Macheson in those days felt himself rapidly growing older. An immeasurable gap seemed to lie between him and the eager young apostle who had plunged so light-heartedly into the stress of life. All that wonderful enthusiasm, that undaunted courage with which he had faced coldness and ridicule in the earlier days of his self-chosen vocation seemed to have left him. Some way, somehow, he seemed to have suffered shipwreck! There was poison in his system! Fight against it as he might—and he did fight—there were moments when memory turned the life which he had taken up so solemnly into the maddest, most fantastic fairy story. At such times his blood ran riot, the sweetness of a strange, unknown world seemed to be calling to him across the forbidden borders. Inaction wearied him horribly—and, after all, it was inaction which Holderness had recommended as the best means of re-establishing himself in a saner and more normal attitude towards life!

“Look round a bit, old chap,” he advised, “and think. Don’t do anything in a hurry. You’re young, shockingly young for any effective work. You can’t teach before you understand. Life isn’t such a sink of iniquity as you young prigs at Oxford professed to find it. See the best of it and the worst. You’ll be able to put your finger on the weak spots quick enough.”

But the process of looking around wearied Macheson excessively—or was it something else which had crept into his blood to his immense unsettlement? There were several philanthropic schemes started by himself and his college friends in full swing now, in or about London. To each of them he paid some attention, studying its workings, listening to the enthusiastic outpourings of his quondam friends and doing his best to catch at least some spark of their interest. But it was all very unsatisfactory. Deep down in his heart he felt the insistent craving for some fiercer excitement, some mode of life which should make larger and deeper demands upon his emotional temperament. A heroic war would have appealed to him instantly—for that, he realized with a sigh, he was born many centuries too late. For weeks he wandered about London in a highly unsatisfied condition. Then one afternoon, in the waning of a misty October day, he came face to face with Wilhelmina in Bond Street.

She was stepping into her motor brougham when she saw him. He had no opportunity for escape, even if he had desired it. Her tired lips were suddenly curved into a most bewildering smile. She withdrew her hand from her muff and offered it to him—for the first time.

“So you are still in London, Mr. Macheson,” she said. “I am very glad to see you.”

The words were unlike her, the tone was such as he had never heard her use. Do what he could, he could not help the answering light which sprang into his own eyes.

“I am still in London,” he said. “I thought you were to go to Marienbad?”

“I left it until it was too late,” she answered. “Walk a little way with me,” she added abruptly. “I should like to talk to you.”

“If I may,” he answered simply.

She dismissed the brougham, and they moved on.

“I am sorry,” she began, “that I was rude to you when you brought that girl to me. You did exactly what was nice and kind, and I was hateful. Please forgive me.”

“Of course,” he answered simply. “I felt sure that when you thought it over you would understand.”

“You are not going back—to Thorpe?” she asked.

“Not at present, at any rate,” he answered.

She looked up at him with a faint smile.

“You can have the barn,” she said.

His eyes answered her smile, but his tone was grave.

“I have given that up—for a little time, at any rate,” he said. “I mean that particular sort of work.”

“My villagers must content themselves with Mr. Vardon, then,” she remarked.

He nodded.

“Perhaps,” he said, “ours was a mistaken enterprise. I am not sure. But at any rate, so far as Thorpe is concerned, I have abandoned it for the present.”

She was walking close to his side, so close that the hand which raised her skirt as they crossed the street touched his, and her soft breath as she leaned over and spoke fell upon his cheek.

“Why?”

He felt the insidious meaning of her whispered monosyllable, he felt her eyes striving to make him look at her. His cheeks were flushed, but he looked steadily ahead.

“There were several reasons,” he said.

“Do tell me,” she begged; “I am curious.”

“For one,” he said steadily, “I did an unjust thing at Thorpe. I sheltered a criminal and helped him to escape.”

“So it was you who did that,” she remarked. “You mean, of course, the man who killed Mr. Hurd?”

“Yes!” he answered. “I showed him where to hide. He either got clean away, or he is lying at the bottom of the slate quarry. In either case, I am responsible for him.”

“Well,” she said, “he is not at the bottom of the slate quarry. I can at least assure you of that. I have had the place dragged, and every foot of it gone over by experienced men from Nottingham.”

“Really,” he said, surprised. “Well, I am glad of it.”

She sighed.

“I want you, if you can,” she said, “to describe the man to me. It is not altogether curiosity. I have a reason for wishing to know what he was like.”

“He was in such a state of panic,” Macheson said doubtfully, “that I am afraid I have only an imperfect impression of him. He was not very tall, he had a round face, cheeks that were generally, I should think, rather high-coloured, brown eyes and dark hair, almost black. He wore a thick gold ring on the finger of one hand, and although he spoke good English, I got the idea somehow that he was either a foreigner or had lived abroad. He was in a terrible state of fear, and from what I could gather, I should say that he struck old Mr. Hurd in a scuffle, and not with any deliberate intention of hurting him.”

She nodded.

“I have heard all that I want to,” she declared.

They walked on in silence for several minutes. Then she turned to him with a shrug of the shoulders.

“The subject,” she declared, “is dismissed. I did not ask you to walk with me to discuss such unpleasant things. I should like to know about yourself.”

He sighed.

“About myself,” he answered, “there is nothing to tell. There isn’t in the whole of London a more unsatisfactory person.”

She laughed softly.

“Such delightful humility,” she murmured, “especially amongst the young, is too touching. Nevertheless, go on. It amuses me to hear.”

The note of imperiousness in her tone was pleasantly reminiscent. It was the first reminder he had received of the great lady of Thorpe.

“Well,” he said, “what do you want to know?”

“Everything,” she answered. “I am possessed by a most unholy curiosity. Your relatives for instance, and where you were born.”

