" ... Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha.

And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.

But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper.

Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel, may I not wash in them, and be clean ...?"

II Kings 5 : 9-12.

1

When a man has crossed the water-shed of forty, his power of recuperation is sorrily reduced. Perhaps he succumbs less easily to illness or injury, the bruises may take longer to shew themselves, but they also take far longer to disappear.

I found this literally and metaphorically true during the weeks when I lay at "The Sanctuary." After my one painful descent to the telephone, I returned to bed and stayed there for a month. One part of my body after another swelled and changed colour; I was pitifully weak, and for the first time in my life my nerves seemed to have gone limp. The memory of my fight with Grayle haunted me, I could not concentrate my mind on anything and I lacked the native buoyancy to want to get well. Bertrand and George were obviously anxious, but even to oblige them I could not put forth strength which was not in me; the weeks rolled by, and I remained a listless and, I am afraid, an exacting and irritable invalid.

As my name had not been published, as I could in fact plead serious ill-health at the time of the inquest on Beresford, I saw no purpose in thrusting myself on the public until I knew what explanation Grayle proposed to give. Curious enquirers were simply informed that I had met with an accident. In the early days we used to watch the bulletins of Grayle's health and the formation of the new government in parallel columns; and the second made more rapid progress than the first. The chief offices were allotted, one after another, and the minor positions down to the last Junior Lordship of the Treasury; at the beginning it was occasionally stated that "at one time Colonel Grayle's name was mentioned in connection with" this or that or the other appointment; gradually the references to him became rarer until his own paper wrote his political epitaph and announced with conventional regret that, while the Prime Minister was believed to have been hoping to make use of his services, his present condition of health put the acceptance of any office out of the question.

Bertrand smiled grimly, as he shewed me the paragraph, but I was impatiently waiting until Grayle's condition of health enabled him to give me a lead. It came at last through the medium of Bertrand on a night when he had been dining at the House and had seen Grayle for the first time since the fire. I am a tolerably humane man and, though I had struck upon provocation and in defence of my own life, I regretted the state to which I had reduced my opponent. He now walked with two crutches and a sling for his foot in place of the one stick; his head was generously bandaged, and, though a curious faint down was beginning to appear on the exposed portions of his scalp, he no longer wore a moustache, and his eyebrows were singed out of existence.

A circle of his friends was bombarding him with questions and comments from all sides at once—"You had a near shave," "Were you badly hurt?" And then the inevitable enquiry—"How did it start?"

Grayle began a roaming description of the garage and loft, its tinder-dry wood-work, its equipment of inflammable papers and the like.

"There was a large quantity of petrol there, too," he explained confidentially, "but I don't want this talked about. I had no business to have it there; it was too near the house; the place—as we've amply shewn—was in no sense fire-proof. I should have the County Council or some other damned interfering body on my back, if it came out; I'm not claiming from the insurance company, as it is, for fear of too many questions. They let me down lightly at the inquest, because there was no one who could give evidence. So this is a secret session," he ended with a laugh, as he began to hoist himself away towards a chair.

One or two of his companions followed and relieved him of his crutches, as he sat down.

"But how did it start?" he was asked again.

"The lamp was overturned," Grayle answered promptly. "You see, I got a message that this poor fellow Beresford—he was the deluded fanatic who was always getting locked up for seditious pamphlets, you know—that he wanted to see me on urgent business, so I went off, expecting to find that the fellow was in trouble again—I knew him slightly, you see; we'd met at people's houses—when I got there, we sat and talked a bit. Well, he was lame—like me...."

He paused and pulled at the bandage on his head.

"Where had I got to?" he asked a moment later.

"You sat and talked," Bertrand put in from behind.

Grayle turned round quickly and caught sight of him for the first time.

"You're the very man I've been wanting to see!" he exclaimed; and then to the others, "Excuse me a minute."

Bertrand pulled up a chair, as they withdrew.

"You must be grateful to me for coming when I did," he began. "The story didn't seem to be going with much of a swing."

"You can leave my explanation to take care of itself," Grayle answered shortly.

"I felt I could make it a bit fuller," Bertrand suggested.

Grayle looked at him enquiringly.

"I see. Well, you're at liberty to tell your tale, and I'll tell mine. Or we can both leave it where it is. I admit that some people aren't quite satisfied at present, but I manage to get rid of them,—as you've seen. If you want me even to drop a hint that there was an attempt at——?"

His lips formed the word, but he did not utter it; and the unexpected silence was surprisingly sinister.

"It's no business of mine what lies you tell," Bertrand answered. "Is that all you wanted to say? If so, I'll move along."

In the week before Christmas O'Rane returned from Melton to find me immovably billeted upon him. After the first greetings he sat silent and reflective. I could see that he wanted to talk and did not know how to begin. The room was his wife's, and there were still marks by the lock, where he had burst it from the wood-work. God knows what his thoughts must have been! As I looked at his slight figure, lazily reposing in a long chair, and at his self-possessed, unrevealing face, I found it hard to picture the scene when he broke in the door. And for the thousandth time since that day of tragedy I asked myself what had been left him in life and longed for him to ask at least for sympathy, if he knew that I could give him no more help.

When he spoke, it was to make some comment on the war. The month-old rumour that the cabinet had broken on the question of peace negotiations was still flourishing. Rather than face another winter in the trenches the German Government was alleged to have made an offer to evacuate Belgium and northern France with the alternative of a threat, in the event of the war's continuing, that every neutral and allied ship sailing under whatsoever flag would be sunk at sight without warning. A school that was faint-hearted in asserting itself, even if it were not faint-hearted in the prosecution of the war, whispered that we must not miss our market and—in Bertrand's phrase—refuse terms now that we should have to accept gratefully and after the loss of another half million men in six months' time. The rival school of stalwarts proclaimed with great show of reason that Germany would talk of peace only at her own convenience—or necessity—and that her needs were our opportunity.

We went on to talk of the new government and its prospect of life. In the week before I was incapacitated political passion in London rose higher than I have ever known it. The old government, tired and indolent, half-hearted and uncaring, was losing the war beyond hopes of recovery. The new government had intrigued its way into place, selling its soul to Lord Northcliffe, as Faust sold his soul to the devil.... As a very independent member I was privileged to hear both opinions in approximately equal numbers and certainly with equal violence of expression. I described to O'Rane two characteristic meetings within five minutes of each other. I had been walking from my office to lunch at the County Club one day, when I stopped to observe an unusual number of cars and a considerable crowd of loafers outside the Reform Club. George Oakleigh came up from behind and asked what I was watching.

"It's the party meeting," he explained. "Aren't you going?"

"Not invited, George," I said. "I'm left out of these pleasant little gatherings. What are they meeting about?"

"To hear a statement from Asquith. There'll be a vote of confidence, I suppose. He's still the leader of the Liberal Party!" he proclaimed with a note of challenge.

"This partisan enthusiasm is new to you," I commented.

Any hint of raillery was lost on him.

"I daresay it is!" he cried. "I was a candid friend in the old '06 parliament, I've voted against them a score of times, but, when I see how they held the country together in the first shock of the war, when I see what they did.... And now to be turned out by a low press conspiracy and a man who owes his political salvation to Asquith, a man who was pulled out of the gutter at the time of the Marconi scandal ... when the whole party nearly split. My God! talk about gratitude in politics!"

He hurried away still most unwontedly explosive, and I followed more slowly. At the corner of St. James' Square I found Beresford also watching the crowd. (It was our last meeting before he called on me in the afternoon of our tragic expedition.)

"They're broken! Their noses are in the dirt,—and thank God for it!" he cried, pointing excitedly across the road. "They were responsible! They dragged us into the war, it was their war, their diplomacy! Asquith, Haldane and Grey. And now they're in the gutter!"

I remember walking on to luncheon with both conceptions to digest as an appetiser.

O'Rane and I talked long of political futures. The Government had resigned without challenge or defeat; we may have felt that we ought to have been consulted, as a compliment to the unfailing support which we had given; we might even dislike the new ministry's mode of birth, but we agreed in thinking that we must give the new management a trial before reverting to those who had failed to keep order in their own home. Suddenly O'Rane interrupted me with a question which shewed that his thoughts had been for some time at a distance from domestic politics.

"Er—Stornaway," he said with noticeable nervousness. "You remember when you came to see me at Melton some weeks ago? You were going to set enquiries on foot to find out where Sonia had got to."

I told him what had been done and how we had failed. There had not been many days for me between giving my promise of help and involving myself in the encounter with Grayle, but George and his sleuth-hound colleague continued to ransack every resource suggested by friendship or professional pique. And at the end of three weeks they were as near finding her as at the beginning.

"She is either staying with friends or hiding away in rooms somewhere," I told O'Rane as my conclusion. "And I can't suggest any way of tracking her down. It's a waste of time to advertise; she's hiding, because she doesn't want to be found. If I may advise you, wouldn't it be wiser to leave her where she is? I take it that you've stopped proceedings?"

