1

When I first met Sir Aylmer Lancing, I was a very young and very impecunious member of the Diplomatic Service; he was in early middle life and a millionaire many times over. It was a time of mental green-sickness with me, when I had an undergraduate's morbid craving for ideas, something of an undergraduate's contempt, too, for those to whom ideas made no appeal. In describing Sir Aylmer as a man without ideas, I am saying something which he would have endorsed and interpreted to mean far more than I intended. He had no ideas outside his business, though within it he shewed a deliberate, dogged objectivity, the sublimation of commonsense, which was staggering and irresistible as a battering-ram. I have met no one with whom the essential was so invariably the obvious. One day, when we were crossing together to America, I asked him what were the qualities which made most for success in any career. He answered, for all the world like the tritest of stage millionaires, "Always know what you want and go for it; always be quite clear about what's going on in your own mind."

Lancing left an estate of over twenty millions; I had made before the war about two hundred thousand pounds; despite the difference I boldly affirm that the first intellectual quality for success is an ability to know what is going on in other people's minds. Bertrand Oakleigh has the quality in a high degree. I made fun of him, indeed, over many years, because he was so oracular. At his house in Princes Gardens, in the Smoking-Room and at the Club he would sit looking up at the ceiling with a long black cigar jutting defiantly from under his heavy walrus moustache, always a little more profound and unhurried than the rest of us, always armed with a general principle, always ready with a philosophic theory, sometimes paradoxical and usually pretentious. But, when he dropped what George once called his "sneers and graces," forgot to be prejudiced or pontifical, he was shrewdly intelligent. Had he been less indolent, less fond of gossip, less detached and content to be the amused spectator, he could have made a considerable political position for himself, for he had a rare faculty of hearing innumerable opinions on the same subject, melting them down, so to say, and producing a prophecy. But, as he grew older, he would not take the trouble to think for himself or to ascertain what others were thinking.

I went to him for advice on the results of my visit to Grayle's house in Milford Square.

"Well, I take it that the one person we're interested in is David," he said by way of giving me a lead.

The remark was characteristic of his love for O'Rane, but I am afraid it was also indicative of his general aversion from women and of his dislike for Mrs. O'Rane in particular, a dislike which dated back to a time long anterior to her marriage. I was weakly ready to go farther and interest myself in her, too, if only on account of her youth and an obstinate belief that youth has a good title to happiness.

"Well, we're looking for the best solution," I suggested, "not meting out justice. Grayle and Mrs. O'Rane are waiting for O'Rane to file a petition. That was her message. Now, O'Rane's never said whether he'll divorce her or not; probably he hasn't made up his mind, and certainly I don't know his views on divorce. She's in an impossible position—socially—as long as she lives with Grayle without marrying him; and Grayle's position will be very uncomfortable as soon as the story gets about. It's enough to spoil his political career; whereas he'll live it down, if there's a conventional divorce and he lies quiet for a few months. If O'Rane wants to take his revenge, he need only refuse to set her free."

"He's not looking for revenge," said Bertrand oracularly.

"Then you'd say—anyone would say—that the kindest and most generous thing he could do would be to divorce her. I'm only uncertain because I know something of Grayle; I presume he'll marry her, but, when the honeymoon period's over, he'll make her supremely unhappy. Perhaps that's no more than she deserves, but, if O'Rane thought she'd be unhappy by marrying Grayle, conceivably he might exercise his power to prevent it."

"Conceivably he might," Bertrand assented dryly.

"Well, those are the alternatives—to divorce or not to divorce. I'm amazed to find how well the secret's been kept, but it can't be kept indefinitely. It happened to be me last night, but Tom, Dick or Harry might just as well have made the discovery. Any day now you may have a nauseating scandal. We none of us want that, and O'Rane does nothing to stop it."

For a moment Bertrand dropped his omniscient manner and shrugged his shoulders with slow helplessness.

"What do you suggest he can do?" he asked.

"Have the minor scandal of a divorce—I regard that as less bad than the common knowledge that she's been living for weeks, months, years with a man who's not her husband,—get it over quickly and give people a chance of forgetting it. If he won't do that, let him see if he's got any power to keep them from living together. I don't think he has. Grayle has sufficient money, his position's not big enough to make him susceptible to blackmail——"

"You may take it that David's got no power," Bertrand interrupted.

"Well, it's your turn," I said a little impatiently.

Bertrand stroked his moustache and closed his eyes sleepily.

"I'll answer your specific question. You know who she's living with and you can tell David or not, as—you—like. It won't make a pennyworth of difference," he added cheerfully. "You see, there's one thing you're leaving out, Stornaway, the only thing that matters. David wants her back. I could see that on the day itself, when he'd caught them, when she decamped.... Nothing on earth will make him divorce her—for purely selfish reasons, if you like; he can't and won't let her go. But I don't know that you'll do much good by putting a pistol of that kind at her head. I've known that young woman on and off for about ten years. I don't see her knocking at the door and saying, 'Oh, by the way, as I can't live with the man I want to, I've come back.' Your general question what to do I can't answer. At least, we can only go on waiting——"

"And praying that other people won't find out?" I asked.

"They will, I'm afraid. Well, Sonia's utterly reckless, I gather; she doesn't care who knows. Grayle wouldn't have cared in the old days. When he was living with her predecessor—you know, the wife of the man in the Brazilian Legation;—Grayle's so untidy in his amours; they always overlap—it was common property, they went almost everywhere together, she took the head of his table. Since those happy, careless times Grayle has discovered political ambitions. From the fact that not more than a handful of people know, I judge that Grayle wants to keep the thing quiet; I'm prepared to bet that Grayle would like best of all to be free of the whole tangle and, if he can't do that, he'd like the divorce to come on as quickly as possible. There's another thing you've left out. Do you suppose Grayle had contemplated a scandal, a divorce, the necessity of marrying the woman?"

"I don't suppose anyone in his position sits down and thinks it out in cold blood," I said.

Bertrand opened his left eye and looked at me with a malicious smile; then closed it and opened the right.

"Some do, some don't," he answered. "That's been my experience. I don't much mind your healthy incontinent animal, but I hate your continent calculating man—the creature who regulates his passions by his fears. He's artificial, to start with, and he's dangerous. Now, I sit here like the sailor's parrot. Grayle is becoming the calculating animal, Grayle for the first time in his life feels that he has a reputation to lose, Grayle is combining disreputable tastes with a decorous exterior."

Bertrand paused to chuckle cynically.

"Well?" I said.

"Well? Everybody seems to leave out one thing in his calculations, and Grayle was no exception. I put it to you a moment ago that he never contemplated the position he's in now; I suggest that Grayle saw a very beautiful young woman and decided, as you'd expect of him, that she was fair prey. He studied her carefully. She wasn't to be bought, because throughout her life she's been receiving everything and giving nothing in return; she wasn't to be drugged, because her head's strong and her nature's cold; she wasn't to be cajoled—Beresford was doing the chivalrous devotion business, and she treated him like a tame cat, which is what he was;—Grayle discovered that the only thing to do was to bully her. He went away, neglected her, snubbed her when they met—enough to mortify her without even suggesting he cared enough to try and hurt her,—shewed her quite plainly that he could get on without her. Down she came with a run and began to make advances to him. He was too busy to waste time on her. She was piqued, she began to throw herself at him until at last he got her into his power.... I don't know who made her think she'd any cause to be jealous of Miss Merryon; it may have been Grayle, she may have evolved it for herself to excuse her leaving her husband; certainly she lashed herself into thinking it was all true, and that was Grayle's opportunity. But, once more, he never thought of anything more than a passing intrigue, which would have been easy enough with the husband away three months at a time. Unfortunately the husband turned up unexpectedly just as the intrigue began, and that lifted everything on to a much higher plane. Grayle cut and ran like a boy caught robbing an orchard—to be followed a couple of hours later by the woman." Once off the subject of O'Rane, Bertrand was enjoying himself prodigiously. "I would have given something to see his face when she arrived. Now, in my experience, there are mighty few crimes and cruelties that the female won't commit to protect the male—the male she's interested in;—she'll lie and thieve—and we've probably both of us seen her fixing the blame on the wrong man, letting him be cited as co-respondent to save her lover. Well, Beresford was sacrificed to protect Grayle; Grayle himself, who'd stayed behind in England to carry out the intrigue, used the excuse of his mission to the Front to cover his tracks. For two months and more he's contrived to keep the thing secret. Do you imagine he isn't ready—however much infatuated about her he may be or may have been—to get rid of her and start again unembarrassed? When we talk about lifelong devotion, we none of us expect to be taken at our word."

Bertrand opened his eyes to look at me, and I saw that he was shaken with noiseless chuckles of malice. I could not share in his merriment.

"I don't see how this helps," I said. "She wants a divorce, he wants to get rid of her, and O'Rane—she won't come back to him, and, if she did, I can't conceive of his taking her back."

"Then you don't know David and you've not had much experience of young men in his state of mind," answered Bertrand with assurance. "In the meantime you can do nothing and you'd better wait till the story begins to get round London. It may be weeks or it may be months, but that little scandal is not going to lie hid for ever."

In spite of Bertrand there was one thing that I could do, and I did it when next I met O'Rane. It was intolerable, to my way of thinking, that he should be allowed to meet Grayle in ignorance of the blow which Grayle had dealt him. To do the fellow justice, I had never seen him seeking O'Rane's company either before or after, but I could not stomach the idea that O'Rane might unsuspectingly join him at dinner or even bid him good-night. I broke the news on my autumn visit to Melton. As soon as I approached the subject, O'Rane's face grew rigid; when I had finished, he said, "Oh, that was it? I see. Thank you."

