Boreham was in his dressing-room at Chartcote looking at himself in the mirror. The picture he saw in its depths was familiar to him. Had he (like prehistoric man) never had the opportunity of seeing his own face, and had he been suddenly presented with his portrait and asked whether he thought the picture pleasing, he would have replied, as do our Cabinet ministers: "The answer is in the negative."

But the figure in the mirror had always been associated with his inmost thoughts. It had grown with his growth. It had smiled, it had laughed and frowned. It had looked dull and disappointed, it had looked flattered and happy in tune with his own feelings; and that rather colourless face with the drab beard, the bristly eyebrows, the pale blue eyes and the thin lips, were all part of Boreham's exclusive personal world to which he was passionately attached; something separate from the world he criticised, jeered at, scolded or praised, as the mood took him, also something separate from what he secretly and unwillingly envied. The portrait in the mirror represented Boreham's own particular self—the unmistakable "I."

He gave a last touch with a brush to the stiff hair, and then stood staring at his completed image, at himself, ready for lunch, ready—and this was what dominated his thoughts—ready to receive May Dashwood.

Some eight or nine years ago, when he had first met May, he had as nearly fallen in love with her as his constitution permitted; and he had been nettled at finding himself in a financial position that was, to say the best of it, rather fluctuating. He knew he was going to have Chartcote, but aunts of sixty frequently live to remain aunts at eighty. May had never shown any particular interest in him, but he attributed her indifference to the natural and selfish female desire to acquire a wealthy husband. As it was impossible for him to marry at that period in his life, he adopted that theory of marriage most likely to shed a cheerful light upon his compulsory bachelorhood. He maintained that the natural man tries to escape marriage, as it is incompatible with his "freedom," and is only "enchained" after much persistent hunting down by the female, who makes the most of the conventions of civilisation for her own protection and profit. He was able, therefore, at the age of forty-two to look round him and say: "I have successfully escaped—hitherto," and to feel that what he said was true. But now he was no longer poor. He was an eligible man.

He was also less happy than he had been. He had lived at Chartcote for some interminable weeks! He had found it tolerable, only because he was well enough off to be always going away from it. But now he had again met May, free like himself, and if possible more attractive than she had been eight years ago!

He had met her and had found her at the zenith of womanhood; without losing her youth, she had acquired maturer grace and self-possession. Had there been any room for improvement in himself he too would have matured! The wealth he had acquired was sufficient. And now the question was: whether with all his masculine longing to preserve his freedom he would be able to escape successfully again? This was why he was giving a lingering glance in the mirror, where his external personality was, as it were, painted with an exactness that no artist could command.

Should this blond man with the beard and the stiff hair, below which lay a splendid brain, should he escape again?

Boreham stared hard at his own image. He repeated the momentous question, firmly but inaudibly, and then went away without answering it. Time would show—that very day might show!

Mrs. Greenleafe Potten had already arrived. Now Mrs. Greenleafe Potten was a cousin of Boreham's maternal aunt. She lived in rude though luxurious widowhood about a quarter of a mile from Chartcote, and she was naturally the person to whom Boreham applied whenever he wanted a lady to head his table. Besides, Mrs. Potten was a very old friend of Lady Dashwood's. Mrs. Potten was a little senior to Lady Dashwood, but in many ways appeared to be her junior. Mrs. Potten, too, retained her youthful interest in men. Lady Dashwood's long stay in Oxford had brought with it a new interest to Mrs. Potten's life. It had enabled her to call at King's College and claim acquaintance with the Warden. Mrs. Potten admired the Warden with the sentiment of early girlhood. Now Mrs. Potten was accredited with the possession of great wealth, of which she spent as little as possible. She practised certain strange economies, and on this occasion, learning that the Dashwoods were coming without the Warden, she decided to come in the costume in which she usually spent the morning hours, toiling in the garden.

The party consisted of the three ladies from King's, Mr. Bingham, Fellow of All Souls, and Mr. and Mrs. Harding.

Mr. Bingham was a man of real learning; he was a bachelor, and he made forcible remarks in the soft deliberate tone of a super-curate. He laughed discreetly as if in the presence of some sacred shrine. In the old pre-war days there had been many stories current in Oxford about Bingham, some true and some invented by his friends. All of them were reports of brief but effective conversations between himself and some other less sophisticated person. Bingham always accepted invitations from any one who asked him when he had time, and if he found himself bored, he simply did not go again. Boreham had got hold of Bingham and had asked him to lunch, so he had accepted. It was one of the days when he did not go up to the War Office, but when he lectured to women students. He had to lunch somewhere, and he had bicycled out, intending to bicycle back, rain or no rain, for the sake of exercise.

