“So when morning was come, he goes to them in a surly manner, as before, and perceiving them to be very sore with the stripes that he had given them the day before, he told them, that since they were never like to come out of that place, their only way would be, forthwith to make an end of themselves, either with knife, halter, or poison: ‘For why,’ said he, ‘should you choose life, seeing it is attended with so much bitterness?’”

When the nurse came to turn him out of the room, Eric steadied himself and tried to walk into the library as though nothing unusual had happened. Once there, with the morning’s letters still unanswered and the evening’s unopened, he could not decide what to do. Forgotten names, from a dream-world that he had forsaken, assailed him with clamorous insistence; his friends, of course, could not realize that for days all his interest had been concentrated on Ivy and Gaymer, with the judge and Gaisford and his own dim family grouped in the middle distance. Absurd urgency to secure his presence at the opera: “L’Heure espagnole, it’s being given for the first time”; letters from America, informing him that the writers, who would never forget the pleasure of meeting him in New York, were on their way to England... In three days their world was as remote from him as Venusburg from the regenerate TannhaÜser; America was but a country in which he had thought of finding a sanctuary for his wife. There was no need now for him to take Ivy abroad; and for three weeks he had worked and schemed in the expectation of going to America in the autumn for six months or a year....

Readjustment....

The telephone-bell rang, and a woman’s voice enquired for him:

“It’s Lady John Carstairs speaking. I’m so sorry to hear about poor Miss Maitland. Amy Loring told me at dinner. How is she? I was wondering if there was anything I could do. You’ve got all the doctors and nurses you want, of course, but it must be such an upset for a bachelor establishment. My husband wanted to know if you’d care for a bed here; we can give you a little room where you’ll be able to work undisturbed....”

As he thanked her, Eric smiled wearily to himself at the speed and thoroughness of Gaisford’s workings. In twenty-four hours it would be known from one end of his little London to the other that “Connie Maitland’s niece, who was helping Eric Lane in the absence of his secretary,” had collapsed unexpectedly with appendicitis. He assisted the report on its way by cancelling two dinner invitations and an engagement for the week-end; growing bold in mendacity, he stereotyped the story, as he had told it to the judge, and despatched it with a late bulletin to his mother. By this time there was no harm in telling Lady Maitland that she might come any day, provided that she did not try to stay more than a moment.

The swift-flying rumour of London dinner-tables was sometimes an occasion for blessing. In three weeks’ time Ivy could be moved; the news of their engagement would flash from house to house; ‘romance,’ hard-worked and ill-used, would be pressed into service as thought-saving description until he might hope to be spared, even in the echo of a whisper, hearing the name of Barbara Neave or of John Gaymer. He was too tired to cope with the tumult which their names conjured up; he tried to forget them....

Yet even now Gaymer could not be left where he was.

“There is one thing which I must add to our conversation of this evening,” Eric wrote. “Ivy and I are definitely engaged to be married. I write this in confidence, as the engagement cannot be announced until I have been through the formality of seeing her father. This I hope to do immediately. You will probably agree that this is the most definite answer to the question which you were proposing to raise.”

He signed the letter and returned to the unexplored pile in front of him. The invitations stretched far into the summer, but for the future he must take Ivy into partnership in dealing with them; there were the customary appeals for money, opinions and advice, the usual requests for interviews, articles and lectures; a long envelope contained the draft of the will which he had instructed his solicitors to make for safeguarding Ivy in the event of his dying suddenly. The necessity had almost passed; but, as he read through the provisions, he filled in her name and rang for his two maids to come and witness his signature. From investments alone they would have rather more than a thousand a year, which was tolerable even in days of swollen prices; in addition he could reasonably hope that his plays would not all cease suddenly and at the same moment to yield him any fees. His income, taken on an average, was probably far bigger than Mr. Justice Maitland enjoyed from salary and securities.

Eric became absorbed in his calculations and worked at them until he was too tired to see any more. Ivy and he would have enough for a flat in London and a cottage in the country; they could winter abroad and travel to their hearts’ content; when children came, they could be given the best upbringing and education, as befitted the beautiful, dark-haired, grey-eyed children that Ivy would bear. Hitherto he had never thought of himself as a father; and he fell asleep with a new, delightful picture of Ivy holding their first child in her arms, herself but a child still....

Next day a budget of sympathetic enquiries awaited him, and he was kept busy with pen and telephone. There were presents of flowers and fruit, offers of personal assistance, general invitations and an embarrassing procession of callers. Eric debated with himself whether to issue orders that Captain Gaymer was not to be admitted; he decided that, if his letter were not enough of a deterrent, there would at least be no attempt at a forced entry for some days.

Though he kept reassuring himself, it was a shock to receive a letter in the evening and to trace the straggling, unfamiliar writing down to the signature “Yours sincerely John Gaymer.” Eric felt his heart beating more quickly as he turned to the opening words:

“I have your letter. All that you say may be true, but it doesn’t affect my point. So far as I know, the facts have never been put before Ivy. Will you tell her that I should like to see her as soon as she’s well enough? The issue is quite plain.”

