“I wonder what’s in store for us this time,” mused Deganway, as he paced up and down the platform at Euston with Carstairs. “Bobbie Pentyre has a genius for mismanaging a house-party. No technique, no personality—”

“It’s not for want of experience,” interposed Carstairs gloomily. “It must be ten years since I first stayed at Croxton, and something has always gone wrong... The food’s improved, but the wine has deteriorated. He knows such odd people, too... But that’s his mother’s fault; she finds good in every one, makes a boast of it. Lord! I don’t see why we shouldn’t have a Monroe doctrine against rastaquouÈres!”

Madame Pinto de Vasconcellos and Lady Maitland were being wedged into place by their maids, while their husbands remained on the platform to finish their cigars. Eric appeared with Ivy and was followed by Amy Loring and Lady John Carstairs, later by Mrs. O’Rane and her husband.

“I didn’t know you were going to be here!,” cried Amy, as she caught sight of Eric.

“It’s not too late for me to go back, if you’d prefer it,” he answered with a smile. “Carstairs and Gerry have decided that it’s going to be a sticky party.”

“Oh, I should love you to come...” She blew a kiss to Ivy; but a frown of misgiving settled on her face as she led Eric away from the carriage-door. “You know John Gaymer’s invited himself? I’m sure it’s only because he knows he’ll meet Ivy... I do hate rows and intrigues and scenes and schemings!”

“I don’t think he’ll get much satisfaction from her,” Eric answered reassuringly.

“I hope to goodness you’re right,” said Amy. “Unfortunately, Johnny’s had a rebuff recently in another quarter... Some actress, I believe... Sonia knows the whole story....”

She walked to and fro by the door, gazing anxiously down the platform; then, on an impulse, she took O’Rane’s arm, whispered in his ear and led him away from the others.

“Nothing serious, I hope?,” he murmured.

“Then you can hear there’s something wrong!,” she laughed. “I wish people’s voices told me as much... No, I just wanted you to pull the party together as much as possible; it’s not too well chosen, and poor Bobbie isn’t very clever at seeing a squall until he’s run right into it. Do you remember poor Jim’s last ball at Chepstow on the eve of the war? I shall never forget how wonderful you were in keeping things going then. So, if you do feel a storm brewing...?”

O’Rane nodded, and they walked back to rejoin Eric. The last stragglers were being urged into their places and the doors slammed, when her eyes opened wider. Looking past her, Eric saw a man in the light-blue uniform of the Air Force.

“I was hoping they’d be left behind,” murmured Amy, as she got into the carriage.

“Who’s with him?,” Eric asked.

“Barbara,” she answered shortly.

“Some one told me she’d gone to Ireland,” he said indifferently.

“No. George has only gone for two days on business, and she’s such a bad sailor that she preferred to stay behind... My dear Babs, you nearly lost the train!”

A leap, a scramble and the support of anxious hands landed the last-comers in safety, as the platform slid from under their feet. Barbara felt her way into a vacant corner and looked round to see who was in the carriage, nodding easily to Eric when his turn came. She seemed so radiantly well and happy that he wondered whether she was trying to make him forget the damning expression of tragedy which he had seen on her face a week before. The train was not out of the station before she had focussed all attention on herself, and she kept the carriage in amused subjection until the journey’s end. Once or twice Eric stole a glance at Ivy; but, if she felt shock or embarrassment at being with Gaymer, she concealed it as nonchalantly as he did and listened with the rest to Barbara’s picturesque story of a luncheon with Gaymer, the theft of a general’s car, a scheme for flying to Croxton, the breakdown of the car, the beguilement of a taxi-driver from his dinner and a breakneck drive to a barren aerodrome and from the aerodrome to Euston. She told a story as well as ever, he found, always shewing herself in the absurdest light; and one story followed another until the train drew in to Croxton.

“I’m so glad Lady Barbara’s here,” said Ivy, as they secured a car to themselves.

“She always makes a house-party go with a swing,” answered Eric. “I say, Ivy, if Gaymer gives you any trouble, let me know. I don’t suppose he will... But, as a matter of fact, does he quite appreciate how he stands? The last time you and he were together, you were engaged to him. Have you ever broken off the engagement?”

“Not in words. Except for a moment at Maidenhead, I haven’t spoken or written to him since that night. And I don’t want to now. I never want to see him again. If he tried to talk to me—”

“You never told him why you wanted to be married without waiting for him to be demobilized?”

Ivy’s cheeks flamed, and she turned her head so that he should not see her face.

“With that woman there, in the next room?,” she cried. “I wasn’t going to beg for mercy. I left it to his honour... And then I told him he hadn’t any honour. And he said that, if that was what I thought of him—”

“Then he still doesn’t know?” Eric persisted. “If he comes and makes a nuisance of himself, are you going to tell him?”

Ivy shook her head passionately:

“No! D’you think I’d look at him, if he begged me to? He shall see that I don’t need him...” She turned suddenly with a look of pleading in her eyes. “Eric, you won’t make me tell him?”

“Of course not! Keep out of his way as much as possible and tell him that you simply don’t want to talk to him. Don’t make a scene, because he’s probably more experienced in scene-making than you are.”