"I've stopped proceedings," he answered, and his chin dropped forward on to his chest so that I should not see the movements of his thin face.

"Then there's nothing to discuss with her. If at any time in the future she or you want to regain your liberty, you can start out to get in touch with her then. Any question of stopping her allowance is mere persecution—and I don't even know that it's likely to be successful persecution. She drew a cheque for twenty pounds on the day she left Grayle; and she's not drawn a penny since. It'll take some time to exhaust her balance, and, if she finds that her quarterly cheque isn't being paid regularly, you know even better than I do that she'll starve or beg or work her fingers to the bone before she'll give in."

O'Rane was long without answering. Then he dragged himself out of the chair, shook hands and bade me good-night.

"I must have a look for her myself," he murmured, as though he were thinking aloud.

"O'Rane, she's clearly avoiding you," I pleaded. "Will it do any good?"

"I must meet her!" he cried tremulously.

If I said a very brutal thing then, I said it because I thought that in the long run it was kindest.

"Let me tell you one thing before you go," I begged him. "O'Rane, you're not facing realities, you know; you're playing with the idea of reconciliations, you think that it's possible to get your wife back and to live with her again. My dear boy, you must use your imagination. Think of the mental process that took her away, think what her experience has been, think what her mental state must be now. She will never come back to you. And you couldn't live with her, even if she did." O'Rane went out of the room without answering by word or gesture.

2

On Christmas Day George came into my room after dinner. He betrayed considerable excitement and was carrying a stout red book in one hand.

"I've tracked her down!" he exclaimed almost before the door was closed.

"Tracked who down?" I asked without any great interest.

"Sonia. I caught sight of her at the Savoy—outside the Savoy, rather—after lunch. The Maitlands were giving a party, and, as we came out into the court-yard, Gerald Deganway put up his eye-glass and dug me in the ribs. Then I saw her in some kind of livery or uniform, driving a car. She didn't see me, and I don't think she wanted to be seen, because she was sitting rather hunched up and with her face turned away.... Then an old general stumped out and told her where to go; she said, 'Yes, sir,' turned the head of the car and drove away. I just had time to see the number and I spent a useful hour or two this afternoon finding who it belonged to. Apparently the old boy calls himself Brigadier-General Sir Andrew Lampwood. Now we'll turn him up in 'Who's Who.'"

He dropped into a chair, filled a pipe and began to turn the pages. General Lampwood, I gathered from his fragmentary recital, had been educated at Eton and Sandhurst ... had served in Egypt, India, Egypt again and South Africa ... despatches, medals, clasps ... a widower with two sons ... one house in Wilton Crescent and another in Norfolk ... Naval and Military, Turf, Ranelagh....

"Well, if Raney wants her, he knows where to find her," he ended. "I suppose you've never met this Lampwood? No more have I." He shut the book with a snap and drummed with his knuckles on the binding. "No wonder we couldn't find her; she's probably living in rooms near by, driving for him all day.... I'm surprised that nobody should have seen her till to-day; she's so well-known, and it's the sort of thing the picture-papers love to get hold of." He sniffed contemptuously. "'Recruit to the Ranks of Society War-Workers!' ... I suppose she can only just have felt that she must do something and have somewhere to live——"

"Do you find people still talking about her?" I interrupted.

"They always have and they always will." He lay back and smoked for a few moments in a reflective silence. "Ever since she came out.... Of course, she's a really beautiful woman—always has been—and she's got a lot of glib society patter and she can make herself almost irresistible to most men. As she would say herself, her technique is perfect. And, if you never waste your energy on emotions, I suppose you're left with a tremendous lot for your precious technique. She can be so charming to everyone, when she likes, that she'll make a success of anything from a sticky dinner to a charity bazaar. She was always a success, she knew it, she got temperamentally drunk on it—until I think that the only thing she cared about was being admired, wanted, loved.... And now she's driving a car for a dug-out general...."

"But what are people saying about her?" I persisted.

"Oh, the old scandal's been toned down to almost nothing. She was being seen about with Grayle too much, and Raney put his foot down and said it was to stop." He grinned maliciously. "Lady Pentyre told me at lunch to-day that it was perfectly abominable the way people went about inventing lies—and about a sweet girl like that! It came so well from Lady Pentyre."

He smoked in silence until O'Rane came in for the five minutes that he always spared me on his way to bed. George repeated what he had told me and asked if there was anything that he could do.

O'Rane listened without any change of expression and then said that he would write to Lady Dainton.

"There's nothing more you'd like me to do?" George asked again.

There was a moment's hesitation in which O'Rane's unsmiling face became graver.

"Well, I can't do it for myself," he said and paused again. "I—I wonder if it would be possible for you to get a word with Sonia—find out what time she starts in the morning and then intercept her——"

"Well?" George encouraged him.

"I wouldn't bother you, if I could see," O'Rane resumed apologetically. "Tell her that if she wants anything——"

I felt that it was time to interfere.

"She can go to her parents," I said. "O'Rane, we're all of us different men and women every day of our lives, we're always changing, never the same. Some things change us more rapidly than others, marriage, illness, great prosperity or great disaster, the death of a friend—my dear boy, I'm only telling you what you know already. Because your name doesn't change, because you look the same and your hair doesn't turn white from illness or grief, you think that you're the same. You're not. And she's not. Since you parted, there have been changes and developments in both your souls which will prevent your ever coming together again. You don't like me to say it, but you'll have to recognise it."

The boy's eyes seemed to shine with reflected pain at every word.

"But isn't there room for something new?" he asked. "A man may love a woman with all his heart and soul, he may marry her, she may die; in time he may marry again—without forgetting her, without transferring the affection he once gave her—leaving her in the place where she's always been since she died, but somehow creating a new love. Don't you think that when two people ... separate, the husks of their love may die ... their old love, I mean, they may even hate the memory of it, but in time, perhaps, a new one may be born ...?"

"Between the same people? My friend, the memory of the separation, the reasons for it, will rise up like ghosts to keep them apart. You want her to come back?"

For the first time a wan smile lit up his thin face.

"Do you wonder?"

"What can you give her that you didn't give her before?" I persisted.

He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed.

"I shouldn't like to think that a second chance is always thrown away."

"And what inducement can you offer?" I asked him brutally.

He spread out his hands with a shrug.

"What inducement did I offer before? We've been in love with each other so long! At one time she was actually engaged to another man.... But there was something constant and unchanging. She didn't forget him or hate him, but in time she had adjusted herself and come back to the thing that had always been there, hidden and unchanged.... So now, isn't it possible that, when the last six months fall into their proper perspective, when the ghosts no longer rise up——"

"How many people have you known to marry a second time after they've been divorced?"

"But there's no reason why they shouldn't."

"In fact they don't," I said.

I believe that George delivered himself of his message within about three days. I believe, further, that he descended to bribe some smirking kitchen-maid and stood through a downpour of rain to seize the opportunity. Mrs. O'Rane masked any surprise that she felt—I suppose that she must have been taking part in many unexpected meetings,—thanked him for troubling to come and transferred her attention to the wind-screen, as a choleric voice remarked, "Now, young man, when you've quite finished talking to my chauffeur!"

The meeting confirmed my own diagnosis. The play was ended, and, if I concerned myself with wondering what O'Rane and his wife would do with the remainder of their lives, I felt that this would be a new play, no continuation of the first. The brief scandal had flickered out as abruptly as it had flared up. Lady Maitland—my barometer and sounding-board—announced to Bertrand across the length of a considerable table that she had seen darling Sonia, who had really turned over a new leaf; it was the best thing in the world; she was taking the war seriously at last.

"Do you know, that dear child is never off duty Sundays or week-days, night or day?" she confided. "You try to get her to lunch or dine—she'll tell you frankly that it's not the least use promising, because, if her General wants her, out she has to go and she may be driving for him all night. I don't see how she can keep it up—not seeing anyone, you know, or doing anything, and after the life she had been leading. Of course, she was really very naughty about the way she did it—all in a night, you know—threw everybody over—I was running an entertainment on behalf of my society, and she simply spoilt one tableau.... But then that's so like darling Sonia."

"She's less of a fool than I thought," was Bertrand's comment to me. "No awkward questions, nobody to meet her and ask them! Can't live at home when she has to be ready with the car at a moment's notice.... I hope General Sir Andrew Lampwood has broad shoulders.... She's snug and secure till the war's over, and God knows when that will be."

I made no answer, for I was thinking of O'Rane. On New Year's Eve he had dined at home with George and Bertrand, and all three came up to my room afterwards. We made a despondent party, for the endlessness of the war daunted us as the third year added month to month with lengthening casualty lists and a growing sense that, when we had already failed so many times and in so many ways, there was no reason why we should not go on failing. Each one of us was far enough from reality to be conscious of helplessness and insufficiency; I could not count the number of times that Bertrand had growled, "I've done with the House! I'm not going down there any more. What good can we do?"—the number of times, too, that he repented and saw the House as the one independent and courageous check on an imbecile and malign government. Stripped of all mental elasticity and enthusiasm, George hated the Admiralty with a savage ferocity that was made no less by the easy youth which he had passed, uncontrolled, undisciplined and effortless. And underneath our nervous depression and irritability lay a despondent sense that the moral grandeur of the war had become obscured.