Then there were Mr. and Mrs. Harding. Harding, who had taken Orders (just as some men have eaten dinners for the Bar), was Fellow and Tutor of a sporting College. His tutorial business had been for many years to drive the unwilling and ungrateful blockhead through the Pass Degree. His private business was to assume that he was a "man of the world." It was a subject that engrossed what must (in the absence of anything more distinctive), be called the "spiritual" side of his nature. His wife, who had money, lived to set a good example to other Dons' wives in matters of dress and "tenue," and she had put on her best frock in anticipation of meeting the "County." Indeed, the Hardings had taken up Boreham because he was not a college Don but a member of "Society." They were, like Bingham, at Chartcote for the first time. It was an unpleasant shock to Mr. Harding to find that instead of the County, other Oxford people had been asked to luncheon. Fortunately, however, the Oxford people were the Dashwoods! The Hardings exchanged glances, and Harding, who had entered the room in his best manner, now looked round and heaved a sigh, letting himself spiritually down with a sort of thump. Bingham his old school-fellow and senior at Winchester, was, perhaps, the man in all Oxford to whom he felt most antipathy.

Mrs. Harding very much regretted that she had not come in a smart Harris tweed. It would have been a good compromise between the Dashwoods and the pretty girl with them, and Mrs. Greenleafe Potten with her tweed skirt and not altogether spotless shirt. But it was too late!

Boreham was quite unconscious of his guests' thoughts, and was busy plotting how best to give May Dashwood an opportunity of making love to him. He would have Lady Dashwood and Mrs. Harding on each side of him at table, giving to Mrs. Potten, Harding and Bingham. Then May Dashwood and Miss Scott would be wedged in at the sides. But, after lunch, he would give the men only ten minutes sharp for their coffee, and take off May Dashwood to look over the house. In this way he would be behaving with the futile orthodoxy required by our effete social system, and yet give the opportunity necessary to the female for the successful pursuit of the male.

Only—and here a sudden spasm went through his frame, as he looked round on his guests—did he really wish to become a married man? Did he want to be obliged to be always with one woman, to be obliged to pay calls with her, dine out with her? Did he want to explain where he was going when he went by himself, and to give her some notion as to the hour when he would return, and to leave his address with her if he stayed away for a night? No! Marriage was a gross imposition on humanity, as his brother had discovered twice over. The woman in the world who would tempt him into harness would have to be exquisitely fascinating! But then—and this was the point—May Dashwood had just that peculiar charm! Boreham's eyes were now resting on her face. She was sitting on his left, next Mrs. Harding, and Bingham's black head was bent and he was saying something to her that made her smile. Boreham wished that he had put Harding, the married man, next her! Harding was commonplace! Harding was safe! Look at Harding doing his duty with Mrs. Potten! Useful man, Harding! But Bingham was a bachelor, and not safe!

And so the luncheon went on, and Boreham talked disconnectedly because he forgot the thread of his argument in his keenness to hear what May Dashwood and Bingham were saying to each other. He tried to drag in Bingham and force him to talk to the table, but his efforts were fruitless. Bingham merely looked absently and sweetly round the table, and then relapsed into talk that was inaudible except to his fair neighbour.

Gwendolen Scott watched the table silently, and wondered how it was they found so much to talk about. Harding did not intend to waste any time in talking to an Oxford person. He put his elbow on the table on her side and conversed with Mrs. Potten. He professed interest in her agricultural pursuits, told her that he liked digging in the rain, and by the time lunch was over he had solemnly emphasised his opinion that the cricket bat and the shot gun and the covert and the moderate party in the Church of England were what made our Empire great. Mrs. Potten approved these remarks, and said that she was surprised and pleased to hear such sound views expressed by any one from Oxford. She was afraid that very wild and democratic views were not only tolerated, but born and bred in Oxford. She was afraid that Oxford wasn't doing poor, dear, clever Bernard any good, though she was convinced that the "dear Warden" would not tolerate any foolishness, and she was on the point of rising when her movements were delayed by the shock of hearing Mr. Bingham suddenly guffaw with extraordinary suavity and gentleness.

She turned to him questioningly.