Though Gaymer had sat without speaking the whole way from Euston, a feeling of tension, first experienced in advance by Amy Loring, gradually spread to Eric and Ivy. In spite of Barbara’s high spirits, uneasiness developed slowly into an antagonism which was made apparent to the sensitive hearing of O’Rane less by the words spoken than by the significant silences. The arrival at Croxton Hall created a temporary diversion. As Gaymer quickly disappeared into the smoking-room on learning that he would find whisky and soda there, Eric was spared all danger of conflict with him. Ivy went at once to her room and only reappeared under the protection of Amy Loring; Barbara was caught and retained at the bridge-table until the dressing-gong sounded. Despite the sombre forebodings of Deganway and Carstairs, Eric began to feel that the week-end might pass without mishap, though he wished fervently, as he bathed and dressed, that it was the last night of his visit instead of the first.

When they went in to dinner, he was so much preoccupied with looking to see who was on either side of Ivy that he did not notice at first that he had himself been placed next to Barbara. The discovery that she was within a foot of him steadied his nerves like the first bomb in an air-raid. For half of the meal he talked with composure to Lady Pentyre; then turned and tossed Barbara the shuttlecock of their conversation, leaving her to shew whether she was content with safe impersonalities or whether she was still bound to improvize a romantic drama out of their meeting.

“Lady Pentyre’s just been telling me that my bedroom’s supposed to be haunted,” he began. “She’s offered me another, without a bathroom, but I told her that all the ghost-proof rooms in the world aren’t compensation for the exclusive possession of a bath.”

“I suppose you’ve got my old room,” said Barbara reflectively. “I came here, the winter before the war, for the Croxton Ball... Lady Pentyre offered it to me again, but... I thought I’d leave it to some one who didn’t take quite so many ghosts with him wherever he went...” She shivered almost imperceptibly as she looked round the room, pretending an interest in ill-executed portraits of mediocre Pentyres, none of whom achieved higher rank than that of colonel, commander or dean. “It was here... I told you the story... the first time you ever dined with me... as soon as I knew that you were a friend of Jack’s. I had to get it off my conscience.”

“I don’t think I’ve been here since Bobbie’s coming-of-age,” Eric answered. “Several of us motored over from Oxford: Deganway, Sinclair, Raney, Summertown... That loving-cup on the side-table; I believe you’ll find all our names on it—a joint present from all the other members of the old Phoenix Club. There are none too many of them left now,” he added with a sigh. “It doesn’t do to let yourself see ghosts....”

Barbara was paying as little attention to the history of the loving-cup as he had paid to her reflections on the haunted room. It was evident now that she was preparing some kind of dramatic scene; and, though her talent was hampered by the presence of others, he would not give her a chance of playing a part that she might continue later in less publicity. Eric was not likely to forget the first time that he dined with her: with evenly balanced triumph and consternation she had described her long and still unended duel with his best friend. Jack Waring, it seemed, had snubbed her, and she took her revenge by making him fall in love with her; when he proposed, she refused him because he was not a Catholic; when he became a Catholic, she refused him again and then, in superstitious terror that she was imperilling a man’s soul, swore that she would marry him whenever he asked her again. Eric was unlikely to forget that dinner because it was almost the first skirmish in the long campaign by which Barbara set herself to make him too fall in love with her; and, when she had succeeded only too well, they discovered that her oath to Jack Waring still kept them apart.

“It doesn’t do...!” Barbara echoed. “You can’t always help it... I think of the last time I was here... and now! When I believed in God, I often used to think what fun He must be having with me!”

“I can’t think God spends much time making people unhappy,” said Eric. “They do it so well for themselves. He has only to create a little egotism....”

Barbara crumbled her bread in silence, waiting to assure herself that they were not being overheard.

“You still think it was egotism that kept me from marrying you, Eric? It wasn’t. Fear, if you like; superstition... I had promised Jack, I was ready to stand all my life barefoot in the snow, waiting for him to forgive me... I loved you, as I’ve never loved any one before or since; you know that. But you wouldn’t wait. It would have been a terribly easy way out... when I wanted to... The night after you said good-bye I telephoned to Jack, I asked him to come and see me... D’you remember abusing me because I was vain? I hadn’t much vanity then, Eric. As soon as Jack recognized my voice—it was the first time we’d spoken alone since his release from Germany, since the war, since that ghastly night when I swore on the Cross that, if he wanted me, I’d marry him—he hung up the receiver. And then I knew at last... It may interest you to hear that my famous pride was still flourishing so vigorously next morning that I drove round to your flat as soon as I was dressed. They told me you’d started for Liverpool. I didn’t know your ship, or I’d have come on board.”

It might be morbid luxury of self-torture—Eric had lived through his own nights and days of might-have-beens—, or a despairing effort to recapture him, or a blend of the two, or a connoisseur’s appreciation of dramatic irony; impulse and calculation, sincerity and sensationalism were always curiously intermixed with Barbara.

“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” he answered coldly. “Superstition, if you like... Or vanity... I knew that night that you put something in life before love. You were afraid of Jack, but you never pretended to be in love with him... However, I don’t think these post mortems do any good. Amy Loring tells me that George is in Ireland. Is it true that he’s selling his place there?”

“He would, if he could find any one to buy it. We haven’t very much money. You see, I forfeited mine by marrying a Protestant and I don’t care to go to my family... We may as well have it out, Eric. I married him—dear God! I’d have married any one who spoke a kind word to me when you went away... I’m trying to make him happy, I’m trying to make amends to every one I’ve injured, but it’s rather a long list.”