"I suppose the pace was too hot," George observed gloomily. "But in those first weeks.... They may not have known what they were going out to face, but they went like good 'uns; and the people who stayed behind were ready for any sort of sacrifice of money, comfort, leisure. All the spiritual fervour seems to go now in trying to make other people do things, keeping other people up to the mark.... God! I'm sick of the press agitations, I'm sick of all this political intrigue, I suppose I'm sick of the war."

O'Rane nodded, but made no answer.

"I don't ask anyone to listen to me," George went on with unwonted bitterness, "because I've been wrong all through. So have you, Bertrand. We were wrong before the war, when we said there couldn't be a war; and we were wrong when we started yapping about a 'war to end war.' We can't even make a clean job of this, we can't make the Hun put up his hands and say he'll go back to the status quo, and as for dismembering Germany and deposing the Kaiser—we can't do it! But when I remember my own tom-fool speeches at the beginning——"

"But we couldn't keep out of it, George," O'Rane interjected.

"And precious little good we've done by going in. I suppose we have stopped Germany from dominating Europe, but, as for our own honour, we offered that up on the altar of necessity when we found that we were fighting a nation that meant to win if it darned well could. Our later policy's become frankly imperialistic; there's no ethical connection between Belgian neutrality and the partition of Turkey and Austria. I'm afraid I've taken a deuced long time to see it...." He turned to me with a scornful smile. "Do you remember when you first came back to England? When we met outside the Admiralty?"

"I've often thought of that conversation," I said.

"Everything seemed to follow so naturally in those days," he sighed. "Disarmament, nationality, a tribunal to arbitrate between states. Raney, you were one of the most persistent optimists I've had the ill-luck to meet; you're not going to pretend that the entire thing's not the most futile, gigantic waste ... whole peoples in arms hacking themselves to death and not a damned thing gained! You don't think we're going to win this war?"

For the first time in six months I saw O'Rane roused to impersonal interest.

"I don't know if anybody's going to win," he answered. "And, what's more, I don't greatly care."

"If you were back in August, '14?" George asked, looking him in the eyes and then quickly turning away.

"I'd go through it again," was the quiet reply.

George got up and began to pace restlessly up and down the room.

"The big thing about this war is quite independent of results," O'Rane explained. "It's the effect on the individual, the effort, the risk, the readiness to make sacrifice. I always hold that there's no room in life for compromise. You know that, don't you, George?" He held out his hand and pulled George on to the arm of his chair. "From the days when we were at Melton together. You and dear old Jim Loring and Tom Dainton—dear God! how this war has killed them off!—you used to thrash me, you brutes, to make me see that I must compromise, but you never won. And always before the war I thought that compromise—what I call moral cowardice and spiritual slovenliness—was the only thing that people minded about. They didn't care. It wasn't their business! If the world was cruel and licentious or base-minded, they always asked me to remember that human nature was human nature." He sprang up with a sudden wriggle as though he were jerking an incubus from his shoulders. "As a nation we were contented with the second-rate—compromise, toleration, ease; we were second-rate in life, art, politics, second-rate in humanity, in soul.... And then there came the war—and it was the big moment when we had to decide whether to fight our way through the flames or to stand in distant security and explain to the reporters that there was a child, sure enough, in the top storey, but that it would be suicide to attempt a rescue and what was the fire brigade for, anyway?... We had to decide, we had to make up our minds that there was something big enough to suffer and sacrifice ourselves for.... All of us who went out there thought, rightly or wrongly, that we'd found something that admitted of no compromise.... Even if you went out of bravado, like poor Val Arden, so as not to be thought a funk.... What it was—I don't quite know ..." he went on slowly. "I doubt if any of us know, and we certainly didn't at the time. Perhaps it was for the security of the people at home.... I know I was seeing red, I'd have slit the throats of German women and children at that time—in revenge for what they did in Belgium.... But before that started, before war was declared.... You remember that last week-end of the Saturnia regna, George? When we walked up and down, up and down at Loring Castle, wondering whether there was anything worth saving.... Well, whenever I catch myself feeling as you do now, I recall that about four million men voluntarily decided that there was something in life better than their own lives, something that had to be preserved, something that ruled out all compromise. That's the moral value of war. After all, what is it you do when you run into the flames and rescue the kiddie from the top storey? You save its life, I admit, and that's something, if you value human life, but the child may die a week later of whooping-cough, it may grow into a drunkard, an imbecile, a criminal. What matters it that you've taken yourself, your own soul, and given it a value?... When this is all over, if we lose, if we're bankrupt and broken, if Germany enchains us like so many tribes of African blacks, it still doesn't matter to the men who refused to compromise, they've made themselves.... Yes, quite deliberately, I'd—go through it—all—again.... And, when the war's over, we can't afford to tolerate anything but the best, we haven't been fighting for the second-rate. And we've got to prepare our own minds for that now, so that the material changes follow automatically. You must start with the individual, your own relationship to the world in all its aspects. Hanging for sheep-stealing ceased automatically when the public mind had prepared itself, stirred itself up to say 'This has got to stop!' and the compromisers, the obscurantists, the vested interests daren't raise their heads. You think, perhaps, that I'm not the best person to decry the usefulness of compromise——"

He stopped abruptly, and all the light and colour died out of his big eyes.

Bertrand, whom I thought to be dozing, raised his head for a moment and lowered it again.

"Didn't Saint Paul say something about being all things to all men?" he asked gently. "Saint Paul was a great diplomatist, a great man of the world. You'd say he was a great compromiser, David, but at least he knew how to suit himself to his audiences, to make allowances for poor, despised human nature. And perhaps you'll even admit that he was not altogether unsuccessful and that Christianity would never have spread a hundred miles from Jerusalem but for him. I sometimes think he has been unduly neglected," he continued with a yawn. "Christianity would have been a poor thing without him."

"It would have been a poorer thing without Christ," O'Rane answered. "And there would have been no Christianity at all, if Christ had said that the Scribes and Pharisees were doing their best according to their lights ... or that we must make allowances for Dives because he had a great many calls on his charity and really couldn't investigate each one personally. Of course, there'd have been no Crucifixion...."

3

The Christmas holidays passed rapidly, and I remember that O'Rane told me one Sunday night that he would be going back to Melton in another ten days' time. None of us cared to ask him how much longer he proposed to continue this make-shift life, teaching seventeen-year-olds for nine months in the year and learning procedure in the House of Commons during the remainder; it was his means of trying to forget that his wife was in the same city, living within a mile or two of him, driving perhaps within a hundred yards of their house or passing him in the street, elusive and unattainable.

After George's glimpse and single meeting, we heard little of her. George told me that he had met "Sonia's General," as that no doubt gallant soldier came to be called with unflattering disregard of earlier and more varied achievements, that he was an agreeable fellow, that someone was putting him up for the Eclectic Club. They fell into conversation and discussed the prowess of the new driver; the General had been taken completely by surprise.

"If she'd said 'Sonia Dainton,' anyone would have known," he explained. "I'd forgotten she was married. She suits me uncommon well,—if she can stand the strain...."

A day or two later Bertrand made the General's acquaintance and came home with the not very surprising news that Mrs. O'Rane had terminated her engagement.

"I never supposed that phase would last long," he grunted. "Up early, back late, out in all weathers and thankful if you can snatch five minutes to munch a sandwich out of a paper bag. There'd be very little of this boasted 'war-work' done, Stornaway, if people weren't allowed to go about in uniform, and none at all, if the first condition of your employment was that no one was allowed to know that you were doing war-work of any kind. I can see the offices and hospitals yielding up their social ornaments! Well, Sonia O'Rane's at least honest about it. A week or two with only a livery and no one to admire her——!"

"She's got no excuse now for living anywhere but at home," I commented.

Bertrand grunted scornfully.

"Give her credit for a little more contrivance than that! She leaves her General at the end of the month, by which time her husband will be safely back in the country. But she hopes to take it up again, when she's a bit stronger. I had this from the General; he shewed me her letter. Damned ill-written scrawl," he added with the intolerance which ran away with him whenever his prejudices were aroused. "She'll recuperate by lunching and dining out and dancing and staying up till all hours; and the moment David comes back to London she'll be well enough to go back to her precious work. You see if I'm not right."

This time, however, Bertrand's ingenuity and malice overreached themselves, for we heard from Lady Maitland that Mrs. O'Rane was genuinely ill.

"I used to see her every morning," she told George, "as I went to Harrod's, and nine times out of ten we had just a word together. Then I missed her, then I saw the car being driven by someone else. I hope it's nothing serious."

