R. Bridges.

Dick walked home. It was a good long tramp, but he was glad of the exercise and the opportunity it gave him to arrange his thoughts into some sort of order. He had spoken to Joan, carried away by the moment, as they stood to say good-night, impelled to frankness by the appeal of her eyes. Now, slowly, reason gathered all its forces together to argue against his inclination. It would be wiser to break his half-made promise to the girl, and stay out of her life altogether. Immeasurable difficulties lay in the way of his marrying her. There was the child, her present position, his people's feelings and his own dismay as he had watched her dancing on the stage and seen her smiling and radiant from the applause it awoke. He had built his dreams on a five minutes' memory and for two years the girl's eyes had haunted him, but none the less it was surely rather absurd. Even love, strong, mysterious power as it is, can be suppressed and killed if a man really puts his mind to it.

At this moment, though of course Dick was not aware of the psychological happening, Love raised a defiant head amid the whirl of his thoughts and laughed at him—laughed deliberately, the sound echoing with all the old joy of the world, and Dick fell to thinking about Joan again. Her eyes, the way she walked, the undercurrent of sadness that had lain behind her gaiety. How good it would be to take her away from all the drabness of her present life and to bring real laughter, real happiness to her lips and eyes!

"I will marry her," he decided stormily, as he turned in to the drive of the house. "Why have I been arguing about it all this time? It is what I had made up my mind to do two years ago. I will marry her."

And again Love laughed, filling his heart with an indefinable glow of gladness.

His night mood stayed with him the next morning and started him singing most riotously in his bath. Mabel heard him and smiled to herself. It was good to listen, to him and know him so cheerful; whatever it was that had disturbed him the night before had evidently vanished this morning.

After breakfast, as was always her custom in summer, she took little Dickie out on to the lawn to sit under the big wide trees that threw so grateful a shade across the green. Big Dick joined them there with his pipe and he sat beside them in silence. It was very pleasant in the garden with the bluest of blue skies overhead and the baby chuckling and crowing in the very first rapture of life on the grass at their feet. Presently, however, a stern nurse descended on the scene and laughter was changed to tears for one short minute before the young gentleman, protesting but half-heartedly, was removed. Then Dick turned to Mabel.

"I am going in to Sevenoaks again," he announced, "and shall probably spend the day there. Would you like me to explain myself, Mabel?"

"Why, yes, if you care to," she answered, "and if there is anything to explain."

Dick nodded in apparent triumph. "Yes," he said, "there is something to explain all right, Mabel." He smiled at her with his eyes. "I have got a secret, I'll give you three guesses to reach it."

"No," Mabel spoke quickly, "I would rather you told me, Dick. Do you remember how once before I tried to dash in on your secret and how you shut me out. When it is ready to tell, I thought then, he will tell it me."

"Well, it is ready now," Dick said. "In a way it is the same old secret. I was shy of it in those days, Mabel, but last night it dawned on me that it was the only thing worth having in the world. I am in love, insanely and ridiculously. Do you know, if you asked me, I should tell you with the most prompt conceit that to-day is a beautiful, gorgeously fine day just because I woke up to it knowing that I was in love."

A spasm of half-formed jealousy snatched at Mabel's heart. She had always wanted Dick to fall in love and marry some nice girl, yet the reality was a little disturbing.

"Dick," she exclaimed, "and you never told me, you never said a word about it in your letters."

"I could not," he answered, "because in a way it only happened last night. Wait," he put his hand on her knee because she seemed to be going to say something. "Let me explain it first and then do your bit of arguing, for I know you are going to argue. You spoke just now about that other talk we once had before your marriage; do you remember what you said to me then? 'Did you think I should not know when you fell in love?' You had guessed the secret in my heart, Mabel, almost before I knew it myself." He leant forward, she noticed that suddenly his face flushed a very warm red. "Last night I saw her again; she was the dancer, you may have noticed her yourself. That was why I stayed behind. I wanted to put myself to the test, I wanted to meet her again."

He sat up straight and looked at her; she could see that some strong emotion was making it very difficult for him to speak.

"It is not any use trying to explain love, is it?" he asked. "I only know that I have always loved her, that I shall love her to the end."

Mabel sat stiffly silent. She could not meet his eyes. She was thinking of all the scandal which had leapt to life round Joan's name once the Rutherfords had left the village. She was remembering how last night Tom had said: "That little dancer girl is hot stuff."

"Dick," she forced herself to speak presently, "I have got to tell you, though it hurts and you will hate me for doing it, but this girl is not the kind of person you can ever marry, Dick. It is a kind of infatuation"—she struggled to make her meaning clear without using cruel words—"if you knew the truth about her, if——"

He stopped her quickly. "I know," he answered, "I have always known."