“I hardly know Ireland at all,” Eric continued in disregard of his emotional cue. “He invited me to Lake House years ago, but I couldn’t afford the time....”

Barbara nodded mechanically, by now unconscious that he was trying to head her off reminiscent dissection, hardly conscious that he had spoken.

“It’s not quite what I expected of life,” she murmured humbly. “But you... Are you happy, Eric?”

“Perfectly, thank you.”

“I’m glad. Time’s a wonderful healer. I always told you to go away and forget me. You said you couldn’t.”

“I haven’t forgotten, but I’ve adjusted some of my values.”

Barbara stole a glance at him and then looked away, with eyes narrowed in pain, over the head of the man opposite her, over the shoulders of the footman, blankly and dizzily into the shadows at the end of the room.

“Until humanity has no value at all...” she whispered. “Ah, Eric... If I could wipe it all out and draw a sponge over your memory so that we met as we met that first evening at Margaret Poynter’s, if I could make you loving, tender—not to me, God knows!—, if I could cure your bitterness of spirit and teach you not to condemn all women because one woman once wrecked your life... Eric, if you could see yourself as I still see you that first night... like a faun, with big startled eyes...” She found her voice rising and stopped abruptly. “I think Lady Pentyre told me it was the ghost of a woman who’d been killed in the Civil War. You’re not afraid of ghosts?”

“Like everything else, they have to be faced boldly.”

There was a moment’s deepening silence, and Lady Pentyre caught the eyes of the women. It was only when he was free from the tension of Barbara’s presence that Eric realized her power. No other woman set his nerves tingling and his blood racing through his veins, and no other woman responded to him as Barbara did. When she flung her crude emotionalism at him, he was still never sure of himself; a very little more would go to his head... He looked round the table, counting the empty chairs and calculating the dinners that he had still to eat; with reasonable luck Lady Pentyre would not put him next to her for another meal.

A hand was laid on his knee, and he found O’Rane trying to speak to him. Pentyre and Gaymer were arguing with irritating heat about some trivial and forgotten aspect of the war, and it was difficult for any one else to make his voice heard.

“Our intrepid airman is becoming the least little bit of a nuisance,” murmured O’Rane. “I thought he was a bit thick when he got into the train at Euston, though he didn’t say much. I shall have to take him in hand; he used to be quite a nice boy.”

Eric’s attention had wandered until he was hardly conscious of his surroundings.

“I... scarcely know him,” he answered.

“You’ll find him worth cultivating... when you’ve overcome your dislike of him,” said O’Rane with a softly malicious laugh.

Gaymer’s voice could be heard growing in assertiveness; and, though Pentyre interrupted from time to time, his resistance gradually weakened until he faint-heartedly cut his opponent short by suggesting to General Maitland and Don Pinto that they should all go into the drawing-room.

“Strategic retreat,” commented Gaymer in thick scorn.

He was flushed and combative, but still master of himself; and, as he crossed the hall and entered the drawing-room, his manner changed. Eric watched him being absorbed into a bridge-four with the Maitlands and Barbara; the rubber ended without unpleasantness, and he began to wonder whether he had not imagined all the tension which he seemed to feel from the moment when he caught sight of Barbara and Gaymer hurrying along the platform. It was difficult to see what either of them could do; Barbara had already played her scene and had not been encouraged to repeat it; Gaymer had hardly spoken to Ivy, and he could see that she was taking pains never to be left alone....

It might be nothing but coincidence that they were all meeting in the same house, but Eric did not want a single-handed encounter with a man whose hostility had been latent ever since their first meeting three years before. When the women went up to bed, he only stayed in the smoking-room long enough to choose a book. Gaymer threw him an abrupt but not uncivil “good-night,” and he walked upstairs with vague, tired relief that he had survived the first evening without altercation. There was a note on his dressing-table: “Good-night, beloved. Sleep well. God bless you. Ivy.” He smiled and began to undress. At the end of the passage he heard doors shutting; as he got into bed, there was a slow clatter on the stairs, followed by “Good-night, Pentyre,” “Good-night, General. You’re sure you’ve everything you want?” There followed a belated “good-night” in the unmistakable clipped utterance of Don Pinto de Vasconcellos. Half-an-hour later Eric heard O’Rane and Gaymer coming up and separating, with suppressed chuckles, outside his door; their footsteps grew faint, and in another moment the house sank into silence.

Feeling too tired to begin a new book, Eric turned out the light and was settling himself comfortably in bed when he saw a square outline of yellow round the door of the bathroom. He raised himself on his elbow with a murmur of annoyance, when the door opened slowly and he saw a tall figure in a loose white wrap. For a startled, uncertain moment he remembered Lady Pentyre’s warning that the room was haunted and Barbara’s addition that the visitant was a woman who had been killed in the Civil War. While he did not believe in ghosts, his hand explored nervously for the electric-light switch; some one might be playing a practical joke, but Pentyre was still unable to walk without crutches, and Gaymer had barely had time to get to his own room. Possibly—he had forgotten or neglected the geography of the house—some one had mistaken his door.

“Hullo?”

“Eric!”

