It was high noon of a perfect summer's day. Beneath green sun blinds, upon the terrace overlooking the lawns, Paul Mario, having finished his lunch, lay back against the cushions of a white deck-chair and studied the prospect. Sloping turf, rose-gay paths, and lichened brick steps, hollowed with age, zigzagging leisurely down to the fir avenue, carried the eye onward again to where the river wound its way through verdant banks toward the distant town.

A lark wooed the day with sweet music. Higher and ever higher rose the little sun-worshipper, pouring out his rapturous hymn to Apollo. Swallows, who but lately had crossed the battlefields of southern Europe, glided around Hatton Towers, describing mystic figures in the air, whilst the high feeble chirping of the younger generation sounded from the nests beneath the eaves. Amid the climbing roses bees were busy, their communal labours an object-lesson for self-seeking man; and almost at Mario's feet a company of ants swarmed over the yet writhing body of an unfortunate caterpillar, who had dropped from an apple-tree to fall a prey to that savage natural law of death to the weak. The harsh voice of a sentinel crow spoke from a neighbouring cornfield, and a cloud of dusky marauders took the air instantly, and before the sharp crack of the farmer's fowling-piece came to confirm the warning. In the hush of noon the tones of some haymakers at their patriarchal labours in a meadow beyond the stream were clearly audible—and the atmosphere constantly vibrated with remote booming of guns on the Western front.

Paul Mario was sufficiently distinguished in appearance to have been a person of no importance. His virile, curling black hair had the raven's-wing sheen betraying remote Italian forebears, and for that matter there was in his entire cast of countenance and the poise of his fine head something statuesquely Roman, Southern, exotic. His large but deep-set eyes were of so dark a blue as very generally to pass for "black"; and whilst in some moods they were soft and dreamy, in others, notably in moments of enthusiasm, they burnt darkly fierce in his pale olive face. In profile there was a certain resemblance to the Vatican head of Julius Caesar, save for the mouth, which had more gentle curves, and which was not unlike that of Dante; but seen full-face, and allowing for the fact that Paul Mario was clean-shaven, the likeness of feature to the traditional Christ was startling. This resemblance is equally notable in the face of Shakespeare.

Rather above medium height, well but slightly proportioned, the uneasy spirit of the man ever looking out of those arresting eyes so wholly dominated him as to create a false impression of fragility, of a casket too frail to confine the burning, eager soul within. His emotions were dynamic, and in his every mannerism there was distinction. The vein of femininity which is found in all creative artists betrayed itself in one item of Mario's attire: a white French knot, which slightly overlay the lapels of his well-worn Norfolk jacket.

To the world's caricaturists, when Paul Mario, at the age of twenty-six, had swept across the literary terrain, storming line after line, the white knot had proved a boon. Delilah, a lyrical drama, written in French, and first published in Paris, achieved for this darling of Minerva a reputation which no man is entitled to expect during his lifetime. Within twelve months of the date of publication it had appeared in almost every civilised language, and had been staged in New York, where it created a furore. Of Madame Caligula, a novel, which followed it, thirty-one editions were subscribed in six days!

The miracle of Paul Mario's success was perhaps to be explained by the neutrality of his genius. A passionate, elemental sympathy with all nature, a seeming capacity to hear the language of the flowers, the voices of the stars and to love and understand the lowliest things that God has made, bore him straight to the heart of England as surely as it swept his name into the holy of holies of artistic France, spoke to Russia's sombre soul and temporarily revolutionised the literature of the United States. His work belonged to no "school," and its charm was not due to "style"; therefore his books lost little in translation, for true genius speaks to every man in his own tongue.

Sympathetic atmosphere was as necessary to Paul Mario as pure air to the general. Deliberate ugliness hurt him, and the ugliness which is the handiwork of God aroused within him a yearning sorrow for poor humanity who might be of the White Company, were it not for avarice, hate and lust. The war, even in its earlier phases, stirred the ultimate deeps of his nature, and knowing himself, since genius cannot be blind, for what he was, a world power, a spiritual sword, he chafed and fretted in enforced inactivity, striving valiantly to reconcile himself to the ugliness of military life. Courted as only poets and actors are courted, he was offered posts and commissions in bewildering variety; but all of them he scornfully rejected. The insane injustice of such selection enraged him.

A severe nervous lesion freed him from the galley-bench of a training-camp, and sent him on a weary pilgrimage through the military hospitals to discharge—and freedom; freedom, which to that ardent nature proved to be irksome. For whilst the very springs of his genius were dammed by the agony of a world in travail, he found himself outside the mighty theatre, a mere bystander having no part in the rebirth of humanity.

II

Someone was approaching along the path consecrated by a million weary feet and still known as the Pilgrim's Way, someone who wore the ugly uniform of a Guards officer (which is a sort of du Maurier survival demanding Dundreary whiskers). He seemed to hesitate ere he turned aside, opened the gate and began to mount those hundred and twenty mossy steps which led up to the terrace.

The newcomer, whose tunic had seen much service, was a man perhaps two or three years Paul Mario's senior, and already the bleaching hand of Time had brushed his temples with furtive fingers. He was dark but of sanguine colouring, now overlaid with a deep tan, wore a short military moustache and possessed those humorous grey eyes which seem to detect in all creation hues roseate and pleasing; eyes made for laughter and which no man other than a good fellow ever owned.

Gaining the terrace and raising his hand to his cap in salute, the officer smiled, and his smile fulfilled all the promise of the grey eyes and would have brought a ray of sunshine into the deepest and darkest cell of the Bastille itself.

"I believe I am trespassing," he began—then, as Paul Mario rose: "By all that's gracious and wonderful, it's Paul!"

"Don!" exclaimed the other, and sprang forward in his own impetuous fashion, grasping the newcomer by both shoulders and staring eagerly into the suntanned face. "Dear old Don! A thousand welcomes, boy!" And releasing his grip on the shoulders, he seized both hands and shook them with a vigour that was not assumed but was merely an outlet for his brimming emotions.

"Some kindly coy dryad of the woods has guided my footsteps to this blessed spot," declared Don. "The last inn which I passed—observe my selection of the word, passed—known, I believe, as the 'Pig and Something-or-other,' is fully three sunny miles behind me. From the arid and dusty path below I observed the siphon on your table——"

"And you determined to become a trespasser?" cried Paul Mario joyously, pushing his friend into the cane rest-chair and preparing a drink for him. "I will build an altar to your dryad, Don; for there is certainly something miraculous in your appearance at Hatton Towers."

"When I have suitably reduced my temperature I will explain. But I have yet to learn what you are doing here. I had always understood that Hatton Towers——"

"My dear fellow, it's mine!" cried Paul excitedly. "My Uncle Jacques dramatically bequeathed this wonderful place to me, altering his will on the day that I renounced the pen and entered an officer's training corps. He was a remarkable old bachelor, Don——"

Don raised his hand, checking Paul's speech. "My dear Paul, you cannot possibly amplify your own description of Sir Jacques, with which you entertained us one evening in a certain top set at Oxford. Do you remember those rooms, Paul?"

"Do I remember them!"

"I do, and I remember your account of the saintly Uncle, for your acquaintance had begun and terminated during a week of the previous long vacation which you had spent here at Hatton. 'Uncle Jacques,' you informed us, 'is a delightful survival, bearing a really remarkable resemblance to a camel. Excepting his weakness for classic statuary and studies in the nude, his life is of Mayflower purity. He made his fortune on the Baltic Exchange, was knighted owing to a clerical error, and built the appalling church at Mid Hatton.'"

Paul laughed boyishly. "At least we were sincere in our youthful cynicism, Don. You may add the note to your very accurate recollections of Sir Jacques that on the publication of Delilah he instructed his butler to say that he was abroad whenever I might call!"