Our brief meeting took place in October, and I do not know whether O'Rane came more than once to London until the Christmas holidays. I did not see him, certainly, and I have never heard whether he ran across Grayle. About a week after our meeting, I happened to be dining with the Maitlands and once more found Grayle among my fellow-guests. Until that moment I had not tried to think what line of conduct I should follow on meeting him; I do not yet know what is the conventional course. When Lady Maitland went to the drawing-room, however, and he moved unconcernedly into the chair next mine, I had no difficulty in arriving at a decision. Grayle was middle-aged, rich, of unimpaired physique; he had tasted most kinds of enjoyment, his life had been brutishly happy and brutally successful; this last intrigue meant as little to him as a kiss snatched from an unreluctant dairymaid. It meant more to O'Rane.

I waved away the decanter which Maurice Maitland was pressing upon me and asked if he would make my apologies to his wife and allow me to slip away unobserved to finish some work which I had been compelled to take home. A day or two later I entered the House as Grayle was leaving it. He turned back and requested the favour of three minutes' conversation with me.

"I just want to understand," he began with an outward show of reason and an underlying menace. "I knew you knew, of course, but I didn't suspect you of so much melodrama. Am I to take it that you don't want to meet me?"

I am afraid that the threatening high voice left me undaunted.

"Grayle," I said, "you must admit you've been a pitiful, heartless cad over this."

"You don't want to meet me?" he repeated. "I only want to be sure of my ground."

"You remembered, of course, that O'Rane was blind?" I went on.

He dropped the menace and assumed an expression of mild perplexity.

"I'm afraid I don't follow where you come in in all this," he said, running his fingers through his luxuriant flaxen hair. "I'm quite ready to meet O'Rane here or—elsewhere. If he likes to plead blindness as an excuse, he can."

"And you will only plead it as an opportunity," I said. "Frankly, Grayle, I never want to see you or hear of you or speak to you again. And I wish I could find someone less fat and flabby to horsewhip you."

So a forty years' acquaintance ended. We spoke as and when we found ourselves members of the same company, but I was only to meet him once again in private and only to hold private communication with him twice. Perhaps I was too busy to frequent the places where I was likely to see him; perhaps, and more probably, he was living in comparative retirement.

During October and November I was constrained to watch the fulfilment of Bertrand's prophecy. The fact that Mrs. O'Rane was living apart from her husband, if not the fact that she was living with someone else, could not be concealed indefinitely. I had entered their social group so recently that I could not count more than half a dozen or a dozen friends in common, but in the course of those two months I heard many references that indicated suspicion or at least curiosity. Lady Maitland, I remember, shook her massive head and told me that it was a great pity for Colonel Grayle and Mrs. O'Rane to be still going about together so much; she had hoped that all that nonsense was over.... Lady Pentyre had heard that there was some estrangement.... And one night, when I was dining at Bodmin Lodge, young Deganway, who prided himself on the range of his social information, peered knowingly through his eyeglass and asked our host whether the famous Mrs. O'Rane did not hail from his part of the country. I forget what answer Pebbleridge made, but Deganway started talking with fine mystery about a certain member of Parliament who should be nameless.... George Oakleigh interrupted him by asking if he knew her.

"I do," he added significantly.

"Well, but is it true?" Deganway demanded resiliency.

"I haven't heard the story yet," George answered. "I don't know that I particularly want to."

His tone was not sufficiently discouraging to closure the discussion, and Pebbleridge observed that he had not heard the story either. I felt that it was time to intervene.

"I've heard a story," I said. "If Deganway and I mean the same thing, there's nothing in it. She used to be rather a friend of yours, usen't she, Deganway?"

"Oh, I've known her for years," he answered imperviously and impenitently.

George and I walked part of the way home together along Knightsbridge.

"It can't go on, you know," he exclaimed. "We had a frontal attack from Lady Dainton to-day. She called at 'The Sanctuary' on her way to Waterloo and was mildly surprised to find me in possession and very fairly staggered when I said Sonia was away and that I didn't know her address. Between us we managed to shut Deganway up to-night, but the story's being circulated by other people as well. I deny it, of course.... And I've seen Sonia with him three times in ten days."

I wondered whether she was trying to force his hand—and her husband's.

"Grayle's probably meeting the story, too," I said. "I wonder how he likes it."

"He must have been through this sort of thing so many times!" George sighed.

"But I doubt if he wants to be the hero of a cause cÉlÈbre at this moment," I suggested. "The political position is becoming very interesting."

A few days before I had found myself at a political meeting in the City. We were assembled to demand a "ton-for-ton" policy of compensation for the merchant shipping which was being sunk by German submarines, and my seat on the platform was next to Guy Bannerman's.

"Grayle couldn't come, so I'm representing him," he explained. "You may imagine his hands are pretty full at present."

"I can well imagine it," I said, "though I don't go out of my way to meet him nowadays." Guy looked at me enquiringly to see how much I knew. "The last time I was at Milford Square I was told that you'd moved into quarters of your own."

Guy nodded abstractedly.

"You know, I don't think you've heard the whole story," he said.

"I've heard more than I want to," I replied, as I began to consult the programme of the afternoon's proceedings.

"Ah, but only on one side. There was such provocation——"

I laid my hand on Guy's knee.

"That was good enough for her, but it won't do for me," I said. "I've no doubt Grayle worked it up very convincingly, but you're far too clever to be taken in by it and not half clever enough to impose on me. We both of us know that it's impossible to say a single word for either of them. There we'd better leave it. It can't be undone now."

We were interrupted by the chairman's introductory speech, but at the end of the meeting Guy took my arm and walked with me to Cannon Street Station.

"I'm not trying to defend them," he said. "In a thing like this no outsider can give an opinion worth having. I'm only saying that you might be a bit more lenient, if you'd heard both sides."

"It can't be undone now," I repeated.

As we seated ourselves in the train, he asked me if I had any idea what O'Rane proposed to do.

"Did Grayle tell you to find out?" I enquired.

"Of course he didn't," was the indignant rejoinder.

"But he would be interested to know," I suggested. "Well, I can't help you, Guy. O'Rane has not told me; he has not told anyone, so far as I am aware. Why don't you interview him on the subject?"

Though Guy is a friend, I could not help being a little brutal to him in manner; I have always admired his loyalty to Grayle, but at this moment it was a quality which alienated me from him.

"It's no business of mine," said the faithful squire. "I don't know O'Rane, but I can't imagine any man sitting down under this sort of thing."

"Is Grayle so desperately keen on a divorce?"

"I've never met anyone who went through the Divorce Court for love of the thing," he answered.

2

Half-way through November O'Rane returned to London for the mid-term Leave Out. I was apprised of his arrival by a telephone message begging me to cancel any other engagements and dine with him informally at "The Sanctuary."

It was Saturday night, and I stayed in London to meet him. George and Bertrand were his other guests, and we dined at one end of the long refectory table on the dais, with the rest of the room lit up only by the flicker of the two fires, which sent shapeless, indeterminate shadows dancing up and down the panelled walls. It is usually as easy to detect when a woman lives in a house as when a house has been unoccupied for months. The library was perhaps tidier than Mrs. O'Rane used to leave it; otherwise it was unchanged, but it had become indefinably masculine. O'Rane was as quiet and self-possessed as I had always found him, but now without the noticeable effort which I had observed at our last two or three meetings. As might be expected, we talked throughout dinner of the war and of political changes in the House of Commons. Only when we were gathered round one fire with our coffee and cigars did he turn the conversation on to himself.

"I must apologise for spoiling your week-end," he said, addressing himself to me, "I had to take the opportunity of seeing you when I could. All three of you have been amazingly kind and amazingly discreet and sympathetic. It's—my funeral, of course, but I wanted you to be present. George, perhaps you're the best person——"

There was a silence of some moments, while George turned his cigar round in his mouth and stared at his boots.

"I only know what you asked me to do, Raney," he began diffidently. And then to us, "O'Rane told me to fix up a meeting with Sonia. I went round to Milford Square last night and told her that he wanted to—discuss the future, I think I said. Grayle was present. She said she'd come, if he came with her; and I arranged for half-past ten to-night."

He stopped with obvious relief. O'Rane was standing with his back to the fire, rocking gently from heel to toe, with his hands in his trouser pockets. I saw him put his watch to his ear, touch the repeater and smile.

"It's not ten yet," he said to Bertrand and me. "If you'd rather be out of it.... I got George to attend as my second and I wanted you two to be—well, to hear what we said and keep us cool. I've been thinking over this business pretty steadily for some months and I feel it can't go on. My idea about marriage—well, to begin with, people mustn't marry unless they feel they can't get on without each other.... If they find they've made a hopeless mistake, nothing to my way of thinking justifies spoiling two lives by keeping them coupled together. Sonia knows that, I've always told her so.... Well, no one could find anything to say for our present position, it's neither one thing nor the other. If Sonia's made her choice——"

He broke off and shrugged his shoulders. Bertrand turned his eyes away from the boy's face and gazed slowly round the long, warm, softly-lighted room. George had discovered a spot of grease on the sleeve of his uniform and was industriously scraping it with the end of a wooden match.

"Go on, O'Rane," I said as gently as I could. "We haven't got much time. She's coming here, and you're going to ask her what she means to do."

He nodded almost gratefully.

"Yes. If she tells me coolly and dispassionately—that's why I've got you men here; I don't want a scene—that she'll be happier with Grayle——" I saw his underlip tremble before he could get out the name—"After all, it's her happiness ... isn't it?"

There was another pause.

"You'll set her free?" I suggested.

"I suppose so," he whispered.