It was Barbara’s voice; and his hand trembled as it turned the switch. Her hair rippled in waves over her shoulders; her eyes shone burningly, and the fingers that held the wrap together were shaking; with the other hand she clung for support to the edge of the door. Eric saw that her face was colourless, that her bosom rose and fell with her quick breathing; as she took a step forward, he noticed that her feet were bare and thrust hurriedly into slippers trodden down at the heel; and, as she moved, the dumb paralysis of surprise left him.

“What on earth are you doing here?,” he cried.

“Hush! Eric... I was afraid one of the others might come in, so I waited. I thought they’d never go to bed... Eric, you think I’ve done you a great wrong—I have! I admit it!—But, if I can’t undo the harm I’ve done....”

Her eyes and voice, her stumbling steps and trembling outstretched arms shewed that she had forgotten everything but a consuming need of him. Eric had never before seen a woman lose all control of herself, he had never imagined that Barbara was capable of such desperation; the madness in her eyes and the delirium of her mood appalled him.

“My God, what are you thinking of, Barbara?” he whispered. “And what d’you take me for? Your husband—”

“I’ll leave him and come to you! We’ll go away together! You once said—d’you remember when I dined with you in an air-raid?—you said you’d rather a bomb hit the house and killed us both than see me married to any one else! I’m here... And I’m blind with misery, Eric. I want to be happy. I want to make you happy. No one need know... Or, if you like, you can let every one know. I’ve made my mistake, I’ll tell George, I’ll ask him to forgive me. He won’t want to keep me, when he knows I don’t love him. We can go away for a time—”

She was creeping inch by inch nearer to him, and Eric suddenly felt the touch of dry and burning fingers on his wrist.

“Stop this nonsense!,” he cried, shrinking back.

The grating harshness of tone sobered her a little. She did not try to touch him again, he could see her mentally preparing a retreat, an escape, a means of saving her face, if he finally repelled her; he could see, too, that she did not mean to be lightly repelled.

“You usedn’t to call my love ‘nonsense’ in old days,” she answered quietly.

“Things have changed.”

“Your love has changed.”

“My love is dead.”

“And you used to say that I must marry you, because I’d spoiled all other women for you.”

Eric nodded slowly. It was so characteristic of her to remember and quote, even at the most critical moment of her life, a dog’s-eared phrase of extravagant adulation.

“Yes. And I might add that you’ve spoilt me for all other women. If one came to me now without blemish, straight from the right hand of the Creator, I should expect to find treachery or ingratitude... Will you please go back to your room?”

He was thankful that he had stopped without saying more. In her craving for new sensations, Barbara had some perverted strain which made her enjoy being scourged by the tongue of a man who loved her; and in another moment he would have said something which would enable her to put him in the wrong; and anything that he said gave her an excuse for staying....

“I’ve never tried to defend myself, Eric. You were right... You were always right. Isn’t there room in life for mistakes?”

“There’s sometimes no room to repair them.”

“You’re still thinking of George?”

“It’s time one of us did, Lady Barbara... I try to treat other men’s wives as I should expect other men to treat mine.”

He reached for his dressing-gown and slipped his arms into the sleeves. When it was too late, he saw that for a moment he was putting himself at her mercy; in that moment she sprang forward and pinioned him:

“Eric!”

“Will you kindly let go and will you kindly leave my room?”

“Eric, you’re going to marry that child! You must be mad! You’ll be as miserable as I am... If you do that, it will be too late... Eric, don’t struggle, you’re hurting me... Listen! I’ve told you it was a mistake, but it’s not too late to put it right. We were made for each other. You wouldn’t be blamed, and I—I should glory in it... Listen! You shall listen! The other day I was at a party, and a man I don’t know said, ‘That woman looks as if she’d been through Hell.’ They’ll say of us that we’re in Heaven. They’ll try to attack us—and they won’t be able to. We shall be in the clouds, we shall be walking on air. People who see us will go away hungry and envious. Eric, you remember what it was like before that awful parting! I lived for you, and you lived for me. Everything we did and thought... Whenever we were ill or unhappy... There’s never been a love like ours; and, if I didn’t see it, I see it now. God punished me to shew me what I was throwing away... You know what this last year has been, Eric; if you threw away your chance of happiness—Ah, you’re hurting me!”

He had wrenched himself free of her embrace and sprung out of bed. Barbara fell forward with her face on the pillow. He listened for the silence to be broken: though she had never raised her voice above a whisper, it had vibrated with passion until he fancied that it must ring and echo through the house. He opened the door, took a step forward into the warm darkness of the passage and listened. When he came back, the room seemed to be filled with the keen scent of carnations. He saw Barbara slowly raising her head and brushing back the hair which had fallen over her face; she looked distractedly round the room through half-closed eyes and threw out her arms to him; then she saw the open door, and her arms dropped to her sides.

“This is a funny way for it to end,” she murmured. Eric said nothing. “I used to believe you, too. I thought you cared for me....”

His silence daunted her, and she walked out of the room with a sigh and a half shrug.

Eric locked the door and began filling a pipe. Then he turned on all the lights and explored bedroom and bathroom on hands and knees. On the middle of the floor he found a crumpled handkerchief, scented with carnation; he fingered it irresolutely, then struck a match and tossed it flaming into the grate. Imagination or reality still scented the room with carnation, and he threw open the curtains, resting his arms on the stone sill of the window and leaning out into a starless night. A heavy dew was rising, and the stone was sticky with moisture. The scent of carnations changed to a scent of stocks; then the reek of his own pipe drowned both. He was wakeful but calm, surprised at his own calmness before and now.

