Paul knew that Madge and he were to have a travelling companion on the voyage, and that the companion was to be Madge’s sister, but he did not meet her until he stepped aboard the steamer bound for Tilbury Docks from Adelaide. Her name was Phyllis, but for some reason or no reason her own small world had elected to call her Bill, and to that name only she gave willing answer, unless she were flattered from the memory of short frocks by being addressed as Miss Hampton. She was a child of astonishing beauty, with eyes like stars and the face of a young angel, and people who did not know her received an impression of sanctity and innocence when they beheld her. A complete knowledge of her character revealed her as an incorrigible imp, utterly without a sense of danger under any circumstances her experience had so far led her to encounter, and, apart from that, a compound—a furious compound on either side—of jealousy and affection. It would, perhaps, be more just to say affection and jealousy, for Bill’s heart was hot with love for those for whom she cared at all, and her jealousy was but the natural product of her affection. It was not until the boat reached Colombo that Bill condescended to accept a solitary advance from Paul. Until then she resented every minute he spent in her sister’s society and every word he addressed to her, but once enlisted she became a sort of lovers’ watch-dog, and held all intruders at bay.

The steamer was lying for four-and-twenty hours in the harbour at Colombo, and everybody who was at liberty was delighted to snatch a day ashore. Paul and Madge and Bill made the customary globe-trotter’s round They lunched at the hotel at Point de Galles, saw the usual conjurers and snake-charmers, drove to the usual Buddhist temple, dined in town, and went aboard again. Bill, who had hitherto proved an unmitigated nuisance, behaved with a fine discretion throughout the day, and it was only half an hour after her appointed bedtime that she pointedly made Paul aware of her existence. He was lounging in a deck-chair and smoking a cigar when the young lady took a place at his side.

‘Look here,’ she said, with the boyish off-handedness which belonged to her. ‘I want you and me to be friends.’

‘Why not?’ said Paul. ‘I’m agreeable if you are.’

‘Have I been good to-day?’ the imp asked, laying her head upon his shoulder, and turning up those starlike, unfathomable eyes of hers.

‘You have behaved like an angel for temper,’ Paul responded, ‘and like an elderly diplomatist for discretion.’

‘You are satisfied?’ said Bill, rolling her golden curls in her Tam-o’-Shanter cap.

‘I am not merely satisfied, William,’ Paul responded. ‘Words fail me to express my gratitude.’

‘Don’t you begin to chaff me,’ said Bill. ‘If you do, I shan’t make the bargain I was going to.’

‘I assure you,’ said Paul, ‘that I was never more serious in my life. I swear it by the most sacred of man’s possessions—gold. This is an English sovereign.’

‘For me?’ asked Bill, her lambent eyes regarding him as if no thought of greed or bribery could touch the angel’s soul which shone through them.

‘For you,’ said Paul.

‘Right oh!’ Bill replied, biting at the coin with her milk-white teeth, and then bestowing it in her pocket. ‘Now, if you’ll promise never to leave Madge alone about one thing, I’ll be as good—as good—you can’t guess anything as good as I’ll be.’

‘There’s no such thing as a one-sided bargain,’ said Paul, ‘and you must let me know what you expect from me in answer to this astonishing confession.’

‘Don’t you chaff me,’ said Bill, still rolling her golden head upon his shoulder, and beaming on him with those eyes of innocence. ‘I might be having a sweetheart of my own one of these days. Don’t you think that’s likely?’

‘I don’t mind betting,’ Paul answered, ‘that you’ll have fifty—’

Bill sat up straight in her deck-chair, clasped her hands with a vivid gesture, and looked skyward with a glance pure as the heavens themselves.

‘What a lark!’ she breathed—’ oh, what a lark! Fifty? Do you think they’d all come together?’ she asked with a sudden eagerness, as if her life depended on the answer.

‘Say, five at a time,’ said Paul—‘ten per annum; that will give you five years to deal with them, beginning, we will say, about two years from now.’

‘But that’s where I want to come in,’ said Bill ‘I want to begin at once.’

‘There is no need to be in a hurry,’ Paul answered. ‘There is plenty of time before you.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Bill thoughtfully. ‘But, then, you see, I don’t want to waste any of it. Now, I just want to tell you what I want you to do for me. I want you to din it into Madge’s ears, morning, noon, and night, that it’s time that I should do my hair up and wear long frocks.’

‘And if I undertake that mission?’ Paul asked

‘We’re friends,’ cried Bill, rising and holding out her hand ‘You’ll see,’ she added, ‘I can be just as nice as I have been nasty.’