The conversation took place at a luncheon party where O'Rane was present. George took it upon himself to reassure her, but from the fact that Mrs. O'Rane had disappeared even more completely than after leaving Grayle there was a risk in fabricating good or bad news about her. General Lampwood supplied her address, and one evening when there was nothing better to do George went round to her lodgings. They consisted of a bed-sitting room in a street off Wilton Crescent conveniently near to the garage. She was in bed, and the landlady doubted whether visitors would be very welcome, as she was suffering a good deal of pain.

"That decided me," George told me. "She hadn't actually said she wouldn't see anyone, because I'm pretty sure she didn't think it would be necessary. I gave her the surprise of her life when I marched in; she couldn't imagine how I'd heard she was ill, how I'd found out her address.... She's now suffering from the most awful reaction after the racket of the last year. Nothing that I said or did was right; she was as lonely as a woman could be and at the same time resented my coming, resented my saying she looked rotten and ought to see a doctor...." He frowned and shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "She needn't bother. She won't catch me going there a second time."

Yet rather less than ten hours passed before he was caught going there a second time. Indeed he can hardly have left the house before Mrs. O'Rane was writing in contrition—"Darling George, do forgive me if I was snappy and ungracious, but I did feel so rotten! It was my own fault that nobody came to see me, because nobody knew where I was, but I felt so horribly neglected, I was so furious with everybody for not coming to see me, that when you came into the room I laid myself out to be hateful.... My dear, I did really feel iller than I can tell you, so forgive me! Sonia."

"I suppose if I collect a few flowers ..." George began apologetically next morning. "I shan't be able to stay more than a moment, or I shall be so frightfully late at the office.... I might get my cousin Violet to look her up, of course."

I was never told how he found Mrs. O'Rane on the occasion of his second visit, but in the evening young Lady Loring paid us an unexpected visit. I did not see her, but, when she had gone, George came into my room with an expression of worried perplexity.

"Violet's been sitting most of the day with Sonia," he explained. "I wonder if you guessed.... I confess I never thought of it for one moment. Sonia's going to have a child very shortly."

I, too, was taken by surprise and needed a moment to arrange my thoughts.

"You're sure of that?" I asked.

"She told Violet. The question is—what are we going to do with her? She's got to be properly looked after and she's got to be moved out of her present pokey little room.... I suppose it means a nursing home. Violet suggested taking her to Loring House, but that was more generous than practical. I'm afraid there's no doubt Sonia did behave very badly to Jim Loring when she was engaged to him ... and Violet knows it and doesn't forgive her ... and Sonia doesn't forgive her for knowing it. You know what women are. Violet's got all the sweetness in the world, she thinks she doesn't bear a grudge, she can call on Sonia in bed, make a fuss of her ... but it's different to take her into her own house, particularly with the associations that house must have for Sonia. But I needn't labour the point; the suggestion was turned down almost as soon as it was made. Well, she can't go to her mother, because Crowley Court's overflowing with wounded soldiers; and I don't know that she's overwhelmingly anxious to meet her mother. She can't come here, of course."

He stood reflectively rubbing his chin.

"Whose child is it going to be?" I asked.

"Grayle's the father. I suppose that, as Raney's taken up his present attitude——" He left the sentence unfinished and began to fill a pipe. "Ye gods, what a sweet mess people can get themselves into!"

"When's the event expected?"

"Pretty soon, I fancy. Violet didn't tell me the exact date, but she did give me to understand very plainly that Sonia mustn't be left by herself any longer. She was extraordinarily overwrought and hysterical, when I saw her, but for some reason or other I never imagined.... I say, Stornaway, if it had been Raney's child, if this had happened a year ago?"

"Nothing would have saved them," I answered, "though it might have kept them artificially together, making a hell of each other's lives, when they'd be far happier apart. O'Rane was more responsible than any man for the break-up of their life; Grayle was only the instrument. The tragedy began when they married."

George smiled grimly.

"I suppose even Raney will see it, when his wife gives birth to another man's child.... And then what? Will he divorce her then? Have we got to go through all this racket again? In the meantime the nursing-home problem——"

He stopped guiltily, as the door opened and O'Rane came in to say good-night to me.

"Who's been to call here?" he asked George. "I met a car driving away."

"It was Violet Loring."

"Oh, I wish I'd known that! When next you see her, you can tell her she's a rude pig not to have pulled up. She must have seen me."

"She was in rather a hurry," George explained. "As a matter of fact, it was me she came to see."

I suppose his voice betrayed uneasiness or at least embarrassment, for O'Rane turned to him with quick sympathy.

"Nothing wrong, I hope?" he asked. "The boy's all right?"

"Oh, it wasn't that." George looked at me almost despairingly, but I could only shrug my shoulders and leave him to make up his own mind. "She came in to say that Sonia's a bit seedy," he went on. "I—as a matter of fact, I saw her for a moment yesterday and, as she was rather off colour, I thought it would be a friendly act for Vi to look her up. I don't know if you heard Lady Maitland telling me at lunch the other day that she was a bit done up."

O'Rane's face became rigid, and his voice was as set as his features.

"I didn't hear anything about it. I—You ought to have told me, George. What's the matter with her?"

George looked at me again, without winning any more help than before.

"I only saw her for a moment," he answered evasively. "She seemed rather overdone."

"But who's looking after her?"

"Nobody much at present. That was what Violet came about: she'd been to see her and thought it would be more comfortable if she were moved into a nursing home."

Nature must compensate the blind by developing their other qualities. Though he could not see George's studiedly non-committal face, O'Rane divined something hidden from him in the easily reassuring voice.

"Old man, I don't think that's the whole story, is it?" he asked with persuasive gentleness. "The nursing-home rather gives you away. Has Sonia got to have an operation?"

"There's no suggestion of it! Violet says it's nothing out of the ordinary."

"Then why a nursing-home?"

"Because she wants rather more attention than she's likely to get in her present quarters. But there's not the slightest need for you to worry yourself."

O'Rane began to pace up and down the room, chewing his lips.

"She must come here, of course," he said at length.

This time I looked up at George.

"You won't find that practicable, O'Rane," I said.

"Why not?"

"She won't come."

"Because of me, you mean? I'll clear out, if she prefers it; I should be clearing out in any event at the end of the week. But it's her home."

"You can't bring her home by force."

O'Rane's eyes lit up with sudden, burning passion.

"If I had my sight, I'd bring her myself! As I haven't, George is going to bring her for me. Yes, you are, George. You're going to take a car and have her carried into it and brought here. If she objects, you're going to make her. I'll leave the house when she tells me to. You don't understand me, you wouldn't understand me, if you lived to be a thousand; but I took an oath and I'm going to keep it. I swore in the sight of God that I would hold her in sickness and in health to love and to cherish till death parted us. I said it with her hand in mine ... in Melton chapel ... and I could feel her fingers trembling. It was a scorching July day, and I could feel the sun coming hot on my face.... I'd never been at a wedding before, for some reason; we'd rehearsed it, and Sonia'd told me how I had to stand and what I had to say.... And I kept repeating the words as we came out into the Cloisters—it was cold as the grave, and I felt her shivering as she leant on my arm. And then there was a word of command and a rattle as the Corps presented arms.... And we came out into Great Court, and I could feel the sun again. And we were marched off to Little End, and I heard a lot of yelping, and something with a cold nose pressed against my hand, and Sonia gave a little choke and said that Pebbleridge had turned out the hounds in our honour.... And before we went to Burgess' house—the words were still running in my head—I whispered 'I will love you, comfort you, honour and keep you in sickness and in health, forsaking all other.' I swore it then and I should be damned if I went back on it. This is her first sickness since we were married, and I'm not going to leave her to go through it alone until she tells me to."

His voice rang with excitement until the room echoed and Bertrand came in with eyebrows raised.

"You don't in the least understand, Raney," George began in difficulty and distress. "You were quite right; I hadn't told you the whole story——"

"I don't want to hear any more—yet," O'Rane interrupted. "I shouldn't be asking you to do this, if I could do it myself."

"Was that necessary?" George asked with a touch of stiffness and impatience. "I'll go whenever you want me to."

"You must go now. Ring up Violet and tell her to meet you there in half an hour with her car; you'll want a woman to help you. The rest of us will have our work cut out to get things ready here. Stornaway, I'm sorry to disturb you, but I shall have to find you a shakedown in some other part of the house; this is Sonia's room. Don't waste a moment, George——"

"I suppose you know it's after eleven," George interrupted.

"Move her to-night, if she's fit to move. Let Violet decide that."

George looked from Bertrand to me and turned helplessly to the door. O'Rane had already rung my bell and was standing in the passage tattooing the floor with impatient foot and waiting for his housekeeper. I spread a bath-towel in the middle of the floor and began to pile on it my exiguous personal effects, while Bertrand seated himself heavily in an arm-chair and begged for enlightenment. A moment later the front-door slammed, as George set out.