He wondered what Barbara was doing....

He wondered what she would do at their next meeting. Presumably she would invent a letter from George in the morning, calling her to Ireland, or recalling her to London, but they would meet later. A man, after such a misfire, would surely go abroad for a year or two; woman seemed to lie about these things to others—(“Eric Lane was staying with the Pentyres. You know he used to be rather in love with me? I’m afraid he still is, though I should have thought that, when I married, he’d have faced facts... I wish he’d find some nice girl... Connie Maitland’s little niece was there, but she’s hardly out of the nursery...”)—until they could lie about them to themselves; in a few years Barbara would convince herself that he had broken down the locked door of her bedroom and entreated her to run away with him. Women could make themselves believe anything, when they had to save their faces, to ignore a rebuff and keep up their value in the sex-market. And, as a matter of fact, a man did not always retire to decent obscurity; he sometimes came, like John Gaymer, officer and gentleman, and stayed in the same house as the girl whom he had seduced and deserted. Seemliness of conduct, seemliness of feeling were dead....

Sleep was impossible; and he remembered with gratitude how Lady Pentyre had arranged for him to work undisturbed. She had made a literary picture of a preoccupied, irregular genius who wrote under the attack of fitful inspiration; breakfast would come when he rang for it: he was not expected, he was almost forbidden, to shew himself before luncheon; and, if he wanted to work during the night, there awaited him a touching equipment of electric stove, spirit-lamp, cocoa, biscuits, and cold chicken. Eric went into the dressing-room and surveyed with a smile her solicitous array of stationery; there was paper big and small, plain and ruled, there were pencils and pens, india-rubber, paper-fasteners and a chromatic riot of ink and sealing-wax. He unlocked his despatch-box and glanced at a bundle of manuscript; a character called Beatrice seemed to be speaking, but he read the name as Barbara; and the lines that he had given her were overlaid as in a palimpsest by the words that Barbara had spoken, was still speaking....

He wondered what she was doing....

Work was out of the question until he had thought a little more about Barbara. However far she fell, there was always a lower depth. He imagined that she had reached her own limits in marrying George, but she was prepared to be faithless even to him, she was already faithless in spirit. Barbara was too young and ardent of soul to exist without loving and being loved; it was a question of time before she joined the furtive, unsatisfied band of women who lived in more or less open infidelity; she would go from one to another, encouraging George to do the same so that he would have less cause for reproaching her.

And three years earlier she had seemed to walk clothed in a white flame of purity. Was it another pose, like her extravagant talk of devotion, gratitude, honour, sacrifice? Her romantic emotions and phrases were culled from Italian operas and sentimental novels; and she treated them seriously. He told her once that she lived in “the hall of a thousand mirrors”, donning and discarding the dress and properties of a character, watching her reflection, posturing, mouthing her lines—until the personality of Barbara Neave lost outline and became a lay figure for the clothes of others. Her own form and stature did not satisfy her; she must be Isolde, Sarah Curran, Mrs. Blessington, Joan of Arc, Lady Hamilton and, at a pinch, Messalina; which part she played hardly mattered to her... She was without a sense of right and wrong... A sensationalist, as Jim Loring called her while she was playing with Jack, before she began to play with him... or George... An emotion-hunter....

The night was paling to a grey-blue, and the dawn brought with it a chill wind. Eric found his body shivering and his fingers stiff. He looked lazily at the array of food, too tired to eat or drink; then he got into bed and once more turned out the light. Was Barbara asleep yet?... Apart from everything else, what a fool the girl was to run such risks! If Lady Pentyre had looked into her empty room, if one of the men had come to finish a cigar on the end of his bed!...

He rang for his tea at noon and looked curiously through his letters. There were ten loving words from Ivy, who disdained concealment from the servants, but he sought in vain for any note from Barbara. Perhaps he was foolish to expect one, for she knew that she could trust him to hold his tongue. The thorough-paced anarchist always expected the police to protect him from the violence of an enraged mob....

It was a shock, after he fancied that he had diagnosed her so exhaustively, to find an unsuspected depth of impudence. When Eric went into the garden before luncheon, he was astounded to find her reading under a tree. The others were working or playing golf; but she hailed him and explained that she had stayed behind with a head-ache. Her manner was free of challenge or appeal; she did not invite him to play the accomplice; there seemed nothing to hide, and in all the time that he had known her he had never understood her less than when she lay in white skirt and knitted silk coat, bare-headed and bare-armed, smoking cigarettes and turning the pages of a book which she was too indolent to cut. Her movements and expression were gently provocative, as though she were trying to tantalize him.

“I wonder—,” he began and stopped abruptly.

“Yes?”

Eric shrugged his shoulders and turned half away. He was wondering where and what Barbara would be in five, ten, twenty years’ time, wondering why he had ever been in love with her, why she still attracted him and why he could not bear to touch or look at her.

“I was wondering how far it was to the links. I thought I’d go and meet the others. They must have finished playing by now.”

“I think I shall stay here,” she answered lazily. “It’s cooler.”