I looked at Bertrand, and he first shrugged his shoulders and then shook his head. The first gesture seemed to mean that he did not mind what was said, the second that he himself did not propose to say it.

"You will divorce her?" I went on to O'Rane. "I only want you to see all sides of the question. It's not—pleasant, but—if she wants it and you're ready to face it on both your accounts.... There will be a big scandal, O'Rane. She's very well known in society. And any Member of Parliament, even if he wasn't as notorious as Grayle.... It will make good copy for the papers, I'm afraid."

"I'd save Sonia from it, if I could," said O'Rane, moistening his lips. "Of course, if Grayle doesn't mind——"

"I should think he'd mind very much," I interrupted. "If he doesn't want to appear in the Divorce Court just now——"

"He should have thought of that before," said O'Rane grimly. Then he held out his hands in entreaty. "You don't suggest I can let it go on any longer? Most people would say it had gone on too long, that if I'd had a spark of pride—I can't. Try to imagine if your wife.... Thinking of it night and day, night and day, forgetting for a moment when you're asleep and then waking up fresh to it every morning...." His hands stole up and pressed his temples as though they were bursting. "You lie for a moment wondering what it is that's hanging over you," he whispered, "and then you remember.... And you forget again for a moment when you're working or people are talking to you ... but you always know it's there ... and it comes back—comes back with a stab in the middle of whatever you're doing.... And they mustn't see.... God knows, a divorce won't alter things much, but at least it's a definite break, I've given her up, I've got no claim, no rights.... It can't go on any longer. Have—have all you men got something to smoke?"

He came quickly forward from the fire-place and touched his way to a table behind our chairs. Though his back was turned, I could see out of the corner of one eye that he was furtively wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.

"If by any chance they don't want a divorce, will you insist on it?" I went on unsparingly.

"Of course not. Provided they separate. You don't imagine——"

"If they do? If your wife asks you to forgive her and have her back?"

O'Rane had never smoked, I have been told, since his blindness; he could no longer taste the tobacco nor keep it alight. I observed him now putting a cigar in his mouth and chewing the end.

"It's not very likely to arise," he said.

"But if it did?"

"I'll wait till it arises."

He came back to his old place on the hearth-rug, and we remained silent until the clock struck half-past ten. At the sound I could see the others growing tense and expectant, as I was doing. O'Rane had been whistling through his teeth, but he abandoned even this distraction. For myself, uncomfortable as I knew us all to be, I could not help thinking that Mrs. O'Rane and Grayle could be hardly free from all feelings of embarrassment. To return to the house, which had been given as a wedding present sixteen months before, accompanied by the lover with whom she had left it, to meet her husband and discuss how he proposed to deal with her infidelity—the bare bones were enough without clothing them in imagination. I pictured Mrs. O'Rane giving the familiar directions to the driver, tapping on the window when he lost himself in trying to take short cuts through the streets of Westminster, stopping him at the door and being helped out by Grayle.... And Grayle, for all his seasoning, had never, I was very sure, been led by the wife into her husband's house and presence....

I scribbled on an envelope and handed it to George:

"Couldn't they have pitched on some other place?"

"I wanted a private room in an hotel—neutral ground," he wrote back. "Raney insisted on this. Moral effect, I suppose."

As I crushed the paper into my pocket, I reflected that O'Rane was taking risks. The sight of the room and of himself might act on his wife like the smell of blood on an animal.

The clock struck again, and I exchanged glances with Bertrand. It was so characteristic of Mrs. O'Rane, even in my short acquaintance with her, that she should be late on such an occasion.

"You did say to-night, didn't you?" O'Rane asked, trying to keep his tone unconcerned.

"I don't suppose they've been able to get a taxi," George answered. "It was raining before dinner."

A moment later we grew tense and expectant once more at the sound of an engine. I heard the slam of a door and Grayle's voice saying, "Will you wait a bit?" Then Bertrand, George and I rose from our chairs, as the flame-coloured curtain was drawn aside and Mrs. O'Rane walked composedly into the room, with Grayle in his staff uniform a pace behind. She narrowed her eyes and then raised her brows almost imperceptibly when she saw who was present.

"I'm sorry if we've kept you all waiting," she said, as she slipped her arms out of her coat and handed it to Grayle.

O'Rane swallowed.

"Won't you sit down?" he murmured.

George and I each pulled an extra chair into the half-circle, and I watched Mrs. O'Rane settling herself. Presumably she must have started the evening pale, for her cheeks were slightly rouged—and I had not observed her to use rouge before. Her eyes, too, looked tired, as I had seen them at our chance meeting in Hyde Park several months before, but she was perfectly controlled, and I could trace no sign of nervousness or embarrassment. As though she were shewing herself off to young Beresford or any other of her admirers, I saw her look down at the pink dress which she was wearing, smooth a crease out of one glove, lift one transparent sleeve higher on to her shoulder and settle the folds of her skirt. Grayle spent some moments laying her coat carefully across the back of a chair; then dropped on to the end of a sofa with his stiff leg rigid in front of him and began peeling off his gloves and tossing them into his cap. He, at least, was not at ease; and, when George picked up the cigar-box and offered it him, he stammered in his refusal.

There was a moment more of silence, and then we turned slowly and with one accord towards O'Rane. As though he felt our eyes upon him, he tossed the cigar behind him into the fire and faced his wife.

"I—George probably told you, Sonia—I'm spending the week-end in London. I thought we might discuss things a bit."

Mrs. O'Rane looked unhurriedly to left and right.

"By all means," she acquiesced. "Do we want—quite all these——?"

"I should have preferred to meet you alone. As Colonel Grayle said he was coming——"

"He had a right to come. Of course, if you prefer everything dragged up in public...."

She shrugged her shoulders and began to play with the watch on her wrist.

"I think everyone here is acquainted with most of the facts," said O'Rane. "But I'm not proposing to drag up anything that's happened. I asked you to come here because I wanted to talk about the future. I expect everyone will agree that the present position can't continue."

He waited for a sign of assent. Mrs. O'Rane took off one glove and helped herself to a cigarette from the gold case at her wrist.

"I told Mr. Stornaway that you were at liberty to divorce me," she said with a glance in my direction. "I said I was willing to face it. I don't know whether you ever got the message."

I decided to watch Grayle, but he was sitting with his head back, staring at the ceiling and occasionally blowing elongated smoke-rings.

"The Divorce Court is—an unsavoury place," O'Rane observed. "I want you to believe, Sonia, that what I've always said is as true now as when I first said it. I put your happiness higher than anything in the world, I'm trying to leave myself out of this."

Mrs. O'Rane looked once at her husband, and her eyes seemed to harden; then she glanced without apparent purpose at the half of the room which was within her field of vision. I noticed for the first time that the flower-vases were empty; I fancy that she noticed it, too. Her mouth began to purse, and I knew that O'Rane would have done better to hold his meeting elsewhere.

"It's very kind of you," she said stiffly. "Isn't it rather late in the day for you to be thinking of my happiness? When I lived here—— But you said you didn't want to go into what was past. The future's simply in your hands. I've told you I'm willing to face it. I don't believe in this modern business of the man always letting himself be divorced by the woman. I'm—willing—to face it. You've got your witnesses; they'll stand by you, if anybody criticises you."

"But if I don't want to see you in the Divorce Court, Sonia?"

"I'm afraid that's one of the things you can't help."

O'Rane's chin dropped on to his chest, and he began to pace up and down the ten-foot rug in front of the fire with his hands plunged into his pockets and his fists so tightly clenched that the knuckles of either hand stood out in four sharp lumps against the sides of his trousers. Grayle still sat like a husband reluctantly dragged to hear a dull sermon; Mrs. O'Rane set herself to light a second cigarette from the glowing stump of the first, leaning forward so that the ash should not scatter over the pink dress. A quarter past eleven struck, and I remember that Bertrand and I gravely consulted our watches and pretended to compare them by the clock on the mantel-piece.

At last O'Rane halted by Grayle's chair.

"You're in this, too, Colonel Grayle," he said. "Once more we need concern ourselves only with the future. I should like to hear your views."

Grayle brought his head forward with a sharp jerk.

"It's her happiness we're considering," he agreed slowly, with his eyes on O'Rane's waist. "I—well, it's for her to say; I obviously can't tell you what will make her happiest, she's the only person who can do that. You've not put forward any case for yourself, I musn't put forward any for myself. She must tell us both whether she's been happy enough these last months to want to go on.... I may say—you haven't attacked me, so perhaps I don't need to defend myself—I may say that, when a woman's unhappily married, I don't regard her as being under any obligation to her husband; she's free to start her life again; and any man is free to share that life, if she sees fit. That—that's my theory, in case you feel there's any question of rights involved."

His tone was becoming truculent, but O'Rane nodded gravely.

"Yes. But we agreed to leave the past alone," he said. "I've knocked about a good bit the last thirty years and I can assure you that I never want to be put on my trial for anything. Let's stick to the future. Do you wish—my wife to go through the Divorce Court?"

I looked at Mrs. O'Rane to see if the offending word would rouse her, but she seemed not to have heard it. The hard composure of her entrance had broken down, she seemed ready to faint with fatigue, and the patches of rouge on cheeks that were grown suddenly white gave her an absurd something of a Dutch doll's appearance. I fetched her a tumbler of soda-water, and her smile of thanks was the first human thing that I had seen about her that night. As she began to sip it, I saw her glance over the brim at Grayle.

"I don't wish it," he said at length. "What—what else is possible?"

"You can say good-bye to her," O'Rane suggested quietly.

Grayle looked up uncomprehendingly; and Mrs. O'Rane's eyes flashed in sympathy.