From this time forward the voyage was like a happy dream. Suez and Naples and Gibraltar were full of interest and wonder to the untravelled Madge, and the Mediterranean was smooth as a pond through all the lovely days and nights of the European spring. The Bay of Biscay so far belied its stormy reputation that there was scarcely a heave upon its surface, and at last the shores of England came in sight, sacred and beautiful to the eyes of a girl born and bred in the Colonies. Then came Tilbury, and at Tilbury brother George was waiting to bid his sisters welcome.

Paul was happy and content enough to be in the mood to like anybody and everybody, and an inward suggestion that he was not favourably impressed with brother George presented itself only to be discounted and ignominiously turned out of doors at once. As Tennyson has said, ‘It is not true that second thoughts are best, but first and third, which are a riper first.’ Brother George was undeniably good-looking after his fashion. He was well set up and a little over the middle height. He was very perfectly groomed, and had very fine, regular, white teeth which he was a little too fond of showing in a rather mechanical smile. His eyes were rather too closely set either for beauty or for character, and his manner was a trifle over-suave.

Bill, who had been promoted after her own desires, fell upon him like an avalanche, and being at first unrecognised in her aspect of grown-up young lady, embarrassed brother George considerably. But there was such a laugh at this as set all four in high spirits, and there were so many questions and answers that the time of waiting for the train passed in a flash.

The quartette lunched together at a restaurant in town, and brother George carried off his sisters to the apartments he had secured for them in the house in which he lodged. But before he went a little episode, which was afterwards renewed in various forms until it grew monotonous, occurred. Brother George naturally played the host at the restaurant, and spread a generous and delicate feast, but on the presentation of the bill was struck through with chagrin at the discovery that he had lost his purse. That he had brought it from home was beyond cavil in his mind, for had he not paid his cab-fare and the other expenses from it? It was an awkward beginning of an acquaintance, as he allowed with an embarrassed smile, but if Mr. Armstrong would be his banker for a day—— Mr. Armstrong was happy enough to be willing to be any man’s banker at that moment, and brother George borrowed a ten-pound note with many expressions of regret and obligation. He forgot this little transaction so completely, that it was not so much as mentioned for a year or two; but brother George gave clear proof later on that he was not the man to leave unworked any social patch which at the first stroke of the hoe would yield so promising a little harvest, and first and last quite a handsome income in a small way accrued to brother George at the expense of brother George’s sister’s lover.

It is not when a man is happy, and the errors of his life have not yet yielded their inevitable crop of suffering, that conscience bestirs itself. Things went smoothly with Paul Armstrong. His plays prospered and yielded rich returns. A volume of verses gave him something more than the reputation of the average minor poet There was no more popular man at his clubs than he, and, if he had cared for it, he might have been something of a social lion. As it was, he met many notable people on terms of intimacy, and reckoned himself as rich in friendships as any man alive; and, when the six months’ probation was over, he and Madge went quietly away together to spend in Paris a honeymoon which had not been consecrated by any rite of the Church, and entered upon a wedded life which was not even sanctioned by the registrar. Madge became informally Mrs. Paul Armstrong, and, under that style and title, was introduced to a dozen of Paul’s intimates who were in no doubt as to the facts of the case, and to hundreds of other people who accepted the pretence without a thought of inquiry. The whole family lived together—Madge and her mother, Bill and brother George—and things went smoothly for two or three prosperous and happy years. In mere prosperity and happiness there is little to record, but the heart of the Exile in the mountains yearned over that vanished time in a bitter and unavailing regret. How sweet it had been! With how tender a gradation the first passion of delight in possession had softened into friendship, and the calm love of happily wedded people, and the delicious intimate camaraderie which springs of the unbroken companionship of board and bed, and the sharing of every little confidence of life!

The past was obliterated; it was wiped out as cleanly as if it had been written on a slate, and a wet sponge had been passed over it. Practically it was forgotten, but the obliterated record sprang to light again with an unlooked-for, dreadful swiftness.

Bill by this time had developed into Miss Hampton, and was a grown-up young lady in real earnest, with lovers by the dozen. She and Paul were chums, and she had no secrets from him. Her face alone was bright enough to have made sunshine in any house; but it happened one day that Paul, returning from rehearsal, found it blank with astonishment and pain. She had evidently been waiting and listening for him; for at the instant at which his latch-key clicked in the lock, she threw the hall-door open, and, as he entered, closed it silently, almost stealthily, behind him. Then, with her hand upon his shoulder, she led him to his study—the plainly furnished little workshop which looked out on the trim suburban garden. This was the room in which he had spent the richest and most prosperous hours of the only tranquil years he had known, and it was here that he was fated to meet the death-blow to his happiness.

‘What is the matter?’ he asked—‘what has happened? Where is Madge?’

‘She is in her own room,’ Phyllis answered, her eyes wide with terror, and her pretty Australian roses all vanished from her cheeks. ‘Mother and she have locked themselves in together, and Madge is crying her heart out Oh, Paul, Paul,’ she cried, clasping her hands, ‘what have you done?’