Eric locked the letter away in a despatch-box and walked up and down the library, trying to compose himself before Gaisford came in from the sick-room. Even without Gaymer, the last few weeks had been sufficiently exhausting—first Ivy, then Barbara and the succession of unnerving encounters with her; and, before that, the shock of her marriage, the torturing sense of betrayal, the endless nights and days of inward raving and outward stoicism in which he had travelled and lectured and written from end to end of America like an effigy of himself with the spirit torn out and bleeding apart; and, before that, the two years of illness and madness. It was not surprising if he sometimes felt that something in his head, just behind the eyes, would snap; it was unpleasantly surprising to calculate that he had not felt well for months, that he was half-consciously waiting to hear the snap.

He was sitting with his head bent forward, squeezing his fists against his temples, when the doctor came in. The door was open, and Eric never knew how long Gaisford had stood watching him before he looked up; and, though he rallied at once and asked steadily enough for the evening report, he felt trapped.

“She’s doing very nicely,” said Gaisford, still looking at him curiously. “If you don’t let people see her till I give you leave—.”

“You can trust me for that,” Eric interrupted.

“And if I say you’re not to see her yourself?”

“I shouldn’t dream of going near her against your orders!”

The doctor silenced him with a grunt and began digging like an industrious terrier among the papers on the writing table.

“Tell me where you keep your cigars and don’t become theatrical,” he advised. “Since when have you started this flattering regard for my orders?”

“I’ve done everything you’ve told me to.”

“Since yesterday morning. In other days I used to prescribe for you, I’ve even pulled you out of one or two tight corners for which posterity is likely to be more grateful to me than you are. Shoo! Shoo! Shoo! Seniores priores. I’m doing the talking. Well, you’ve always had the sense and justice to admit that you wouldn’t have got into eighty per cent. of those same tight corners, if you’d followed my orders earlier. D’you remember the man in Kipling who always prophesied trouble in the Balkans in the spring? It was a fairly safe shot. I always seem to prophesy a nervous breakdown in about a fortnight’s time for you. Before you go to bed this night, I’m going to overhaul you; and then you’re going away—not for my sake, nor for yours, but for your young woman’s. You’re no use to her, if you smash up; and you’re going to smash up, unless you take in sail. What’s the trouble? I left a message last night to say she was out of danger.”

“And, before that, you sent me off to have a nice, bright dinner... I tumbled across that swine Gaymer, and you may be amused to hear that we dined together. Gaymer had never suspected anything till that moment; he appreciated that there was a certain coolness and he was leaving her to come to her senses! Now....”

Eric jumped up and shut the door, conscious that he was scoring bad marks against himself by his restlessness but hardly caring to keep up pretences any longer.

“Well?” said Gaisford.

“I don’t know... He swears he’s in love with her, wants to marry her. And he’s made up his mind to see her.”

“I shall have something to say about that for the next three weeks.”

“And by then the engagement will be announced. The judge told me he was going away to-morrow, but as soon as he comes back....”

“What’s troubling you, then?”

Eric continued to pace up and down between the windows and the door, staring at the carpet, locking and unlocking his fingers behind his back and trying to find words for the new doubt which Ivy had not resolved even when she promised herself to him the night before:

“I’m not easy in my mind... I don’t know... Does a woman ever break her first lover’s spell? I seem uncertain of everything.”

“Then you’d better put it to the test. You’ll be a fool to marry her, if you think she’ll come at the other man’s whistle. I told you that—weeks ago, in this very room, when we first discussed it. Let him see her, let her make up her mind.”

“She’s made it up. If he comes, she’ll send him away again.”

“Then she has broken the spell? I don’t know whether I’m not following you very well....”

Eric laughed mirthlessly:

“I’m not surprised. Sometimes, Gaisford, you get a feeling which won’t bear analysis or definition or argument; it’s just there... I left Gaymer yesterday in a state of panic. I felt that he was the better man. He was doing prodigies of valour in the war, while I was collecting rejection papers; and I sometimes wonder whether women care for anything but the best animal on the market. Fastidiousness in conduct, super-culture, the ability to ‘see two points in Hamlet’s soul unseized by the Germans yet’—all that may appeal to some, but they’re atrophied women, without sex. The war has made our scale of values very primitive... When I was at school, I wasn’t allowed to play games; and, if other people despised me in consequence, you bet your life I despised myself more; I never had a friend, in consequence, till I went up to Oxford... The war was a fair test whether a man was a man—in courage, physical endurance, ability to command and to obey, herd-capacity to protect the female, the young, the home. Well, I couldn’t survive that test. Better a live crock than a dead hero, you may think, if you happen to be one of the crocks; but, when I left Gaymer last night, when I stood leaning against a tree in the Park picturing the pair of us as two males fighting for one female, I said, ‘You drunken brute, you’re the better man.’ And, if I feel that, a woman will feel it, too... Ivy loves me; I’m quite sure of that. But I’ve never imagined she felt any passion for me, you wouldn’t expect it in her present state. Undoubtedly she once felt passion for Gaymer... You want to know what’s worrying me. Well, it’s just that.”