"Desert her, you mean?"

"It's hardly the word I should have chosen, but we needn't go into that. Colonel Grayle, neither you nor I want a scandal. By the mercy of God, there's only one man outside this room who knows what's been taking place all these months. We've agreed that my wife's happiness is the thing that we're both unselfishly seeking, we won't bandy rights and wrongs or grievances or justifications—we won't even try to put our love for her into a scale. If you give me your word of honour that you'll never see or speak to my wife again, I will take no further steps; I'm not trying to steal her away from you so that I may get her back myself—she must determine her own happiness. You and I can at least spare her the unhappiness, the vulgarity, the morbid, sniggering curiosity of a public scandal. She can live in another part of the house, live away from me, let it be known confidentially that we somehow didn't manage to get on very well together.... Are you prepared to make that sacrifice for her happiness?"

Grayle lit another cigarette, coughed and fetched himself a syphon and tumbler.

"You're begging the question," he said at length. "You can't define the conditions of Sonia's happiness."

"I know what will make her unhappy. That's good enough as a negative definition."

Mrs. O'Rane pushed her chair back a few inches and rose to her feet. She looked round for her coat and walked to the chair where Grayle had laid it.

"I've said I'm ready to face everything and everybody," she said over her shoulder, as she slipped her arms into the sleeves.

"But, please God! you don't know what you're facing!" O'Rane cried with an outburst of emotion which he was no longer able to contain. "Grayle, you say you love her! If you care a snap of the fingers for her, if you've any humanity, any decent feeling in the whole of your composition, if you hope for mercy in this world or the next, you've got your opportunity now! The one thing you can do for her abiding happiness is to take my hand and swear you'll never see her again. You know it is! You can walk out of this house and leave her so that no one will dare to say a word against her for fear of being thrashed within an inch of his life. If she doesn't get on well with me, if we part by common consent, that's my fault; everyone will say that I was always eccentric, that she was a fool to marry me, that I've spoiled her life.... Will you do that, Grayle? Will you shew that what you call your love for her means something?"

As he ended, I heard a muffled banging on the front door. George hurried away, and a moment later there came the sound of an engine starting.

"It was only the taximan," he explained, as he came back. "He's got a train to catch at Victoria, so I paid him off. We can telephone for another one when it's wanted."

Mrs. O'Rane looked at her watch and frowned.

"I wish you hadn't done that, George," she cried petulantly. "It was pouring when we came, and now we shall probably have to walk home.... I don't see that there's anything more to be said. It's very kind of everyone to take so much trouble about me, but, if I'm prepared to go through with it, that ends the matter."

"But you're talking about something you don't understand, Sonia!' cried O'Rane.

"Perhaps I understand better than you think," she answered. "It's just conceivable that Vincent and I both thought about the consequences beforehand. Good-bye."

She turned to the door, and Grayle followed her. George moved mechanically forward to open it for them. Bertrand and I remained where we were, watching O'Rane smooth back a wisp of black hair that was glued to his forehead.

3

It was characteristic of O'Rane that he went back to Melton at the end of his leave without hinting to anyone what he was going to do. After his wife and Grayle left "The Sanctuary," I waited for perhaps ten minutes to see whether he wanted my opinion or advice, but he made no reference to the scene at which we had all been present. All that he said to the Oakleighs was, "Well, I'm rather tired. I think I shall go to bed." He disappeared as quietly and suddenly as he had come; perhaps we were to see him back in six weeks' time at the end of term, but even this was uncertain.

The advent of autumn, bringing with it the recognition that there must be another winter in the trenches, roused the country from the uncaring optimism or placid resignation in which the summer had been passed. In the London press, at the Club, in the House and at private dinner tables, I found very general agreement that the war had entered upon a new phase. A timid minority earnestly confided to discreetly chosen audiences that the people who talked about a deadlock and a stale-mate peace were proving right after all. With the exception of Beresford, who thought no opinion worth holding unless he shouted it from the house-tops, the new peace-school was obviously frightened of being called unpatriotic or pro-German. Bertrand would shake his head gloomily and begin sentences half-jocularly with—"I suppose I shall be called the Hidden Hand next, but all I can say is...." Whatever it was, he said it in an undertone and made sure of his man before saying it. Others tried to avert personal attacks by discussing war and peace in the abstract, adducing uncertain historical parallels and wondering academically whether it was wise to aim at humiliating a great country too much; were we not sowing the seeds of future wars?

The discussion seldom continued to be academic, and the peace school by its furtiveness and timidity invited persecution, as does the mild urchin at school who never stands up for himself and becomes a legitimate target for his fellows' kicks. Early in December there was much talk of the American "peace-kite." President Wilson had been re-elected, his hands were free, and for four years he could mould the policy of the United States without fear of an election. It was said that his patience was nearing its limits, that he was ready to break off diplomatic relations with Germany and that the "peace-kite" was a last attempt to arrive at terms of settlement before deciding to plunge his country into war.

The rumours of peace discussions and possible terms produced an immediate repercussion in London and developed a greater intensity of political feeling than had been known since the war began. There was said to be a peace-party in the Cabinet; the blunders and catastrophes of more than two years were set down to the malevolence of Ministers who had been driven to war against their will and were only anxious for an immediate end, even if such an end meant victory for the enemy; I heard once again Lady Maitland's confident assertion that the Government was in German pay.... There could be little academic discussion in such an atmosphere, and the one public attempt which I heard Bertrand make was literally shouted down.

"All I say," he kept repeating one night at Ross House, "is that I see no reason why we should be successful in 1917, when we've failed in 1916. I may be wrong; I don't pretend to have sufficient data. I only warn you that in six months' time you may have to accept worse terms than you could get now—with a balance of half a million or a million lives the wrong way. That's a big responsibility."

"You'd let Germany keep all she's got," Lady Maitland asked, "as an instalment?"

"Germany's broken, as it is," Bertrand answered. "She can never make good her losses and she'd gladly discuss terms. But, good Heavens! even if we didn't accept the terms, there's surely no harm in discussing them!"

Maitland shook his head sagely.

"When I'm dealing with the burglar who's collared my silver," he said, "I prefer not to argue until he's divested himself of what I believe is called the swag."

"You may prefer not to. Can you enforce your preference?" Bertrand asked rather curtly.

"Then let's go down fighting," Lady Maitland proposed valiantly.

"With great submission, a live dog's better than a dead lion," said Bertrand. "I've so much faith in the potentialities of my country that I want to preserve her."

Lady Maitland turned on him with unaffected ferocity. "If you make peace now, you'll disgrace her!" she cried. "We shall never be able to hold up our heads again!"

Young Lady Loring, who was between Bertrand and me, was no less strong.

"Uncle Bertrand, you can't be serious!" she exclaimed. "We should be faithless to those who've died, if we didn't hold on. I—I would sooner have my husband killed a second time than go back on the dead!"

Her intensity of feeling caused a stir, followed by an embarrassed pause. Maitland brought it to an end by shaking his head good-humouredly.

"I say, Oakleigh, old man, if I may say so, you oughtn't to talk like that, you know. You're a man in a responsible position, people quote what you say. It produces a devilish bad impression."

My instinctive sympathy is always with the minority, and I came mildly to Bertrand's support.

"I agree with Oakleigh to this extent," I said. "All of us here are either women or men over military age. We ought to check the easy impulse to make other people fight to the bitter end."

"You won't hear any peace-talk at the Front," interposed Maitland. "I've just come back from G.H.Q., you know."

Bertrand gave a snort of impatience.

"You won't find people lighting pipes in high-explosive factories," he answered. "It's against the rules. At the present time the policy of the war is dictated by people who can't conceivably be sent to carry it out. Stornaway's quite right. We fat old men sit at home and water the fields of Flanders with other people's blood. We say that, if they don't go on to the bitter end, there'll be another war in ten years. It's wrong, and we've been wrong every day we've gone on after we shewed the Germans that they couldn't overrun Europe at will. I went through the phase of dismembering Germany, deposing the Kaiser, commandeering the Fleet."

There was an unfortunate note of intellectual superiority in his voice, as though he alone had waded through the depths and shallows of folly and was at last (and alone) on dry land. His reward was immediate interruption by a chorus from every quarter of the table at once.

"Perhaps if you'd had a brother in solitary confinement for eight months because he called the guard a Schweinhund, which was the only word they'd given him a chance of learning——" began little Agnes Waring on my left with considerable heat.

"You wouldn't stir a finger to avenge Belgium?" demanded Lady Maitland.

"Oakleigh! Oakleigh!" her husband expostulated. "You're too old to fight yourself; for God's sake don't damp the ardour of those who can, those who'll go on till they've dictated their own peace terms—in—Berlin," he ended proudly.

As the chorus subsided for want of breath, Frank Jellaby, who was now one of the Liberal Whips in the Coalition, allowed his incisive, nasal drawl to rise and dominate the table.

"The trouble about you, Oakleigh, is that you go through so many phases; we poor, benighted folk can't keep up with you. There was a phase—quite a long one, for you—when any war with Germany was impossible, unthinkable. Didn't you run a paper to prove it? When the war came, someone twitted you in the House, and you made a personal statement—and a pretty complete recantation. You've been wrong here, wrong there.... If I may put it quite brutally, how are we to know you're not just as wrong now, how soon may we expect another personal statement?"

"Have all your prophecies been right?" Bertrand enquired.

"What prophecies have I made?" was the bland and temporarily safe rejoinder.

It was the one articulate effort which I heard at this time to determine the limits of military effort. It was derided and drowned; and from that—as we had to go on fighting—there was a short and easy road to criticism of present methods.