For an hour we worked hard to make the house ready for Mrs. O'Rane. Bertrand's one comment, when I explained the new commotion, was, "The boy's mad! She won't come," and from time to time, when he was being urged and driven to a fresh task, he would remonstrate gently and warn O'Rane not to be disappointed. There was never any answer. By midnight our labours were complete: the bedrooms had been reshuffled and beds made, food and drink prepared. We met in the library with vague uncertainty what to do next.

"You must tell me if it looks all right," O'Rane said to Bertrand. "I want it to look exactly as it was before. She always loved this room, and I believe it is a beautiful room."

Bertrand glanced perfunctorily round and laid his hand clumsily on the boy's shoulder.

"I told you before, David; you're going to be terribly disappointed, if you think she's coming."

"I would have undertaken to bring her!" he cried. "We can trust George. And I don't suppose he'll even say where he's taking her."

"If she doesn't know where she's coming," I interrupted, "you'd better keep out of the way till she says she'd like to see you."

"I must welcome her," O'Rane answered.

Bertrand and I exchanged glances and excused ourselves. As we turned at the door, O'Rane was standing with his watch to his ear. About three-quarters of an hour later I heard a car slowing down in the street outside.

George has told me since that his cousin and he found their patient far less difficult than they had feared. She was plunged in melancholy bordering on hysteria. Loneliness, pain and neglect had reduced her pride until she sat up in bed with her face contorted and tears trickling down her cheeks, reproaching them for never coming to see her and bitterly proclaiming that she now knew how much trust to put in people when they said that they were her friends. George took her hand and explained that he had come to take her away where she would be tended and made happy. At once there was an indignant outburst; she would not move, she was quite well; if they would go away instead of bullying her, worrying her, threatening her, she would be all right in a moment. He let the storm spend itself and recaptured the hand that she had snatched away.

"Violet's told me what's the matter with you," he whispered. "Unless you're very quiet and good, you'll injure yourself. And you are going to be quiet and good, aren't you?" He was talking to her as though she were a child and she responded by throwing her arms round his neck and weeping convulsively. "You're going to be very good, aren't you, Sonia? And we're all going to take the greatest care of you. Violet's got her car here, and we're going to wrap you in a cloak and explain to your landlady that we're not really stealing the blankets, however much appearances may be against us, and we're going to take you away, and you're going to be in the midst of friends, and everybody's going to be kind and sweet to you, and you're going to forget how lonely and miserable you've been the last few days."

He lifted her into a sitting position, while Lady Loring hunted for slippers and wrapped a cloak about her.

"I don't deserve it!" Mrs. O'Rane cried with sudden revulsion. "Why do you come here bothering me? It's my fault, I knew perfectly well what I was doing; I should never have done it, if he'd treated me properly, if he'd loved me. It was David's fault, you know it was; and you come here bothering me when I'm ill...."

George helped her out of bed and supported her across the room. From time to time she muttered, "Why don't you leave me alone? It was his fault, but he could never do any wrong in your eyes!" like a sobbing child in the last stages of a tornado of temper. He carried her into the car, while Lady Loring poured out a hurried explanation to the landlady. A deep drowsiness descended upon her as she felt herself being packed into a bed of cushions, while a bearskin rug was wrapped round her, but, as the engine started, she opened her eyes and enquired sleepily where she was being taken.

"You're to go to sleep and not ask questions," said George. "Is that a promise? Say it quite slowly—'I—Sonia O'Rane—promise—that—I—will—go—to—sleep—at—once—quite—quietly—and—will—not—ask—a n y—questions.'" She laughed weakly and began to repeat the words, only stumbling at her own surname. "Once again!" George ordered. "I—Sonia O'Rane—promise...." She struggled half-way through the sentence and then dropped asleep with her head pressed against his shoulder.

She was still sleeping when the car drew up at "The Sanctuary." The door stood open, George lifted her out and carried her across the pavement and into the house. The lights in the library were burning, and, as he carried her in with her head over his shoulder, she looked dully at the familiar book-cases and panelling, the high, shadowy rafters, the chairs and sofas and the preparations for a meal on the refectory table. He had borne her half-way across the room, when she recognised her surroundings and struggled violently to free herself. George had perforce to lay her on a sofa before she threw herself out of his arms. As he did so, O'Rane came up from behind.

"I asked George to bring you here," he explained. "I thought you'd be more comfortable at home."

She dragged herself to her feet and hurried uncertainly to the door.

"My dear, you can't go out in that state!" said Lady Loring, as she laid restraining hands on her shoulders.

"Let me go! It was a trick! You lied to me!"

O'Rane slipped forward and touched her wrist.

"I thought you'd be more comfortable at home," he repeated. "You won't find me in the way, I'm going back to Melton. I was only staying to see that you had everything you wanted."

"Let me go!" she cried again, shaking his fingers off her wrist.

"No, I'm going. But isn't it more comfortable?"

She looked stonily round, and her eyes came to rest on his face.

"Oh, yes. It's more comfortable. Now may I go, please?"

"You had better stay. Let me help you upstairs, and then I'll leave the house. I was hoping you'd be glad to be back. And I'd waited so long."

He smiled and held out his hands to her. She looked at him for a moment; then her eyes closed, and she began to sway.

"Take me home!" she whimpered, as George sprang forward to catch her.

"You must stay here to-night."

"I ask you to take me home!"

O'Rane put one arm under her shoulders, and the other under her knees.

"It's too late now, and you're tired, darling," he whispered. "To-morrow, if you like. I'm just going to carry you up to bed, as I used to do at Crowley Court when you were twelve and I came over for the holidays. Do you remember? And then I'll say good-night, and Violet will put you to bed and take care of you. Don't struggle, Sonia sweetheart! You can't hate me so much that you can't bear to let me touch you or carry you up a flight of stairs when you're ill."

4

As I kept deafly and pusillanimously to my room, I am far from sure what happened during the remainder of the night. O'Rane, I believe, carried his wife up to bed, left her in charge of Lady Loring and accepted from the tired butler at Loring House an armchair in the library for his own accommodation. Bertrand was already in bed, I heard George going to bed as the car started outside; by two o'clock all was quiet.

I remember that, when I was young enough to play baccarat for high stakes and impressionable enough to be embarrassed by a scene, I stayed in a house where certain unpleasantness took place at the card-table. The dispute and recriminations were bad enough, the night of reflection—after a dozen final councils adjourned from bedroom to bedroom—was worse, but worst of all was our uncertain meeting next day, when we stood whispering by the fire in the dining-room, peevishly waiting for breakfast and watching the door to see whether the cause of the unpleasantness would shew himself. Bertrand, George and I stood whispering next morning with much the same embarrassment; breakfast lay on the table, and none of us paid any attention to it. The time was early for me and late for George; I have no idea at what hour Bertrand usually rose, but I remember he was soothing himself with the first cigarette I had ever seen him smoke, at intervals forgetting that it was not a cigar and trying to hold it between his teeth.

Our attitude of vague expectancy was broken up by the arrival of Lady Loring in a creased, black evening dress with a travelling rug over her shoulders. Her eye-lids were pink with fatigue and her arms mottled with cold.

"We look a nice band of conspirators!" she exclaimed. "Now, will somebody tell me what it's all about?"

"How's Sonia?" George asked.

"She went to sleep the moment her head touched the pillow and she was sleeping like a child whenever I looked at her. I think you're all needlessly alarmed about her, but then you're only men. I've been through it all, so I know exactly what it feels like to imagine you're being neglected. But what does anybody want me to do?"

She beckoned us to the table and sat down rather wearily, looking from one to another.

"The trouble is, dear lady," Bertrand grunted, "that we don't know. I suppose you've heard that these two young idiots have had a disagreement? Does that young woman upstairs know where she is?"

"She'll know the moment she wakes up. Is David here?"

"He said he'd beg a shakedown at your house, Violet," George interrupted.

Lady Loring hummed dubiously.

"To judge from her condition yesterday," she ventured, "she's hardly accountable for her actions. It's not to be wondered at, you know, when you think what she's been through—and the way she's lived on her nerves for years. If you'll tell me what you want done, of course...."

It was easier to concentrate our attention on breakfast. George soon hurried away to his office, Bertrand lighted a cigar and went off to a committee meeting, after stumping the library for half an hour, with the ends of his walrus moustache pulled into a circle, and murmuring at five-minute intervals, "What are two fat old men like us doing in this galley?" A telephone message from O'Rane enquired how his wife was, and Lady Loring took the opportunity of arranging with her maid for a supply of clothes to be sent round. The conversation reminded me of her vigil, and I told her that, if she would lie down until luncheon, I would take a book, a chafing-dish and a bowl of bread and milk and sit outside Mrs. O'Rane's door in case she wanted anything. Half-way through the morning O'Rane tiptoed upstairs for a change of linen; Bertrand relieved guard while I went down and took a light meal with Lady Loring. It was not until three or four o'clock that I heard sounds of movement within the sick-room.