Fascinated as of old by his whimsical language, the cap-and-bells which he loved to assume, Paul watched affectionately the smiling face of Donald Courtier. Momentarily a faint tinge of melancholy had clouded the gaiety of Don's grey eyes; for this chance meeting had conjured up memories of a youth already slipping from his grasp, devoured by the all-consuming war; memories of many a careless hour treasured now as exquisite relics are treasured, of many a good fellow who would never again load his pipe from Paul Mario's capacious, celebrated and hospitable tobacco jar, as he, Don, was doing; of days of sheer indolent joy, of nights of wild and carefree gladness.

"Good old Paul," he murmured, raising his glass. "Here's to the late Sir Jacques. So you are out of it?"

Paul Mario nodded and took from the pocket of his threadbare golf jacket the very twin of Don's curved and blackened briar, drawing towards him the tobacco jar upon the table—a MycenÆan vase from the tomb of Rameses III. A short silence fell between them.

"Frankly, I envy you," said Don suddenly, breaking the spell, "although I realise that actually you have suffered as deeply as many a man who has spent two years in the trenches. One cannot imagine the lyre of Apollo attuned to What's-the-name's marches."

"Two years," echoed Paul; "is it really two years since we met?"

"Two years on June the twenty-second. On June the twenty-second, nineteen hundred and fifteen, you saw me off from Victoria of hateful memory. I have been home six or seven times in the interval, but somehow or other have always missed you. I was appalled when I heard you had joined. God knows we need such brains as yours, but they would be wasted on the Somme; and genius is too rare to be exposed to the sniper's bullet. What are you doing?"

The sympathy between the two was so perfect that Paul Mario knew the question to refer not to his private plans but to his part in the world drama.

"Beyond daily descending lower in my own esteem—nothing."

"Yet you might do so much."

"I know," said Paul Mario. "But—it awes me."

If his work had not already proved him, the genius of the man must have been rendered apparent by his entire lack of false modesty. Praise and censure alike left him uninfluenced—although few artists can exist without a modicum of the former: he knew himself born to sway the minds of millions and was half fearful of his self-knowledge. "I know," he said, and pipe in hand he gazed wistfully across the valley.

A faint breeze crept through the fir avenue, bearing with it a muffled booming sound which was sufficient to raise the curtain of distance—never truly opaque for such as he—and to display to that acute inner vision a reeking battlefield. Before his shuddering soul defiled men maimed, blind, bleeding from ghastly hurts; men long dead. Women he saw in lowly hovels, weeping over cots fashioned from rough boxes; women, dry-eyed, mutely tragic, surrounded by softness, luxury and servitude, wearing love gifts of a hand for ever stilled, dreaming of lover-words whispered in a voice for ever mute. He seemed to float spiritually over the whole world upon that wave of sound and to find the whole world stricken, desolate, its fairness mockery and its music a sob.

"At the moment, no doubt," said Don, "you feel as though you had been knocked out of the ring in the first round. But this phase will pass. The point is, that you never had any business in the ring at all. No quarrel ever actually begins with a blow, and no quarrel was ever terminated by one. Genius—perverted, I'll grant you, but nevertheless genius—started this war; and we are English enough to think that we can end it by brute force. Pass the matches."

"You are really of opinion," asked Paul dreamily, "that I should be doing my utmost if I stuck to my last?"

"Unquestionably. There are a thousand and one things of vital interest to all humanity which have not been said yet, which only you can say, a thousand and one aspects of the Deluge not yet presented to the world. Above all, Paul, there are millions of poor bereaved souls who suffer dumbly and vaguely wonder for what crime they are being punished."

"Would you have me tell them that their faith, their churches, are to blame?"

"Not necessarily. The churches will receive many a hard knock without you adding your quota. Merry England has always nourished the 'Down-wither'; we breed the 'Down-withers'; and they will raise their slogan of 'Down with everything' soon enough. I see your part, Paul, as that of a reconstructor rather than a 'Down-wither.' Any fool can smash a Ming pot but no man living to-day can make one. You think that the churches have failed?"

"On the whole, yes. If we here in England are firm in our spiritual faith, why are the churches empty at such an hour as this and the salons of the crystal-gazers full?"

"Because we are not firm in our spiritual faith. But many of us know and admit that. The point is, can you tell us why, and indicate a remedy?"

Paul Mario's expression grew wrapt, and he stared out over the valley into a land which it is given to few ever to explore. "I believe I can," he answered softly; "but I dare not attempt such a task without the unshakable conviction that mine is the chosen hand."

"I am glad to hear you say it; those doubts prove to me that you recognise the power of your pen. They are fools who hold that a ton of high-explosive is worth all the rhetoric of Cicero. It was not Krupps who plunged the Central Empires into the pit, Paul, but Bernhardi, Nietzsche and What's-his-name. Wagner's music has done more to form the German character than Bismarck's diplomacy. Shakespeare's Henry the Fifth means more to England than Magna Charta."

"I agree."

"When the last of our marshals has stuck the last of his pins in the last war map, all the belligerents will still be of the same opinion as before the war began. The statesman of to-day is perhaps past praying for, but your book will help to form the statesman of to-morrow."

"You dazzle me. You would make me the spiritual father of a new Europe."

"And a new America. Why not? You have heard the call and you are not the man to shirk it. Lesser men than you have tried—all honour to them if they were sincere—to voice the yearnings, the questions, the doubts, of a generation that has outgrown its spiritual garments. All the world feels, knows, that a new voice must come soon. The world is waiting for you, Paul."

III

Flamby Duveen lay flat amid the bluebells, one hand outstretched before her and resting lightly upon a little mound of moss. It was a small brown hand and she held it in such a manner, knuckles upward, and imparted to it so cunning and peculiar a movement that it assumed quite an uncanny resemblance to a tiny and shrinking hare.

Some four feet in front of her, at the edge of a small clearing in the bluebell forest, from a clump of ferns two long silky ears upstood, motionless, like twin sentries, and from between the thick stalks of the flowers which intermingled with the ferns one round bright eye regarded the moving hand fascinatedly.

Flamby's lips were pursed up and a soft low whistle quite peculiar in tone caused the silky ears of the watching hare to twitch sharply. But the little animal remained otherwise motionless and continued to study the odd billowy motions of the brown hand with that eager wonder-bright eye. The whistling continued, and the hare ventured forth from cover, coming fully twelve inches nearer to Flamby. Flamby constrained her breathing as much as was consistent with maintaining the magical whistle. Her hand wriggled insinuatingly forward, revealing a round bare arm, brown as a nut upon its outer curves and creamy on the inner.

The hypnotised subject ventured a foot nearer. Flamby's siren song grew almost inaudible above the bird-calls of the surrounding wood, but it held its sway over the fascinated hare, for the animal suddenly sprang across the space intervening between himself and the mysterious hand and sat studying that phenomenon at close quarters.

A little finger softly caressed one furry forepaw. Up went the hare's ears again and his whole body grew rigid. The caress was continued, however, and the animal grew to like it. Two gentle fingers passed lightly along his back and he was thrilled ecstatically. Now, his silky ears were grasped, firmly, confidently; and unresisting, he allowed himself to be couched in the crook of a soft arm. His heart was beating rapidly, but with a kind of joyous fear hitherto unknown and to which he resigned himself without a struggle.

Flamby wriggled up on to her knees and holding the hare in her lap petted the wild thing as though it had been some docile kitten. "Sweet little Silk Ears," she whispered endearingly. "What a funny tiny tail!"

Quite contentedly now, the hare crouched, rubbing its blunt nose against her hands and peering furtively up into her face and quickly down again. Flamby studied the little creature with an oddly critical eye.

