“Your distresses in your journey... are proper seasonings for the greater fatigues and distresses, which you must expect in your travels; and, if one had a mind to moralize, one might call them the samples of the accidents, rubs, and difficulties, which everyone meets with in his journey through life. In this journey, the understanding is the voiture that must carry you through; and in proportion as that is stronger or weaker, more or less in repair, your journey will be better or worse; though, at best you will now and then find some bad roads and some bad inns....

“My long and frequent letters which I send you, in great doubt of their success, put me in mind of certain papers which you have very lately, and I formerly, sent up to kites, along the string, which we call messengers; some of them the wind used to blow away, others were torn by the string, and but few of them got up and stuck to the kite....”

“Miss Maitland asked me to say she would like to see you as soon as you are ready.”

Eric thanked the nurse and continued dressing. The night of unresisting, helpless exhaustion had been tranquil as death; he wondered whether Ivy had slept... Or had she been rehearsing the speech in which she would tell him that she could not marry him? Or would she say nothing, waiting for him to tell her that he had been in the passage outside her room while she threw him aside for Gaymer?... It was significant that she asked to see him. An easy conscience must have told her that he would have come as soon as he was dressed....

He went in to find her tired and nervously excited, but she achieved an unembarrassed smile of welcome and asked how he was.

“I’ll return the c-compliment,” he said, wondering why he stammered. “How are you, Ivy? You’re the invalid.”

“Oh, I’m much better. I shall be able to come down to Lashmar at the end of next week.”

Eric turned away and looked for a chair. At times of great mental exhaustion it was hard to tell whether a thing had happened or whether he had dreamed it. Ivy was talking as though she had never perjured herself for Gaymer, as though she had never seen him again—an absurd, intoxicating child with short black curls and thin white arms, the immature bud of a woman... Yet there was a table by the bed within reach of her hand; on the table stood a black Wedgwood bowl; in the bowl a nodding mass of lilies. Once or twice before, when she was living with Lady Maitland and dining alone with Gaymer, she had confessed to inventing fellow-guests to keep her in countenance and to placate her aunt; she had regarded the lie as amusing and clever, certainly venial; Eric hoped that she was not going to lie now. Perhaps he had imagined that nightmare moment in the passage, perhaps the sight of her frank grey eyes kept his habit of love unbroken; undoubtedly he loved her still, loved her so desperately that he could not bear to see her made vile with a lie... But the lilies at least were not imaginary... Her easy reference to Lashmar shewed that she intended to confess nothing; she would leave him to find out. One day he would receive a letter to say that she had run off with Gaymer; in the meantime she played her double part with outward unconcern, as though she were already married and had a secret lover....

“At the end of next week,” he repeated.

It was easier to echo her words than to break new ground.

“Are you going back at once? I hope you’re going to stay here,” she said, beckoning him to a chair.

“I promised my mother to go back to-day.”

“Can’t you telephone? I do so want you to stay... Eric, does your mother know? I’ve been so afraid she might disapprove of me. Have you told her?”

He shivered unconsciously; the appealing pose of fidelity was cynical enough, without her becoming inartistic by overdoing it.

“I gave her a very fair idea of what was in the wind,” he said. “She’s very fond of you, Ivy. There’d be no difficulty in that quarter.”

“You haven’t seen father yet? When are you going to?”

For a moment Eric was so much disgusted to find himself participating in this game of make-believe that he did not realize she was asking him a question and waiting for an answer.

“I don’t know,” he answered at length. “I don’t know whether I shall see him. There are certain rather considerable difficulties... Ivy, d’you want me to go to him?”

As he spoke, he was conscious that his tone had hardened; there was a challenge and a warning in it. He waited to see whether she would go on lying; the hint of menace must shew her that she was underestimating his knowledge.

A slight frown, a slighter shrug were her only signs of emotion.

“I never did want you to go,” she answered. “My father is nothing in my life now. I should actually have asked you not to if you hadn’t frightened me by saying that he might make trouble because I wasn’t of age.”

Eric nodded and prepared a question which would leave no room for evasion.

“You’ve thought it over carefully, I hope?,” he said. “You still want to marry me?”

“Of course.”

She held out her hands to him, but he pretended not to see them. The last man to kiss her was Gaymer; where he kissed, a fume of liquor and lasciviousness remained....

“You want to marry me after seeing—him? You’ve satisfied him that it’s all over?”

Her frown deepened, but there was no indication of embarrassment.

“He still claims that we’re engaged—,” she began.

“Does he still think he’s going to marry you?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve told him you won’t?”