She turned to face him. "You knew," she gasped, "about the child?"

"Yes," he nodded, his eyes were very steady as they met hers. "That day when I was called in to see her, do you remember, she spoke out before her aunt and myself. She told us she was like Bridget Rendle. 'I am going to have a baby,' she said, 'but I am not ashamed or afraid. I have done nothing to be ashamed of.' Do you know how sometimes," he went on slowly, "you can see straight into a person's soul through their eyes. Well, I saw into hers that day and, before God, Mabel, it was white and innocent as a child's. I did not understand at the time, I have not understood since, what brought her to that cross way in her life, but nothing will alter my opinion. Some day I hope she will explain things, I am content to wait for that."

What could she find to say to him? Her mind groped through a nightmare of horror. Dick's happiness meant so much to her, she had planned and thought of it ever since she could remember.

"Love is sometimes blind," she whispered at last. "Oh, my dear, don't throw away your life on a dream."

"My love has wide-open eyes," he answered, "and nothing weighs in the balance against it."

"Don't tell the others, Dick," she pleaded on their way back to the house; "leave it a little longer, think it out more carefully."

"Very well," he agreed, "and for that matter, Mabel, there is as yet nothing to tell. I only let you into my secret because, well, you are you, and I want you to meet her. You will be able to judge then for yourself better than you can from all my ravings."

She did not answer his suggestion then, but later on, as he was getting into the car to drive to Sevenoaks, she ran down the steps to him.

"Dick," she said quickly, "ask her to come out to tea some day and bring one of the other girls if she likes. Tom is never in to tea; there will just be mother and me."

"Bless you," he answered; his eyes beamed at her. "What a brick you are, Mabel, I knew you would turn up trumps about it."

It took him some time to persuade Joan to accept the proffered invitation. It took her, for one thing, too near her old home, and for another she was more than a little disturbed by all Fanny's remarks on the subject. Fanny had come back from her drive with Swetenham full of exciting information to give Joan about "the new victim," as she would call Dick.

"Do you know, honey," she confided, waking Joan out of a well simulated slumber, "I believe he is the same young man as was so taken with you that evening in the Strand. You remember the day we spent in town? It is love at first sight, that is what it is. Young Sockie"—that was her name for Swetenham, invented because of his gorgeous socks—"tells me he has never seen a chap so bowled over as the new victim was by your dancing, and he asked to be brought round and introduced. Did you catch him staring at you all through the dinner, and, honey, did he try to kiss you when he brought you home?"

"Of course not," Joan remonstrated; "I wish you would stop talking nonsense and get into bed. It is awfully late and I was asleep."

"That is only another sign then," Fanny went on, quite impervious to the other's requests. "You take it from me, honey, if a man falls really in love he is shy of kissing you. Thinks it is kind of irreverent to begin with. You mark my words, he will be round again to-morrow. Honey," she had a final shot at Joan's peace of mind just before she fell asleep, "if you play your cards well, that man will marry you, he is just the kind that does."

Joan lay thinking of Fanny's remarks long after the other had fallen asleep. She was a little annoyed to find how much impression the man had made on her; the idea was alarming to one who fancied herself as immune as she did from any such attraction. But until Fanny had burst in she had been pleased enough with the vague thoughts which his eyes had waked to life. If you took the dream down and analysed it as Fanny had rather ruthlessly done, it became untenable. Probably this man only thought of her as Landon had thought of her; she was not content to burn her fingers in the same fire.

Short of being extremely disagreeable, however, she could not avoid going out to lunch with him the next day, as Fanny had already accepted the invitation, and once with him, it was impossible not to be friends with Dick, he set himself so assiduously to please her. He did not make love to her; Fanny would have said he just loved her. There is delicate distinction between the two, and instinctively Joan grew to feel at her ease with him; when they laughed, which they did very often, their laughter had won back to the glad mirth of children.

Fanny watched over the romance with motherly eyes. She had, in fact, set her heart upon Joan marrying the young man. He came to the theatre every evening, but it was not until the sixth day of their acquaintance that Fanny was able to arrange for him to spend the afternoon alone with Joan. She had tried often enough before, but Joan had been too wary. On this particular afternoon, half way through lunch and after the three of them had just arranged to go out into the country for tea, Fanny suddenly discovered that she had most faithfully promised to go for a drive that afternoon in young Swetenham's side-car.

"I am so awfully sorry," she smiled at them sweetly, "but it doesn't really matter; you two will be just as happy without me."

"We could put it off and go to-morrow," suggested Joan quickly.

"We can go to-morrow too," Dick argued, and Fanny laughed at him.