I went in to find Mrs. O'Rane considerably altered since our last meeting, but more collected than I had anticipated. She asked for food and, when I had brought her the bowl of bread and milk, begged me to stay and talk to her. Her first question was who had brought her to "The Sanctuary," and, when I had told her, she lay back on the pillows with closed eyes to avoid giving away any points.

"I feel better than I did yesterday," she said at length. "I shall go back to my own rooms to-day."

"You'll be wiser to stay here."

She smiled rather sneeringly.

"You think it's the simplest thing in the world for me to stay here."

"The wisest," I corrected her. "Your husband's not here, by the way, and you can be sure of being well looked after."

"Oh, don't say that again! You think it's easy for me to lie here and be looked after by people who despise me and hate me...."

I got up and lifted the tray from her bed.

"I'm going to leave you now," I said. "Sleeping's much better for you than talking, and I'm afraid I've got rather a faculty for getting on your nerves."

Her lower lip at once fell and trembled with nervous contrition.

"I didn't mean to be rude, but I do feel so ill! And you do all hate me! To bring me here!"

She gave a single breathless sob, and tears began to well into her eyes and trickle down her cheeks. I pulled a chair to the bedside and took her hand.

"The older I get," I said, "the greater disparity I find between the theory and practice of hating. Theoretically I hate no end of a lot of people, but, if I had the power of venting my hatred on them, I don't see myself using it much. As a matter of fact, I had a talk with George the other night about you; I said that the madcap life here was fantastically impossible, that your husband had himself to blame more than any other man for driving you out of the house——"

"That wasn't why I left him," she interrupted quickly.

"You didn't leave him because you thought he was unfaithful to you."

"I know he was. I had proofs."

"Supplied by Grayle?" I hazarded. She looked at me steadily without answering. "Well, when you've time, I should re-examine those proofs in the light of your general knowledge of your husband. If you're interested in my opinion of you"—her eyes lit up eagerly—"you'd sooner be insulted than ignored, wouldn't you?"—expectancy gave way to affected anger—"Well, I don't hate you, but you were a little fool to marry such a man; your instinct, your knowledge of life, your knowledge of him ought to have made it impossible. Having married him and considering his affliction, I blame you for not effacing yourself, obliterating your own individuality to stay with him. After that——" I dropped her hand and strolled to the window. "You were young, entitled to make your own life; it's not easy to justify, but it seems to follow almost naturally from the premisses. It happens to have turned out a failure, but no one can hate you for an error of judgement, particularly when you've shewn that your instinct about men is unreliable; you shewed it with O'Rane, I believe you shewed it before ... and fortunately pulled up before it was too late. I feel this so strongly that I told O'Rane it would be a tragedy, if you ever tried to come back to him; there'd be a second catastrophe worse than the first.... I'm afraid he's too much in love with you to use his imagination."

She pressed the palms of both hands against her eyes.

"I can't stay here," she exclaimed irrelevantly. "I've no right to turn David out."

"You needn't worry about that. He's given you the right, and you're turning him out for less than a week. For the matter of that——"

Her face grew suddenly set and her eyes scornful. "I suppose in spite of all the fine words this is all a trick to try and force me back here?"

"I've not the least doubt that O'Rane hopes you'll return to him," I told her frankly; "he probably will, even when he knows what's the matter with you,—no, he doesn't know even that at present;—but he's living in a fool's paradise."

With another of her quick facial regroupings—which is the only phrase I can find to indicate the shortening of a line here, its lengthening there, the droop or lift of the corners of her mouth, the dilatation of a pupil, the sudden gleam which turned her brown eyes almost golden, the tilt of the nose or the sudden birth of a dimple—she was smiling with her old demure self-confidence.

"I'm vain enough to think I can make almost any man want to live with me," she said, darting a glance from beneath lowered eyelashes.

"Come, that's more like yourself!" I laughed.

Thereupon the smiles and coquetry vanished as though I had struck her in the face. Yes, I had always hated her, always disapproved of her, regarded her as a flirt, taken everyone's side against her. There was no good in her, was there? Nothing ever to be said in her defense?... She lashed herself from one fury to another for ten minutes, only stopping from exhaustion and discouragement at my failure to answer.

"I could make him love me!" she panted in conclusion. "I shouldn't even need to make him, he's in love with me now. But I could make him happy. You think I can't. You think I can't! You know you think I can't!"

I laid my hand on hers; she slapped at it petulantly, but without any great desire to hurt, I fancied.

"Mrs. O'Rane——"

"Why don't you call me Sonia?" she interrupted with complete detachment from all that we had been discussing. "Everyone does. I suppose you prefer to keep—at a distance!"

And then I did a thing which still surprises me. I got up and sat on the edge of her bed. (There was a spring-mattress which I largely capsized, so that she was thrown half on her side.) I put one arm round her shoulders, drew her to me and kissed her on the forehead and both cheeks. I remember thinking at the time what an amazing thing it was to do, and the thought was confused with a knowledge that her face was dry and burning. She put her arms on my shoulders and returned the kiss; quite dispassionately I noticed that her lips were crumpled and dry as brown paper.

"Don't you think you're really rather a silly baby, Sonia?" I said. "If you could remember the times we've met, I should tell you frankly that for half of them I wanted to go away and keep at the farthest possible distance. For the other half——"

Her eyes brightened in anticipation of a compliment.

"Well?"

"It doesn't matter now. Why won't you believe that everyone here wants to help you?"

"Because I don't see why they should. I didn't expect it, I don't ask for it; I made up my mind at the time...."

She choked and drew herself closer to me, sobbing quietly but inconsolably until I felt her arms relaxing and laid her back on the pillows, a pathetically disfigured and moist piece of something that was above all wonderfully youthful.

"If you'll promise not to cry, I'll stay and talk to you," I said. "Otherwise——" I must have made some unconscious movement, for she clutched at my sleeve. "Do you promise? Well, I'm only a man...."

She pulled herself suddenly upright.

"Where's David?" she demanded.

"At Loring House, I believe,—only a man, as I was saying, but I can tell you that you'll wear yourself out, if you go on like this. You've got a great grievance against all of us, you say we hate you and despise you; wouldn't it be fairer not to say that till we've given you some better cause than you've had at present?"

Her teeth snapped like the cracking of a nut. Then the corners of her mouth drooped, and she began to cry again.

"If you would hit me!" Her head fell back until I could see only a quivering throat and the under side of her chin. "My God! what I've been through! No one knows! No one can ever know!"

I gave her some water to drink and asked leave to light a cigarette.

"When I was a small boy," I said, "there was a big oak press in my bedroom which used to reflect the firelight until I thought that all manner of goblins were coming out to attack me. I never got rid of the idea until I was shewn inside it by daylight—I remember it was full of the drawing-room summer chintzes;—then I never feared it again. Does it help you to talk about things, Sonia?"

Her face set itself again, but this time in resolution. For two hours I listened to the most terribly frank self-revelation that I am ever likely to hear. Like a sinner worked up to make confession, she told me of her life from the age of sixteen, when she had fallen romantically in love with O'Rane and when her mother had, quite properly, told her not be ridiculous. For years she had been incited—I had almost written "excited"—to make a great match; she had rushed into an engagement with an honoured title, half feeling all the time that she was pledged to the trappings of a man rather than to the man himself; and, when the engagement ended, she had set herself, like a prisoner at the triangles, to shew that it did not hurt, that she was not going to allow her capacity for enjoyment to be killed; and, when her own people looked askance at her, she had traded her charms among others who fawned on her and whom she despised. The outbreak of war found her unplaced—without mission or niche; she had thrown herself into war-work—and broken down, she had lain useless, neglected and tacitly contemned until she met O'Rane, blind and icily self-sufficient.

Then she had married him in the delirium of self-immolation, only to find that his passionate idealism for the future was transmuted into a white-hot zest to perfect the present. He was prepared to practise the Sermon on the Mount in a tweed suit and soft hat. For a month she shared his life as she would have partaken of an impromptu mid-night picnic in the Green Park. Then a homing instinct had rebelled against the promiscuous publicity of their life, she had felt that his love for her was diluted beyond taste by a vague devotion to mankind. She had treasured slights where no slights were intended and vented irritabilities where none was justified. His smiling patience had evoked a sense of hopelessness, followed by a desire for self-assertion. They had quarrelled, and, rather than admit herself in the wrong, she had blindly groped for evidence against him which the heat of inconvertible resentment would torture her into believing. Grayle had supplied it....

She told me unreservedly of the conflicting influences upon her of three men at the same time. All were in love with her after their kind. O'Rane himself, most sympathetic with men and least understanding of women, gave her the keys and cheque-book of his life, imagining that undemonstrative, uncaressing fidelity would meet with like return; Beresford offered a romantic devotion which posed her frigidly among mountain snows and would have sent him through fire to avenge an insult to his idealised conception. And Grayle had strode in, compelling and indifferent, slighting and frightening her alternately, at a time when she was instinctively yearning to be called to order, taken in hand, shaken and even beaten.

