1

"If you care for a six-months' lecturing tour in America," wrote Grierson, "I have an unrivalled offer. You would start in the New Year.…"

His agent's letter was the first that Eric opened on the morning after Barbara promised to marry him. As he lay half-awake, waiting to be called, he realized that something had changed the foundations of his life; he was at peace, well and strong, with a heart tuned for adventure and a new tireless energy.

Six o'clock.… Seven.… Eight.… He carried the telephone into the smoking-room, lest he should be tempted to disturb Barbara, and paced bare-foot up and down, wondering how to inaugurate the new life. In marrying a Protestant, she would forfeit the money which she had received under her god-father's will; henceforward he must work and earn for two. In his safe lay a brown-paper parcel containing the manuscript of a novel, unopened since the day when Gaisford so contumeliously flung it back at him. Eric carried the despised book into his bedroom and began to skim the pages. With his new sense of power, he would so re-write it that the doctor should eat humble-pie; and there would be a slice for Manders too. It was no good trying him with another version of the "Singing-Bird"; but "Mother's Son," which had lain neglected ever since it was sent back three years before, needed only a word of change and a touch of polish. October, November, December.… Eric would be ready for America in the New Year.

The next letter was from Agnes, begging him to write occasionally to Jack; the next from Lady Lane, wondering when he was coming to Lashmar. A firm of topical photographers respectfully begged leave to send a representative by appointment to interview Mr. Lane and to enrich their gallery with a few camera-studies of the house and of the author at work. The other letters were invitations and charitable appeals.

At ten o'clock he telephoned to ask when he could see Barbara, but was told that she had not yet been called. After two more unsuccessful attempts, he sent a note by hand, inviting himself to tea, and spent the rest of the morning at work on the manuscript of his novel. Shortly before luncheon his interviewer arrived with an assistant bearing a camera, and for half an hour the flat was filled with the smoke and powder of the magnesium flares. Eric submitted sheepishly to being "discovered" looking (in profile) out of his dining-room window, to being "interrupted" at his desk (three-quarter face), to being found taking a moment's respite for thought and a cigarette (full face, with his back to the smoking-room fire); finally he was dressed up in hat and coat and shewn to be saying good-bye in the hall. While the assistant packed up his camera and tripod, Eric allowed himself to be interrogated on his past and future work, his plans and views of art.

"Have you anything new?" asked the interviewer. "I've got all the old stuff out of 'Who's Who'."

Eric spoke vaguely of the novel, the play and the course of lectures in America, remembering the threadbare commonplaces of such illustrated interviews as he had read; it were fruitless to fancy that he could vary the form or fact of what was being so industriously scribbled down.

"Nothing expected for some months? I must work up the back stock. I shall want you to tell me in a minute what started you writing plays.… Now, about your engagement?"

"My engagement?" Eric echoed.

The man nodded and moistened the end of his pencil in anticipation.

"Why, that's what I'm here for! I don't say," he added apologetically, "that this stuff wouldn't stand by itself—or come in useful, anyway."

"I'm afraid I don't quite follow."

The man looked at him in patient surprise.

"We supply all the pictures for 'The World and His Wife'," he explained. "They 'phoned through to know if we could let them have up-to-date photographs of you and Lady Barbara Neave——"

"But you spoke of an engagement."

"Isn't it true, then?"

"This sort of thing is really intolerable!" Eric cried. "I don't want to tell other people how to run their business, but in common decency your firm might wait for an official announcement in 'The Times' instead of circulating these rumours——"

"It's only a rumour, then?" said the interviewer blankly, pocketing his note-book.

As he walked to Berkeley Square, Eric decided that, by telling Barbara of his encounter, he would annoy her without bringing relief to himself. The announcement, when it came, would be made with imposing ceremony after a meeting between his father and Lord Crawleigh, an adjustment of religious differences and a distressingly material discussion of settlements. There would be ponderous debates and irritating disagreements; Barbara and he both needed a respite for recuperation.…

"I telephoned three times this morning," said Eric, as he was shewn into the drawing-room. "I did so want to talk to you! I was so happy I couldn't sleep."