"Don't disappoint him, honey, it's a shame," she said with unblushing effrontery, "and if it is a chaperon you are wanting, why, Sockie and I will meet you out there."

So it was arranged, and Dick and Joan started off alone. They were to drive out to a farmhouse that Swetenham knew of, where you got the most delicious jam for tea. Joan was a little shy of Dick to begin with, sitting beside him tongue-tied, and never letting her eyes meet his. From time to time, when he was busy with the steering, she would steal a glance at him from under her lashes. His face gave her a great sense of security and trust, but at times her memory still struggled with the thought that she had met him somewhere before.

Dick, turning suddenly, caught her looking at him, and for a second his eyes spoke a message which caused both their hearts to stand still.

"Were you really afraid of coming out with me alone?" he asked abruptly; he had perhaps been a little hurt by the suggestion.

"No, of course not," Joan answered; she hoped he did not notice how curiously shaken the moment had left her. "Only I thought it would probably be more lively if we waited till we could take Fanny with us. I am sometimes smitten with such awful blanks in my conversation."

"One does not always need to talk," he said; "it is supposed to be one of the tests of friendship when you can stay silent and not be bored. Well, we are friends, aren't we?"

"I suppose so," Joan agreed; "at least you have been very kind to us and we do all the things you ask us to."

"Doesn't it amount to more than that?" Dick asked; his eyes were busy with the road in front of him. "I had hoped you would let me give you advice and talk to you like a father and all that sort of thing." His face was perfectly serious and she could hear the earnestness behind his chaff.

"What were you going to advise me about?" she asked.

"Well, it is this theatre game." Dick plunged in boldly once the subject had been started. "You don't like it, you know, and you aren't a bit suited to it. Sometimes when I see you dance and hear the people clapping you I could go out and say things—really nasty things."

"You don't like it?" she said. "I have tried to do other things too," she went on quickly, "but you know I am not awfully much good at anything. When I first started in London, it is two years ago now, I used to boast about having put my hand to the plough. I used to say I wouldn't turn back from my own particular furrow, however dull and ugly it was. But I haven't been very much use at it, I have failed over and over again."

"There are failures and failures," he answered. "There was a book I read once, I don't remember its name or much about it, but there was a sentence in it that stuck in my mind: 'Real courage, means courage to stand up against the shocks of life—sorrow and pain and separation, and still have the force left to make of the remainder something fine and gay and brave.' I think you have still got that sort of courage left."

"No," whispered Joan. She looked away from him, for her eyes were miserably full of tears. "I haven't even got that left."

They had tea, the four of them, for strange to tell Fanny did deem it expedient to keep her promise, and it was after tea that Dick first mooted the idea of their coming out to tea with his people the next day.

Fanny was prompt in her acceptance. "Of course we'll come, won't we, honey," she said. "My new muslin will just come in for it."

"It won't be a party," Dick explained, his eyes were on Joan, "just the mother and my sister. Not very lively I am afraid, still it is a pretty place and I'll drive you both ways."

He came to the theatre again that night. Fanny pointed him out to Joan in a little aside as she stood beside her in the wings, but Joan had already seen him for herself. She could put no heart into her dancing that night, and she ran off the stage quickly when the music ceased, not waiting to take her applause.

"Feeling ill to-night?" Daddy Brown asked her. He eyed her at the same time somewhat sternly; he disapproved of signs of weakness in any of the company.

"I suppose I am tired," Joan answered. Only her own heart knew that it was because a certain couple of blue eyes had shown her that they wished she would not dance. "I am getting into a ridiculous state," she argued to herself; "why should it matter to me what he thinks? It must not, it must not."

"You did not dance at all well to-night, honey," Fanny added her meed of blame as the two of them were undressing for the night. "But there, I know what is wrong with you. You are in love, bless your heart, and so is he. Never took his eyes off you while you were dancing, my dear—I watched him."

The rather hurt feeling in Joan's heart burst into sudden fire. "I am not in love," she said, "and neither is he. Men do not fall in love with girls like us, and if you say another word about it, Fanny, I won't go out to tea to-morrow; I won't, I won't!"

Fanny could only shrug her shoulders. The words "girls like us" rather flicked at her pride. Later on, however, when they were both in bed and the room in darkness save for the light thrown across the shadows by the street lamp outside, she called softly across to Joan:

"You are wrong, honey," she said, "about men and love. They do fall in love with us, sometimes, bless them, even though we aren't worth it. And anyway, you are different, why shouldn't he love you?"

Joan made no answer, only when she fell asleep at last it was against a little damp patch of pillow and the lashes that lay along her cheeks were weighed down by tears.