"I was like the 'Punch' picture of the woman in a thunderstorm," she laughed. "I wanted a man there just to tell me not to make a fool of myself. Poor David never, never ..."

Grayle desired her until she felt safe in playing with him, then he neglected her until in pique she set out to try the temper of her charms; ultimately he terrorised her into a surrender which neither blind trust nor deaf devotion could compass.

She told me of her mood when she felt that Grayle was overpowering her, of her drunken willingness to believe what she knew was untrue. She described her parting with O'Rane as she might have described herself beating a child because she was out of temper and had to pretend that someone else was in fault. I was given an unsparing account of her life in Milford Square, which she entered with an unsubstantial hope that she would find love and a quivering sense that she had come like a dog to be beaten. Not a day and night had passed before she found that she had outstayed her welcome, that she was pressing on him for all his life what he desired for an unoccupied afternoon. Their life together was like the record of wife-beating by a besotted husband refined in method by the play of sarcastic wit on impressionable senses. At last there had come a day when he put into words the taunt that hitherto lacked only verbal clarity; she riposted with the charge that he was discarding her to clear the way to his political ambitions; every hoarded grudge and bitterness was dragged into the light, unseemly reproaches were uttered with the knowledge that all were exaggerated and most without foundation; and in a breathing-space both discovered that the articulation of such hidden and reserved acerbity made it impossible for them ever to live together again.

She had walked into the street with his last scurrility stinging her ears and cheeks until she found herself tearlessly crying. It was no use crying, when she needed all her wits to decide her next move, all her composure to face it. A lodging for the night had to be found in some place where she would not be interrogated, and for long her mind wavered slowly from one to another of the neighbourhoods in which she had lived and which all the while she knew were the first for her to reject—Rutland Gate, Manchester Square, Curzon Street, Westminster. It was hard to think of anywhere else; one needed a map, one of those easy maps that were pasted on the walls of Underground stations....

The long recital had exhausted her pent antagonism, and she described her experiences as General Lampwood's driver with humour and an occasional preening of her feathers.

"One day I knew I was going to have a child," she threw out abruptly. "It—it made me quite ill. Then—well, you know the rest. I'm not complaining. I never thought it was going to be easy or pleasant, but, if I had my time over again——"

"I think not, Sonia," I said.

"I never expected a bed of roses," she answered haughtily. Then she suddenly covered her face with her hands. "You mean I'm not through with it yet? Mr. Stornaway, is it—is it as bad as people say? I'm not a coward, really; I don't believe I should mind if I wanted it, if I were praying for a child, if it was going to be a child I should love.... That was what made me ill. When I first knew and I remembered the awful day when he turned me out of the house.... I wanted to kill myself. There was a big motor lorry racing along Knightsbridge, and I made up my mind to step in front ... as if I hadn't heard it. I stood on the kerb and put one foot forward.... Oh, but I wanted to live so badly! I couldn't, I simply couldn't! It was like tearing myself in two with my own hands. I just had time to think of next spring and all the early flowers coming up.... And then I knew that I should have to go through with it!"

Her eyes closed, and she lay without speaking until I made sure that she was asleep. I was treading lightly to the door when she called out and asked to be supplied with paper and a pencil.

"You're just in the mood to go to sleep," I protested.

She shook her head obstinately.

"I couldn't sleep, if I tried. You say David's at Loring House?"

"He spent last night there and looked in here this morning for clean clothes. I've no idea where he is now."

She looked at me with the set, unrevealing expression which I had seen once or twice already.

"Let me know if he comes in to-morrow," she said.

We had not to wait so long, for O'Rane, behind the pretext of packing books and clothes for his return to Melton, came in after dinner and examined me keenly on the condition of his wife. I mentioned that she had hinted at a desire to see him or at least to know his whereabouts, and, for all his control of himself, O'Rane's face was transfigured.

"I'm—here now," he said significantly.

"That means I'm to go up and find out if she wants to see you and if Lady Loring will let her?"

There was a sound of voices, as I knocked at the door—the nurse mildly begging her patient to go to sleep, Sonia resolutely and not too petulantly protesting that she had just finished. I delivered myself of my message, while she sat turning over a pile of manuscript and trying to read it and listen to me at the same time.

"Will you look at this?" she said at length.

She had written a condensed but pitiless version of the story which she had told me, starting with the day when she had chosen to believe that O'Rane was unfaithful to her and ending with the morning when she knew that she was going to bear Grayle a child.

"It's not very legible," she commented casually. "My writing's not up to much at the best of times, but when I'm in bed it's hopeless."

"I can read it," I said.

"I want you to read it to David," she went on in the same tone.

I raised my eyebrows, but said nothing.

"Will you do that for me?" she asked.

"If you wish it."

"Thank you very much. Now I think I shall go to sleep."

I went downstairs and led O'Rane to the far end of the library. He stood with his hands in his pockets and his back to the fire, rocking in his old way from heel to toe.

"Have you read it?" he asked me, when I had explained his wife's request.

"Yes."

He held out his hand for the papers.

"And you remember everything she said?"

"Pretty well."

He rocked in silence for a moment and then smiled whimsically.

"I suppose you could—forget it, if you tried?" he suggested. "Perhaps it would help you to forget it, if we got rid of this. I usually burn myself when I start playing with fire; perhaps you wouldn't mind putting this in. Don't set the chimney alight, will you?"

5

The next morning I again mounted guard, while Lady Loring rested. We had agreed that, if no change for the worse shewed itself, it would be quite unnecessary to continue this day and night attendance. Physically Sonia was quite normal, but her nerves were unstrung, and for a time it had certainly looked as if hysteria might develop into something graver. Two nights' untroubled sleep, the belated recognition that she was among friends and, most of all, the relief of confession had braced her and built up her self-respect. When I went in to see her she was still a little defiant, but it was the defiance of courage.

"Is David here?" was her first question.

"He went back to Loring House when he'd finished his packing," I answered.

Sonia looked at me in silence, and her eyes narrowed.

"Oh! So that's it," she murmured at length.

"What is what?" I asked.

She sighed carelessly.

"You were right, and he was wrong, that's all. I was right too.... I knew that, when I left this house, I'd left David for good; if I hadn't known it then, I knew it when—when we came here that night and he offered to drop the divorce if I'd leave—you remember? He thought he was somehow so different from other men.... What did he actually say?"

"He didn't say anything, Sonia. I think you're on the wrong tack. He just asked if I'd read the letter and if I remembered it. I said 'Yes.' Then he smiled and begged me to forget it."

"But didn't you read it to him?"

"He asked me to burn it."

She looked at me for some moments without understanding, then pulled herself lower into the bed and half turned away, shading her eyes with her hand. I walked to the window and gave her nearly a quarter of an hour to order her thoughts. At the end I asked her why she had written the letter.

"I felt I owed it to him," she said slowly. "I don't regret it, though I suppose it's a selfish sort of gratification.... If he'd left me alone, I should have said nothing, but when he went out of his way to have me brought here and looked after.... I—suppose it's very magnanimous to burn a letter of that kind without reading it, but I'd sooner have had him read it. If he comes here, I shall have to tell him ... at least that I'm going to have a child. Please don't think that I'm running away from what I've done. I'm not trying to work on his feelings, I'm not trying to make him take me back; I couldn't go back, if he begged me, if his life depended on it."

"Then it doesn't matter much whether he reads the letter or not."

Sonia nodded slowly.

"I must see David, though."

"It will upset you without doing him any good."

She bit her lip to steady herself.

"Perhaps it will cure him," she suggested.

I was not present when they met; I do not even know how long they were together. Sometime before dinner O'Rane came into the library and sat down in front of the fire without speaking. From his haggard face I guessed that he had been taken as much by surprise as any of us. During dinner he roused himself with an effort, and I remember that we discussed the coming unrestricted submarine campaign, the danger of starvation, the inadequacy of our food control and the likelihood of finding America ranged on our side in the war. We talked very earnestly—I believe, very intelligently,—as though we had a critical audience and were shewing our best form; but it was wonderfully unengrossing.

"It's just a year since I was in America," I remember beginning in preface to some new argument.

"I say—she told you everything, didn't she?" O'Rane interrupted.

"Yes."

He forced a smile.

"It rather—brings it home to one, doesn't it?"

"And yet—is this any worse for you than when they were living together?"

"I was really not thinking of myself for the moment. My God, Stornaway, if you were a woman and hated a man as she hates Grayle, how would you like to be feeling that he'd had anything to do with your child, how'd you like to go through all this hell of childbirth to bear him, a child? All your life, even if you came to love it or at least to be kind to it, you'd always be reminded, wouldn't you? You'd trace a likeness, it would seem to get stronger and stronger.... I wonder what we should do?"

"I imagine most women would try to stop the child being born."

O'Rane looked up quickly.

"Sonia wouldn't."

"Then I'm afraid she's got to accept this as her punishment."

"Hers?" he murmured.