“And you’ve lost confidence in yourself so much that, if the girl came to you every quarter of an hour, protesting that she preferred you and didn’t want to see the other man, you still wouldn’t believe her. Go away for a holiday, Eric. If I agreed with your sex-generalizations about ‘better men’ and ‘finer animals’—I don’t; and I suspect you of taking your psychology from novels by unmarried women—, I should tell you you’re becoming relatively worse and worse every day that you neglect your health. Go right away for a few weeks.”

“I don’t like leaving Ivy at Gaymer’s mercy.”

“Then agree with him that he may come and get his congÉ from the girl’s own lips, if he’ll promise not to bother her till she’s well again. Now I’m going home. And you’d better cut off to bed and stop thinking about anything.”

The next morning Eric drafted, copied and redrafted a letter to Gaymer:

“I have not given your message to Ivy,” he wrote finally, “because she is not well enough to be worried even with a hint of such a thing. I should have thought that she had made her meaning quite clear, but, if you need to be convinced by hearing it again from her, I will suggest that she disabuse your mind once and for all. Whether she will see you or not I cannot say; and, if she refuse, I shall not allow you to molest her. If she consent, it must be on one condition; you must not attempt to see her or to communicate with her for a month from now. If you tell me that you agree, I will put this proposal before her.”

There was no answer to the letter, but, as Eric left his club the following night, he met Gaymer returning from dinner with the Poynters in Belgrave Square. They so narrowly avoided a collision that it was useless for either to pretend that he had not seen the other. Both stopped short and stood silent; then Eric said:

“Hullo!”

Gaymer half put out his hand, withdrew it and put it out again.

“Hullo!,” he answered with unwonted apparent cordiality. “You going my way?”

“I’m rather tired. I think I shall take the Tube to Dover Street,” said Eric, reflecting rapidly that Gaymer could not reach Buckingham Gate by that route without fetching a wide compass.

“Split the difference and walk with me as far as Lancaster House,” Gaymer suggested. “I got your letter. I’ll say at once that I accept the conditions. You’d probably prefer to have it in writing—”

“That’s not necessary, is it?,” Eric interrupted quickly and in embarrassment.

Gaymer chuckled malevolently. He had hitherto spoken seriously and with a touch of dignity, hiding any antagonism that he might feel under an easy but disconcerting friendliness. The dignity and restraint were shattered by the chuckle.

“You mean that, if I’m going to break my word,” he said, “I shall break it just the same whether it was in writing or not?”

“No, I meant that, if you gave me your word, I should accept it without any bonds or witnesses.”

“Devilish good of you...” Gaymer paused and took out his cigarette-case. “You talk just like your own plays.” He paused again and fumbled with an automatic lighter. “Babs Neave always used to say that.”

In his turn Eric paused and began to fill a pipe. They had gone too far into the Green Park for him to branch off and seek the Down Street station; he could not turn on his heel and refuse to walk farther with the fellow; yet Gaymer was steadily and progressively attacking him, first with common rudeness, then with a sneer at his work, finally with a depth-charge which he exploded to see what effect the name of Barbara would produce. Gaymer had known much and suspected all; he had been present, when Eric and Barbara first met at dinner with Lady Poynter; he had speculated with the rest of them and had once interrogated Barbara about her “writer fellow” until she froze his jesting... Intoxication might explain much, but it provided no motive for the baiting unless Gaymer wanted the satisfaction of a brawl which would contribute nothing to the problem of Ivy.

“Even off the stage one accepts a man’s word, until he’s proved that it’s unworthy of acceptance,” said Eric.

“And you’re satisfied with mine?,” asked Gaymer. “It’s not so long since you thought I’d broken my word to Ivy.”

He was still obviously exploring for a quarrel, but Eric would not help him.

“It’s easier, if we confine ourselves to the future,” he said. “You’ve given me your word and you can see Ivy—if she’ll see you; I’ll ask her to—as soon as she’s well enough. And you won’t try to get in touch with her till then, will you? I shan’t do anything to prejudice you. As a matter of fact, I’m going away for a few weeks, but, until the time comes, I’ll promise not to queer your pitch, if you’ll promise to wait till you’re sent for. Is that a bargain? After all, it’s not to the interest of either of us to injure her health.”

They had reached Lancaster House, and Eric held out his hand. Gaymer hesitated for a moment and then gripped it.

“I was only ragging you, Lane,” he said with an awkward laugh. “Dining with Aunt Margaret fairly gets on my nerves: she’s like a gramophone with all the newest and most expensive “intellectual” records. Turn the handle, put in a new needle; “The Psychoanalyst’s Ragtime Holiday, as played by the Freud-Jung syncopated orchestra”... Does she know anything about anything?... And that fellow Poynter riles me. ’Told me to-night that my job had fallen through and I was to be patient... He’s simply not trying... I’ll keep the bargain—letter and spirit. In the meantime you’re not announcing the engagement? I can’t consent to that, you know; it prejudices my chances, if Ivy has that to explain away.”

“I’ll wait till she’s seen you, if you like,” said Eric. “Honestly, it won’t make any difference to you, but I want to play fair. Good-night. One of us will write to you soon.”