"I couldn't sleep, either," said Barbara huskily, holding out one hand and covering her eyes with the other.

"Aren't you going to kiss me?"

"If you like. It's your right now."

Eric let fall her hand and drew back, biting his lip.

"That's not a very pretty thing to say, darling," he murmured.

"I'm sorry.… I've been haunted all night. It seemed as if God must strike me down.… And, whenever I fell asleep, Jack was there, reproaching me, mocking me——"

"He's had his chance," Eric interrupted sharply. "You start absolutely free."

"You mean he's—rejected me?"

After the tragic talk of God's striking her down for taking His name in vain, Eric could not attune himself readily to a whimper of wounded vanity. Barbara's dramatic intensity had hitherto been convincing, and he had never imagined that she was unhappy because she had offered herself to a man and he had repelled her.

"I mean it's—all over. You've no reason to reproach yourself, Babs.… I want to talk to you about seeing your father——"

She stopped him with a shudder, and Eric found a difficulty in curbing his impatience. Trying a fresh cast, he described his latest invitation to lecture in America. Barbara listened with half her attention, mechanically agreeing that it would be an experience and a change, mechanically accepting his figures and wounding him with an indifference which was made greater by her early love of sharing his triumphs with him. He hunted through a pile of letters and gave her one in which the previous occupant of his flat offered generous terms for the remainder of the lease.

"We must decide some time when we're going to be married," he said, "and where we're going to live."

"Please, Eric!"

He looked at her in amazement and drew slowly away from her side, walking to the fire-place and resting his forehead on his arm.

"I—don't…I don't understand what's the matter," he murmured at length. "Last night…You did it of your own free will, Babs.… And unless you wanted to hurt me more completely and ingeniously than you've ever succeeded in doing before——"

The girl winced and covered her face with her hands.

"I wouldn't hurt you for the world!" she whispered. "Ah! God! I wish I'd never met you, I wish I'd never been born! Don't you see that I couldn't go on taking, taking, taking with both hands—all your sweetness and gentleness, everything—and giving you nothing in return? When you said that I'd spoiled your work…Didn't I see that I'd already ruined your health and made you miserable? I tried to make amends, but it wasn't in my power. I ought never to have given you that promise!"

"Don't you love me any more, Babs?"

"Oh, yes."

"Well, what have I done since last night?"

"You haven't done anything.… It was a letter.… You remember about Jim Loring's ball just before the war——"

Eric drew her head on to his shoulder and kissed her.

"My darling, that's all so long ago! Why distress yourself with it now?"

"Jack was staying with the Knightriders," she persisted. "Kathleen Knightrider's the only soul who's ever suspected.… I never told her. She's heard that Jack has been sent to Switzerland and she wrote this morning to—to congratulate me! I tried to make amends to Jack too.… Oh, the mockery of it! All last night I saw the two of you pulling, pulling…"

"He's had his chance," Eric told her again.

"I wish God had struck me down," she whispered.

Eric invented an excuse to leave early, for, when Barbara was not reproaching herself for the engagement, she affected the abject humility of a slave whom he had bought for his pleasure. Perhaps she was amusing herself with a new emotion, perhaps she wanted to keep him alert and suspended, perhaps she enjoyed the vision of herself torn between the two men who wanted her more than anything in the world.…

2

For the second morning in succession Barbara did not telephone. Eric waited until noon and then asked her to dine with him.

"I will, if you—want me to," she answered with the new servile listlessness; and he wondered again whether she was trying to exact some novel abandonment of adoration or to exhaust him by passive resistance. "I believe we have people dining," she added.

"Well, choose some other night," he suggested.

"Oh, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. And I'm going to the country to-morrow."

"But I thought you were going to be in London till Christmas."

"I'm supposed to be ill," she answered and hung up the receiver before he could say anything more.