"Your funny ears go this way and that way," she murmured, raising one hand and drawing imaginary lines in the air to illustrate her words; "so and so. I never noticed before those little specks in your fur, Silk Ears. They only show in some lights but they are there right enough. Now I am going to study your tiny toes, Silky, and you don't have to be afraid...."

Raising one of the hare's feet, Flamby peered at it closely, at the same time continuing to caress the perfectly happy animal. She was so engaged when suddenly up went the long ears, and uttering a faint cry resembling an infant's whimper the hare sprang from her lap into the sea of bluebells and instantly disappeared. A harsh grip fastened upon Flamby's shoulder.

Lithely as one of the wild things with whom she was half kin and who seemed to recognise the kinship, Flamby came to her feet, shaking off the restraining hand, turned and confronted the man who had crept up behind her.

He was an undersized, foxy fellow, dressed as a gamekeeper and carrying a fowling-piece under one arm. His small eyes regarded her through narrowed lids.

"So I've caught you at last, have I," he said; "caught you red-handed."

He suddenly seized her wrist and dragged her towards him. The bright colour fled from Flamby's cheeks leaving her evenly dusky; but her grey eyes flashed dangerously.

"Poachin', eh?" sneered the gamekeeper. "Same as your father."

Deliberately, and with calculated intent, Flamby raised her right foot, shod in a clumsy, thick-soled shoe, and kicked the speaker on the knee. He uttered a half-stifled cry of pain, releasing her wrist and clenching his fist. But she leapt back from him with all the easy agility of a young antelope.

"You're a blasted liar!" she screamed, her oval face now flushing darkly so that her eyes seemed supernormally bright. "I wasn't poaching. My father may have poached, but you hadn't the pluck to try and stop him. Guy Fawkes! Why don't you go and fight like he did?"

Fawkes—for this was indeed the keeper's name—sprang at her clumsily; his knee was badly bruised. But Flamby eluded him with ease, gliding behind the trunk of a friendly oak and peering out at the enraged man elfishly.

"When are they going to burn you?" she inquired.

Fawkes laid his gun upon the ground, without removing his gaze from the flushed mocking face, and began cautiously to advance. He was a man for whom Flamby in the ordinary way entertained a profound contempt, but there was that in his slinking foxy manner which vaguely disturbed her. For long enough there had been wordy warfare between them, but to-day Flamby realised that she had aroused something within the man which had never hitherto shown upon the surface; and into his eyes had come a light which since she had passed her thirteenth year she had sometimes seen and hated in the eyes of men, but had never thought to see and fear in the eyes of Fawkes. For the first time within her memory she realised that Bluebell Hollow was a very lonely spot.

"You daren't hit me," she said, rather breathlessly. "I'd play hell."

"I don't want to hit you," replied Fawkes, still advancing; "but you're goin' to pay for that kick."

"I'll pay with another," snapped Flamby, her fiery nature reasserting itself momentarily.

But despite the bravado, she was half fearful, and therefore some of her inherent woodcraft deserted her, so much so that not noting a tuft of ferns which uprose almost at her heels, she stepped quickly back, stumbled, and Fawkes had his arms about her, holding her close.

"Now what can you do?" he sneered, his crafty face very close to hers.

"This," breathed Flamby, her colour departing again.

She seized his ear in her teeth and bit him savagely. Fawkes uttered a hoarse scream of pain, and a second time released her, clapping his hand to the wounded member.

"You damned witch cat," he said. "I could kill you."

Flamby leapt from him, panting. "You couldn't!" she taunted. "All you can kill is rabbits!"

Through an opening in the dense greenwood a ray of sunlight spilled its gold upon the carpet of Bluebell Hollow, and Flamby stood, defiant, head thrown back, where the edge of the ray touched her wonderful, disordered hair and magically turned it to sombre fire. Venomous yet, but doubtful, Fawkes confronted her, now holding his handkerchief to his ear. And so the pair were posed when Paul Mario and Donald Courtier came down the steep path skirting the dell. Don grasped Paul by the arm.

"As I live," he said, "there surely is my kindly coy nymph of the woods—now divinely visible—who led me to your doors!"

Together they stood, enchanted by the girl's wild beauty, which that wonderful setting enhanced. But Flamby had heard their approach, and, flinging one rapid glance in their direction, she ran off up a sloping aisle of greenwood and was lost to view.

At the same moment Fawkes, hitherto invisible from the path, stooped to recover his fowling-piece and turned, looking up at the intruders. Recognising Paul Mario, he raised the peak of his cap and began to climb the dell-side, head lowered shamefacedly.

"It's Fawkes," said Paul—"Uncle Jacques' gamekeeper. Presumably this wood belonged to him."

"Lucky man," replied Don. "Did he also own the wood-nymphs?"

Paul laughed suddenly and boyishly, as was his wont, and nodded to Fawkes when the latter climbed up on to the path beside them. "You are Luke Fawkes, are you not?" he asked. "I recall seeing you yesterday with the others."

"Yes, sir," answered Fawkes, again raising the peak of his cap.

Having so spoken Fawkes become like a man of stone, standing before them, gaze averted, as a detected criminal. One might have supposed that a bloody secret gnawed at the bosom of Fawkes; but his private life was blameless and his past above reproach. His wife acted as charwoman at the church built by Sir Jacques.

"Did you not observe a certain nymph among the bluebells, Fawkes?" asked Don whimsically.

At the first syllable Fawkes sprang into an attitude of alert and fearful attention, listened as to the pronouncement of a foreman juror, and replied, "No, sir," with the relieved air of a man surprised to find himself still living. "I see Flamby Duveen, I did, he continued, in his reedy voice—"poachin', same as her father...."

"Poachin'—same as her father," came a weird echo from the wood.

Paul and Don stared at one another questioningly, but Fawkes' sandy countenance assumed a deeper hue.

"She's the worst character in these parts," he went on hastily. "Bad as her father, she is."

"Father, she is," mocked the echo.

"She'll come to a bad end," declared the now scarlet Fawkes.

"A bad end," concurred the magical echo, its accent and intonation eerily reproducing those of the gamekeeper. Then: "Whose wife stole the key of the poor-box?" inquired the spirit voice, and finally: "When are they going to burn you?"

At that Don succumbed to uncontrollable laughter, and Paul had much ado to preserve his gravity.

"She appears to be very young, Fawkes," he said gently; "little more than a child. High spirits are proper and natural after all; but, of course I appreciate the difficulties of your position. Good day."

"Good day, sir," said Fawkes, again momentarily relieved apparently from the sense of impending harm. "Good day, sir." He raised the peak of his cap, turned and resumed his slinking progress.

"A strange coincidence," commented Don, taking Paul's arm.

"You are pursuing your fancy about the nymph visible and invisible?"

"Not entirely, Paul. But you may remember, if the incident has not banished the fact from your mind, that you are at present conducting me, at my request, to Something-or-other Cottage, which I had failed to find unassisted."

"Quite so. We are almost there. Yonder is Babylon Lane, which I understand is part of my legacy. Dovelands Cottage, I believe, is situated about half-way along it."

"Babylon Lane," mused Don. "Why so named?"

"That I cannot tell you. The name of Babylon invariably conjures up strange pictures of pagan feasts, don't you find? The mere sound of the word is sufficient to transport us to the great temple of Ishtar, and to dazzle our imagination with processions of flower-crowned priestesses. Heaven alone knows by what odd freak this peaceful lane was named after the city of Semiramis. But you were speaking of a coincidence."

"Yes, it is the mother of the nymph, Flamby, that I am going to visit; the Widow Duveen."

"Then this girl with the siren hair is she of whom you spoke?"

"Evidently none other. I told you, Paul, that I bore a message from her father, given to me under pledge of secrecy as he lay dying, to her mother. Paul, the man's life was a romance—a tragic romance. I cannot divulge his secrets, but his name was not Duveen; he was a cadet of one of the oldest families in Ireland."