He regretted the question as soon as it was uttered. However dishonourably Ivy had behaved, there was no pleasure in driving her inch by inch into a trap; in a world of liars there was never much satisfaction in convicting any one of a lie.

“Yes, I told him that,” she answered. “I also told him I would... You won’t understand that, I expect, but I couldn’t help myself. That’s why I don’t want you to go away and leave me, Eric; that’s why, a month ago, I didn’t want to wait. I daresay you despise me, but I always feel he can make me do whatever he wants. I can’t tell you why. That night... when we came out of a theatre, he said ‘Are you going home, or are you coming home with me?’ I’d never been home with him so late, I knew what would happen, I didn’t want it to happen. I was horribly frightened and I hoped, when he saw I was frightened, that he would spare me. I should have thought any man would... I couldn’t help myself; and that’s why I’ve never been as much ashamed as I ought to be. Even when I thought he’d got tired of me, when I hated him and could have murdered him, I still felt that he might come back and I should have to obey him... I don’t want to be left alone, Eric. When we’re married, it will be all right; I shall have you to protect me. I’ve been ill—and, before that, I was desperately miserable; perhaps I haven’t really been accountable for my actions. But, if he’d picked me up in his arms last night and carried me off, I couldn’t have resisted. Until we’re married, you mustn’t leave me—”

“And, when we’re married, will it be easier to resist him?”

“He’ll leave me alone. He may go abroad... Do you understand? Or do you just despise me?”

She smiled wistfully and held out her hands to him again. Though he had not kissed her on coming into the room, she had not commented on the omission; perhaps she had not noticed it. Their relationship had been wholly passionless. When he brought her back from Maidenhead and saw her for the first time in ecstasy, the glory in her eyes was spiritual; it was gratitude, admiration, love and a great amazement; if she then begged him to kiss her, it was because a kiss was her readiest symbol of love. For Gaymer she had once felt passion; when he ordered her to kiss him, knowing the degree and source of his power, she obeyed. That would pass in a few months; the strength of sex was only equalled by its transience; and they would find nothing to put in its place. While it was there, it was all-powerful; she could only escape it by running away, by surrounding herself with a bodyguard, by reminding the flesh that she owned claims of the spirit also. In so far as Eric could analyse her mind, she yearned to be with Gaymer; and she resisted the yearning, because she owed a spiritual debt to some one else. She would be happier with Gaymer—for a time; no doubt she fancied that she would always be happier. But she was prepared to sacrifice that for honour, for gratitude....

“I’m trying to understand,” he answered. “I once thought that I was utterly helpless in one woman’s hands. There was nothing I wouldn’t do... But I found it was a thing one could overcome. If I went up in blue smoke here and now, you’d marry Gaymer? You remember there was a time when you wouldn’t look at him.”

“I didn’t know everything then.”

“And, if I don’t go up in blue smoke and if he got enough money, if we stood side by side before you, and you had a perfectly free choice?”

Ivy laughed with a dove’s coo of devotion:

“My darling, I should choose you!”

“And if Gaymer tried to entice you away?”

“But you wouldn’t let me go!”

Eric shook his head sadly:

“Aren’t you strong enough to stand by yourself without wanting a man always to dominate you?”

The conversation was tiring her, and her voice became faintly petulant:

“When you’re lying in bed like this, all your will-power goes. And I couldn’t sleep last night. I kept thinking of Johnnie, I was frightened. You oughtn’t to have left me, Eric. Everything would have been all right, if you’d stayed here.”

“Gaisford thought I wanted a change,” he reminded her. “And I’m afraid I shall have to leave you again. He wants me to go abroad.”

“Oh, Eric, why? Are you ill?”

Her eyes were filled with concern; he wondered how much came from sympathy with him and how much from fear for herself.

“Apparently I am. He wants to rest me and fatten me up.”

“But how long will you be away?”

“A couple of years, I should think.”

Ivy drew herself upright in bed and stared at him, with parted lips:

“Eric, you must explain!”

“There’s nothing much to explain. It’s out of the question for me to marry at present...” He hesitated and looked away. “It’s not fair to ask you to wait two years.”

For a moment she did not answer. Then she cried:

“Of course I’ll wait! You know that!”

It was easier to keep his eyes on the ground than to meet hers. The valiant words were inevitable—at such a time and in such an atmosphere; the moment’s hesitation was not. And that, more than anything that she had said or hinted, cleared his mind of doubt.

“Well, we won’t talk about it any more at present,” he suggested. “Gaisford’s going to examine me again, and then we shall know rather better where we are. Don’t worry, Ivy. I’ve no intention of dying yet awhile. I only heard about it last night, so I haven’t had time to think much about the future.”

