the last, but you can be sure that he feels that the bottom's been knocked out the universe."

"But I want to help him! If I can give him anything——"

"He doesn't want you now."

"After doing what he did? Jim, if I'd loved a man as he loved me, I'd do anything to get him, to get him back! There'd be nothing left in life without him!"

"One thinks so at first. But, when love dies, resentment is a workable substitute. Leave it alone, Babs. I must run away now, because I want to talk to the War Office about taking a commission, if war breaks out. Jack's doing the same.... By the way, I'm standing by to have House of Steynes and the Castle and the place at Market Harborough turned into hospitals. If you want something to do, you can apply to be taken on as a nurse. In six months from now, when the war's over and forgotten, it'll be time enough to move. I begged Jack to go slow and think the thing out, because—frankly, Babs—I didn't know what you were up to; and I beg you to think and go on thinking and to wait till you're cool. You hardly know what you're doing now; and, if I know anything of men, Jack's a raving lunatic."

He moved haltingly to the door. Barbara followed with bent head.

"And you want me to leave him like that?"

"You can't mend things at present—if ever."

"And in the meantime he may take a commission and go out——"

"And be killed," said Loring, as she hesitated. "Let's face it."

"And be killed," she replied. "Jim, I can't sit with my hands folded.... What d'you think Judas Iscariot felt like during the Crucifixion?"

Loring shrugged his shoulders and opened the door for her without answering. For the first time that day he doubted her sincerity. It was terribly in keeping with her love for the dramatic, the bizarre, the sensational, the gigantic for her to be comparing herself with Judas Iscariot....