"We've put our hands to the plough," said Maitland placatingly, when the ladies had left us. "We can't turn back, Oakleigh. And I'm afraid I believe that the biggest trial's still ahead of us."

"And you're satisfied we shall come out of that any better?" Bertrand answered. "Your experience of the war leads you to expect that? God knows, the men don't lack courage or sticking-power, but can you find them generalship?"

"We must go on till we do."

Bertrand smoked for some moments in a reflective silence.

"It's a curious thing," he observed at length, "that a war of this size hasn't thrown up a single soldier of first-rate genius."

Maitland, for all that he had made the cleanest possible job of an Afghan raid and was now counter-initialling minutes in an extension of the War Office, took the criticism as personal.

"That is precisely what the soldiers say of you politicians," he retorted.

"The soldiers' job is to understand warfare and run a war," Bertrand propounded.

"The statesman's job is to govern," Maitland retaliated. "That's just what the Cabinet doesn't do and just what you M.P.'s don't make it do."

In the altercation which followed I listened to Maitland and watched Jellaby. The first acted as a barometer to mark the variations of average, prejudiced, unthinking opinion; it was the business of the second to follow the daily movement of the barometer. I did not need a second look at Jellaby to know that he was worried. He and I had talked in odd half-hours at the House about the possibility of attaining the objects for which we had entered the war; when our prospects were far brighter, Jellaby had been more rationally despondent, and I chose to think that his attack on Bertrand was an inspired attempt to suggest that any consideration of peace was at present out of the question and that a hard-pressed Government had better use for its time and energies than debating-society resolutions. He made no defence or comment, however, when Maitland developed a damaging attack on the Cabinet, and I fancied that he could not speak without indiscretion. Whether the Press reflected the public or the public reflected the Press, there was a widespread feeling that an ungainly cabinet of twenty-two talked incessantly and decided nothing, that countries were overrun and opportunities thrown away, because no one acted in time and that, paralysing as this collective lethargy so often and so tragically proved, it was still no check on the spasmodic and misdirected energy of individual members. Bertrand was one of a school which scented Press intrigue in every political development, but, as Grayle was credited with having said, "A Government which can't down Northcliffe can't down the Germans."

Of Grayle I saw nothing at this time, though a fresh crop of rumours told me that he was engaged once more on the task which he had begun a year and a half before, after the battle of Neuve Chapelle. Watchful friends discovered him slipping in and out of the houses of Unionist ministers; there were tales of informal gatherings and chance week-end meetings at Brighton or on Shannon Wood golf-course.

"He wants a new coalition under Lloyd-George," Bertrand explained, "but the Tories aren't nibbling. You see, there's no popular cry that they can put up. George is at the War Office; if he and they can't make their will effective, they'd better resign like Carson, they mustn't proclaim their own impotence by whimpering. But they can't resign on the ground that the war's being mismanaged, because they're jointly and severally responsible for the mismanagement. There's no issue."

Later on he talked to me with a mixture of resignation and disappointment.

"If the Government falls, it will be simply because it doesn't know its own strength. It runs away every time anyone shakes a stick at it; it never says, 'Turn us out and be damned!' Meanwhile its authority is being sapped daily.... It's the old complaint I brought against it for eight years before the war. Ministers are so high and mighty that they never remember who it is that keeps 'em in power. 'Never explain, never complain!' It won't do! For months the Press has been urging that something must be done to raise fresh drafts after the Somme slaughter, that food prices must be controlled, that Ireland can't be left where she is. The Government goes about like Caesar's wife.... And everyone thinks it's doing nothing, and where should we be without Lord Northcliffe? And give us a Man! I don't know when or where the break will come, but I hear most ominous cracks."

The break came—unexpectedly, so far as I was concerned—in the first week of December. I say "unexpectedly," because I have yet to discover why the Government did not fall three months earlier or endure until three months later. Bertrand, who took on a new lease of life when the days of crisis approached, told me that the point of cleavage was the question whether more troops should be sent to Salonica. True or false, this was obscured by an ultimatum in which the Secretary of State for War called for a Merovingian War Cabinet in which the Prime Minister was to have no place.

As I walked home from my office, the contents bills bore the legend, "England's Strong Man to Go." George Oakleigh and one or two others were dining with me, and by the time that I was dressed the news was being shouted in the streets that the Government had resigned. I suppose that I am as near to an Independent as the caucuses and the House of Commons will allow, but, though I had opposed the old Liberal administration in fully half of its measures, I felt a sentimental regret that the long rule was over. It closed an epoch to me at a time of life when I did not want to close epochs.

"I had four years of it at the beginning," said George unenthusiastically. "I'm afraid that in my youth and inexperience I hoped more of it than it was capable of giving. And I was rather glad to be out when the war came along. Beresford's quite right, you know; for seven or eight years the fate of this country was in the hands of three or four men who accepted our support and never gave us an inkling where they were taking us. Are all political rank-and-filers treated as cavalierly as we've been? It goes on right to the end. The Coalition came into existence without consulting the Liberal Party and now it's gone out—every bit as much on its own. You and I don't know why; there was no vote, no trial of strength. Nobody can say how many supporters anyone else can claim; there isn't even the usual man who's defeated the Government for the King to send for. They have treated the party like dirt! Now it remains to be seen whether an alternative Government can be formed."

That night and for a day or two afterwards London was filled with a greater political excitement than I can ever remember at any other time. Bertrand told me that, in the interests of governmental and national unity, there had been a disposition to accept the terms of the ultimatum, but that a majority had decided that here at least a stand must be made.

"Now you simply must tell me what's happening!" young Deganway exclaimed when I met him dining late at the Club. "Bonar Law's been sent for, as you know, but I hear he's told the King he can't form a Government. That leaves only George. How much life do you give him? Three weeks? I want you to say three weeks, because I've got a fortnight bet on the other way with a man in the War Office and I'm rather inclined to hedge."

The next day it was announced officially that Mr. Bonar Law was unable to form a Government and that the King had sent for the Secretary of State for War. There was fresh furious speculation how short a time would suffice to shew that he would fail, as his predecessor had failed, but the speculation was incommoded by the intrusion of fact. Bertrand informed me that the Prime Minister-Elect had struck a bargain with Labour, but that the Liberal and Unionist members of the Coalition were refusing to serve under a man who had slain his master. I next heard that the Unionist attitude was modified, that it was felt the King's Government must be carried on, that pressure had been brought....

"Of course, when once the rot sets in!" cried George Oakleigh, when we met by the tape-machine at the Club. He was undisguisedly disappointed, which was interesting. For eight or nine years I had heard from him plain and bitter criticism of the Government, but the old faith in his political idols had survived unexpectedly to make him forget the war and become the most excited of partisans. No terms were too strong to describe the treachery which had laid the Government low; his new-born good-will towards the dead Ministry was only exceeded by his blind antagonism to any alternative. "There was a day when Lloyd George could not get a man near him; then the Tories began to rat and everyone tried to elbow his way in before his neighbour.... He'd got the liver in his pocket, everyone was afraid of being left out, the doors of the War Office weren't wide enough to let them all in. This latest development has rather disgusted me with politics. I shouldn't have minded, if it had been an ordinary peace-time political intrigue. I suppose I've been hoping for a higher standard since the war ... gratitude—things of that kind. How are you going to vote, Stornaway? Bertrand keeps saying that he must support the de facto Government. Is that your view?"

"I want to see the de facto Government first," I said.

"You've an intelligent anticipation here," he answered, handing me a copy of the "Night Gazette." "Sir John Woburn can be relied on to have good stable information."

The first page of the paper contained a streaming headline—"Do It Now" or "Wait and See?" Underneath came an obviously inspired forecast of the new ministry with the old Unionist and Labour members back in place as to some eighty per centum of their numbers; the old Liberal office-holders were collectively abstaining, and their place in the party scale was filled by consequential nobodies and by the leaders of the Liberal "ginger group."

"If they've got rid of the brains, at least they've kept the dead-heads," George observed. "I don't see stability or long life here, Stornaway. Everyone knows that Woburn and the Press Combine turned the Coalition out, and now, before a single name has been submitted to the King, the Press Combine's at work devouring its own child. The new Ministry's too much tarred with the brush of the old, Balfour and Robert Cecil and the less featherbrained are to be pushed out of their offices some time before they get into them. It's going to be a very clean sweep."

I heard later that the attack on the elder Unionist statesmen was abandoned on the day when the Unionist party threatened to withdraw its support from the new Coalition unless newspaper attacks on its members ceased immediately.

"Is Grayle included?" I asked, as George drew an expressive finger down the draft list.

"He gets a new Ministry of Recruiting. At least, when I say that he gets it," George corrected himself, "this is quite unofficial, of course. He's suggested for it."

"I wonder if he'll get it," I said.

4

In London, more even than in the fabled Indian bazaar, the secret of to-day is the thrice-told tale of to-morrow. The same few thousand men and women migrate so regularly from one to another of the same few hundred houses that, if you let fall a piece of gossip at luncheon in Chesterfield Gardens, it will have taken wing to Portman Square and Hans Place by tea-time and will set tongues wagging over the dinner-tables of Westminster, Pall Mall and Piccadilly. By Saturday night the germ-carriers have spread themselves for a hundred miles to the west, north and south; before the week-end is over, the news may reasonably be expected to have reached Paris and, in these latter days, General Headquarters; and there has probably been more than one sly hint in the personal columns of the Sunday papers. Lady Maitland hears the story that very day at luncheon from the Duchess of Ross, who has met Gerald Deganway the night before at the Opera; he had been dining with Lady Pentyre, who had spent the week-end at Oxford with the Cutler-Blythes; young Haviland had come over to lunch on Sunday and had brought the story from All Souls'....