Eric sauntered across the lawn and through the garden, stopping for a moment to speak with Lady Pentyre and Madame Pinto de Vasconcellos, who were cutting roses. He sauntered into a wood and sat down on a stile commanding the pathway to the links. There was a sprawling group by the eighteenth green, and he identified O’Rane, Pentyre and the general. They were joined by a foursome, and he gradually distinguished Amy Loring and Ivy, Gaymer and Mrs. O’Rane. The sprawling figures straightened themselves, O’Rane collected the clubs of the women, and the party ranged itself in single file and threaded its way along the foot-path towards the wood. Eric had been thinking so much of Barbara during the last twelve hours that he had not troubled about Gaymer, but, as they drew near, he looked closely at Ivy for signs of annoyance or distress. She was frowning a little, but it might have been a frown of fatigue, and her face cleared at sight of him.

“How did you all get on?,” he asked.

“Lady Amy and I were beaten at the last hole,” Ivy answered. “Give me a hand over the stile, Eric; I’ve blistered my foot.”

“All well?,” he asked in a whisper.

“Ye-es,” she answered doubtfully. “I had one bad moment. He—you know—came up and pretended to look for my ball. He told me that he wanted to have five minutes’ talk with me some time; he said he’d invited himself here specially for that. I told him as politely as I could that I never wanted to speak to him again.”

“What happened then?,” asked Eric.

“He said it would take less than five minutes. I said it could do no good. He said that I couldn’t tell till I knew what he was going to say... Then I said, ‘If I give you five minutes, will you promise not to bother me ever again?’”

Eric found his eyebrows involuntarily rising in uneasy wonder. Ivy had shewn herself so much less valiant with Gaymer than she had boasted beforehand; she seemed to be cowed by him, so that she bargained and begged for mercy instead of standing up for herself.

“And then?”

“Well, he wouldn’t promise. He just repeated ‘Will you give me five minutes?’ I told him I’d think it over. Eric, can’t you explain—?”

He shook his head quickly:

“No, my dear! You can refuse to see him, if you think it’ll upset you; or you can see him and tell him that everything’s over.”

“Eric, he frightens me!”

“But you’ll have to get over that. Unless you fight him and beat him, you’ll be troubled whenever he chooses to make a nuisance of himself to you. When you’ve convinced yourself that he has no more influence over you, he’ll go away and leave you in peace. You’d better see him, but you mustn’t let him bully you.”

Ivy sighed and walked in silence to the house. At luncheon Lady Pentyre began to make suggestions for disposing of her guests: if they did not all know Melbury Cathedral, she said, they ought to take this opportunity of seeing it. It was only an hour’s run in the car; they could have tea there, drive on to Wilmington Abbey and be back in time for dinner.

“Or, if you want to laze,” she added, “there are the two punts....”

“That sounds more like me,” said Gaymer. “Ivy, what do you say to exploring?”

She hesitated for a moment, but Eric gave her no lead.

“I don’t mind what I do,” she answered.

“I think I ought to put in a little work,” Eric told Lady Pentyre.

An hour later he watched the party dispersing. Amy Loring had undertaken to punt O’Rane to Croxton for tea; and, if he still entertained doubts of Gaymer, he was reassured at feeling that Ivy would have help within call. General Maitland and Carstairs retired to their rooms with letters to answer; the others drove away in the car.

“We shall be back for tea,” Ivy announced with an air of summoning witnesses. “I promised to help Aunt Connie with her letters.”

Eric went to his room and tried to write, but his broken night and the flooding heat of the afternoon sun made him drowsy. He fell asleep in his chair and awoke with a start to find Ivy bending over him and kissing his forehead.

“My dear, there’s nothing wrong, is there?,” he asked.

“No! But you looked so anxious at lunch that I thought I’d come and tell you everything was all right. What a darling room Lady Pentyre’s given you to work in! Or sleep in. Were you frightfully tired, sweetheart, and did I wake you?”

“I was only lazy. Is it tea-time?”

“We’ve had tea. And I’m supposed to be writing letters. Don’t you think I’ve written them long enough? Don’t you think you might take me on the river now?”

She held out her hands, and Eric jumped up and caught her in his arms. He had dreamed of many things, not all of them pleasant; when he felt the light brush of lips on his forehead, he could have sworn that Barbara was kissing him; and the sight of Ivy puzzled him, recapturing for an instant the fleeting cloud-wreath of a fancy that something had happened to her, that he had lost her....

“You were anxious, Eric?”

“I didn’t want you to be upset; and I didn’t want even a shadow to come between us.”

“It hasn’t.”

They ran downstairs hand in hand, separating decorously in the hall and then slipping through a side-door into the garden. Reaction over her fright, the ever-new sense of security had elated Ivy until she was happier than at any time since their magical return to London from the river. In a week their month’s waiting would be over; he was already beginning to think how the announcement should be made....

“One week more!”

Eric was startled:

“I didn’t say anything!”

“I know you didn’t. I was just thinking—”

“I was thinking, too—of that. Well, Ivy?”

“Bless you, Eric!... As if I didn’t know all along! As if there’d ever been the faintest shadow of a doubt. But I shan’t marry you unless you swear to me that you want me. I feel I shall disappoint you so terribly, Eric; you’re so clever and so wise. I never think... You were quite right about Johnnie; I feel much better now that it’s all over.”

He helped her into the boat and paddled into mid-stream.

“It went off all right?,” he asked. “I don’t want to know what happened.”