Eric returned to his work, affecting unconsciousness of her alternating indifference and hostility. In the afternoon Agnes Waring telephoned to say that she was unexpectedly in London and would like to have tea with him. He welcomed her cordially, only hoping that she would not stay long enough to clash with Babs, and, guiltily reminded of her letter, put aside his work and began writing to Jack. Once or twice, as he paused to fill his pipe, the old feeling of duplicity came back, as on the Sundays when he walked home from Red Roofs in jubilation after Agnes had told him with her unchanging composure that there was still no news of her brother. And now he was writing a gossipy, facetious letter.… Eric tore the envelope in two—and then hesitated. Jack had been given his opportunity, and he had not taken it.

Agnes did not arrive until nearly six o'clock and then came attended by a young officer.

"You remember Mr. Benyon," she said. "We brought him to dine at the Mill-House last year. He hadn't seen 'The Bomb-Shell,' so we went to the matinÉe to-day."

"Jolly good, if I may say so," murmured Benyon. "Hope you don't mind my buttin' in like this? Agnes said——"

"I obviously couldn't come here alone, Dick," she interrupted; and Eric wondered whether they would have left before Barbara came alone to dine with him.

He wondered too what intimacy Agnes had reached with this young man who was beginning to recur in her life and conversation. They had attained the Christian name milestone without passing it; and she seemed to have brought him as a challenge. Whenever Eric flagged in attention, Agnes brought Benyon up like an army of reserve; whenever Benyon fancied that he had won a position, she rounded on her own reinforcements and admitted Eric to a private intimacy of conversation about Jack. It was a new part for her to play, but no woman seemed able to resist the intoxication of having two men interested in her at the same time. If only she knew that his interest had died more than a year ago, on the night when Barbara sat in that room, on that sofa.… Perhaps she did know. He caught her looking at him with an expression which changed almost before their eyes met. Was it desperation, defiance, an indifferent resolve to give him one last chance—or his own hypercritical fancy?

They were still talking when Barbara was announced.

"Gracious! Is it eight?" Agnes cried, looking at her watch. "I thought it was only seven. We must fly. Dick's taking me to a revue."

"Won't you wait for a cocktail?" Eric asked. "By the way, I don't think you know Lady Barbara Neave. Miss Waring, Babs. Mr. Benyon."

The two girls shook hands, and Agnes began searching for her gloves and purse, hurriedly declining Eric's invitation.

"I used to know your brother quite well before the war," said Barbara. "I was so thankful to hear your good news."

Agnes looked up with a quick smile.

"We never quite lost hope," she said.

"Eric told me that you and your people had been out to see him in Switzerland. How did you find him?"

The smile died away in wistfulness.

"Well, he's alive, and that's the great thing," Agnes answered. "The doctors out there don't seem to think that he'll ever be able to do much work with his head again; he'll probably have to give up the bar and live out of doors. You can understand that, when a man's just begun to get a practice together——"

"But is that quite certain?" Barbara interrupted.

"N-no. But it seems probable. There's a report that some of the bad cases are going to be sent home. Then we shall see."

Eric watched the faces of the two girls. Barbara's expressed nothing more than the conventional sympathy of one stranger hearing of another's misfortune; a few months earlier Agnes had not known that Jack and Barbara were even acquainted.

"How soon do you expect him?" asked Barbara.

"Oh, I don't think anything's been decided yet. And you know how long these things take.… Eric, if I'd had any idea how late it was…!"

He accompanied her to the door and returned to find Barbara still standing, still in her cloak. The flicker of animation which she had presented on meeting Agnes had died down, and she was again the sport of man and the plaything of fate.

"I like her, Eric," she remarked thoughtfully. "Why don't you marry her? Any one can see she's in love with you."

"You're the only person in the world I want to marry," he answered.

Barbara's face twisted in a spasm of pain.

"God! How it hurts when you say that! Eric, I shall make you miserable and be miserable myself! I love you; you know I love you! But I don't want to marry you. Why don't you forget me? Go away——"

"Forget you!" Eric gripped her by the shoulders. "What d'you think would be left, if I lost you?"