In the afternoon Eric returned to Wimpole Street for the further examination. The second report was fuller, but not materially different: one lung was affected, and with reasonable care he would be cured in a year or eighteen months. He again begged the doctor to say nothing at present to his parents or Ivy.

“There’s a lot to take into consideration,” he explained vaguely.

“I’m sorry about this business, Eric,” said Gaisford. “But I’m telling you the truth. If you’ll be patient—”

“Everything will come right. I see... D’you think your man would like to send a message to Lashmar to say I shan’t be down to-night?”

He walked into Oxford Street and through Hyde Park to Piccadilly. Once before, after bidding Barbara good-bye, he had bade good-bye to London, wandering from his flat to the theatre, from the theatre to, his club, almost pinching himself in the effort to remember that he was seeing them all for the last time. One could never reproduce an emotion in its first breathless perfection; though he went through the same emotions, the earlier shock had numbed him protectively against any that might come later. And, as it proved, it was not the last time. In another two years he might return to find Ivy married to Gaymer, as he had found Barbara married to George Oakleigh; he would be two years older, twenty years more disillusionized, with a bitter heart for women and a dread of the blank emptiness before him.

Ivy was not to blame for meeting a force too strong for her; she was ready to risk everything, even what she fancied to be her own happiness, for loyalty and the honourable observance of her promise. If he felt sore, it was because he had come to love her; she had made him forget Barbara and had given him the hope of a new life. But throughout, from the first night when he discussed her with Gaisford, he had made her his spiritual anaesthetic; while there was an opportunity of offering her himself, his money and reputation, his devotion and care, he had looked with the eyes of a fanatic on this single act of sacrifice which was to give value and meaning to his life. In trying to face the future, it was the meaninglessness of life that appalled him....

He had been trying, ever since their talk in the morning, to banish himself in imagination to California and to consider what was best for her. Gaymer would ruin her life; he would be unfaithful after six months and brutal after a year. And she knew it. Should she be saved from that? Was it ever worth trying to save man or woman from the woman or man that they desired? Yet it was a poor proof of love to stand aside and let her go to certain misery. If he mounted guard over her, he could still keep her from Gaymer....

And from her phantom of happiness.

He turned into the Green Park and walked in the shade of the trees towards Lancaster House. A woman bowed to him; he returned the bow without seeing who she was, but there was a scrape of gravel under her heel as she stopped, and he heard his name called.

“I thought it was you, but you had your chin so much on your chest... Thinking out a new play?”

“Mrs. O’Rane? I hope you didn’t think I was trying to cut you! No, I hardly know what I was thinking about. How’s your husband?”

“If you go on for about a hundred yards, you’ll find him. I have to rush off to a committee. Good-bye!”

He shaded his eyes and looked down the pathway until he saw a Saint Bernard asleep with his head on his paws and the paws pressed in gentle protection against the feet of his master. Eric walked on and greeted O’Rane.

“That’s—wait a bit! that’s Eric Lane’s voice. Am I right?”

“First shot. You’re marvellous, Raney.”

“It’s patience, you know. And I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. How’s the patient? Lady John Carstairs told me of your troubles. I wanted you to come and have a shake-down with us, but she said you preferred to stay where you were. I hear the operation went off all right.”

“Oh, yes. She’s out of danger, I’m glad to say.”

“So Gaymer told me. It all happened within a few hours of our coming up from Croxton, apparently.”

“Yes.”

Eric wondered when and why O’Rane had been talking to Gaymer, but his speculation was cut short by a question:

“By the way, is it true...? I heard an interesting piece of news about you.”

“Oh?”

“I heard you were engaged.”

“Now where did you hear that?”

Eric’s laugh seemed to ring shrilly, but O’Rane did not notice it.

“Tell me first if it’s true,” he said. “I’m the soul of discretion.”

He held out his hand, smiling and eager to congratulate. Eric hesitated and again laughed nervously.

“That ought to be an easy enough question for me to answer,” he said, “but, as a matter of fact, I can’t.”

The neglected hand reached out and felt for Eric’s arm.

“I nearly came round to see you,” said O’Rane gently, “but I thought you’d wonder what business it was of mine. You remember our talk on board the Lithuania... I know a good deal about you, and we’re very old friends... So I was glad, more than glad, when I heard you were actually engaged. Then I heard—”

His fingers slacked their grip on Eric’s arm; and his voice died away.

“That I wasn’t,” Eric suggested.