With that she broke into sudden weeping, and Paul stood amazed, with a chill terror, as yet unrecognised, clutching at his heart.

‘What have I done?’ he echoed—’ what have I done, dear?’

‘Done!’ she flashed at him, drawing her hands away from her streaming eyes, and throwing them passionately apart ‘Oh, Paul, we have all loved you so, and honoured you so, and now——’

She cast herself into an arm-chair with a reckless abandonment, and cried bitterly. The chill hand at Paul’s heart grew icy, but even yet he did not recognise his fear.

‘For mercy’s sake, Bill, tell me!’

She flashed to her feet in a second, and looked at him from head to foot with a burning scorn.

‘Never call me by that name again,’ she said, through her clenched white teeth. ‘You ask me what you have done? You have ruined Madge’s life and broken her heart, and mine,’ she cried, striking her clenched hand upon her breast—‘and mine!’

She went raging up and down the room like a lovely fury, her hair disordered, her eyes flashing, and her cheeks new-crimsoned with anger.

‘Tell me—tell me,’ he besought her, ‘what has happened.’

‘This has happened,’ she answered, with a sudden tense quiet: ‘your wife has been here—your wife, an overdressed, painted French trull, so drunk that she could barely stand.’

‘Good God!’ said Paul. He laid his hand upon a bookshelf, and stood swaying there as if he were about to fall. ‘What brought her here?’ he gasped.

‘You don’t deny it?’ said the girl, speaking with the same tense quiet as before.

‘No, no,’ said Paul, ‘I don’t deny it What brought her here?’

‘She came to assert her rights,’ said Phyllis, with a biting indignation. ‘She came to warn us that she was setting the law in motion, and that she would drag Madge’s name—you hear? Madge’s name—through the mud of the Divorce Court; and only this morning I loved you, and respected you, and believed in you.’

‘I must see Madge,’ said Paul.

‘You shall not!’ she cried, flashing to the door, and setting her back against it.

But the door was opened from without, and Madge was here. Paul opened his arms to her, and she laid her pale face against his breast.

‘I have feared it always,’ she said, ‘and it has come at last. My poor, poor Paul ‘how you must have suffered!’

‘Your poor, poor Paul,’ said Phyllis, in a voice of bitterest disdain, ‘is a very fitting object for your pity. My personal recommendation is that your poor Paul should drown himself.’

‘You don’t understand, dear,’ Madge answered her—’ you don’t understand. Paul has done me no wrong. We did not take you into our confidence, because you were too young; but there has been no disguise among the rest of us. I knew of this before Paul and I resolved to spend our lives together. Mother knew it; George knew it; you know it now, dear. Will it part us, Bill?’

The girl’s face changed from angry scorn to pure bewilderment, and then again to pity.

‘Come here, Madge,’ she cried, opening her arms wide, and speaking with a sobbing voice; ‘come here.’

She hugged her sister fiercely, and cried over her.

‘I can understand,’ she said—‘I can understand.’ She repeated the words again and again. ‘It isn’t a pretty thing to have to face; but it’s your trouble, darling, and we must stick together. As for me,’ she added, with a new outbreak of tears, which a laugh made half hysteric, ‘I shall stick like wax.’

Annette’s threat was no brutum fulmen, as the society newspapers soon began to show. Paragraphs appeared here and there indicating that the unprosperous matrimonial affairs of a popular playwright would shortly excite the interest of the public; and one day Paul, driving along the Strand, and finding his cab momentarily arrested by a block in the traffic, was frozen to the marrow by the sight of a newspaper placard which by way of sole contents bore the words, ‘Who is the real Mrs. Armstrong? Divorce proceedings instituted against a famous playwright.’

At first his thought was: ‘Some enemy has done this;’ but he knew the journal and most of the influential members of its staff, and he could not guess that he counted an enemy among them. He had dined with the editor a week before at the same club-table, and had found him not less cordial than he had ever been before.

‘I suppose the man is justified,’ Paul thought when the power of reflection returned to him. ‘The whole story is on its way to the public ears, and neither he nor any other man can stop it It’s his business to be first in the field with it if he can.’

He turned his cab homeward, for he had no heart to face the people he had meant to meet, and on his way, just to gratify the natural instinct of self-torture, he bought a copy of the journal, and read there that Messrs. Berry and Smythe, the well-known firm of solicitors in Lincoln’s Inn, had that day filed a petition for divorce against Mr. Paul Armstrong, the well-known dramatist, and that remarkable revelations were expected.