"You interest me intensely. He seems to have been a wild fellow."

"Wild, indeed; and drink was his ruin. But he was a man, and by birth a gentleman. I am anxious to meet his widow."

"Of course, she knows of his death?"

"Oh, you need fear no distressing scenes, Paul. I remember how the grief of others affects you. He died six months ago."

"It affects me, Don, when I can do nothing to lessen it. Before helpless grief I find myself abashed, afraid, as before a great mystery—which it is. Only one day last week, passing through a poor quarter of South London, my cab was delayed almost beside a solitary funeral coach which followed a hearse. The coffin bore one poor humble little wreath. In the coach sat a woman, a young woman, alone—and hers was the wreath upon the coffin, her husband's coffin. He had died after discharge from a military hospital; so much I learned from the cabman, who had known the couple. She sat there dry-eyed and staring straight before her. No one took the slightest notice of the hearse, or of the lonely mourner. Don, that woman's face still haunts me. Perhaps he had been a blackguard—I gathered that he had; but he was her man, and she had lost him, and the world was empty for her. No pompous state funeral could have embodied such tragedy as that solitary figure following the spectre of her vanished joy."

Don turned impulsively to the speaker. "You dear old sentimentalist," he said; "do you really continue to believe in the faith of woman?"

Paul glanced aside at him. "Had I ever doubted it, Yvonne would have reassured me. Wait until you meet a Yvonne, old man; then I shall ask you if you really continue to believe in the faith of woman. Here we are."

IV

A trellis-covered path canopied with roses led up to the door of Dovelands Cottage. On the left was a low lichened wall, and on the right a bed of flowers bordering a trimly kept lawn, which faced the rustic porch. Dovelands Cottage was entirely screened from the view of anyone passing along Babylon Lane by a high and dense privet hedge, which carried on its unbroken barrier to the end of the tiny orchard and kitchen-garden flanking the bungalow building on the left.

As Paul opened the white gate a cattle-bell attached to it jangled warningly, and out into the porch Mrs. Duveen came to meet them. She was a tiny woman, having a complexion like a shrivelled pippin, and the general appearance of a Zingari, for she wore huge ear-rings and possessed shrewd eyes of Oriental shape and colour. There was a bluish tinge about her lips, and she had a trick of pressing one labour-gnarled hand to her breast. She curtsied quaintly.

Paul greeted her with the charming courtesy which he observed towards everyone.

"Mrs. Duveen, I believe? I am Paul Mario, and this is Captain Courtier, who has a message to give to you. I fear we may have come at an awkward hour, but Captain Courtier's time is unfortunately limited."

Mrs. Duveen repeated the curtsey. "Will it please you to step in, sirs," she said, her eyes fixed upon Don's face in a sort of eager scrutiny. "It is surely kind of you to come, sir"—to Don.

They entered a small living room, stuffy because of the characteristically closed windows, but marked by a neatness of its appointments for which the gipsy appearance of Mrs. Duveen had not prepared them. There were several unframed drawings in pastel and water-colour, of birds and animals, upon the walls, and above the little mantelshelf hung a gleaming German helmet, surmounted by a golden eagle. On the mantelshelf itself were fuses, bombs and shell-cases, a china clock under a glass dome, and a cabinet photograph of a handsome man in the uniform of a sergeant of Irish Guards. Before the clock, and resting against it so as to occupy the place of honour, was a silver cigarette case.

Don's eyes, as his gaze fell on this last ornament, grew unaccountably misty, and he turned aside, staring out of the low window. Mrs. Duveen, who throughout the time that she had been placing chairs for her visitors (first dusting the seats with her apron) had watched the captain constantly, at the same moment burst into tears.

"God bless you for coming, sir," she sobbed. "Michael loved the ground you walked on, and he'd have been a happy man to-day to have seen you here in his own house."

Don made no reply, continuing to stare out of the window, and Mrs. Duveen cried, silently now. Presently Paul caught his friend's eye and mutely conveying warning of his intention, rose.

"Your grief does you honour, Mrs. Duveen," he said. "Your husband was one I should have been proud to call my friend, and I envy Captain Courtier the memory of such a comrade. There are confidences upon which it is not proper that I should intrude; therefore, with your permission, I am going to admire your charming garden until you wish me to rejoin you."

Bareheaded, he stepped out through the porch and on to the trim lawn, noting in passing that the home-made bookshelf beside the door bore copies of Shakespeare, Homer, Horace and other volumes rarely found in a workman's abode. LÉmpriÉre's Classical Dictionary was there, and Kipling's Jungle Book, Darwin's Origin of Species, and Selous' Romance of Insect Life. Assuredly, Sergeant Duveen had been a strange man.

Some twenty minutes later the widow came out, followed by Don. Mrs. Duveen's eyes were red, but she had recovered her composure, and now held in her hand the silver cigarette case from the mantelpiece.

"May I show you this, sir," she said, repeating her quaint curtsey to Paul. "Michael valued it more than anything he possessed."

Paul took the case from her hand and examined the inscription:

To Sergeant Michael Duveen,
— Company, Irish Guards,
from Captain Donald Courtier,
in memory of February 9th, 1916.

Opening the case, he found it to contain a photograph of Don. The latter, who was watching him, spoke:

"My affairs would have terminated on February the ninth, Paul, if Duveen had not been there. He was pipped twice."

"His honour doesn't tell you, sir," added Mrs. Duveen, "that he brought Michael in on his back with the bullets thick around him."

"Oh! oh!" cried Don gaily. "So that's the story, is it! Well, never mind, Mrs. Duveen; it was all in the day's work. What the Sergeant did deserved the V.C., and he'd have had it if I could have got it for him. What I did was no more than the duty of a stretcher-bearer."

Mrs. Duveen shook her head, smiling wanly, the thin hand pressed to her breast. "I'm sorry you couldn't meet Flamby, sir," she said. "She should have been home before this."

"No matter," replied Don. "I shall look forward to meeting her on my next visit."

They took their departure, Mrs. Duveen accompanying them to the gate and watching Don as long as he remained in sight.

"Did you observe the drawings on the wall?" he asked Paul, as they pursued their way along Babylon Lane.

"I did. They were original and seemed to be interesting."

"Remarkably so; and they are the work of our wood nymph."

"Really! Where can she have acquired her art?"

"From her father, I gather. Paul, I am keenly disappointed to have missed Flamby. The child of such singularly ill-assorted parents could not well fail to be unusual. I wonder if the girl suspects that her father was not what he seemed? Mrs. Duveen has always taken the fact for granted that her husband was a nobleman in disguise! It may account for her adoration of a man who seems to have led her a hell of a life. I have placed in her hands a certain locket which Duveen wore attached to a chain about his neck; I believe that it contains evidence of his real identity, but he clearly intended his wife to remain in perpetual ignorance of this, for the locket is never to be opened except by Flamby, and only by Flamby on the day of her wedding. I fear this popular-novel theme will offend your Æsthetic sensibilities, Paul!"

"My dear fellow, I am rapidly approaching the conclusion that life is made up more of melodrama than of psychological hair-splitting and that the penmen dear to the servants' hall more truly portray it than Henry James ever hoped to do or Meredith attempted. The art of to-day is the art of deliberate avoidance of the violent, and many critics persist in confusing it with truth. There is nothing precious about selfish, covetous, lustful humanity; therefore, good literature creates a refined humanity of its own, which converses in polished periods and never comes to blows."

"What of Madame Caligula? And what of the critics who hailed Francesca of the Lilies as a tragedy worthy to name with Othello!"

"Primitive passions are acceptable if clothed in doublet and hose, Don. My quarrel with to-day is that it pretends to have lived them down."