Deganway's name appeared most regularly in these lists, but I doubt if he had the wit to invent scandal; he was content to collect and hand it on during the hours when his energies might have been more disastrously employed at the Foreign Office. It was from him that I first publicly heard even a rumour of Mrs. O'Rane's escapade; George Oakleigh and I succeeded in stopping his mouth, and for a few more precarious weeks Milford Square sank back to its former insecure silence. Then the busy tongues got to work again, and within thirty-six hours I had heard six various accounts in as many places, starting with an early morning encounter in Hyde Park with my niece, who observed triumphantly, "Now I know why you haven't been talking about the great Sonia O'Rane the last few months."

"How much do you know, Yolande?" I asked.

"I heard yesterday that she'd run away," was the answer. "I wasn't told who with.... I can't say I was surprised."

At luncheon the name was supplied, unsupported by details, however. I was sitting next to Lady Pentyre, who welcomed me with even greater fervour than our old friendship warranted.

"I've been longing to see you!" she began eagerly. "You know Mrs. O'Rane, don't you? And you know Colonel Grayle. Well, is it true ...?"

"Is what true?" I asked, as she paused delicately.

Her full question was inaudible, but I caught the words "chÈre amie."

"Ask someone who knows them better," I suggested. "I've hardly seen either for months."

There was less delicacy about Pebbleridge, when I dined with him; less still about Frank Jellaby, when I met him at the Club. To the party organiser moral depravity is of interest only in so far as it contributes to damage a hostile cause.

"Grayle's hardly chosen a fortunate moment for the double event," he observed gleefully.

I made it a rule in these days never to admit knowledge of the facts until I had discovered how much my antagonist knew. The House of Commons on this occasion was better informed than Pont Street, the County Club or Eaton Place.

"Well, you know, he's been living—for months, apparently—with Mrs. O'Rane? I'm told O'Rane is bringing a petition. It will rather cook Grayle's goose, if this all comes out just when he's waiting to be sent for. It'll be a pretty bad case, from all accounts. You know O'Rane, don't you? Well, he lost his sight early in the war, which won't get Grayle much sympathy; and he was pretty newly married, which will appeal to the sentimental; and the whole business seems to have been conducted without any regard for human decency. Grayle used to go to the house as a friend, have them to his house, meet O'Rane in the Smoking-Room.... If he goes into the witness box, he'll be broken for all time, but, whether he goes in or not, he's dished himself for the present; even in war-time the Nonconformist Conscience wouldn't swallow a scandal of that kind. It's a bit ironical, isn't it? Like Parnell when he'd got Home Rule in the hollow of his hand. Grayle has done more to bring about this crisis than any six other men—including Northcliffe. He worked the Tories; he could call for anything he liked; and now you and I have only to wait for the story to get round a bit, and you'll find that Grayle's duties at the War Office are so important that he won't have time to attend the House, let alone taking a job." He laughed jubilantly. "Nemesis! Nemesis!"

"If the story is true," I said. "Where did you hear it?"

"Oh, everybody's talking about it! You don't suggest it's untrue?"

"I agree that everybody's talking about it, though that by itself doesn't make it true. Indeed, I've heard so many versions that I'm beginning to get confused. You say that O'Rane is bringing a petition? That's quite well-established? If so, this is the most convincing version that I've heard since lunch, because I don't suppose he would act on mere suspicion."

Jellaby looked up to the ceiling and pinched his chin thoughtfully between thumb and finger.

"I can give you my authority, I think. I was talking to several of the Lobby correspondents—it was that little man Palfrey, the fellow from the 'Night Gazette.' He told me that Grayle had been sent for all right, but not to be sounded for an office. This story was going about, and they wanted to know if it was true. I don't know where Palfrey got his facts from, but he's usually very well informed. He told me quite definitely that O'Rane was applying for a divorce."

I hardly knew whether to be surprised or not. When I last saw O'Rane he did not seem to have made up his own mind. At first he had told us unmistakably that he would be driven to bring the marriage to an end, unless his wife and Grayle separated; later, when she was for a moment once more in his house, he forgot to threaten and expended himself in pleading, with an appeal to Grayle which I should have been unable to resist, if I had been in his place. Her voice and bodily presence, the memories of the few weeks when they had lived together there seemed to have killed any feeling of resentment and of personal interest; O'Rane was begging the two of them to spare him the necessity of an extreme step. He did not convince them, but, when I left, I was not sure that he had not convinced himself.

Jellaby was about to leave me, when I called him back.

"I want to ask a favour of you," I said. "Don't make party capital out of this—yet awhile, at least. I know all these people; and I should like you to hold your hand for the present. If the story's true, if the case comes into court, it's public property for the world to discuss. But, until then, don't spread a story which may not be true and, true or not, must be tolerably unpleasant for young O'Rane."

"But I'm not spreading it!" Jellaby protested. "Everybody seems to have heard of it except you."

"Everyone's heard of it at about fifteenth hand. Whether it's true or not is very simply tested by events. O'Rane's not likely to let his wife go on living with Grayle, if that's what she's doing now; if he takes action, you'll know your story's true; if he doesn't—well, for pity's sake don't even repeat such charges against a perfectly innocent woman."

The epithet made Jellaby wag his head at me very knowingly.

"There's no smoke without fire, you know, Stornaway," he said.

I cannot deal with debilitated minds which employ proverbs in place of arguments; Jellaby remained unanswered.

I had hardly got rid of him and ordered myself a glass of port wine, when a page-boy brought me a card and stated that Sir Roger Dainton was waiting in the hall and would like to see me for a moment. Now, I had been on nodding terms with Dainton a dozen years in and out of the House, but we had never attained greater intimacy, as I am temperamentally unable to suffer bores gladly. A call from such a man at nine o'clock in the evening could mean only one thing.

"Ask him, with my compliments, if he will join me in a glass of wine," I said.

Under his usual garb of awkward diffidence and universal apology, I could see that my visitor was perplexed and worried. For several moments I entirely failed to check his flow of regret at disturbing my dinner; when I silenced him with three interruptions and as many invitations to taste his wine and try some of my nuts, he planted his elbows impressively on the table, leaned forward, opened his lips and then flung himself back and swept our corner of the Coffee-Room for eavesdroppers.

"I hope there's nothing wrong," I said.

He planted his elbows in position a second time and abruptly covered his face with his hands.

"It's—incredible," he began. "My little girl—Sonia, you know Sonia? Have you heard about it?"

"I don't know what you're referring to yet," I pointed out.

"Sonia's run away from her husband!" he whispered uncomprehendingly. "She's gone off with another man. They say—they say David's going to divorce her."

He lowered his hands, and the round, child's eyes, harmonising perfectly with the chubby, boyish face, were as full of horror and incredulity as his voice had been. I knew, of course, that Dainton had lost his elder son in the first year of the war and I believe that the younger had been wounded at least twice; this was the first time, however, that he had been flung against the sharp rocks of life, and he was as helplessly and bewilderedly scared and resentful as a child who has fallen among the breakers on a rugged coast.

"You had better tell me all about it," I said.

His stammering, self-interrupted narrative added nothing to the three sentences which he had already spoken. The blow had fallen that day at luncheon. Dainton found himself one of a large party which was for the most part unknown to him. Half-way through the meal he caught the sound of his daughter's name with some comment which would have been grotesque, if it had not been uttered with so much assurance. There followed the silence which drives home to a speaker that he has said something unpardonable and that he alone is unaware what it is. Dainton's neighbours rallied simultaneously and doused him with two conflicting jets of conversation, only to find that he was not listening and that, when they paused, he asked in an amazed whisper whether they had heard what was said.

"I may not have caught it right," he explained hopefully.

But both denied that they had heard the words in question.

When luncheon was over, an unknown woman with a scarlet face came up to him and apologised with tears in her eyes. What he must think.... She wouldn't have done such a thing for the world.... Really it was partly their hostess's fault for not introducing them properly. Honestly, she had no idea....

"I asked her to say it again," Dainton told me dully. "It was the very first I'd heard, the first I'd suspected.... I can't believe it now—not Sonia.... She—she said it was only a rumour, she couldn't vouch for it, but there was a report that David was going to ..."

He paused to raise his glass, spilling the wine generously. "I didn't know what to do. I couldn't go about asking every Tom, Dick and Harry whether my daughter—When I got away from the office to-night, I went round to her house to see if I could find out anything from Oakleigh or George—I could talk to them fairly freely.... I remember my wife told me, I forget when it was, that Sonia was away and that George had moved in there to look after his uncle; neither of us ever dreamed then.... They were both out, so I thought I'd come and bother you. I knew you were pretty intimate with them. I—quite frankly I want you to tell me if what that woman said was true."

I did not find it easy to face Dainton's troubled, boyish eyes.

"I'm afraid it is," I said. "She's left O'Rane, she did go off with another man. I'm sorry to say that your luncheon-party wasn't the only place where it was being discussed, and several people have told me that the petition's actually been filed."

Dainton picked up a pair of nut-crackers and twisted them nervously open and shut.

"This will kill Catherine," he muttered. "We've both of us always been so proud of her, she was always so wonderful, even when she was a little child.... Stornaway, is this true? Is there no doubt of any kind? You don't know what she is to us!" he cried fiercely, as though I had been responsible for the shipwreck of their pride.

"There seems to be no doubt at all."

"I wonder if I may have another glass of wine," he said absently. "I'm afraid I've spilt most of this."