The next day he broke the news to Ivy that he was going to the country. Her face fell at the prospect of being left alone, but the doctor came in before the discussion was over and quenched the first smoke of opposition.

“I think I ought to tell you that I’ve seen something of Gaymer the last few days,” Eric told her, when he came to say good-bye. “He’s very anxious to see you. He didn’t know you were ill, he didn’t suspect any reason why you should be. I don’t quite know what he told you at Croxton, but he assures me that he regards himself as being still engaged to you. I reminded him that you’d already given him his answer, but he persisted that there are new facts. If you don’t want to see him—”

“I don’t!,” Ivy cried in apprehension. “You must keep him away.”

It was an appeal for protection, but Eric could not protect her against an attack which had not been launched. It wrung his heart to see Ivy helpless and pleading, but he was so tired that he would gladly have dropped into a trance where responsibility and striving were unknown, where he could rest, where no one could blame him or attack him or appeal to him....

“He won’t take it from me,” he pointed out—and was hurt to see that Ivy was disappointed in him for the first time. He wondered how Gaymer would have spoken and acted, if the positions had been reversed....

“I can’t see him without you!”

“My child, then don’t see him at all. When you feel well enough, send him a line and tell him that nothing he could ever say or do would make any difference.”

When Eric reached Lashmar Mill-House, he found that an inaccurate but serviceable legend had already been woven round Ivy’s illness. For days and nights, he gathered, he had been nursing her single-handed, which accounted for a natural look of fatigue on his face; for the operation his flat had been turned upside down, and he had now been driven out to make way for a second nurse. It was an explanation which barred all speculation about his own health and absolved him from confessing that he was himself in Gaisford’s hands.

“Will you be able to have Ivy down here, when she’s fit to move?,” he asked.

“Of course,” Lady Lane answered warmly.

“She’ll be convalescent in a fortnight or three weeks. I was thinking of staying here in the meantime... The country’s looking very beautiful. I think I shall go for a stroll before dinner.”

He walked through the house and crossed the mill-stream into the woods by the plank-bridge over the wheel. Unless he prompted her, his mother would patiently abstain from asking him about Ivy; but there was an unspoken question in her very silence, she was sharing his anxiety and his hopes, waiting hungrily to be told that all was well. It was curious that he felt so much less certain of Ivy since she had promised to marry him. Gaymer was so sure of himself that he must inevitably overpower her; people always seemed to win if they were convinced that they would win....

And, conversely, no man ever won unless he believed in himself. Eric pulled himself together physically, holding his head up and walking boldly instead of shambling. He believed in himself and he believed in Ivy. Unless a woman were dead to honour and gratitude, he had nothing to fear.

A fallen tree trunk barred his path. He was glad to sit down on it, because he was too tired to go on walking with any pleasure, and his train of thought had incapacitated him like a blow at the back of his knees. Barbara, who admitted always that she loved him, even when it was too late, had broken down at that test; he had confidently left everything to her honour and gratitude... Women were not to be trusted... But he trusted Ivy... Yet should he trust her?

The moment’s pause had not rested him, but he jumped up because it was harder to brood when he was walking quickly. Besides, this holiday had to be taken very seriously. He had thought out a scheme which was to put him in hard physical condition; a plunge into the mill-pool as soon as he was called, a sensible breakfast instead of the jaded Londoner’s tea and toast, a glance at his letters and the papers, one pipe (and no more; no cigarettes, either), a line to Ivy and then a good tramp, wet or fine, from ten till one, a bath and change of clothes, luncheon, another pipe, a second walk till tea or, perhaps, dinner, a third pipe and a book, with bed at half-past ten. That, if anything, would keep him from worrying and make him sleep. He looked at his watch and almost decided to begin the treatment then and there with six miles on the high-road before dinner. If he elected to saunter on through the woods, it was because he was really too tired to face the glare of the road and the exertion of hard walking.

It was easier to keep his resolution of going to bed early, though he made an unpromising start next day. Instead of the usual maid with letters and hot water, his mother came in unexpectedly with breakfast on a tray.

“You looked so tired last night that I thought I’d let you have your sleep out,” she explained. “I waited till eleven and then, thinking I heard signs of life—My dear boy, how hot you are!” She put down the tray and laid her hand on his chest. “Your pyjamas are wringing wet!”

“Too many bed-clothes, I expect,” answered Eric, as he inspected the handwriting on his letters.

“There’s only one blanket. And it wasn’t at all a hot night.”

“Ah, but I can undertake to sweat away about two pounds a night in mid-winter. I suppose it’s because I kick about in bed so much.”

“But you haven’t any flesh to spare. I wish you weren’t so thin, Eric.”

“You mustn’t worry, mother. It’s beyond the wit of man to make me fat.”

Lady Lane did not pursue the subject, but she continued to look anxiously at him. To turn her thoughts, he handed her a note from the nurse reporting that Dr. Gaisford was wholly satisfied with Miss Maitland’s progress and would in future not need to see her more than once a day.

“That ought to make you happier, Eric,” said his mother.