“Well, no. I heard—at least, I gathered that it wouldn’t be all plain sailing. I gathered it from Gaymer himself. D’you remember at Croxton that I said I thought I should have to take him in hand? He was drinking too much, he wanted pulling up. He’s been living in my pocket the last day or two. I can make something of him. But I’m afraid his interests cuts across yours.”

“Would it bore you to hear the whole story?,” Eric asked.

There was a welcoming nod of encouragement. Eric tried to speak dispassionately, though he knew that he was appealing for sympathy and help; and the appeal grew stronger as he saw his companion’s expression becoming more grave.

“Confidence for confidence,” said O’Rane, when he had done. “Quite soon after I married, there came a time when it seemed possible that Sonia and I had made a mistake, a time when I felt that, if I wanted her to be happy, I should have to say, ‘Think this over carefully; you’ve only one life and, if you believe you’ll make more of a success of it with another man, you know I’ll not stop you’... I said that, Eric, and I’ve always felt it was the right thing to do. I won’t pretend it was easy, but the right thing seldom is. As it happens, everything’s turned out well... I believe it’s a question that a great many men ought to put to their wives, instead of exercising harem-rights over a human creature, made in God’s image, that they’ve bought or attached to themselves. Do you want to love a woman or to enjoy a slave?... I tell you this, because you must give that girl the opportunity of slipping out of your grasp—”

He stopped at the touch of a hand laid deprecatingly on his knee.

“I can’t keep her, if she wants to go,” said Eric.

“Indeed you can. Use your imagination, man! After all you’ve done for her, with the knowledge that you’re ill—Put it on the lowest ground; she wouldn’t dare to have it said of her that she’d thrown over a man with consumption because she couldn’t wait two years for him to get well. Probably you agree with me that a man who is a man doesn’t make capital out of his physical infirmities. You must persuade her that she’s under no obligation to you; and, if the decision goes against you, you must accept it with a good grace. You behaved well in coming to her rescue; you may have an opportunity of behaving even better in giving up all claim on her.”

Eric sat for some moments digging at the gravel with his stick. Then he touched O’Rane’s arm and stood up.

“Let’s move on,” he suggested. “It’s—it’s hot here... Raney, I’m not going to give her up. I don’t see why I should.”

“I hope you won’t have to.”

“No one can compel me, if she says she’ll wait.”

“No one would need to compel you. Dear man, your devotion to her is a very beautiful thing, it’s a thing you’ve better reason to be proud of than anything you’ve ever done. You wouldn’t degrade a devotion like that by keeping her against her will.”

Eric said nothing for several moments, but he laughed to himself, and O’Rane gripped his arm as though the sneer in the laugh stung him.

“And I wonder what you think would be left for me, if I did give her up!” he resumed. “It’s no good trying to make me live in too rarified air. All this business about ‘the right thing’—I’m not cut out for Cyrano de Bergerac or for Sidney Carton; a good conscience, a glow of magnanimity—it does me no sort of good, Raney. I know what I want, I know how badly I want it. I can imagine pretty clearly what the next two years are going to be like—vegetating on a verandah in Arizona. She’s all I have left... But if there’s nothing to come back to... I’m the one that has to go through this and I want you to tell me what’s left.”

O’Rane laughed and linked arms with him.

“I’ll change lungs, if you’ll change eyes,” he murmured.

“I’m sorry! My outlook’s a bit jaundiced. I expected too much of life, I’d had a pretty fair hammering in one way or another and I thought it was going to change, to end.”

O’Rane stopped short and sighed with whimsical regret.

“Like your novels and plays,” he suggested. “Life differs from romance in that there are no happy endings. And, when you’ve learned that lesson, you must learn that life has no endings of any kind short of death. We try to divide our lives into dramatic phases, but you know that there’s no finality about your first disappointment in love; it modifies the texture of your spirit and prepares you for something else just when the dramatist scrawls his ‘Curtain’ and the novelist writes ‘The End.’ Perhaps it prepares you for another and a different love, perhaps for marriage: no one but a fool would stop his play or novel with the clash of wedding-bells. It’s not the end of anything except one stage of an endless development; it’s not the beginning of anything except the next stage of development. These dramatic and literary forms destroy our sense of continuity. Hundreds of generations have gone to the preparation of your personality; you will enrich it in a thousand ways and hand it on by blood or teaching or example to thousands of generations unborn. You ask what is left... I should answer: your personality, your ego. You have that left to build up, fortify, perfect. I don’t say that the next two years will be particularly happy, but you can come out of them a deeper, broader, bigger man... You’ll give this girl her chance?”