We must have sat for another hour in the deserted Coffee-Room, now silent as Dainton yielded inch by reluctant inch to the slow penetration of inevitable truth, now discussing explanations and canvassing expedients for retrieving a lost position. Beyond giving Grayle's name and mentioning that I had been present when an attempt was made to obviate divorce proceedings, I volunteered no details and did my best to give patient hearing to schemes which the rest of us had either rejected already or refused to consider. He would force Sonia to return to her husband, force O'Rane to take her back, force Grayle to give her up....

"There's no kind of force you can use," I had to tell him. "We've tried argument and entreaty, and that's failed."

"Her mother can make her!"

"No one can make her!"

Dainton looked at me as though I had contrived the catastrophe and were pluming myself on its completeness.

"But do you mean we've got to stand by and see our Sonia in the Divorce Court, to have her examined and cross-examined—our own child, with reporters scribbling it all down and everybody reading about it next day in the papers? It's unthinkable, Stornaway, it's unthinkable!"

"Tell me any way of avoiding it, and you may count on any help I can give you. By all means see her yourself or get Lady Dainton to see her. Of course, assuming that O'Rane has started proceedings, I don't know that you'll stop him. He's behaved with the greatest love and loyalty, and, if I may say so, your daughter exceeded them when she went back with Grayle after we'd tried to persuade her. But get Lady Dainton to see her. It can do no harm, but I advise you not to build too great hopes on it. Your daughter's last words, pretty well, were that she'd thought it all over beforehand and was prepared to face everything. Conceivable she may be frightened when she's taken at her word, but I'm inclined to think it will only make her set her teeth the harder."

Dainton looked at me dazedly, as though his mind had lagged a sentence and a half behind everything that I was saying and he were trying to overtake me. With marked indecision he raised his glass, lowered it, raised it again and gulped down the last mouthful of wine. Then he rose to his feet and beckoned me to do the same.

"There's not a moment to lose," he said gravely. "I'm going round to see Sonia at once. If you'll shew me where the telephone is——"

I led him to one of the boxes by the porter's office and dawdled in front of the tape-machine while he searched for Grayle's number and awaited his call. There was little news, but numerous prophets were helping the new Prime Minister with a wealth of conflicting suggestions to construct his cabinet. I had not succeeded in finding Grayle's name mentioned more than once when Dainton emerged and led me to a sofa.

"She's not in," he said. "I don't quite know what to do. I must tell my wife at the earliest possible moment.... My God, if she came up here and had it broken to her as I did to-day.... I should like to catch the 11.10 to-night ... and I could go and see David to-morrow. Poor boy! I'm not blaming him, but he can't understand what he's doing, what this means to us—Sonia! If only I knew about it!..." He turned to lay his hand timidly on my knee. "She seemed very determined, when you saw her?"

"Immovable," I answered.

"You think she'd disregard her own father and mother? Stornaway, you don't know what she is to us!"

His voice gave me the answer, but I saw no way of bringing home to him that he and his wife were less than nothing to her at this moment.

"You can only try," I said. "I've seen her at 'The Sanctuary' with O'Rane and Grayle, I've seen her in Milford Square by herself——"

He looked at his watch and turned to me excitedly.

"Look here, I can't be in two places at once and I must get down to my wife. Will you—I've no claim on you; I ask it, because I can't help myself—will you go to Sonia, insist on seeing her, tell her of our meeting to-night and beg her—in her mother's name—and mine——"

His faltering sentences lagged and halted until they stopped altogether.

"If you wish me to," I said.

"I can never thank you enough! I pray you'll never be in a similar position, but if you are——"

"Don't build extravagant hopes on it," I warned him again.

When I had seen him into a taxi, I drove to Milford Square with profound and momentarily increasing distaste for my mission. I felt instinctively that it was foredoomed to failure; I knew that, two hours after I had failed, the Daintons would be staring blankly at each other or pacing nervously up and down the room, refusing—despite my repeated warning—to abandon hope until my failure had been confessed. And I knew that I must see Mrs. O'Rane alone—which Grayle would try to prevent—and make an emotional appeal—which I was ill-equipped for doing....

My taxi drew up at the door. I rang and enquired of my old, smooth-faced antagonist whether Mrs. O'Rane was at home. I was told that she was not.

"Then I'll wait for her," I said, squeezing past him into the hall and taking off my coat and gloves. "Is Colonel Grayle in?"

"Not yet, sir; Mr. Bannerman's in the smoking-room."

"I should like to see him," I said, "if he's not engaged."

Guy dragged himself out of an arm-chair with a mixture of surprise and distrust.

"Hullo! what brings you here?" he enquired. "I never expected to see you."

"Well, I never expected to see you," I answered. "I thought you'd been banished."

He looked at me with cautious absence of expression and then applied himself to treading a little mound of cigar-ash into the carpet.

"Grayle ought to be in soon," he volunteered. "He said he wouldn't be late."

"It was Mrs. O'Rane I came to see."

Guy looked at me closely and raised his eyebrows slightly. Then he buried the lower half of his face in a tumbler of whiskey and soda, glanced at me again over the brim, swallowed and set the glass down empty.

"What d'you want with her, if I may ask?" he enquired.

Guy has a dual personality compounded of loyalty to his master and love for humanity at large. The combination is not an easy one to imagine, but he contrived at once to blend the qualities and yet keep them distinct. I told him frankly and fully of my conversation with Dainton.

"I warned him that he was sending me on a fool's errand," I said. "But how could I refuse? I'd submit to being sent on a dozen fool's errands each day, if I thought I could spare him—and his wife—and O'Rane—and his wife——"

Guy raised his hand to interrupt me.

"Look here, how much do you know?" he asked, as I had been asking every second person that day. "Not the early part; what I mean is, are you up to date?"

"Two or three people have told me that O'Rane's actually filed his petition," I said. "Is that true?"

"I don't know. Is that all you know?"

"My dear Guy, the whole of London's discussing the thing, I've heard an approach to the truth and most kinds of variants."

"But is that all you know?" he repeated.

"I imagine so," I answered.

Guy shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

"Then you're not up to date," he said. "I got Dainton's enquiry on the telephone and I told him that she wasn't in. It was true—as far as it went. She's gone, Stornaway. I've not the faintest idea what happened, but there was—a big row of some kind—not the first by any means, I may tell you,—and she walked out of the house."

"But where's she gone to?" I asked, as soon as I was sufficiently recovered from my surprise to ask anything.

"I've no idea," he answered.

5

I wanted to ask so many questions that I hardly knew where to begin, but Guy—with the best possible intentions—was not in a position to tell me anything worth hearing. Mrs. O'Rane, at the end of an hour-long altercation behind closed doors, had come into the hall with a pearly-white face, collected a fur-coat and umbrella and walked into the Square.

"She stopped for a moment on the top step and unfastened her latch-key—she used to carry it tied to her bag with a bit of ribbon;—I found it in my hand the next moment, and she was saying good-bye and telling me quite casually that she wasn't coming back. Grayle—he didn't even trouble to come out of the smoking-room. What it was about I can't say, but they must have had an unholy row." Guy looked at me dubiously, weighing my discretion. "I suppose, now that it's all over, there's no harm in saying that rows were the rule rather than the exception.... Right from the earliest days, when she used to come and dine here or he took her out. I don't know how either thought they could possibly live in the same house. Of course, she fascinated him," he conceded with the gusto of a Promenade habituÉ, "but she never cared for him. I'm as certain of that as I am of my own existence. She's a curious woman; it used to make me go hot and cold sometimes to see and hear Grayle with her—he was cruel,—but, the more he bullied her, the more she respected him. If he shewed her the sort of deference a man does shew a woman, he seemed to lose his grip. I don't know how much you saw of them before she came here, but she was playing cat and mouse with Grayle. Or trying to. He soon put a stop to that. He's had a good many ordinary affaires, but he was really fond of this woman, and, when he found that O'Rane was openly living with someone else——"

"That's well-established, is it?" I interrupted.

"I believe so. Well, he naturally wanted to protect Mrs. O'Rane. She treated it as a joke, until he swore he'd never see her again. (He was always saying it, but this time he meant it.) Then she got frightened. First she rang up,—and he ignored her; she wrote,—and he didn't answer her letters; called,—and he refused to see her. The next thing was complete surrender." Guy Bannerman spread out his hands and shrugged his shoulders. "You can't compound a common life of that sort of storm and sunshine. Grayle found that, if he wanted to get his way,—well, he didn't actually take a stick to her, but it was the next best thing."

Guy paused to sigh in perplexity, trying vainly to reconcile his idol's behaviour with his own romantic canons of chivalry.

"Go on," I said.

"Well, he was gradually breaking her spirit, killing all her charm; and then I really think that he began to get tired of her. They were wearing each other out, and you couldn't expect her to be mewed up inside the house, and people were beginning to talk.... I've told you pretty well all I know."

I digested Guy's story in silence until I heard the jingle of a hansom cab outside, followed by a word or two in Grayle's voice. A moment later he was standing in the door-way, scowling in surprise at seeing me there.

"Hast thou found me, oh mine enemy?" he sneered. "I seem to remember your giving it as your considered opinion that you never wanted to see me or speak to me again. I'm honoured by your visit, of course, but you can—just—clear—out!"

He pushed the door open to its widest extent and stood aside as though nothing would give him greater pleasure than to assist my departure with a kick. In his present mood he would have done it without much further provocation, but I am no more of a physical coward than my neighbour and I was not going to let him threaten me.

"I came to see Mrs. O'Rane," I told him without getting up.

"Well, no doubt Bannerman's informed you that she's not here."