I made no answer, but my mind went back to the luncheon at Crowley Court, when Roger Dainton sat with drooping mouth and troubled brown eyes, wondering if he had heard aright that his own daughter was likely to be divorced, waiting to wake up from the bad dream. And I remembered Lady Dainton. She had an adequate allowance of maternal feeling, I doubt not, but on that day she was less moved by Sonia's plight than by a sense of social failure, of a rare and delicate instrument broken—as if after twenty years' training the hand of the violinist was become paralysed.

"It's a bit one-sided, isn't it?" suggested O'Rane quietly.

I still said nothing. Grayle was being punished in the one part of him that I knew to be capable of feeling, but perhaps the punishment did not stop there. For all I could tell he might in time know a pang of desire to see his own child. O'Rane's black eyes were sunk low in their sockets.

"It's damnably all-embracing," I said.

He pushed his chair back and returned to the fire, where he threw himself on a sofa.

"D'you know where George is dining to-night?" he asked. "I want to talk to him.... I suppose you think me a great fool, Stornaway, for not seeing it before. I loved her so much, I love her so much still.... Anyone can manage a boat when the water's calm, it wouldn't have required much love just to live with Sonia while everything was sunny, but I was prepared to do so much more.... When I went down to Melton the night after she left me, I set my teeth and told myself that I must keep my head. I knew it wasn't a trifle, like a fit of bad temper, I knew it was a very big thing she'd done. And I haven't much use for the kind of man who blindly protests beforehand that he'll forgive his wife whatever she may do.... It isn't love, it isn't generosity; it's just dam' folly. But I did feel that my love for Sonia would be a poor, cold thing, if it only lasted while everything was going well, if it wasn't strong enough to live through a bad storm. You won't exactly have to strain yourself to imagine what it was like thinking of her with Grayle.... I don't know that I can explain, it's all the little things, the little personal touches that I missed—even without being able to see her. She was such fun, she always enjoyed life and got so much out of it; she made a story out of everything and she loved telling me everything she'd been doing and she knew I loved hearing about it. I missed that frightfully when I was alone at Melton, before she left me; I used to feel quite jealous when I thought of her going about with other people, being a success, when I wasn't there to hear about it afterwards. But I always knew that I should be with her again in a few months. Well, I felt that my love for her would be just like other people's love, if I didn't first of all mind like hell and then recognise that in spite of it all, in spite of it all.... You saw me trying to get her away from him—for her own sake; it honestly was; I tried to keep myself in the background. You know I always hoped she'd come back. But now...."

He drew his legs up under him and sat with his chin on his fists.

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"That's what I wanted to see George about. She must have the house as long as she wants it, and I'll try to persuade Violet to come and look after her regularly when the time draws near. Then if she'd like to go on living here.... You see, there's rather an important money question. I've got the freehold, so there's no rent to pay, but Bertrand runs the place. He won't stay on with her and without me, and I doubt if we can afford the upkeep by ourselves. I shall make myself responsible for Sonia, of course, but we shall have to cut things pretty fine. George is my trustee, and I wanted to discuss it with him.... As regards the child...." He paused, and I could see him furtively moistening his lips. "Something's got to be done about that. It will be Sonia's child, and, whoever else is to blame, the kid mustn't suffer. If I make George trustee of a fund.... That gives him an official status, you see; he'd have a voice in the upbringing of the child, the education—I don't trust a woman by herself——"

"Are you—recognising the child?" I asked.

"Certainly." He smiled for the first time. "Poor little devil! it will have as much right to my name as I have. I daresay you know that my father ran away with someone else's wife? Ever since the smash came—I'd never thought of it before—I've been wondering how the other man felt. Fellow called Raynter—he was at the Legation at Berne. My father ran away with her, and Raynter wouldn't divorce her.... I've never precisely liked being illegitimate, because it seemed a reflection on my father, but I always used to think there was a certain amount of romance about the whole thing.... Bertrand knew my mother; he says she was one of the most beautiful women in Europe; my father loved her and they were frightfully happy for the little time that they lived together before I was born. I—I thought it was very fine and plucky of them.... But lately I've been wondering what Raynter thought of it all, what kind of life he had. I believe he loved my mother too, and it killed her when I was born. I wonder what he thought of the man who'd killed his wife.... I suppose you never met him in your diplomatic wanderings?"

"No. He left the service immediately after what you've been describing."

"What happened to him?"

"I believe he took to drink," I said.

O'Rane made a sound of disgust.

"But perhaps it's just because it doesn't appeal to me ..." he apologised. "I certainly did hope to be finished off in France after I'd lost my sight, but there's such a tenacity about life. I'm glad I pulled through, even to be where I am and as I am now. Yes, I've been feeling that there may be rather more to say for Raynter and—I suppose—rather less—for my father."

He fell to musing, and I smoked in silence until George came in. Then we had the discussion re-opened; Bertrand returned from the House at eleven, and I heard it a third time. If O'Rane hoped for advice or comfort, I am afraid he did not get it, though Bertrand did indeed tell him bluntly that he was burdening himself needlessly.

"I could have got rid of it all by divorcing her," was the only answer.

"You're not responsible for the child."

"Somebody's got to be."

Bertrand sighed and held his peace, while George and O'Rane talked in undertones.

"What are you going to do yourself?" I asked.

"I've hardly thought. You see, until four hours ago I'd always contemplated having Sonia as—as part of my life. I've got to think things out afresh.... But there's plenty of time. For the present, of course, I'm going back to Melton. To-morrow."

"Have you said good-bye to Sonia?" George enquired. "I mean, have I got to explain all this to her?"

O'Rane hesitated in doubt.

"I'm not quite sure. You see, she said she wanted to tell me something, and I went in, and then she told me that she was going to have a child. I can't say if I shewed anything—more than surprise, I mean. I said—I really don't know what I did say. We talked about how she was, and I said I hoped she was better, and was there anything that she wanted? And she asked me when I was going back to Melton.... I told her to let me know if there was anything I could do.... We didn't take any formal farewell, but I came away as soon as I could, we weren't either of us enjoying it very much."

"You gather that she proposes to stay here?"

"I think so. And I should tell anyone who asks. This is the natural place for her to be, her friends may as well come to see her. I shall get over to Crowley Court as soon as I can and tell her parents ... and I think the best thing I can do is to find work of some kind abroad. We've thrown dust in everyone's eyes for fairly long, but it can't go on indefinitely, if she's living here and I never come near the place ... I don't know yet; I haven't had time to think. I never thought that her having a child by someone else could suddenly make all the difference, but it has. I'm not angry with her, or aggrieved, or anything of that kind, but I've just discovered that she doesn't belong to me any more. I'd still do anything she asked me to do, but something's been killed, something's been taken away.... If only someone else were going to benefit by it! I believe I could forgive Grayle, if he'd proved that he was making her happier than I'd done.... We haven't made much of a success, have we?"

He smiled wistfully, and his face looked suddenly older, as if the accumulated strain of years had exhausted him. Bertrand took his arm and told him to go to bed. George and I got off our chairs and waited without knowing what to do.

"Is Violet on duty?" he asked. "If you're all going up, I'll come with you and see if Sonia wants anything."

The bedroom door was ajar, and I saw Lady Loring reading a book. She raised one finger warningly, as O'Rane came into the room; then remembered that he could not see the signal and touched his wrist.

"Is she asleep?" he whispered.

"Yes."

He felt his way to the bed and ran one hand lightly over the blankets until it reached the pillow. Then he bent slowly forward, listening to his own breathing, and kissed his wife on the forehead.

"You'll look after her well, won't you, Violet?" he said, as they came to the door.

"Trust me, David," she whispered. "I'll do all I can, and we'll get in a regular nurse to-morrow."

It may have been fatigue, but I thought that she was looking worried.

"You told me this morning," I said, "that a nurse wasn't necessary any more for the present."

"I didn't think so—then, but she's not quite so well to-night. We mustn't talk here, or we shall wake her. You didn't say anything to upset her, did you, David?"

"I hope not. What's been the matter?"

We came into the passage, and George and Bertrand considerately whispered good-night and left us. I would have gone, too, but O'Rane had slipped his arm through mine.

"She's so nervous and fanciful," Lady Loring explained, "that she makes herself quite ill. I suppose, never having been through it before.... To-night she was quite ridiculous. Didn't it sometimes happen in bad cases that the mother or the child had to be sacrificed? Well, what happened then? And who decided? She worked herself up into the most pitiful state, imagining herself unconscious and at the mercy of a mere brutal man, who could order her to be killed." Lady Loring looked through the open door and smiled compassionately. "She's so afraid of dying, David, that it never occurs to her that this sort of thing is happening every hour of the day and that it's the exception for anything to go wrong. I don't quite know what to do about her...."

O'Rane stood for a moment without speaking; then he disengaged his arm and said good-night to us. I heard him busying himself in the library for a few minutes; the front door closed gently, and I caught the sound of footsteps, as he walked away. The next morning he telephoned to ask how his wife was. In the afternoon he called with a cab for his luggage and drove to Waterloo without coming into the house.