“It does. I don’t know what I should do, if I lost Ivy...” His voice was graver than he had intended, and he decided to go on and to fortify himself by taking his mother into his confidence. “You remember the last time we discussed her? You do like her, mother, don’t you? You do—approve? As soon as she’s well enough, we’re going to get everything fixed up. Don’t tell the guv’nor yet, because you know he’s temperamentally incapable of keeping a secret. But you are pleased, aren’t you?”

Lady Lane bent down and kissed his forehead.

“My blessed boy! It’s time you had a little happiness. And it’s certainly time you had a wife to look after you.”

What with his letters and the papers, which Sir Francis brought up in person, Eric narrowly avoided being late for luncheon; and his scheme of diet and exercise was again postponed by his mother’s suggestion that he should come out with her in the car. He salved his conscience in consenting by the reflection that he would at least be in the open air; when, however, Lady Lane suggested after tea that he should lie down until dinner, he began to scent a conspiracy.

“You’re looking so wretchedly tired and thin that I want to keep you from working,” confessed his mother.

“Well, I’ll join the conspiracy,” said Eric.

For a week he spent half the day in bed and the other half motoring or walking in Lashmar Woods. If he failed to put on any weight, at least he began to feel less tired. The ghosts that lay in wait for him in London seemed to have been driven away by the sunshine and scented wind of the garden. Every day the nurse wrote that Ivy was maintaining steady progress; he had two reassuring letters from Gaisford and at last a pencilled note from Ivy herself.

“I’m almost well and longing to see you. Thank you for all your divine letters. I’m counting the days till you come here to fetch me away. Do thank your mother for asking me—and for the flowers. I had a long letter from J. G. this morning, explaining and arguing and asking when he might come to see me. He said he’d been expecting to hear from you and couldn’t make out why you’d not written. I told him it was no good; in fact, I wrote just what I told you I would.”

Eric tried to remember whether he had received a specific promise that Gaymer would not write; there had been some phrase about “not communicating”... Gaymer may have interpreted this to mean personal communication; or he might be acting on the principle that wise men give promises and fools accept them.

Ivy’s next letter narrowed the field of choice.

“J. G. has been here,” she began. “He called with some flowers, and nurse let him in. Several other people had been, so she never asked me. I said at once, ‘I can’t see you;’ and I told him that I thought he’d promised you faithfully not to come here. He said he only meant to come to the door with the flowers, but that he couldn’t help coming in. He wasn’t going to argue, he said, but he was responsible for everything and he must come and ask me to forgive him. I told him I’d forgive him, if that gave him any pleasure, but he must understand that everything was over. On the whole, I was rather glad to have it out with him. He must see now, because at the end he said—horribly bitterly—, ‘Your love is rather short-lived, Ivy.’ I refused to be drawn. If he likes to think that, he may, I don’t feel it’s worth having a row with him, Eric, about coming, because we have cleared the air, however painful it may have been at the time. And it isn’t pleasant, you know, to have him thinking that I’m unfaithful to him. I did love him—desperately; I’m even willing to believe now that he always meant to behave honourably; but, as I told him, it doesn’t really matter whether there’s any foundation for a misunderstanding, what matters is the effect it has on one’s mind. It was no use pretending I hadn’t utterly changed towards him. He couldn’t see how I could love him once and then stop loving him, when the reason why I’d ceased to love him had been explained away. He’s tired me out, dear Eric, and I don’t want to think about him.”

Her letter reached Lashmar by the evening post, and Eric spent a sleepless night after reading it. At one moment he decided to return by the first train to London and mount guard over Ivy’s door; at another he shuffled and discarded cryptic phrases for a warning telegram to Gaisford... It was long after daybreak when he fell asleep without reaching a decision; and, when his breakfast was brought in, he was too tired to eat it or to read his letters or to begin getting up.

Only when Lady Lane asked leave to send for the doctor did he rouse to interest.

“Your man here is such a hopeless idiot,” he exclaimed impatiently. “I think I shall run up and see Gaisford. All I want is a tonic, but he does know about me. I can’t stand answering a string of questions from a stranger.”

Lady Lane forbore to oppose him in his new mood of nervous irritability; she contented herself with making him promise to come down the following day and asking whether he would care for her to accompany him. Her obvious anxiety jarred on nerves that were already raw.

“I’m really all right, mother,” he answered querulously.

“My dear boy, you’re not! I have had some experience of you, remember. You’re shockingly ill. You know I try not to worry you, when you’re not feeling well, but you frighten me, Eric, when you look like that. Isn’t there something you haven’t told me? Can’t you tell me?... People are commenting on it. After church on Sunday the vicar wanted to know... So, you see, it isn’t just fancy. I have a pretty handful in your father, as it is,—trying to make him take care of himself. I can’t have you getting ill... Isn’t there anything, Eric?”

His mother had come nearer to breaking down than he had ever seen; a vague stirring of masculine protectiveness steadied Eric.

“I’m feeling used up,” he answered wearily. “It may be this hot spring... I think it’s the war... and the strain of the last few weeks, the strain of the last two or three years... It takes something to drive me into a doctor’s arms, but I’ll get myself thoroughly overhauled by Gaisford and, what’s more, I’ll tell you what he says and I’ll carry out his orders to the letter. There’s no need for you to worry, mother.”