"I want to know where she is. I may mention that I've seen her father to-night. He'd heard nothing till lunch-time to-day, and, though it's no affair of his, I thought he was rather upset. He's gone down to Hampshire to break the news to his wife, and I promised to see if I could arrange a meeting with his daughter."

Grayle walked to the sofa, picked up my coat and tossed it to me.

"I don't know where she is," he said shortly. "And I don't care."

My hat followed the coat through the air and dropped on to my knees.

"Dainton wants to stop the divorce," I said. "That must have a certain academic interest for you, Grayle. He's seeing O'Rane to-morrow morning."

I looked in vain for any sign of pleasure, relief or concern.

"I tell you, I don't know where she is," he repeated. "She left this place to-day—and—she's—not coming—back."

"You mean you turned her out," I suggested.

"Oh, I'm sick of this!" He limped to my chair and caught my wrist in one hand, bending it back until I had to get up to prevent his breaking my arm off at the elbow. "As a matter of courtesy I told you she'd gone, and the best thing you can do is to follow her. You've found time to meddle with my affairs for a good many months, but I'm tired of it now; it's got to end. I give you fair warning, Stornaway, that I am instructing my servants not to admit you, if you come here again; and, by God! if you try to force your way in, I'll thrash you out with a crop. Now—march!"

My exit was painless, though I will not pretend that it was dignified. I walked a few yards along the Brompton Road, wondering what to do next. It was futile to speculate where Mrs. O'Rane was gone; she could not return to "The Sanctuary," she could not go home to her parents; after abandoning her husband and being abandoned by her lover within six months, she could hardly—with her pride and temper—ask a friend to take her in. Any grandeur with which she had tried to invest her recklessness and infidelity at our last meeting was sorely draggled. And she was about thirty—a year or two more, a year or two less—in the full bloom and beauty of her life, with some hundreds from her father to pay her hotel bills, debarred by the war even from hiding herself for a few months abroad. I stood still to wonder where she was at that moment, how she was facing the future.

Then I turned down Sloane Street and made for the Underground station. I had meant to go home and, perhaps, to telephone to Dainton, but it could do no good, and I wanted to hold a council of war with the Oakleighs. In Sloane Square I met Beresford hobbling along on a stick and made him turn round and keep me company. In some way I felt that he deserved to be present. Bertrand was in bed when we reached "The Sanctuary," but I found George reading a book with his feet up on a sofa, and, when I told him that my business was urgent, we adjourned upstairs to the scene of more than one early morning session. I told them as shortly as I could of my interviews with Dainton, Bannerman and Grayle and left the facts to sink in. The ensuing silence was broken by Beresford, speaking more to himself than to the room.

"The cad!" he muttered. "Oh, my God! the cad! And you don't know where she is now?"

"No. I've given you all the facts."

After the one outburst Beresford remained quiet, and the other three of us started a rambling debate to decide what we wanted done and what was practicable. Bertrand acted as chairman and put the questions. We agreed that for the sake of O'Rane and the Daintons the proceedings should be stopped, if possible; it was established that Mrs. O'Rane and Grayle were unlikely to meet again, and, if we could get back to the terms discussed a few weeks earlier, it was still conceivable that the scandal might be suppressed.

"But O'Rane doesn't know they've parted," I reminded Bertrand. "Someone must tell him. I'll go down, if necessary, as I had the news at first-hand. Of course, if he refuses and says they had their chance and missed it——"

"He won't refuse," said Bertrand. "You'll go? I believe we can stop it even now. He's not particularly vindictive—he shewed that the other night—and he'd sooner spare his wife than punish Grayle." He grimaced with disfavour. "Stornaway, I've never liked that man, but I didn't think he was capable of this."

"Nor did she, poor soul!"

We had reached our decision, and, if I had to leave for the country by an early train, I wanted to get home to bed. George and his uncle were chewing the cud of my story, and I saw no end to that. I was putting on my coat, when Beresford begged me to stay a moment longer.

"You're not leaving it at this, are you?" he asked, with a white face.

"Have you anything to suggest?" I asked.

"You're going to let Grayle ride off? Merciful Christ! And I thought some of you were Sonia's friends!"

He struggled to his feet and in another moment, bumping past me, was half-way to the door. George sprang from his chair and had one foot planted solidly in the way before Beresford could reach the handle.

"Here, where are you off to?" he demanded.

"Something's got to be done about Grayle," was the reply.

"What do you mean?" I asked, for Beresford had the voice, the eyes and the bearing of homicidal mania.

"I'm going to have a word with him," he answered between clenched teeth. "Let me go!"

There was something pitifully incongruous between the purposeful language and the emaciated, consumptive speaker. Grayle, for all his unsound leg, could pluck him up by the ankles and crush in his head against the wall like the shell of an egg.

"Let's hear some more about it first," I said, taking his arm despite a quiver and jerk of protest. "I know Grayle fairly well, and, if you're going to match yourself against him in physical strength, you might just as well try to knock holes in the side of a battleship with your naked fists."

Beresford wriggled against my grip.

"I can have a go at spoiling him first," he cried. "After that, I don't mind what happens."

Their motives were different, but I was vividly reminded of the Cockney Huish preparing to advance, vitriol jar in hand, against the unerring rifle of Attwater. I looked over Beresford's head and lifted my eyebrows at Bertrand, who raised himself in bed and called him twice by name.

"You mustn't do anything hasty," he urged, wagging his forefinger with great parade of reasonableness. "Any kind of attack on Grayle is bound to recoil on Sonia, and that's the last thing you want. I assure you that twenty-four hours after you'd gone for him——"

Beresford shook free of my arm and limped menacingly up to the bed.

"You don't care a curse for her," he cried, "but you pretend to care for O'Rane. You're going to let Grayle break up O'Rane's life, take away Sonia from him, throw her out of doors——"

Bertrand spread out his hands with a gesture of bland expostulation.

"My dear boy, we can't prevent it. It's done, and any act of private vengeance will hit David and Sonia hardest of all. Haven't we been scheming and contriving to prevent the divorce for that very reason? We all know that it would dish Grayle's political career to be cited as a co-respondent at the present time; it would keep him out of the Cabinet or compel him to resign. But I can tell you that it would dish the O'Ranes very much more completely. Dear boy, when we're hoping to close down one scandal, for Heaven's sake don't open up another."

If not impressed, Beresford was at least interested and temporarily checked. He stood reflecting with a scowl on his face and his underlip thrust forward.

"Is that—brute going to be taken into the Government?" he asked.

"According to the papers there's every possibility," Bertrand answered. "No one will ever know, but I choose to believe that he tired of Sonia from the moment when his plans were threatened by the possibility of a scandal."

Beresford looked at him wonderingly and then turned to me.

"Do you bear that out?" he asked. "I don't know enough of public life to say if it's true. Do you mean that, if Grayle went into the Divorce Court, he'd be broken?"

The eagerness of his tone frightened us a little, for we thought that we had talked him out of danger. Bertrand assumed great determination of manner.

"Grayle's not going into the Divorce Court, if we can help it," he said.

"Grayle's going to be broken, if I can work it," was the retort.

"But you can't. No one would support you more readily, if it were possible."

Beresford dropped into his former chair without answering and propped his chin on his fists. Bertrand watched him uneasily; George came back from the door and led me away to the window. Tentatively he asked me how far I thought the threat of proceedings could be used to block Grayle's path of office.

"I don't know how far you can blackmail a man," George admitted. "Particularly a man like Grayle. It's only an idea, I've just thought of it. If we could make him sign an undertaking—something that we could use against him and that he couldn't turn and use against us. It all wants the devil of a lot of thinking out.... If Raney doesn't divorce Sonia now, when the offence is still fresh, I suppose he weakens his position; he may not be able to get a divorce later, and then our barrier's kicked to matchwood. I'm not a lawyer; perhaps Bertrand...."

We walked to the bed, where Bertrand was sitting with his eyes on us. I cannot say whether my friends have been more unfortunate than the generality, but one has bound himself by a similar undertaking not to play cards, two more not to enter certain cities, and four or five to resign certain positions and to live abroad. As a rule, however, a felony was being compounded, or the offence was one against honour wherein there was no statute of limitations.

"It's mere bluff, and he'll beat you at that game," Bertrand said without hesitation. "What Grayle's done is to outrage public opinion, and the public has a short memory. You could break him now, but in two, three years' time people would say, 'This is very ancient history, we've heard her story, but not his; probably he wasn't so much to blame as she makes out; she couldn't live with one man, so it's conceivable that she couldn't live with another. But, anyway, it's ancient history.' In three years' time your man of the world would think none the worse of him;—and you can't tell how far she may have travelled in three years. Time's on his side."

"But this is the opportunity of his political life," George persisted. "In three years' time it may have gone beyond hope of returning."

"But he knows that David wouldn't sacrifice his wife to punish him. Haven't we talked ourselves hoarse to find a way of stopping the proceedings? Grayle's a level-headed fellow——"

"Hardly at this moment," I interrupted.

Bertrand looked at me in some surprise.

"Well, discuss it with David," he said unenthusiastically. "If he agrees, go to Grayle and try your luck. I never like brandishing weapons that I'm not prepared to use. I tell you it's an empty threat and that Grayle will see through it. You know, you're all carried away by some idea of poetic justice, you think you've got a pocket retribution packed up and ready for him; you imagine that people are punished for their crimes in this world. I've outgrown that phase."

The superfluous touch of cynicism flicked us all and Beresford most of all.

"Somebody's going to punish that man," he cried. "I don't know who and I don't know how, but it's going to be done. I'll drop everything else and sacrifice all I've got to it."

Bertrand sighed and lay back on his pillows.

"Grayle's not worth it," he said.

"But Sonia is!" Beresford cried passionately.