"Let us give credit where credit is due. Prussia has not hesitated to proclaim her sympathy with the primitive. Did you observe an eagle-crowned helmet above Mrs. Duveen's fireplace?"

"Yes; you know its history?"

"Some part of its history. It was worn by a huge Prussian officer, who, together with his staff, was surprised and captured during the operations of March 1st, 1916; a delightful little coup. I believe I told you that Sergeant Duveen had been degraded, but had afterwards recovered his stripes?"

"You did, yes."

"It was this incident which led to his losing them. He was taking particulars of rank and so forth of the prisoners, and this imposing fellow with the golden helmet stood in front of all the others, arms folded, head aloft, disdainfully surveying his surroundings. He spoke perfect English and when Duveen asked him his name and rank and requested him to hand over the sword he was wearing, he bluntly refused to have any dealings whatever with a 'damned common sergeant.' Those were his own words.

"Duveen very patiently pointed out that he was merely performing a duty for which he had been detailed and added that he resented the Prussian's language and should have resented it from one of his own officers. He then repeated the request. The Prussian replied that if he had him in his own lines he would tie him to a gun and flog him to death.

"Duveen stood up and walked around the empty case which was doing service as a table. He stepped up to take the sword which the other had refused to surrender; whereupon the Prussian very promptly and skilfully knocked him down. Immediately some of the boys made a rush, but Duveen, staggering to his feet, waved them back. He deliberately unbuttoned his tunic, took off his cap and unhitching his braces, fastened his belt around his waist. To everybody's surprise the lordly Prussian did likewise. A ring was formed and a fight began that would have brought in the roof of the National Sporting Club!

"Feeling ran high against the Prussian, but he was a bigger man than Duveen and a magnificent boxer. Excited betting was in full swing when I appeared on the scene. Of course my duty was plain. But I had young Conroy with me and he pulled me aside before the men saw us.

"'Five to one in fivers on the sergeant!' he said.

"I declined the bet, for I knew something of Duveen's form; but I did not interrupt the fight! And, by gad! it was a splendid fight! It lasted for seventeen minutes without an interval, and Duveen could never have stayed another two, I'll swear, when the Prussian made the mistake of closing with him. I knew it was finished then. Duveen got in his pet hook with the right and fairly lifted his opponent out of the sentient world.

"I felt like cheering; but before I could retire Duveen turned, a bloody sight, and looked at me, out of puffy eyes. He sprang to attention, and 'I am your prisoner, sir,' said he.

"That left me no way out, and I had to put him under arrest. Just as he was staggering off between his guards the Prussian recovered consciousness and managed to get upon his feet. His gaze falling on Duveen, he held out one huge hand to him—"

"Good! he was a sportsman after all!"

"Duveen took it—and the Prussian, grasping that dangerous right of the sergeant's in his iron grip, struck him under the ear with his left and knocked him insensible across the improvised table!"

Paul pulled up in the roadway, his dark eyes flashing: "The swine!" he exclaimed—"the—ee swine!"

"I had all my work cut out then to keep the men off the fellow. But finally a car came for him he was the Grand Duke of Something or other—and he was driven back to the base. He had resumed his golden helmet, and he sat, in spite of his bloody face, scornfully glancing at the hostile group about the car, like a conquering pagan emperor. Then the car moved off out of the heap of rubbish, once a village, amid which the incident had taken place. At the same moment, a brick, accurately thrown, sent the golden helmet spinning into the road!

"Search was made for it, but the helmet was never found. I don't know who threw the brick, Paul (Duveen was under arrest at the time), but that is the helmet above his widow's mantelpiece! The men who have witnessed incidents of this kind will no longer continue to believe in the veneer of modern life, for they will know that the true savage lies hidden somewhere underneath."

They were come to the end of Babylon Lane and stood now upon the London road. Above the cornfield on the right hovered a sweet-voiced lark and the wild hedges were astir with active bird life. Velvet bees droned on their way and the air was laden with the fragrance of an English summer. Along the road flashed a motor bicycle, bearing a khaki-clad messenger and above the distant town flew a Farman biplane gleaming in the sunlight. The remote strains of a military band were audible.

"The Roman road," mused Don, "constructed in the misty unimaginable past, for war, and used by us to-day—for war. Oh, lud! in a week I shall be in the thick of it again. Babylon Hall? Who resides at that imposing mansion, Paul?"

They stood before the open gates of a fine Georgian building, lying far back from the road amid neatly striped lawns and well-kept gardens.

"The celebrated Jules Thessaly, I believe," replied Paul; "but I have never met him."

"Jules Thessaly! Really? I met him only three months ago near Bethune (a neighbourhood which I always associate with Milady and the headsman in The Three Musketeers)."

"What was he doing in Bethune?"

"What does he do anywhere? He was visiting the French and British fronts, accompanied by an imposing array of 'Staffs.' He has tremendous influence of some kind—financial probably."

"An interesting character. I hope we may meet. By the way, do you manage to do much work nowadays? I rarely see your name."

"It is impossible to do anything but war stuff, Paul, when one is in the middle of it. You saw the set of drawings I did for The Courier?"

"Yes; I thought them fine. I have them in album form. They were excellently noticed throughout the press."

Don's face assumed an expression of whimsical disgust. "There is a certain type of critic," he said "who properly ought to have been a wardrobe dealer: he is eternally reaching down the 'mantle' of somebody or other and assuring the victim of his kindness that it fits him like a glove. Now no man can make a show in a second-hand outfit, and an artist is lost when folks begin to talk about the 'mantle' of somebody or other having 'fallen upon him.' A critic can do nothing so unkind as to brand a poor poet 'The Australian Kipling,' a painter 'The Welsh Whistler,' or a comedian 'The George Robey of South Africa.' The man is doomed."

"And what particular offender has inspired this outburst?"

"Some silly ass who has dubbed me 'the Dana Gibson of the trenches'! It's a miserable outrage; my work isn't a scrap like Gibson's; it's not so well drawn, for one thing, and it doesn't even remotely resemble his in form. But never mind. When I come back I'll show 'em! What I particularly want to ask you, Paul, is to get in touch with Duveen's girl; she has really remarkable talent. I have never seen such an insight into wild life as is exhibited in her rough drawings. I fear I shall be unable to come down here again. There are hosts of sisters, cousins and aunts, all of whom expect to be taken to the latest musical play or for a week-end to Brighton: that's how we victimised bachelors spend our hard-earned leave! But I promised Duveen I would do all in my power for his daughter. It would be intolerable for a girl of that kind to be left to run wild here, and I am fortunately well placed to help her as she chances to be a fellow-painter. Will you find out all about her, Paul, and let me know if we can arrange for her to study properly?"

"You really consider that she has talent?"

"My dear fellow! go and inspect her work for yourself. Considering her limited opportunities, it is wonderful."

"Rely upon me, Don. She shall have her chance."

Don grasped his arm. "Tell Mrs. Duveen that she will receive a special allowance on account of her husband's services," he said, bending towards Paul. "Don't worry about expenses. You understand?"

"My dear Don, of course I understand. But I insist upon sharing this protÉgÉe with you. Oh, I shall take no refusal. My gratitude to the man who saved my best pal must find an outlet! So say no more. Do you return to London to-night?"

"Unfortunately, yes. But you must arrange to spend a day, or at any rate an evening, with me in town before my leave expires. Are you thinking of taking up your residence at Hatton Towers?"

Paul made a gesture of indecision. "It is a lovely old place," he said; "but I feel that I need to be in touch with the pulse of life, if I am to diagnose its ailments. Latterly London has become distasteful to me; it seems like a huge mirror reflecting all the horrors, the shams, the vices of the poor scarred world. To retire to Hatton in the companionship of Yvonne would be delightful, but would also be desertion. No idle chance brought us together to-day, Don; it was that Kismet to which the Arab ascribes every act of life. I was hesitating on a brink; you pushed me over; and at this very hour I am falling into the arms of Fate. I believe it is my appointed task to sow the seed of truth; a mighty task, but because at last I realise its dimensions I begin to have confidence that I may succeed."