Her eyes opened wide with wonder.

"You can't love me as much as that, Eric!"

"I love you so much that I'd sooner have an air-raid to-night and a bomb on my head here, now, than lose you! You're the whole world to me!"

She shook her head miserably and without hope of flattering reassurance.

"I could have killed myself when you told me that I'd destroyed your power of work," she whispered. "And to-night, when that girl said that Jack might never be able to work again…It's what I should feel, if we married and I couldn't bear children! I should be incomplete, useless!"

"But you're not responsible."

"I might make things easier.…"

So compassion was coming to reinforce or supplant vanity.… Eric felt that he knew Barbara's moods in advance. Lady Knightrider—a curse on her name—had started by setting every nerve on edge; the sight of Agnes Waring—with Jack's eyes, hair and voice—had completed her discomfiture; and Barbara had been morbidly drawing one unhappy picture after another. Jack was incapacitated; and, with his pride, he would never win through pity what he had failed to win on merit. Incapacitated or not, Jack was a pauper; and, with his fantastic honour, he would regard himself as an outcast from Barbara's society.

"Even if he can't go back to the bar," said Eric at length, "his father will have no difficulty in getting him a job. Lord Waring could take him on as his agent."

"Oh, I never thought he'd starve! But it must be such a disappointment."

"Well, the war's been such a mix-up that seven men out of ten will change their careers, when they come back.… Babs…do you care for Jack as much as that?"

She looked up quickly with a gleam of hope in her eyes.

"Are you going to—forget my promise?"

"No! I asked whether you cared for Jack as much as all that."

Barbara shook her head in bewilderment.

"I've given you my heart, Eric. But I owe Jack my soul."

Behind the neat phrasing of the professional trafficker in emotions, Eric felt that she was trying to weary him of their forty-eight hours' engagement.…

3

At the beginning of November Eric went to Lashmar for a long week-end. After the first days of his engagement he had hardly seen or heard anything of Barbara. She was presumably at Crawleigh Abbey, but for a week she answered no more than one letter out of three; after that, with a sense that he could do nothing right and that they were fretting each other's nerves, he ceased to correspond and was trying to absorb and exhaust himself with work. Now his novel was in the agent's hand, and "Mother's Son" had been sent to Manders.

As he dawdled before a book-stall at Waterloo, Eric's eye was caught by "The World and His Wife" contents' bill, which announced, with other attractions, an "Illustrated Interview with Mr. Eric Lane." There had not been time for him to receive the article from his news-cutting agency, and he bought a copy to read in the train. The pictures were well reproduced, and he was by now so hardened to the perverse inaccuracy and genial blatancy of the letter-press that he hardly blushed at the aspirations which were attributed to him, until his attention was arrested in mid-paragraph by Barbara's name. Collecting himself and glancing almost guiltily round the somnolent carriage, he turned back to the beginning.

"Rumour has been busy with the names of Mr. Lane and of Lady Barbara Neave, only daughter of the Marquess of Crawleigh. No official announcement has been made, but the young people have been going about together a good deal lately; some of our readers may have seen them at the PREMIÈRE of 'The Bomb-Shell.' The Stage has of recent years surrendered so much of its beauty and talent to the Peerage that it is high time for the Peerage to make this romantic return to the Stage.… Mr. Lane's advice to budding playwrights is reminiscent of Mr. Punch's famous advice to those about to marry—'Don't.' Though the 'Divorce' was his first play to be produced, it was not the first that he had written; like most authors, he had to buy experience.…"

There was nothing in the rest of the article to incriminate him, but the offending paragraph was enough in itself. Guiltily Eric looked round a second time. Two of his fellow-passengers, slumbering with mouths agape, were clutching "The World and His Wife" to their stomachs; it was the one periodical of later date than "Punch" and the monthly reviews which his parents took in at the Mill-House. Saturday was made eventful by its appearance; even Sir Francis interested himself in the full-page studies of actresses and dÉbutantes, the house-party groups and snapshots of celebrities in the Park.…

As he climbed into the car Eric was careful to let Sybil see that he was carrying the paper in his hand. She had scarcely wormed her way out of the traffic and shot free along the Melton road before she nodded towards the bulging strap of his despatch-box.