He kissed her with a bluff attempt at reassurance and scrambled out of bed. It was humiliating that he had to steady himself by gripping the top of his dressing-table, and, when he began to pour out his shaving-water, as much slopped on to the wash-hand-stand as went into his glass. He could only hope that, as she said nothing, his mother had seen nothing.

It was late afternoon when he reached Waterloo, and, after dining at his club, he drove to Dr. Gaisford’s house in Wimpole Street. The butler, who was a friend of many years’ standing, regretted that his master was not yet returned and invited Eric to come in and wait.

“I suppose you’ve no idea where he is or how long he’ll be?,” asked Eric.

The butler retired to the consulting-room and returned with an engagement-pad.

“He dined at home at half after seven, sir,” he announced. “Then he was going to Sir Marcus Fordyce in Hay Hill, then to Mrs. Grimthorpe in Upper Brook Street, then to Colonel Somers in Half-Moon Street—and then to you, sir; to your young lady, I should say. He said he’d be back not later than twelve.”

“And it’s half-past nine now. I’ll go home and wait for him. If I miss him, will you tell him, when he comes in, that I called? And will you ring me up and let me know when I can see him to-morrow? Say I’ve come up from the country on purpose.”

He reached Ryder Street in time to find the hall lit up and a bowler hat and stick on the table. The whole flat was sweet and heavy with the warm scent of flowers. They symbolized Ivy, and he could fancy that he was already married and returning to their home. It was a new, electrifying emotion, the sublime epitome of all the moments when he had waited of a morning to hear her ring. Latterly she had been too much the patient; until that moment the flat had not drawn its life from her.

A murmur of voices reached him from the passage leading to her bedroom; he wrote “Don’t go till you’ve seen me” on the back of an envelope and dropped it into the hat; then he picked up the evening paper and went into the library.

At the end of one cigarette he threw away the paper and looked sleepily at the clock, thanking Heaven that he was not a doctor. At this rate Gaisford would not be home by midnight; and he must have had a heavy day to be calling on patients after dinner... The sleepiness dropped from Eric’s brain as he remembered an early bulletin from the nurse, telling him that for the future Dr. Gaisford saw no need to come more than once a day. The most overworked doctor would not be paying his first visit at a quarter-past ten at night; this was the second visit, and Ivy had undergone a relapse; or the third, the fourth... If Ivy were dying, they would have sent for him... Telegrams took long.... But Lashmar Mill-House was on the telephone... Trunk-calls took long, too... But he had not left home till after five... Perhaps they had forgotten, perhaps they had been too busy... But one could add “perhaps” to “perhaps” like paper bows to the tail of a kite... This was the discordant jangle of snapping nerves....

He sat long enough to recover self-possession, then strolled unconcernedly into the hall. The hat and stick were still there, the note in the hat. He bent down to read his own words and wondered why Gaisford, of all men, had abandoned his traditional silk hat for a bowler... A sporting bowler, too with flat brim. He was trying to remember whether there were any races near London to explain the unseemly hat and the doctor’s no less unseemly hour for calling, when he noticed violet-ink initials over the maker’s name.

The doctor was Richard or Robert Gaisford, Eric could not remember which; certainly not “J.” As he began to be certain that “J. G.” could only stand for John Gaymer, Eric told himself in an audible whisper that he had to be very calm; if there were anything in the old, hysterical premonition of a stand-up fight with Gaymer, it would take place in less than five minutes.

He inspected the hat carefully, as though it were filled with clues and secrets, then replaced it on the table, withdrew his note and walked quietly down the passage to Ivy’s room. The door was ajar, and he could hear perhaps half Gaymer’s words, when he dropped his voice, and everything, when he raised it.

“If you admit it, there’s nothing more to be said. D’you like the prospect of being married for fifty years to one man when you’re in love with another? Oh, it’s too late now, you’ve admitted it. I never had any doubt. You’ve got to get out of it; and the sooner the better... It’s no good denying it, Ivy; we’ve gone through all that. Look me in the eyes... Ivy, do as I tell you—now. You have to do as I tell you. You’ve never loved him as you loved me. Give me your hand. You don’t shiver when you touch him, you don’t belong to him.... Kiss me, Ivy. I said, ‘Kiss me, Ivy’.” There was a laugh of contemptuous affection. “There!... So valiant we were! So independent—at a distance! Kiss me again—on my lips... Did you think I’d let you go so easily? Didn’t you know that, if I stood at the back of the church when you were being married and just said ‘Ivy, come here’...? You knew that, and I knew that.”

Eric found himself sitting on a chair half-way down the passage. Ivy was being bewitched; obviously he must not allow her to be bullied like this... Somebody ought to go in and stop it....

“I’ve promised Eric,” she was saying quietly.

“And d’you think I care about that? He can’t hold you to your promise, if you don’t want to marry him. You love me, Ivy. Say it again!”

There was no answer.

“Say it again!,” repeated Gaymer.

“I....”

Eric could not hear the next whispered words, but they seemed to satisfy Gaymer.

“Say ‘I love you more than my life’,” went on the relentless voice.

“I love you more than my life.”