Don stood still in the road, facing Paul. "Choose your seed with care, Paul, for generations yet unborn will eat of its fruit."

V

Paul Mario dined alone in the small breakfast-room overlooking the sloping lawns, waited upon by Davison, the late Sir Jacques' butler, a useful but melancholy servant, having the demeanour of a churchwarden and a habit of glancing rapidly under tables and chairs as though he had mislaid a cassock or a Book of Common Prayer. The huge, gloomy dining-room oppressed the new owner of Hatton Towers, being laden with the atmosphere of a Primitive Methodist Sunday School.

Sir Jacques had been Paul's maternal uncle, and Paul had often wondered if there could have been anything in common between his mother—whom he had never known—and this smug Pharisee. His father, who had died whilst Paul was at Oxford, had rarely spoken of Paul's mother; but Paul had chanced to overhear an old clubman refer to her as having possessed "the most fascinating ankles in London." The remark had confirmed his earlier impression that his mother had been a joyous butterfly. For his father, a profound but sombre scholar, he cherished a reverence which was almost Roman in its character. His portrait in oils occupied the place of honour in Paul's study, and figuratively it was a shrine before which there ever burned the fires of a deathless love and admiration.

Paul's acute response to environment rendered him ill at ease in Hatton Towers. The legacy embarrassed him. He hated to be so deeply indebted to a man he could never repay and from whom he would not willingly have accepted the lightest favour. It has been truly said that the concupiscence of the eye outlives desire. Tiberius succumbed to premature senility (and was strangled by Macro) in a bedchamber decorated with figures from the works of Elephantis; and Sir Jacques' secret library, which he had omitted to destroy or disperse, bore evidence to the whited sepulchre of his intellectual life.

This atmosphere was disturbing. Paul could have worked at Hatton Towers, but not upon the mighty human theme with which at that hour his mind was pregnant. For his intellect was like a sensitive plate upon which the thoughts of those who had lived and longed and died in whatever spot he might find himself, were reproduced eerily, almost clairvoyantly. It was necessary that he should work amid sympathetic colour—that he should appropriately set the stage for the play; and Fame having coming to him, not empty-handed but laden with gold, he made those settings opulent.

He did spontaneously the things that lesser men do at behest of their press-agents. The passionate mediaeval tragedy Francesca of the Lilies, destined to enshrine his name in the temple of the masters, he wrote at the haunted Palazzo Concini in Tuscany, where, behind tomb-like doors, iron-studded and ominous, he worked in a low-beamed windowless room at a table which had belonged to Gilles de Rais, and by light of three bronze lamps found in the ruins of the Mamertine dungeons.

For company he had undying memories of sins so black that only the silent Vatican archives held record of them; memories of unholy loves, of deaths whose manner may not be written, of births whereat the angels shuddered. Torch-scarred walls and worm-tunnelled furniture whispered their secrets to him, rusty daggers confessed their bloody histories, and a vial still bearing ghastly frost of Borgian contarella spoke of a virgin martyr and of a princely cardinal whose deeds were forgotten by all save Mother Church. Paul's genius was absorbent, fructiferous, prolific of golden dreams.

But the atmosphere of Hatton Towers stifled inspiration, was definitely antagonistic. The portrait of the late Sir Jacques, in the dining-room, seemed to dominate the house, as St. Peter's dominates Rome, or even as the Pyramids dominate Lower Egypt. The scanty beard and small eyes; the flat, fleshy nose; the indeterminable, mask-like expression; all were faithfully reproduced by the celebrated academician—and humorist—who had executed the painting. Soft black hat, flat black tie, and ill-fitting frock coat might readily have been identified by the respectable but unfashionable tradesmen patronised by Sir Jacques.

Paul, pipe in mouth, confronting the likeness after dinner, recalled, and smiled at the recollection, a saying of Don's: "Never trust a whiskered man who wears a soft black felt hat and a black frock coat. The hat conceals the horns; the coat hides the tail!"

From room to room he rambled, and even up into the octagonal turret chambers in the tower. Here he seemed to be rid of the aura of the dining-room portrait and in a rarefied atmosphere of Tudor turbulence. In one of the turret chambers, that overlooking the orchard, he found himself surveying the distant parkland with the eyes of a captive and longing for the coming of one who ever tarried yet was ever expected. The long narrow gallery over the main entrance, with its six mullioned windows and fine collection of paintings, retained, as a jar that has held musk retains its scent, a faint perfume of Jacobean gallantry. But the pictures, many of them undraped studies collected by Sir Jacques, which now held the place once sacred to ancestors, cast upon the gallery a vague shadow of the soft black hat.

From a tiny cabinet at one end of the gallery a stair led down to my lady's garden where bushes masqueraded as birds, a sundial questioned the smiling moon and a gathering of young frogs leapt hastily from the stone fountain at sound of Paul's footsteps. Monkish herbs and sweet-smelling old-world flowers grew modestly in this domain once sacred to the chatelaine of Hatton; and Paul kept ghostly tryst with a white-shouldered lady whose hair was dressed high upon her head, and powdered withal, and to whose bewitching red lips the amorous glance was drawn by a patch cunningly placed beside a dimple. My lady's garden was a reliquary of soft whispers, and Paul by the magic of his genius reclaimed them all and was at once the lover and the mistress.

In the depths of the house he found a delightful dungeon. More modern occupiers of Hatton had used the dungeon as a wine-cellar and Sir Jacques had converted it to the purposes of a dark-room, for he had been a skilful and enthusiastic amateur of photography; but that it had at some period of its history served other ends, Paul's uncanny instinct told him. A sense of chill, not physical, indeed almost impersonal, attacked him as he entered, hurricane-lantern aloft. For the poet that informed his lightest action dictated that the ray of a lantern and not the glare of a modern electric appliance should illuminate that memory-haunted spot.

Gyves fastened up his limbs and dread of some cruel doom struck at his heart as he stooped to enter the place. Here again the powerful influence of Sir Jacques was imperceptible; the dungeon lay under the spell of a stronger and darker personality; and as he curiously examined its structure and form, to learn that it was older than the oldest part of the house above, he knew himself to be in a survival of some forgotten stronghold upon whose ashes a Tudor mansion had been reared. Searing irons glared before his eyes; in a dim, arched corner a brazier glowed dully; ropes creaked.

Returning to the library, he found himself again within the aura of his departed uncle. It was in this book-lined apartment that Sir Jacques had transacted the affairs of the ugly little church at Mid Hatton and the volumes burdening the leather-edged shelves were of a character meet for the eye of an elder. The smaller erotic collection in the locked bureau in the study presumably had companioned Sir Jacques' more leisured hours.

Paul sank into a deep, padded arm-chair. The library of Hatton Towers was in the south-east wing, and now because of the night's stillness dim booming of distant guns was audible. A mood of reflection claimed him, and from it he sank into sleep, to dream of the portrait of Sir Jacques which seemed to have become transparent, so that the camel-like head now appeared, as in those monstrous postcard caricatures which at one time flooded the Paris shops, to be composed of writhing nudities cunningly intertwined, of wanton arms, and floating locks and leering woman-faces.

VI

Through the sun-gay gardens, wet with dew, Paul made his way on the following morning. The songs of the birds delighted him and the homely voices of cattle in the meadows were musical because the skies were blue. A beetle crawled laboriously across the gravel path before him, and he stepped aside to avoid crushing it; a ladybird discovered on the brim of his hat had to be safely deposited on a rose bush, nor in performing this act of charity did he disturb the web of a small spider who resided hard by. Because the flame of life burnt high within him, he loved all life to-day.