"It depends upon what you mean by democratic," he said, smiling softly past Mrs. Potten and on to Harding. "The United States of America, which makes a point of talking the higher twaddle about all men being free and equal, can barely manage to bring any wealthy pot to justice. On the other hand, Oxford, which is slimed with Toryism, is always ready to make any son of any impecunious greengrocer the head of one's college. In Oxford, even at Christ Church"—and here Bingham showed two rows of good teeth at Harding,—"you may say what you like now. Oxford now swarms with political Humanitarians, who go about sticking their stomachs out and pretending to be inspired! Now, what do you mean by Democratic?"

Mrs. Potten would have been shocked, but Bingham's mellifluous voice gave a "cachet" to his language. She looked nervously at Boreham; seeing that he had caught the talk and was about to plunge into it, she signified "escape" to Lady Dashwood and rose herself.

"We will leave you men to quarrel together," she said to Harding. "You give it to them, Mr. Harding. Don't you spare 'em," and she passed to the door.

For a moment the three men who were left behind in the dining-room glanced at each other—then they sat down. Boreham was torn between the desire to dispute whatever either of his guests put forward, and a still keener desire to get away rapidly to the drawing-room. Harding had already lost all interest in the subject of democracy, and was passing on the claret to Bingham. Bingham helped himself, wondering, as he did so, whether Mrs. Dashwood was in mourning for a brother, or perhaps had been mourning for a husband. It seemed to Bingham an interesting question.

"Good claret this of yours," said Harding. "I conclude that you weren't one of those fanatics who tried to force us all to become teetotallers. My view is that at my age a man can judge for himself what is good for him."

"That wasn't quite the point," said Bingham. "The point was whether the stay-at-homes should fill up their stomachs, or turn it into cash for war purposes."

"Of course," sneered Harding, "you like to put it in that way."

"It isn't any man's business," broke in Boreham, "whether another man can or can't judge what's good for him."

Boreham had been getting up steam for an attack upon Christ Church because it was ecclesiastical, upon Balliol because it had been Bingham's college, and upon Oxford in general because he, Boreham, had not been bred within its walls. In other words, Boreham was going to speak with unbiassed frankness. But this sudden deviation of the talk to claret and Harding's cool assumption that his view was like his host's, could not be passed in silence.

"What I say is," said Harding again, "that when a man gets to my age——"

"Age isn't the question," interrupted Boreham. "Let every man have his own view about drink. Mine is that I'm not going to ask your permission to drink. If a man likes to get drunk, all I say is that it's not my business. The only thing any of your Bishops ever said that was worth remembering was: 'I'd rather see England free than England sober.'"

Harding allowed that the saying was a good one. He nodded his head. Bingham sipped his claret. "You do get a bit free when you're not sober," he said sweetly. "I say, Harding, so you would rather see Mrs. Harding free than sober!"

Harding made an inarticulate noise that indicated the place to which in a future life he would like to consign the speaker.

"Every man does not get offensive when drunk," said Boreham, ignoring, in the manner peculiar to him, the inner meaning of Bingham's remark.

"That's true," said Bingham. "A man may have as his family motto: 'In Vino Suavitas'(Courteous though drunk, Boreham); but when you're drunk and you still go on talking, don't you find the difficulty is not so much to be courteous as to be coherent? In the good old drinking days of All Souls, of which I am now an unworthy member, it was said that Tindal was supreme in Common Room because 'his abstemiousness in drink gave him no small advantage over those he conversed with.'"

"Talk about supreme in Common Room," said Boreham, catching at the opportunity to drive his dagger into the weak points of Oxford, "you chaps, even before the war, could hardly man your Common Rooms. You're all married men living out in the brick villas."

"Harding's married," said Bingham. "I'm thinking about it. I've been thinking for twenty years. It takes a long time to mature thoughts. By the by, was that a Miss Dashwood who sat next Harding? I don't think I have ever met her in Oxford."

"She is a Miss Scott," said Boreham, suddenly remembering that he wanted to join the ladies as soon as possible. He would get Bingham alone some day, and squeeze him. Just now there wasn't time. As to Harding—he was a hopeless idiot.

"Not one of Scott of Oriel's eight daughters? Don't know 'em by sight even. Can't keep pace with 'em," said Harding.

"She's the daughter of Lady Belinda Scott," said Boreham, "and staying with Lady Dashwood."

"I thought she didn't belong to Oxford," said Bingham.