"Is that true, Ricky?"

"Is what true?"

"That you're engaged to that woman?"

"Does the paper say so?" Eric enquired loftily. "By the way, Barbara Neave is a great friend of mine, and I don't very much care about hearing her described as 'that woman.…' I think the paper only said that 'rumour' had 'been busy with' our 'names.' Rumour's been damnably busy; it won't leave us alone!"

His sister was silent for some moments.

"I hope to Heaven you're not going to make a fool of yourself with her," she exclaimed at length. "She'll wear you out, spoil your work, make you bankrupt in a month——"

"Isn't this rather sweeping about some one you've never even met?" Eric interposed gently.

"You take such jolly good care that we shouldn't meet her," Sybil answered at a tangent.

While he dressed for dinner Lady Lane came into his bedroom, more diplomatic but no whit less insistent. As his mother, she was prepared to make the best of everything and to suppress her own feelings; but, if Eric had committed a crime, he could not have felt greater distaste in putting her off with half-truths.

"You'll tell us—when there's anything to tell?" begged his mother, as they went down to dinner; and Eric felt that he might have saved his elaborate prevarications for a more gullible audience. Sir Francis made no direct allusion throughout the week-end, but, as they sat over their wine on the first night, he enquired spasmodically how old Eric was, how much money he had made during the last year and what literary ventures he had in contemplation.

It was a relief to walk over to Red Roofs next day and have tea with Agnes Waring and her father. For an hour he was spared even indirect references to the unhappy interview, though in his over-sensitive condition he fancied that Agnes was unwontedly frigid in manner, as though a new barrier had been placed between them. Conversation centred about her brother. Humanly speaking, he would be released from Switzerland within a few weeks and would come either to Paris or London; he was, of course, debarred from active service, but the War Office would no doubt test his capabilities of health and brain either in Whitehall or at the MinistÈre de la Guerre. Eric could count on seeing him almost any day—in England, or, if he could invent a mission, in Paris.

Only when she had walked through the garden to send him on his way across the fields did Agnes touch on the offending article. They were standing on opposite sides of a sun-dial at the end of a fruit-walk; and both were recalling the earlier Sundays when Eric had asked with sympathetically lowered voice: "No news of Jack, I suppose?"

"You're looking as if you wanted a holiday," Agnes volunteered.

"I've been rather worried lately," Eric answered vaguely.

"Not about that——" She looked at him and moved round, slipping her hand through his arm. "I shouldn't worry about a thing like that! She's so well-known that the papers are on to her like cats on a mouse.… I liked her that night I met her, Eric."

"It makes my relations with her rather difficult," he laughed.

"But all you've got to do is not to meet her!" Agnes explained in a tone of convincing reason.

"She's—one of the greatest friends I've got," he said.

Agnes rubbed gently at the tarnished motto on the dial.

"That makes it rather difficult, of course," she said at length.

And then it seemed easiest for him to shake hands and walk away without adding anything.

His family by itself on one side, Agnes by herself on the other would not have spurred Eric to action. He was precipitated by the felicitations of an almost complete stranger in the train on Monday morning and held to his course by a succession of congratulatory notes and telephone messages.

"I don't know," he wrote to Barbara on reaching home, "whether you have seen this week's 'World and His Wife.' There's a rather broad hint at our engagement, and I'm receiving congratulations. Isn't this a golden opportunity for publishing the news?"

Barbara's reply was tuned to an uncompromising note which Eric had met but once before—at the beginning of his last illness, when he had threatened to go away from her and the threat had misfired; when, too, he—"one of our conquerors"—had broken down and cringed to her; and she, with drawn cheeks and leaden eyes, had laid his head on her bosom and caressed him, not as a conqueror or a lover, but as a tired, sick child.