The world grew blind in its old age, reverencing a man-hewn symbol, a fragment of wood, a sacerdotal ring, when the emblem of creation, of being, the very glory of God made manifest, hung resplendent in the heavens! Men scoffed at miracles, and the greatest miracle of all rose daily before their eyes; questioned the source of life, and every blade of grass pointed upward to it, every flower raised its face adoring it; doubted eternity whilst the eternal flames that ever were, are and ever shall be, burned above their heads! Those nameless priests of a vanished creed who made Stonehenge, drew nearer perhaps to the Divine mystery than modern dogma recognised.

So ran his thoughts, for on a sunny morning, although perhaps sub-consciously, every man becomes a fire-worshipper. Then came the dim booming—and a new train of reflection. Beneath the joyous heavens men moiled and sweated at the task of slaying. Doubting souls, great companies of them, even now were being loosed upon their mystic journey. Man slew man, beast slew beast, and insect devoured insect. The tiny red beetle that he had placed upon the rose bush existed only by the death of the aphides which were its prey; the spider, too, preyed. But man was the master slayer. It was jungle law—the law of the wilderness miscalled life; which really was not life but a striving after life.

Realising, anew, how wildly astray from simple truth the world had wandered, how ridiculous were the bickerings which passed for religious thought, how puerile, inadequate, the dogmas that men named creeds, he trembled spiritually before the magnitude of his task. He doubted his strength and the purity of his motives. "Any fool can smash a Ming pot, but no man living to-day can make one." Dear old Don had a way of saying quaint things that meant much. The world was very fair to look upon; but for some odd reason a mental picture of Damascus seen from the Lebanon Mountains arose before him. Perhaps that was how the world looked to the gods—until they sought to live in it.

Coming out into the narrow winding lane beyond the lodge gates, Paul saw ahead of him a shambling downcast figure, proceeding up the slope.

"Good morning, Fawkes," he called.

Fawkes stopped as suddenly as Lot's wife, but unlike Lot's wife without looking around, and stood in the road as rigid as she. Paul came up to his side, and the gamekeeper guiltily raised the peak of his cap and remained standing there silent and downcast.

"A glorious morning, Fawkes," said Paul, cheerily.

"Yes, sir," agreed Fawkes, his breath bated.

"I want to tell you," continued Paul, "whilst I remember, that Mrs. Duveen's daughter, Flamby, is to be allowed to come and go as she likes anywhere about the place. She does no harm, Fawkes; she is a student of wild life and should be encouraged."

Fawkes' face assumed an expression of complete bewilderment. "Yes, sir," he said, his reedy voice unsteady; "as you wish, sir. But I don't know about not doing no harm. She spoils all the shootin', alarms the birds and throws things at the beaters, she does; and this year she stopped the hounds, she did."

"Stopped the hounds, Fawkes?"

"Yes, sir. The fox he ran to cover down Babylon Lane, and right into Dovelands Cottage. The hounds come through the hedge hard after him, they did, and all the pack jumped the gate and streamed into the garden. Colonel Wycherley and Lady James and old John Darbey, the huntsman, they was close on the pack, and they all three took the gate above Coates' Farm and come up in a bunch, you might say."

Fawkes paused, glanced guiltily at Paul's face, and, reassured, lowered his head again and raced through the remainder of his story breathlessly.

"Flamby, she was peelin' potatoes in the porch, and she jumps up and runs down to the gate all on fire. The hounds was bayin' all round her as fierce as tigers, and she took no more notice of 'em than if they'd been flies. She see old John first, and she calls to him to get the pack out of the garden, in a way it isn't for me to say...."

"On the contrary, Fawkes, I take an interest in Flamby Duveen, and I wish to hear exactly what she said."

"Well, sir, if you please, sir, she hollers: 'Call your blasted dogs out of my garden, John Darbey!'

"'The fox is a-hiding somewhere here,' says John.

"'To hell with the fox and you, too!' shouts Flamby, and pickin' up a big stick that's lyin' on the ground, she slips into them dogs like a mad thing. I'm told everybody was sure they'd attack her; but would you believe it, sir, she chased 'em out like a flock of sheep. She don't hit like a girl, Flamby don't; she means it."

"She loves animals, Fawkes, and knows them; therefore she has great influence over them. I don't suppose one of them was hurt."

"Anyway, sir, she got 'em all out in the lane and stood lookin' over the gate. John Darbey he was speechless in his saddle, like, but Lady James she told Flamby what she thought about her."

Fawkes paused for breath and darted a second furtive glance at Paul.

"Proceed, Fawkes," directed the latter. "What was the end of the episode?"

"Well, sir, Flamby answered her back, but it's not for me to repeat what she said...."

"Since the story is evidently known to the whole countryside, you need have no scruples about the matter, Fawkes. What did Lady James say to Flamby?"

"She says, 'You're a low, vulgar creature!' And Flamby says, 'Perhaps I am,' she says, 'but I ain't afraid to tell anybody where I spend my week-ends!'"

"Ah," interrupted Paul, hurriedly, "you should not have repeated that, Fawkes; but I am to blame. See to it that you are more discreet in future."

"Yes, sir," said Fawkes, all downcast immediately. "Shall I tell you what happened to the fox, sir?"

"Yes, you might tell me what happened to the fox."

"Flamby had him locked in the tool-shed, sir!"

He uttered the words as a final, crushing indictment, and ventured a swift look at Paul in order to note its effect. Paul's face was expressionless, however, as a result of the effort to retain his composure.

"An awful character, Fawkes!" he said. "Good morning."

"Good morning, sir," said Fawkes, raising the peak of his cap with that queer air of relief.

Paul set off along the lane, now smiling unrestrainedly, came to the stile where the footpath through the big apple orchard began, crossed it and stood for a moment watching a litter of tiny and alarmed pigs scampering wildly after their mother. One lost his way and went racing along distant aisles of apple trees in quest of a roundabout route of his own. Paul, who symbolised everything, found food for reflection in the incident.

He lingered in the fragrant orchard looking at a flock of sheep who grazed there, and admiring the frolics of the lambs. In the beauty of nature he always found cause for sorrow, because every living thing is born to pain. Animals knew this law instinctively and received it as a condition of their being, but men shut their eyes to so harsh a truth, and cried out upon heaven when it came home to them. He thought of Yvonne and his happiness frightened him. Gautama Buddha had left a lovely bride, to question the solitude and the sorrows of humanity respecting truth; he, Paul Mario, dared to believe that the light had come without the sacrifice. This mood bore him company to Babylon Lane, but the sight of the white gate of Dovelands Cottage terminated a train of thought. Here it was that the story related by Fawkes had had its setting.

No one responded to the ringing of the cattle-bell, and the door of the cottage was closed. In the absence of a knocker Paul rapped with his stick, and having satisfied himself that Mrs. Duveen and her daughter were not at home turned away disappointed. He had counted upon an intimate chat with Flamby, which should enable him to form some personal impression of her true character.

He returned slowly along Babylon Lane, and passing the path through the orchard, he chose that which would lead him through the fringe of the wood wherein he and Don had first seen Flamby. Evidently the wood was a favourite haunt of the girl's, for as he crossed the adjoining meadow he saw her in front of him, lying flat upon a carpet of wild flowers, now shadowed by the trees, her chin resting in one palm and her elbow upon the ground. In her right hand she held a brush, which now and again she applied with apparent carelessness to a drawing lying on the grass before her, but without perceptibly changing her pose.