Harding stared at his fellow Don, vaguely annoyed. He disliked to hear Bingham hinting at any Oxford "brand"—it was the privilege of himself and his wife to criticise Oxford. Also, why hadn't he talked to Miss Scott? He wondered why he hadn't seen that she was not an Oxford girl by her dress and by her look of self-satisfied simplicity, the right look for a well-bred girl to have.

"I promised to show Mrs. Dashwood my house," said Boreham. "We mustn't keep the ladies too long waiting. Shall we go?" he added. "Oh, sorry, Harding, I didn't notice you hadn't finished!"

The men rose and went into the drawing-room. Harding saw, as he entered, that his wife had discovered that Miss Scott was a stranger and she was talking to her, while Mrs. Greenleafe Potten had got the Dashwoods into a corner and was telling them all about Chartcote: a skeleton list of names with nothing attached to them of historical interest. It was like reading aloud a page of Bradshaw, and any interruption to such entertainment was a relief. Indeed, May Dashwood began to smile when she saw Boreham approaching her. Something, however, in his manner made the smile fade away.

"Will you come over the house?" he asked, carefully putting his person between herself and Lady Dashwood so as to obliterate the latter lady. "I don't suppose Lady Dashwood wants to see it. Come along, Mrs. Dashwood."

May could scarcely refuse. She rose. Harding was making his way to Gwendolen Scott and raising his eyebrows at his wife as a signal for her to appropriate Mrs. Potten. Bingham was standing in the middle of the room staring at Lady Dashwood. Some problems were working in his mind, in which that lady figured as an important item.

Gwendolen Scott looked round her. Mr. Harding had ignored her at lunch, and she did not mean to have him sitting beside her again. She was quite sure she wouldn't know what to say to him, if he did speak. She got up hurriedly from her chair, passed the astonished Harding and plunged at Mrs. Dashwood.

"Oh, do let me come and see over the house with you," she said, laying a cold hand nervously on May's arm. "I should love to—I simply love looking at portraits."

"Come, of course," said May, with great cordiality.

Boreham stiffened and his voice became very flat. "I've got no portraits worth looking at," said he, keeping his hand firmly on the door. "I have a couple of Lely's, they're all alike and sold with a pound of tea. The rest are by nobodies."

"Oh, never mind," said Gwen, earnestly. "I love rooms; I love—anything!"

Boreham's beard gave a sort of little tilt, and his innermost thoughts were noisy and angry, but he had to open the door and let Gwendolen Scott through if the silly little girl would come and spoil everything.

Boreham could not conceal his vexation. His arrangements had been carefully made, and here they were knocked on the head, and how he was to get May Dashwood over to Chartcote again he didn't know.

"What a nice hall!" exclaimed Gwen. "I do love nice halls," and she looked round at the renaissance decorations of the wall and the domed roof. "Oh, I do love that archway with the statue holding the electric light, it is sweet!"

"It's bad style," said Boreham, walking gloomily in front of them towards a door which led into the library. "The house was decent enough, I believe, till some fool in the family, seeing other people take up Italian art, got a craze for it himself and knocked the place about."

"Oh," said Gwen, crestfallen, "I really don't know anything about how houses ought to look. I only know my cousin Lady Goosemere's house and mother's father's old place, my grandfather's and—and—I do like the Lodgings, Mrs. Dashwood," she added in confusion.

"So do I," said May Dashwood.

"This is the library," said Boreham, opening the door.

Boreham led them from one room to another, making remarks on them expressly for the enlightenment of Mrs. Dashwood, using language that was purposely complicated and obscure in order to show Miss Scott that he was not taking the trouble to give her any information. Whenever he spoke, he stared straight at May Dashwood, as if he were alone with her. He did not by any movement or look acknowledge the presence of the intruder, so that Gwendolen began to wonder how long she would be able to endure her ill-treatment at Chartcote, without dissolving into tears. She kept on stealing a glance at the watch on Mrs. Dashwood's wrist, but she could never make out the time, because the figures were not the right side up, and she never had time to count them round before Mrs. Dashwood moved her arm and made a muddle of the whole thing.

But no lunch party lasts for ever, and at last Gwendolen found herself down in the hall with the taxi grunting at the door and a bustle of good-byes around her. The rain had stopped. Mrs. Greenleafe Potten and Bingham were standing together on the shallow steps like two children. The Hardings were already halfway down the drive. Lady Dashwood looked out of the window of the taxi at Boreham, as he fastened the door.

"Wait a minute, Mr. Boreham," she said. "Tell Mr. Bingham we can take him into Oxford."