"I am so very miserable," she wrote. "Sometimes I could almost wish to die—just to get us all out of this terrible tangle. You'd be happier—after a time, when you'd got over the first feeling of loss and loneliness; and, however lonely and unhappy you'd be without me, it would be nothing to the misery I should bring you, if we were foolish enough to marry. Let me be your devoted, your very loving, very grateful friend! If you try to marry me, you'll be marrying my name, my voice, my clothes, my body; you won't be marrying me; you'll waste your divine love on a woman whose soul is at the other end of the world. Whatever happens, I must do you a hideous wrong."

Eric read the letter three times and left it unanswered.

A very little more of this erotic battledore-and-shuttlecock would send them both out of their minds. It was a mistake to write, when both needed a holiday. He telephoned to his agent and walked to Covent Garden for a consultation about the lecturing-tour in America.

"I'm worn out, I must have a complete change," said Eric. "And I want to start at once."

Grierson was surprised out of his habitual placidity by the nervous vehemence of Eric's manner.

"You'll need a month or two to prepare your lectures," he pointed out.

"You can begin making the arrangements immediately. London's getting on my nerves rather. Three months in the country, three months out there—oh, the war may be over by then.… I'm sick of England.… If the war's still going on, I shall stay away and go on to Japan. You'll fix that, Grierson?"

He jumped up restlessly and was starting for the door when his agent recalled him.

"Are you in a hurry?" he asked. "There are one or two things I want to talk to you about. Rather good news," he added. "Staines have accepted your novel on our terms. I had a fight over the advance, but your name carried you through."

Eric was not interested in the figures. He was recalling the mood in which he had sent the manuscript to Grierson, when he was working under inspiration. He had grudged the hours wasted on sleep and food when he might have been working for Barbara.

"I seem to have more money than I know what to do with," he answered shortly. "By the way, has Manders given tongue yet about the play?"

"'Mother's Son'? Yes, I wrote you last night. Didn't you get my letter? Oh, he's quite enthusiastic about it. He suggests a few small changes——"

"Manders would," Eric rejoined from habit rather than resentment. He did not care if he never wrote another play; he did not care if they returned to him battered and dog's-eared after months of delay and desultory travel—as in the old days. Manders might cut the thing about to the top of his vulgar Philistine bent.

"He wants to begin rehearsing at once," Grierson went on slowly. "And the 'Divorce' is being revived at the Emperor's. You'll have three plays running in London at the same time."

"I'm not going to stay in England to please Manders," Eric interrupted.

"He'd like to have a talk with you about it before you leave London," said Grierson.

Eric caught himself yawning. It was such futility to discuss a play in which he had lost all interest.

On his return, he yawned again over his letters. It was futile to hear from people in whom he had lost all interest, though a Swiss stamp and a hand-writing which he had almost forgotten quickened the beating of his heart.

"My dear Eric," he read.

"Your letter was a joy to me! Please go on writing. You cannot imagine how home-sick I feel. I want the smell of London again, I want to hear people talking my own language and I want to see 'em in bulk, drifting slowly down the Strand from the Temple. Do you remember the old days when we lived together in Pump Court? I want to go and lunch at the club again and have a little dinner at the Berkeley, say, and go on to a theatre, decently dressed with other people decently dressed too. There's a chance—one lives on hope from day to day—that I may be sent home; I don't seem to be getting any better here: all goes well for a time, and then I get such a head-ache as I would not sell for the minted wealth of the world. Of course, that makes work of any kind rather a problem, and I see myself looking out for a job which I can do at my own convenience, when I feel up to it. The bar doesn't look particularly hopeful, if I'm unable to last out a long case or if I can't appear at all; I'm afraid my standing's hardly good enough to convince any one if I say I've got a case in another court. I think you'll have to expound to me the whole art of writing plays; that's the sort of thing for my one-hour-on-and-six-hours-off condition.