“But I want to tell you, I like telling you everything.” She thought critically over her story before beginning it. “It was curious. He seemed to start again as though nothing had happened...” She was looking dreamily at the nodding blue and orange irises wading a third of the way across the stream; she did not see Eric’s involuntary shudder and stiffening. “He began again from the time when I asked him when we were going to be married; he actually said, ‘You remember that talk we had one night before I took you to the Vaudeville. You asked me how long I thought I should take to get demobilized...’ I said ‘Yes’. Eric.., well, I’ll come to that later. He said he’d had a very bothering time, because sometimes, when he’s not well, he doesn’t seem able to make up his mind about anything; and no one in his wretched ministry seemed to know what anybody wanted to do... He’d thought it over and he’d decided to come out. You know his uncle, Lord Poynter, don’t you? Well, Lord Poynter had offered him a job—a very good job, I imagine—in the Azores Line....”

She paused and regarded the irises with a puzzled frown, still trying to examine her narrative critically.

“Go on,” said Eric.

“Well, he stopped short there... He was very quiet... He seemed to be saying that he’d made all arrangements and everything was right and I’d been rather impatient. I didn’t know what to say... Well, then he said, ‘The last time we were together you seemed to have a pretty low opinion of me. I told you that I couldn’t marry you then. I can’t marry you now. I can’t marry you till I’ve got the job and held it. But I’m going to get it and I’m going to hold it.’”

“Ah!”

Ivy looked up in surprise at the rasping interjection.

“What d’you mean, Eric?”

“It sounds to me very like his original promise. And I think he’s making it for the same purpose. He’s trying to get you back.” He paused and then hurried on for fear that prudence might restrain him. “He wouldn’t have thought of you, if I hadn’t been in the way. It’s a trial of strength against me. Go on.”

Ivy winced, and the pupils of her eyes dilated.

“I told him that things had changed,” she explained. “I said—it wasn’t true—I said that I’d always believed in him, but there was a time when I was frightened... I reminded him of everything—the night when he said ‘If that’s your opinion of me, we’d better call the engagement off.’ I reminded him of the woman I’d seen him driving home with. He said....”

“Well?”

“He said, ‘I’ve never pretended to be a saint. When I was knocked out in the war, I saw everything differently. Most people would cut me, if they knew anything of my private life; I drink too much, I do this and that... I could put up a case, if I thought it worth while, but I don’t. You knew all this the first night we met. I didn’t pretend to be better than my neighbour, I daresay I’m a lot worse; I don’t know and I don’t care. But I’m the same as I was that first night. I loved you then—and I’ve never loved another woman before or since. I asked you to marry me then; and I’m in a position—I soon shall be, at least—to make good.’ Then he sort of left it to me... I’d thought of all kinds of bitter, horrid things to say, but I didn’t want to. I think he meant it. I felt the only thing to do was to be cold and dignified. I said, ‘There was a time when I thought I was in love with you. I’ve changed since then. I thought you’d broken your promise to me, I lost faith in you. Perhaps I never properly loved you, but, if I lived to be a thousand, I could never love you or trust you again’... While I said it, I felt that I might be terribly wrong, but it was—instinct. He looked at me... Then he looked at his watch... Then he said, ‘We’d better be getting back, or we shall be late for tea.’ Eric...”

“Yes.”

“Then I felt free. I felt I’d won. I felt you were right and I should never be troubled again. I’m happy now... Of course, I was happy before, but, when he flung himself into the carriage at Euston... Eric, you’ll despise me, but have you ever seen a dog being called simply to be beaten? It comes. It knows it’s going to be beaten. And it might run away. But it knows it has to come back later. I felt that, if ever Johnnie... I felt it at lunch, when he suggested that I should come on the river with him...”

The stream was carrying them two yards down for every yard that Eric paddled towards home. He bent over the side for a merciful moment of eclipse and unshipped a pole.

“And now?,” he asked.

“When he said we should be late for tea, if we didn’t get back, I knew I’d won,” she answered promptly.

A serpentine rivulet of water ran down Eric’s arm; he turned his head and industriously rolled up his sleeve.

“Good for that,” he commented. “Ivy, if you ever think I’m behaving like a cold-blooded old man, I should rather like you to suspend judgement for five seconds. Think of me as a man who might have kidnapped you, when you were so miserable that you didn’t know whether you were on your head or on your heels; think that I’m trying to play fair when perhaps I might play foul and still win... I’ve forgotten what I was going to say, but, if we don’t get back, we shall be late for dinner.”

She looked at him fearlessly; and he realized that she had not looked at him like that before.

“I can think of you as all that—and a lot more,” she answered.

For the second dinner Eric found himself between Lady Maitland and Amy Loring; he observed that Ivy was between O’Rane and Gaymer, but he felt no uneasiness. She had emerged morally stronger and with enhanced personality from her encounter of the afternoon. Gaymer shewed no sign of disappointment or rebuff, but he was silent and preoccupied. Eric would have given much to know what was going on inside his head and what he made of a girl who yielded to him and then refused to marry him....

Resentment was swamped in curiosity. The fellow might be genuinely in love with Ivy, though he modelled himself too closely on the dramatically strong, silent man who bluffly admitted that he was of flesh and blood like other men, that others must take him as they found him. Or he might be trying only to re-establish his ascendancy for a few days or weeks until some other woman came his way. Ivy might boast that she had won free of him, but at least she half-believed in him, at least she had let him off without a word of reproach, at least she was susceptible and even in danger, if he set himself to win her back. Was this new assurance and elation more than the response of a woman’s vanity when she found two men equally desirous of marrying her? Eric looked impatiently on the week which still lay ahead of him. When their engagement was announced, Gaymer must inevitably take himself off, but it was possible to compress a great deal of mischief into one week.