"He's going to walk," said Boreham, coldly. "He's going to walk back with Mrs. Potten, who wants to walk, and then return for his bicycle."

"Oh, very well," said Lady Dashwood, leaning back. "Good-bye, so many thanks, Mr. Boreham."

Boreham's face wore an enigmatic look as he walked up the steps.

Bingham had opened a pocket-book and was making a note in it with a pencil.

"Excuse me just one moment, Mrs. Potten. I shan't remember if I don't make a note of it."

The note that Bingham jotted down was: "Sat. Lady Dashwood, dinner 8 o'clock."

Boreham glanced keenly and suspiciously at him, for he heard him murmur aloud the words he was writing.

Boreham did not see that Bingham had any right to the invitation.

"I've forgotten my waterproof," exclaimed Mrs. Potten, as she went down the steps.

Bingham dived into the hall after it and having found it in the arms of a servant, he hurried back to Mrs. Potten.

"I do believe I've dropped my handkerchief," remarked Mrs. Potten, as he started her down the drive at a brisk trot.

"Are you afraid of this pace?" asked Bingham evasively, for he did not intend to return to the house.

Boreham gazed after them with his beard at a saturnine angle. "You couldn't expect her to remember everything," he muttered to himself.

The sky was low, heavy and grey, and the air was chilly and yet close, and everything—sky, half-leafless trees, the gravelled drive too—seemed to be steaming with moisture. The words came to Boreham's mind:

"That won't do," he said to himself, as he still stood on the steps motionless. "It's no use quoting from Victorian poets. 'What the people want' is nothing older than Masefield or Noyes, or Verhaeren. Because, though Verhaeren's old enough, they didn't know about him till just now, and so he seems new; then there are all the new small chaps. No, I can't finish that article. After all, what does it matter? They must wait, and I can afford now to say, 'Take it or leave it, and go to the Devil!'"

He turned and went up the steps. There was no sound audible except the noise Boreham was making with his own feet on the strip of marble that met the parquetted floor of the hall. "It's a beastly distance from Oxford," he said, half aloud; "one can't just drop in on people in the evening, and who else is there? I'm not going to waste my life on half a dozen damned sport-ridden, parson-ridden neighbours who can barely spell out a printed book."

One thing had become clear in Boreham's mind. Either he must marry May Dashwood for love, or he must try and let Chartcote, taking rooms in Oxford and a flat in town.

If Boreham had found the morning unprofitable, the Hardings had not found it less so.

"Did Mrs. Potten propose calling?" asked Harding of his wife, as they sat side by side, rolling over a greasy road towards Oxford.

"No," said Mrs. Harding.

"It's quite clear to me," said Harding, "that Mrs. G. P. only regards Boreham as a freak, so that he won't be any use."

"We needn't go there again," said Mrs. Harding, "unless, of course," she added thoughtfully, "we knew beforehand—somehow—that it wasn't just an Oxford party. And Lady Dashwood won't do anything for us."

"It's not been worth the taxi," said Harding.

"I wish you'd not made that mistake about Miss Scott," said Mrs. Harding, after a moment's silence.

"How could I help it?" blurted Harding. "Scott's a common name. How on earth could I tell—and coming from Oxford!"

"Yes, but you could see she powdered, and her dress! Besides, coming with the Dashwoods and knowing Mrs. Potten!" continued Mrs. Harding. "If only you had said one or two sentences to her; I saw she was offended. That's why she ran off with Mrs. Dashwood, she wouldn't be left to your tender mercies. I saw Lady Dashwood staring."

Harding made no answer, he merely blew through his pursed-up mouth.

"And we've got Boreham dining with us next Thursday!" he said after a pause. "Damn it all!"

"No. I didn't leave the note," said Mrs. Harding. "I thought I'd 'wait and see.'"

"Good!" said Harding.

"It was a nuisance," said Mrs. Harding, "that we asked the Warden of King's when the Bishop was here and got a refusal. We can't ask the Dashwoods and Miss Scott even quietly. It's for the Warden to ask us."

"Anyhow ask Bingham," said Harding; "just casually."

Mrs. Harding looked surprised. "Why, I thought you couldn't stick him," she said; "and he hasn't been near us for a couple of years at least."

"Yes, but——"

"Very well," said Mrs. Harding. "And meanwhile I've got Lady Dashwood to lend me Miss Scott for our Sale to-morrow! And shall I ask them to tea? We are so near that it would seem the natural thing to do."