Eric walked on without answering. They left the Park and passed along Cleveland Row to St. James’ Street. The wind was blowing from the river, and they paused to hear Big Ben strike.

“Seven o’clock. I’d no idea we’d been talking so long,” said O’Rane. “My wife’s dining out and going to the ballet. I suppose you wouldn’t care to take pot-luck with me?”

“I should love it, when I’ve been home. Ivy’ll be wondering what’s happened to me. Raney, what would you do in my place, if you felt certain that, by giving a woman up, you’d be sentencing her to utter misery?”

“To begin with, no one can ever be certain of that.”

“Gaymer’s a brute and a cad and a drunkard,” said Eric hotly.

“He’s given up drinking for good. As for the rest, when you see so many estimable men turning into brutes and cads on marriage, it’s not unreasonable to hope that a brute and cad may be converted by marriage into something better. As a matter of fact, Gaymer’s neither. I saw him when, to use his own phrase, he thought you’d jumped his claim; it was the time when the girl’s life was in danger. Gaymer’s very fond of her, too, though he’s English enough to hide it from everybody but a man who has ears even if he’s no eyes... Gaymer’s no fool. He knows that all his nervous organism has gone to pieces in the war, he recognizes that he’s left the rails and that, if he doesn’t pull up, he’ll go downhill with a run. He wants some one to keep him steady; and this girl—the only living creature in the world that he cares for—is the only one who can do it. He’s fighting for her, because she’s his one anchor. He can’t afford to lose her.”

“I can’t afford to lose her.”

“Perhaps you mayn’t. I only want her to have a free choice.”

“Freedom to marry a blackguard? He is a blackguard, Raney, to have taken advantage of a girl’s youth and ignorance. He’s a blackguard right through to the end! He solemnly promised me not to go near her and then bursts in the moment my back’s turned. He’s a libertine, a liar—”

“That’s no objection in a woman’s eyes. Every corespondent is all that and perhaps a good deal more.”

“I’m not going to give her up.”

They turned into Ryder Street and walked up the stairs to Eric’s flat. O’Rane waited in the hall while Eric went into Ivy’s bedroom. She was sitting up, writing on her knees, and, as he came in, she laid down her pencil and handed him the letter. Her eyelids flickered, and he could see that she spoke with an effort.

“It’s to Johnnie,” she explained. “He called immediately after you’d gone, but I told the nurse to say I couldn’t see him. He’s just sent me a note... What did the doctor say, Eric?”

“He didn’t add much to what he told me last night. Do you want me to read this, Ivy?”

“I think you’d better. I told Johnnie that I didn’t know what I was saying last night, when I promised to marry him. I’ve begged him not to worry me—”

Eric fingered the letter without reading it.

“If I told you that the doctor didn’t know if I could marry even in two years, what would you say?,” he propounded.

“Even!...? What do you mean? Did he say that? Eric, tell me! You frighten me when you won’t say what’s the matter with you.”

He pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat down, holding her hand.

“I can’t tell you anything very definite,” he answered. “But I’m trying to look at all possibilities. I feel responsible for you, Ivy. I want to think what’s the best for you. If Gaisford says I must never marry, what will you do?”

She looked at him with frightened eyes, and he saw that her lips were trembling. Two slow tears rolled down her cheeks and splashed on to his hand. So she had cried once at the opera, and her tears had melted him. Now they seemed to eat into his hand like acid.

“I shan’t die, if I can help it, Ivy,” he added. “If I did, or if I couldn’t marry you, what would you do? Would you marry Gaymer?”

“Oh, Eric, don’t be cruel! Are you doing this just to frighten me?”

“No! I’m thinking of your future. If you married him, do you feel that you’d both be happy?”

“I should never be happy, if anything happened to you.”

“Darling Ivy, leave me out for a minute! Imagine you’d never met me. Do you feel that you’d be happy with him?”

“If I’d never met you?... But, Eric—”

“You really love him, Ivy? Do you love him more than me?”

“Don’t torture me! I could never love any one as I love you. Johnnie’s quite different; I feel quite differently about him... Eric, it isn’t kind not to tell me.”

She drew her hand back and leaned forward, throwing her arms round his neck. He kissed her forehead and dried the tear-rivulets on her cheeks. Then he unlocked her fingers and stood up, turning half away.

“I’ll tell you, Ivy,” he said. “I asked you this morning whether you’d wait two years—”

“I will! You know I will!”

“I know you will! Bless you! But two years are no good. I hope to be very much better by then, but I shall never be well enough to marry... Gaisford t-told me so this afternoon,” he added with deliberation.