“Say—‘I will marry you and no one else—’”

There was a pause and a sob.

“Oh, Johnnie, don’t make me! It isn’t fair on him!”

“You can’t be fair to us both!,” Gaymer cried.

“He’s been so wonderfully good to me. I should have killed myself, if it hadn’t been for him. I told him I’d marry him, I said he was the only person in the world I cared for. He’s done everything for me! We should have been married by now, but he wanted to give me time to be quite sure—”

She was interrupted by a harsh, triumphant laugh.

“Well for him he did! And you are quite sure, Ivy! I’m not going through all this again. ‘I will marry you and no one else.’ Say it.”

“I will marry you and no one else... Johnnie, it’ll break his heart! I can’t say it!”

“But you have. Do you take it back?”

There was a long silence. Then Eric heard a low but distinct “No.”

The passage had not been noticeably hot before, but the still air glared like the burning blast from an open furnace-door. Eric found his face streaming with sweat; and the wooden chair-back was slippery in his grasp. There seemed to be a murmur of confused voices everywhere—in the passage on either side of him, in the hall—preeminently in the hall, where one murmur dominated the other murmurs, and one voice dominated all.

It was Gaisford’s voice, authoritative and ill-tempered, reprimanding some one.

“Yes, my girl, but I said my patient was not to be left. You go off duty when the other nurse comes on—and not a moment before. You’ve left the patient entirely unattended? ‘Seemed all right’ be hanged! Your duty is to do precisely what I tell you. When did you go out? Half an hour! I don’t believe it! I don’t mind telling you that you haven’t heard the last of this.”

Eric came into the hall, as the nurse hurried away with a scarlet face and the doctor pulled off his gloves and threw them on to the table, still muttering angrily to himself.

“Hullo!,” he exclaimed. “I thought I’d sent you away.”

“I came up this evening to consult you,” Eric answered. His voice seemed small and remote, but the doctor found nothing amiss with it. “I was feeling rather seedy and I thought I’d ask you to overhaul me. If you’re not very busy, we might get it over to-night, when you’ve finished with Ivy. I—I’ve only just come in,” he added hastily. “I went to your place first. I rather fancy that in the nurse’s absence some one must have let Gaymer in. I think he’s with Ivy now, though I haven’t been in to see yet.”

It was all admirably calm. The doctor did not even look at him; but his frown deepened, and he strode down the passage with threatening footsteps. Eric was not conscious of having followed; but he found himself on the threshold, as the door was thrown open. Ivy and Gaymer had been given time to prepare themselves; she was lying back with half her face hidden in a bouquet of lilies of the valley, while he stood with his hands on the back of a chair, as though he were just leaving. Neither shewed surprise or discomfiture at the doctor’s volcanic entry, but Ivy could not repress a cry at sight of Eric.

“Now, young man, you can take yourself off!,” Gaisford snapped at Gaymer, jerking his thumb towards the door.

There was a confusion of four voices speaking at once.

“I just brought some flowers.”

“Eric!”

“A pretty time to call—exciting my patient, when she ought to be asleep!”

“H-how are you, Ivy? I came up for one night—only decided at tea-time....”

Eric found himself face to face with Gaymer, who nodded quickly as he walked to the door. He was as much concerned as a man who finds that he has left himself too little time to dress before dinner—as much and no more. He seemed to be murmuring, “’Evening, Lane. No idea it was so late. ’Couldn’t get round before. Glad to see she’s so much better.”

Thus far for the audience; he retreated in good order; and in another moment there was a rattle as he picked up his stick from the hall table. Eric found his jaw moving; but he could say nothing, he did not even know what he wanted to say. It was no use staring at the blank door-way, he could not turn without facing Ivy... The authoritative voice was speaking again, apparently addressing him; the resonant words defined themselves into “If you’ll run away now, I’ll come and have a word with you on my way out.”

Eric went to his bedroom and began to undress, because it gave his hands occupation. They were trembling until he could hardly undo the buttons of his waistcoat. He looked at his reflection in the mirror and found himself a little paler than usual; his forehead was still glistening with the insufferable heat of the passage, but there should have been something to shew that he had been blown to bits and was held together by shreds of tattered skin. Lines that he had learned as a boy at school....

And why should he murmur them to the tune of ‘Wenceslaus’?... Was he delirious?

Gaisford had seen nothing amiss. If it were but possible to carry off the interview without shewing him anything... After all, Ivy and Gaymer had not betrayed themselves. “I will marry you and no one else.” With lips not yet still from her betrayal of him, she had made a show of composure. And Gaymer, forsworn and a walking lie, explained coolly that he had brought some flowers and could not get round before. They would probably have been no less composed if they knew that he was in the passage, listening to every word. Did they know? Did they fancy that he had come in with the doctor?

Did they care?

He could not begin to think about it all until his brain was fit to work. Gaymer had lied, Ivy had betrayed him; there was room here for anger, jealousy... He had lost her, when she alone had come to make life worth living, when she was the prize and symbol of his victory over fate; room here for shaking his fists at Heaven and cursing God. To curse God and die... But God was quite equal to keeping him alive. Room here for thinking of the future and going stark mad. But these were all parts of a whole too big for him to envisage yet; that at least he could see....