"You're such a celebrity nowadays that I suppose you simply won't look at your humble friends! I saw your first thing the last time I was home—it seems like the Dark Ages now, before my little sojourn in Mittel-Europa. I imagine you're sick of hearing it praised, especially by people who don't know anything about it, but I thought it was an amazingly good play. The moment I was within range of English papers—this was before I got your letter—I went through the advertisements to see if you were still 'drawing all London' (I believe that's the phrase) and found that yet another was going very strong. You seem to have struck oil. The best of good luck to you.

"There's really nothing to tell you about this place. I believe you know ChÂteau d'Oex; well, there's a little colony of British prisoners of war here, some more knocked about than others, but all pretty glad to be out of Hunland. The Swiss gave us a great reception, and we're allowed pretty fair liberty, though we can't wander at large over the whole of Switzerland. The War Office is very busy trying to start industries out here to keep the men employed and to give training to the unskilled so that they'll have something to do when they're discharged. You may remember that before I was called, I spent a year with a firm of chartered accountants, so I'm supposed to know something of book-keeping. I don't put a very high price on my service, however, because my attendance is rather erratic.

"I suppose it's out of the question for you to come here? Yet a holiday would do you good, I'm sure. If you can't manage it, we must wait till the end of the war or till I'm sent back. And then I dine with you—sumptuously—and make you take me to the latest of your popular successes.

"Write again, old man. Your letter did me no end of good.

"Ever yours
"Jack Waring."

Eric read the letter twice and then locked it in a drawer. It was characteristic of the writer in that he said hardly anything of himself. That might have been expected, and there was no need to be frightened by the hand-writing. A moment later he unlocked the drawer and enclosed the letter in a note to Barbara, reminding her that he had long ago promised to let her have any news that came to him. The promise was before their engagement; but the letter would shew her that Jack was capable of writing.

A week later Jack wrote again.

"I've been shifted to Paris, no longer a prisoner of war, but a more or less free man. I could probably get discharged to-morrow, if I liked, but the army does pay me SOMETHING, and I haven't yet found anything else that will.

"For the last fortnight I've been doing a turn of French-Without-Tears as an interpreter at the MINISTÈRE DE LA GUERRE. There was so little work to do that the job suited me rather well. Alas! it suited equally well certain others who had a better claim to it, and I'm being transferred to England next week with a vague promise of some light duty at the War Office. The best thing about the new arrangement is that I shall be at home and shall have a chance of seeing you. 'Mr. Eric Lane, the well-known dramatist and author, in his charming Ryder Street residence.' As you probably know, the papers have been full of you; the gaping world now knows to the last inch of your benevolent smile exactly how you work and smoke a cigarette and dress and have your pyjamas laid out. If the photographs are at all good, you seem to have got rather a comfortable billet. Talking of which, if you hear of any cheap and handy rooms within a hundred miles of Whitehall, you might keep me in mind. People out here tell me that London's rather congested.…"

There was a chance, Eric reflected, that Jack might have glanced at the pictures in "The World and His Wife" without troubling to read the letter-press. It was so unlikely as not to be worth entertaining. That he had read of the rumoured engagement was as certain as that he made no comment upon it.

Whether he had seen it or not was trivial. All this pernickety analysis was flooded by the overwhelming fact that Jack was coming home. Germany, Switzerland, Paris, London; nearer and nearer. Within seven days he might be taking train for Crawleigh—to shew what was left of him and to ask whether Barbara wished to withdraw her promise. Within six days she might be begging to be set free, appealing to Eric's love and magnanimity.…

He determined that, if they were to play battledore-and-shuttlecock with their capability for self-sacrifice, he would strike the first blow and stand ready to see what return she would make.

"Darling Babs, it's essential that I should see you for a moment," he wrote. "And that as soon as possible. Are you going to be in London next week? If so, please fix your own time. If not, what about this? I'm going down to Lashmar for the week-end and, if you can meet me for thirty seconds at Crawleigh station, I'll come straight on to you on Saturday and then get a train back to Winchester. I can't come to the Abbey, obviously, or every one would want to know what was up. The business in hand won't take a moment to discuss, but it's ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE that we should discuss it at once."