For these past few years home had seemed Paradise. He had never for any fraction of an instant wavered in his love, and use and wont had helped to set a seal of sanctity upon it With the passage of the months and years, with the growth of many intimate acquaintanceships, and not a few closer and dearer ties about him, home had grown to be as sacred to him as if the union on which it was founded had been blessed by all the priests of all the churches. No purer and more tranquil spirit of affectionate loyalty had breathed in any home in England, and now the balm of his soul was vitriol, and that which had been the bread of life to him was steeped in gall and wormwood. The very honest purpose of his life, his constant and sober pursuit of a worthy fame, recoiled upon him here as if it had been in itself a crime. Not to have striven, to have been content with a dull obscurity of fortune, to have wasted his days in idleness and his nights in foolish revel, would have seemed a happier course to him. And as it was the better part of life which chastised him most cruelly, so it was the best and worthiest affection he had ever known which turned upon him with a cup of poison in its hand and bade him drink it to the dregs. Life and the world are so made that only the most desolate can suffer by themselves. If by any trick of magic he could have borne his chastisement alone, he would have accepted it with something like a scorn of fate.

He had discharged his cab within a hundred yards of home, and had read the stinging paragraph beneath a lamp-post almost at his own doorstep. He entered the house noiselessly, and from Madge’s music-room there floated down to him the sound of Chopin’s great Funeral March. She played this and some other favourites of her own as few musicians play them, for music had been the one delight of her life, and but for the fleeting theatrical ambition, and for Paul, she might have become famous as an executant He stood in the hall to listen as the alternate wail and triumph filled and thrilled the air, and thinking that she was alone, he strolled silently to his dressing-room, and then in smoking-jacket and slippers went to join her. Except for the glow of the fire the room was in darkness, and a voice which came out of the darkness startled him.

‘I had prepared myself to wait for hours,’ said the voice; and Ralston emerged from a shadowed corner with an outstretched hand—Ralston, with his big sagacious head, all unexpectedly silver-white, and moustache and beard of snow, but with the same old hand-grip, and the same half-dictatorial, half-affectionate tone. Madge struck a resolving chord, rose, and with a kiss and a whispered ‘I know the news,’ slipped from the room before he could make an effort to detain her.

‘Can we have a light on things?’ said Ralston, in that hoarsely musical growl of his. He struck a match as he spoke, and lit the gas, and then marched sturdily to the door and closed it. ‘You know me—you, Paul Armstrong,’ he said, turning to face the master of the house. ‘I have spent a fighting life, but I have never known a downright murderous fit till now. Have you seen this?’

‘Yes,’ said Paul,’ I’ve seen it.’

The journal Ralston haled from his pocket and held towards him was a fellow to that he had just thrown away in the street.

‘The carrion-hunting hound!’ cried Ralston; ‘I read this, and I came straight here. I knew there was no hiding it from your wife. I say “your wife,” and I hold by the word until faith and friendship are as dead as last year’s leaves. She had to see it, Armstrong, and it was better that a friend should bring it to her. Now, mind you, we who know her rally round. We may be only two or three, but we are a fighting colony. I am by way of being a cleric, but I don’t always cut my linguistic coat to suit my cloth, and my word at this hour is, Damn the bestial ecclesiastical bigotry which seeks to tie the bodies of men and women together when their souls are sundered! Here is a man reported within this last fortnight as having been arrested the day after his marriage at a registrar’s office, and as having been since then condemned to penal servitude for life. Is that fact a relief to the woman who was his victim? Not a bit of it Let her contract a new marriage, and the law will indict her for bigamy. She must live in loneliness, or be classed with harlots. Here is a man I know, an outlying parishioner of mine, whose wife is hopelessly and incurably insane. Is there any release from the marriage-bond for him? Not a chance of it. There are a hundred thousand people of this country, men and women, so saturated and demoralized with drink that only an overwhelming Christian pity could bear to touch ‘em with a barge-pole—husbands intolerable to wives, wives intolerable to husbands, live corpses with corruption distilling at each pore—and this filthy marriage law, which is the last relic of Christianity’s worst barbarism, binds quick and wholesome flesh to stinking death, and bids them fester together in the legal pit. I set one honest man’s curse upon that shameless and abominable creed, and I would not take my hand away from my seal though I went to the stake for setting it there.’

He broke into a stormy laugh, and clapped Paul boisterously upon the shoulder.

‘And now,’ he said, with a sudden change of voice and manner, ‘that we have got rid of the froth of passion, let me offer you one cup of the sound wine of reason. Fight this business through, Paul Armstrong. Don’t give way by half a barleycorn. The story, as it tells against you, will be made known. The truth, as your friends know it, must come out as well. If I had time to read up for the bar, and pass my examinations, I would ask nothing better than to be your counsel. Face the music, Armstrong, and you may help the cause of justice. It is time that this union of quick and dead were done with, and that the ecclesiastic fetish rag which makes its wickedness respectable were burned.’