He shook his head.

“I have no relatives,” he answered. “I was born in Australia. I am an orphan, twenty-eight years old, and feel forty-eight, no profession, no settled purpose in life. I am Japhet in search of a career.”

She glanced at his shabby clothes. He had been to a mission-house in the East End.

“You are poor?” she asked softly.

“I have enough, more than enough,” he answered, “to live on.”

Her eyes lingered upon his clothes, but he offered no explanation. Enough to live on, she reflected, might mean anything!

“You say that you have no profession,” she remarked. “I suppose you would call it a vocation. But why did you want to come and preach to my villagers at Thorpe? Why didn’t you go into the Church if you cared for that sort of thing?”

“There was a certain amount of dogma in the way,” he answered. “I should make but a poor Churchman. They would probably call me a free-thinker. Besides, I wanted my independence.”

She nodded.

“I am beginning to understand a little better,” she said. “Now you must tell me this. Why did you entertain the idea of mission work in a place like Thorpe, when the whole of that awful East End was there waiting for you?”

“All the world of reformers,” he answered, “rushes to the East End. We fancied there was as important work to be done in less obvious places.”

“And you started your work,” she asked, “directly you left college?”

“Before, I think,” he answered. “You see, I wasn’t alone. There were several of us who felt the same way—Holderness, for instance, the man who came to your house with me the other night. He works altogether upon the political side. He’s a Socialist—of a sort. Two of the others went into the Church, one became a medical missionary. I joined in with a few who thought that we might do more effective work without tying ourselves down to anything, or subscribing to any religious denomination.”

She looked at him curiously. He was tall, broad-shouldered and muscular. He wore even his shabby clothes with an air of distinction.

“I suppose,” she said calmly, “that I must belong to a very different world. But what I cannot understand is why you should choose a career which you intend to pursue apparently for the benefit of other people. All the young men whom I have known who have taken life seriously enough to embrace a career at all, have at least studied their individual tastes.”

“Well,” he answered, smiling, “it isn’t that I fancy myself any better than my fellows. I was at Magdalen, you know, under Heysey. I think that it was his influence which shaped our ideas.”

“Yes! I have heard of him,” she said thoughtfully. “He was a good man. At least every one says so. I’m afraid I don’t know much about good men myself. Most of those whom I have met have been the other sort.”

The faint bitterness of her tone troubled him. There was deliberation, too, in her words. Instinctively he knew that this was no idle speech.

“You have asked me,” he reminded her, “a good many questions. I wonder if I might be permitted to ask you one?”

“Why not? I can reserve the privilege of not answering it,” she remarked.

“People call you a fortunate woman,” he said. “You are very rich, you have a splendid home, the choice of your own friends, a certain reputation—forgive me if I quote from a society paper—as a brilliant and popular woman of the world. Yours is rather a unique position, isn’t it? I wonder,” he added, “whether you are satisfied with what you get out of life!”

“I get all that there is to be got,” she answered, a slight hardness creeping into her tone. “It mayn’t be much, but it amuses me—sometimes.”

He shook his head.

“There is more to be got out of life,” he said, “than a little amusement.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“How about yourself? You haven’t exactly the appearance of a perfectly contented being.”

“I’m hideously dissatisfied,” he admitted promptly. “Something seems to have gone wrong with me—I seem to have become a looker-on at life. I want to take a hand, and I can’t. There doesn’t seem to be any place for me. Of course, it’s only a phase,” he continued. “I shall settle down into something presently. But it’s rather beastly while it lasts.”

She looked at him, her eyes soft with laughter. Somehow his confession seemed to have delighted her.

“I’m glad you are human enough to have phases,” she declared. “I was beginning to be afraid that you might turn out to be just an ordinary superior person. Perhaps you are also human enough to drink tea and eat muffins. Try, won’t you?”

They were in front of her door, which flew immediately open. She either took his consent for granted, or chose not to risk his refusal, for she went on ahead, and his faint protests were unheard. His hat and stick passed into the care of an elderly person in plain black clothes; with scarcely an effort at resistance, he found himself following her down the hall. She stopped before a small wrought-iron gate, which a footman at once threw open.

“It makes one feel as though one were in a hotel, doesn’t it?” she remarked, “but I hate stairs. Besides, I am going to take you a long, long way up.... I am not at home this afternoon, Groves.”

“Very good, madam,” the man answered.

They stepped out into a smaller hall. A dark-featured young woman came hurrying forward to meet them.

“I shall not need you, Annette,” Wilhelmina said. “Go down and see that they send up tea for two, and telephone to Lady Margaret—say I’m sorry that I cannot call for her this afternoon.”

“Parfaitement, madame,” the girl murmured, and hurried away. Wilhelmina opened the door of a sitting-room—the most wonderful apartment Macheson had ever seen. A sudden nervousness seized him. He felt his knees shaking, his heart began to thump, his brain to swim. All at once he realized where he was! It was not the lady of Thorpe, this! It was the woman who had come to him with the storm, the woman who had set burning the flame which had driven him into a new world. He looked around half wildly! He felt suddenly like a trapped animal. It was no place for him, this bower of roses and cushions, and all the voluptuous appurtenances of a chamber subtly and irresistibly feminine! He was bereft of words, awkward, embarrassed. He longed passionately to escape.

Wilhelmina closed the door and raised her veil. She laid her two hands upon his shoulders, and looked up at him with a faint but very tender smile. Her forehead was slightly wrinkled, her fingers seemed to cling to him, so that her very touch was like a caress! His heart began to beat madly. The perfume of her clothes, her hair, the violets at her bosom, were like a new and delicious form of intoxication. The touch of her fingers became more insistent. She was drawing his face down to hers.

“I wonder,” she murmured, “whether you remember!”