As he posted the letter, Eric was conscious that he could have said all that was necessary without a meeting, but he knew well that it was far easier for her to be collected and valiant on paper and at a distance. If Barbara chose to accept his sacrifice, she should do it in his presence, looking into his eyes.

"Has something awful happened?" she wrote in reply. "You do FRIGHTEN me so, when you write like that! I have to come up on Sunday for a charity concert at the Olympic, where I'm a patroness or something. If you really want to see me for only a moment, is it possible for you to meet me at Winchester? The train gets in at 12.29 and leaves at 12.33 (aren't I getting clever with the time-table? As a matter of fact I made father's secretary work it all out for me). If you'd like to wait on the platform, I'll put my head out of the window and we can be together for a moment. Dear Eric, I do hope you're not in any kind of trouble! When you become telegraphic in manner, I always grow nervous. Barbara."

There was suppressed excitement at the Mill-House on Saturday night, when he put in a claim for the car, announced his intention of driving himself and instructed the maids with unusual particularity to see that he did not oversleep himself.

"We're being very mysterious," murmured Sybil.

Eric smiled and said nothing.

He went to bed early in hope that a long night's rest would steady his nerves for an interview which would not be the less trying for its brevity and which, he now saw, had been made inevitably dramatic. It was a perfect autumn morning, as he climbed into the car, with a scented mist rising before his eyes, under the mild warmth of a November sun; Lashmar Woods flaunted their last dwindling recklessness of colour, from ivy-green through fading red to russet and lemon-yellow. He had a rare feeling of peace, as he surrendered to the voiceless magic of the still countryside and to whimsical memories of his own childhood. Life was so much simpler then! Life would again be so much simpler when he had Babs driving by his side.… (If he could only drag her from the train and take her home to astonish and subjugate his parents! It would be worth a little mystery to effect that!)

If she dropped like a stone out of his life, he would raise both hands to Heaven and pray God to take away his reason and draw a sponge across his memory.…

Barbara was leaning out of the window, as the train drew into the station. Eric ran to her compartment; but for a time they were victimized by the nervous antics of an old lady with cumbrous luggage, who stood in the doorway calling with shrill helplessness for a porter.

"I see your play's going to be produced at the end of the month," said Barbara, waving her hand towards a paper on the opposite seat.

"Are you coming with me to the first night?" he asked.

"Of course!" She watched the departure of the old lady with ill-suppressed eagerness. "Thank goodness, she's gone! What is it, Eric? Why did you want to see me like this?"

"I always want to see you!" he laughed uneasily. Ever since he received her letter, he had been rehearsing an effective little speech; but it was gone from his mind now, and he found himself nervously clearing his throat. "Babs, I'm in rather a hole and I want to do the right thing. For some reason you always talk about my generosity. I've been thinking it over.… You're absolutely free, Babs."

"But—why?" she asked blankly.

"Before writing to you, I'd heard from Jack. He'll probably be in England within a week. I—don't want you to feel…" He had to leave the sentence unfinished.

Barbara had become very pale and for a moment she said nothing.

"This—doesn't mean that you're—saying good-bye?" she faltered.

"It's a present, not an ultimatum," Eric answered sharply.

So she could still try to make the best of both worlds.

"You've always been wonderfully generous!" she whispered. "I can never repay you."

From her tone and phrasing Eric knew that he had failed. His own sacrifice neither stirred nor shamed her into equal generosity; the volley was over, and the shuttlecock had dropped to the ground.

"Have you tried?" he asked sharply.

There was a whistle and a jolt, as the train began to move. Eric stepped off the foot-board, raised his hat slightly and turned on his heel. Mechanically he set his watch by the station clock. The train had come in late, but it was leaving on time.

"Rather less than two minutes, if anything," he murmured, as he started the engine. "Five weeks since we became engaged.…"

Half-way home he steered for a government lorry which was standing unattended by the side of the road. Something older and stronger than himself paralyzed the malevolent muscles of his arm, and the car swerved into safety.…