It was curious that force of habit should set him methodically folding his clothes and winding his watch... Before committing suicide a man nearly always shaved himself, without pausing to wonder whether it was not rather wasted labour....

He put on a dressing-gown and lay on his bed. It was curious that he and Ivy should be destined to spend this night of all nights within twenty yards of each other. Curious world... Barbara had once said something about the fun that God was having with her... Curious how the light seemed to burn through the back of the eyes into the brain. Curious that one lacked the energy to stretch a hand to the switch....

Eric was still staring at the ceiling when Gaisford came in. The doctor’s moment of ill-temper had passed; and this was a pity, because he would be less preoccupied and more observant.

“Well, my son, and what’s the matter with you?,” he asked.

“I’ve become so extraordinarily limp.” The voice was slow but firm. “The longer I stayed at Lashmar, the limper I got. I wasn’t trying to work, but I couldn’t even walk a couple of miles. It occurred to me that a tonic, perhaps....”

The doctor grunted and fitted the ends of a stethoscope into his ears. The ritual which followed was very familiar to Eric; chest and back, long breath, ordinary breathing, holding the breath, tapping... The stethoscope darted to and fro, as though it were playing a game with some elusive noise inside him; it finished with the heart and began chasing the lungs into improbable corners under the collar-bone and shoulder-blades, dodging back to the heart when it was least expected.

“Lie down. A deep breath,” said Gaisford.

This lying-down portended something serious; or perhaps the doctor was not yet sure. They were always so uncommunicative; you might have a tolerably wide experience of these examinations and yet not know what they were trying to find.

“Anything the matter?,” Eric asked, as the stethoscope was detached and pocketed.

“You’ve not much flesh on you,” said the doctor, feeling his ribs. “Are you eating properly?”

“The usual amount. But you know I never did run to fat.”

“Do you perspire much?”

“Like a pig. I gave my poor mother quite a shock when she came in one morning and found me as if I’d just come out of the mill-stream. I save pounds on Turkish baths.”

Gaisford nodded and put a number of questions which Eric seemed to answer adequately. They did not appear to lead anywhere, but some of them were new to his experience. At the end, the stethoscope was produced again.

“Anything the matter?,” Eric repeated, for the doctor was frowning. The examination, too, was unusually long.

“Well, yes. It’s what I’ve feared ever since I’ve known you. We’ve caught it in time, but you’ll have to be rather careful. There are four of you, aren’t there? What are your brothers and sisters like? You can put on that dressing-gown; I don’t want you to catch cold.”

Eric weighed the question as he slipped his arms into the sleeves. God was enjoying himself....

“Let’s come back to that,” he suggested. “What is it? Heart?”

“That’s been a bit tired for years.”

“Lungs, then?... I see. Well, I’m not a child, Gaisford. How long do you give me? Six months? A year?”

The doctor changed his spectacles and tipped Eric’s clothes from an arm-chair. He could be exasperatingly slow when he liked; and he always liked to be slow, when his patients shewed signs of becoming unnerved.

“Forty, if you do what I tell you,” he announced at length. “If you don’t, you’ll get rapidly worse. By the way, it’s chiefly in books that a doctor says you’ve three weeks and two days to live; science isn’t quite so exact as that, and doctors aren’t such damned fools... No! I’ll tell you. This might have come at any time, because you’ve been on the delicate side ever since I’ve known you. Now you’re a little bit touched. It’s a bore, but it’s nothing to be frightened about. I shan’t let you live in this country, of course, and I shall cut down your work; but that doesn’t matter, because you’re indecently rich for your age. And I can give you a choice of places to live in—California, South Africa, the Riviera—”

“This is in confidence, of course,” Eric interrupted. “You’re not telling my people—or Ivy... or any one?”

“No. But I’ll tell you that, if you try to marry that child in your present state, you’ll deserve to be pulled limb from limb.”

“I don’t propose to.”

“If you’ll wait a couple of years....”

Eric was troubled to keep his brain, now suddenly alert, back to the doctor’s deliberate pace. The immediate future was clear....

“How soon am I to start?,” he asked.

“Get out of London as soon as possible.”

“And—about Ivy. When will she be well enough to be told?”

“I should tell her at once—to-morrow. She’ll see something’s up; she wanted to know to-night why you’d suddenly come back without warning... I find that as a rule it’s best to tell people the truth, however much of a shock it may be. We’re all of us equal to a certain number of shocks; and it seldom becomes less of a shock by postponing it and wrapping it in lies.”

“I’ll tell her to-morrow,” said Eric. “Do you want to do anything more with me?”

“I’m afraid there’s no doubt of it.”

“Then I may as well turn in.”

Eric threw off the dressing-gown and put on his pyjamas. The doctor, he knew, was watching him, but he was successfully deliberate and composed. They shook hands and said good-night without emotion or straining after heroics. There was a half-heard phrase about “having another word with” him in the morning. Eric lay for a few moments in darkness, waiting to hear the doctor’s car drive away; there was no sound, however, and he was asleep before he had done speculating whether Gaisford had come on foot or in a car....