After dinner Eric went out of his way to open conversation with his moody neighbour.

“I understand you’re going to be demobilized shortly,” he began.

“There’s some talk of it,” was the guarded answer.

“What are you thinking of doing?,” Eric persisted, though his companion put no hint of welcome into his manner.

“I’m looking for a well-paid job with good holidays and short hours. Do you know of any?”

“I know of several men who started looking for just that job when they went down from Oxford a dozen years ago. But for the war they’d still be looking for it.”

“Well, if you hear of anything,” said Gaymer in a tone of dismissal, “mind you let me know. Or perhaps you wouldn’t care to take the responsibility of recommending my name? You expressed yourself very fluently on the one occasion when you honoured me with a visit.”

He was clearly undecided whether to end the conversation or to pick a quarrel. Eric knew that it would be wisest to turn round and talk to General Maitland, but Gaymer always employed a contemptuous insolence of manner which roused any combativeness that his audience might have.

“Did I say anything that wasn’t justified?,” Eric asked with an effort of memory.

“I suppose it’s a matter of opinion how far any one’s justified in interfering with other people’s business. But, as that seems to be the serious occupation of your life, you can’t be too thorough. I recognized that then, you remember; I begged you to drop in at cocktail-time whenever your feelings were too much for you. I suppose you’ve been too busy to come.”

“No. I felt that, whether it was my business or not, you at least had dropped out of it.”

Gaymer removed his cigar and stared dully at the glowing end.

“Well, you seem to have been very busy with my name behind my back,” he said.

“I’m not aware of it.”

“Oh? It was an impression I got.”

“Can you remind me what I said?,” asked Eric.

“I haven’t the least idea. You seem to have been doing very efficient propaganda against me. Weren’t you in the Propaganda Department at one time?”

“Yes. And my experience there was that the propaganda which you carry out against a nation never compares with the propaganda which a nation carries out against itself. One good Lusitania outrage was worth months of our solemn generalizations; that shewed the world what the Germans really were.”

Gaymer yawned openly:

“I daresay you’re right. I’m not a good judge of backstabbers.” Eric smiled and refused to be roused by the word. “I admit that I sometimes wonder now, as I wondered then, just where you come in.”

“I think I told you that I was a friend of one of the parties.”

“But does that justify you in telling lies about me to the parents of one of the parties? I only ask for information.”

“I never met or held any communication with either parent until some days later. Then I said that I did not know you well enough to give an opinion about you; it was untrue, but I erred on the side of generosity. All this was months after you had been invited to leave the house.”

Gaymer turned away without troubling to answer, and for the next two days they only exchanged formal greetings when they could not avoid each other; but there was already so much tension in the house that a little more or less made no difference. Barbara stayed until the end of the party, talking without embarrassment to Eric and looking him frankly in the eyes. Amy Loring, who knew as much of their relationship as any one, betrayed neither surprise nor curiosity. The Maitlands, who welcomed Eric as cordially as they repelled Gaymer, presented an attitude of stolid indifference and would have been artistically astonished if any one had hinted that the two men were fighting a subterranean duel for Ivy. Madame Pinto de Vasconcellos tried to compromise every man in turn, and her husband glowered silently at her frantic failures.

“I think it was so sweet of you all to come,” said Lady Pentyre complacently each evening. “I do hope you’re enjoying yourselves. I was thinking that to-morrow, perhaps...”

She would then concentrate on the first attentive listener, suggesting expeditions and ordering cars indefatigably. The prevailing chill of misgiving had not spared her in the early days of her party, for Mr. Justice Maitland had begged her not to facilitate meetings between Ivy and Gaymer at her house; but what could a woman do, she asked herself, when a man buttonholed her son at the last moment and said that he had nowhere to go for Whitsuntide? She remembered, too, that years ago, when there was so much gossip about the O’Ranes, Sonia had run away from her husband and billeted herself at Croxton; she had invited the two of them without really being sure that they went about together. As Bobbie complained or boasted—in his silly way and without trying to help her—, the smallest Croxton party could be trusted to produce one catastrophe and three scandals; but, so far as Lady Pentyre could see, every one was now getting on very happily with every one else; and she had reached an age when she aimed less at positive success than at the avoidance of disaster.

At the end of each day Ivy reported to Eric all that she had done. There was little enough to say, for Gaymer had never tried to be alone with her since she gave him his dismissal on the river. As the train drew near London, he did indeed join for a moment in the general discussion of plans and ask her as a matter of form whether he was likely to see her again soon.

“I’m very busy at present,” she told him. “I daresay you know that I’m trying to make myself useful to Mr. Lane while his secretary’s away.”

“I didn’t know you were still doing that,” he answered without interest.

Eric drove with the Maitlands to Eaton Place and took Ivy on in their car to his flat.

“Thank goodness! That’s over!,” he exclaimed, when they were alone.

“Were you afraid there’d be a scene?,” she asked.

“There were—several, only you were spared them. I suppose it was inevitable. But in five days’ time—”

“It’s only four and a half now.”