The morning was steamy and still, giving promise of another tropically hot day, but Paul approached so quietly that he came within a few yards of Flamby without disturbing her. There he stopped, watching and admiring. She was making a water-colour drawing of a tiny lamb which lay quite contentedly within reach of her hand, sometimes looking up into her face confidently and sometimes glancing at the woolly mother who grazed near the fringe of the trees. Flamby was so absorbed in her work that she noted nothing of Paul's approach, but the mother sheep looked up, startled, and the lamb made a sudden move in her direction.

"Be good, Woolly," said Flamby, and her voice had that rare vibrant note which belongs to the Celtic tongue; "I have nearly finished now."

But the lamb's courage had failed, and not even the siren voice could restore it. With the uncertain steps of extreme youth it sought its mother's side, and the two moved away towards the flock which grazed in a distant corner of the meadow.

"I fear I have disturbed you."

The effect of Paul's words was singular. Flamby dropped her brush and seemed to shrink as from a threatened blow, drawing up her shoulders and slowly turning her head to see who had spoken. As her face came into view, Paul saw that it was blanched with fear.

"Please forgive me," he said with concern; "but I did not mean to frighten you."

"Oh," moaned Flamby, "but you did. I thought——" She rose to her knees and then to her feet, the quick colour returning in a hot blush.

"What did you think?" asked Paul gently.

"I thought you were Sir Jacques."

She uttered the words impulsively and seemed to regret them as soon as spoken, standing before Paul with shyly lowered eyes. The attitude surprised him. From what he had seen and heard of Flamby he had not anticipated diffidence, and he regarded her silently for a moment, smiling in his charming way. She had evidently made some attempt this morning to arrange her rebellious hair, for it had been parted and brushed over to one side so that the rippling waves gleamed like minted copper where the sun kissed them. Flamby had remarkable hair, nut-brown in its shadows, and in the light glowing redly like embers or a newly extinguished torch.

Her face was a perfect oval, and she had the most beautifully chiselled straight little nose imaginable. Her face and as much of her neck as was exposed by a white jumper were tanned to gipsy hue; so that when, shyly raising her eyes, she responded to Paul's smile, the whiteness of her teeth was extraordinary. A harsh critic might have said that her mouth was too large; but no man of flesh and blood would have quarrelled with such lips as Flamby's. She was below medium height, but shaped like a sylph and had the airy grace of one. As Paul stood regarding her he found wonder to be growing in his mind, for such wild roses as Flamby are rare enough in the countryside, as every artist knows.

"Why," he asked, "should you be so afraid of Sir Jacques?"

"He's dead!" replied Flamby, an elfin light of mischief kindling in her eyes; yet she was by no means at her ease.

"And what made you mistake me for him?"

"Your voice."

"Ah," said Paul, to whom others had remarked on this resemblance; "but you had no cause to fear him?—alive, I mean."

"No," replied Flamby, stooping to pick up her sketching materials.

Her monosyllabic reply was not satisfactory; but recognising that if she did not wish to talk about the late Sir Jacques he must merely defeat his own purpose by endeavouring to make her do so, he abandoned the topic.

"My name is Paul Mario," he said, "and I came to see you this morning."

Flamby stood up, paint-box, brushes and sketch in hand. "To see me?"

"Yes! why not?"

Flamby confronted him, her natural self-confidence restored, and studied him with grave grey eyes. "What did you want to see me about?" she asked; and in the tone of the question there was a restrained anxiety which Paul could not understand. Also there was a faint and fascinating suggestion of brogue in her accent.

"About yourself, of course," he replied, and wondered more and more because of the knowledge—borne to him by that acute, almost feminine, intuition which was his—that the girl was fencing with him, and because of her strangeness and her beauty as she stood before him, hair flaming in the sunlight, and her eyes watching him observantly.

Now, her expression changed, and her pupils growing momentarily larger, he knew that her thoughts were in the past—and that they had brought relief from some secret anxiety which had been with her.

"Of course!" she said, and laughed with a sudden joyousness that was in harmony with the morning; "you came yesterday with Captain Courtier. I understand, now."

Swiftly as her laughter had come, it vanished, and her eyes grew dim with tears. Such tempestuous emotions must have nonplussed the average man, but to Paul Mario her moods read clearly as a printed page, so that almost as the image arose in Flamby's mind, it arose also in his; and he saw before him one who wore the uniform of a sergeant of Irish Guards. Hotly pursuing the tears came brave smiles. Flamby shook her curls back from her brow, gave Paul a glance which was half apologetic and wholly appealing, then laughed again and swept him a mocking curtsey.

"I am your honour's servant," she said; "what would you with me?"

The elfin light danced in her eyes again, and in this country damsel who used the language of an obsolete vassalage he saw one who mocked at his manorial rights and cared naught for king or commoner. Beyond doubt, Sergeant Duveen had been a strange man, and strangely had he trained his daughter.

"May I see your drawing?"

Flamby hesitated. "Are you really interested?" she said wistfully, "or are you just trying to be kind?"

Paul was tempted to laugh outright, but his delicate sensibilities told him that laughter would give offence. "I am really interested," he assured her earnestly, "Captain Courtier is of opinion that you have a remarkable gift for portraying wild life."

He selected his words deliberately with the design of reassuring her respecting the sincerity of his interest. He was aware of a vague fear that some ill-chosen remark would send Flamby flying from him, the coy wood-nymph to whom Don had likened her, and that she would disappear as she had done from Bluebell Hollow. But still she hesitated.

"You look as though you mean it," she conceded, furtively glancing down at the sketching-board in her hand. "But it's a rotter."

"I'm afraid I am to blame. I spoiled it."

"No you didn't. It was a mess before you came." She glanced at him doubtfully, keeping the drawing turned away. "You see," she continued, "the shadowy part of a lamb on a sunny morning is quite blue—quite blue. Did you know that?"

"Well," replied Paul, musingly, shielding his eyes and looking toward the distant flock, "now that you have drawn my attention to the fact I perceive it to be so—yes."

"But when you haven't got many colours," explained Flamby, "it's not so easy to paint. I've made my lamb too blue for anything!" She displayed the drawing, her eyes dancing with laughter. "No man ever saw a blue lamb," she said—"while he was sober!"

The words shed a sidelight upon the domestic habits of the late Sergeant Duveen, as Paul did not fail to note; and in the masculinity of Flamby's jesting he glimpsed something of the closeness of the intimacy which had existed between father and daughter. But, taking the drawing from her hands, he was astonished at the skill which it displayed and which surpassed that of any work he had seen outside the best exhibitions. It possessed none of the graceful insipidity of the water colours which young ladies are taught to produce at all good boarding-schools and convents, but was characterised by the same vigour which informed Flamby's conversation. Furthermore, it represented a living animal, soft of fleece and inviting a caress and was drawn with almost insolent ease. Paul looked into the girl's watching eyes.

"You are an artist, Flamby," he said; "and like all artists you are unduly critical of your work."

A rich colour glowed through the tan upon Flamby's cheeks and she was aware of a delicious little nervous thrill. Paul Mario's fascinating voice had laid its thrall upon her and his eyes were far more beautiful even than she had supposed, when, confronting Fawkes in Bluebell Hollow, she had suddenly looked up to find Paul watching her. That easy self-possession which she had learned from her father and which deserted her rarely enough, threatened to desert her now; also, a poisonous doubt touched her joy. With its coming came a return of confidence and Flamby laid her hand confidingly upon Paul's arm.

"You really do mean what you say, don't you?" she asked wistfully.

"My dear little girl, why are you so doubtful of my honesty?"

Flamby lowered her fiery head. "Except father," she said, "I never knew anybody who really thought I could paint. Some pretended to think so; and Miss Kingsbury at High Fielding, who ought to know, laughed at me—after she had asked me to go and see her—and told me to 'try and find a nice domestic situation.'"

The mimicry in the concluding words was delightfully funny, but Paul nodded sympathetically. A mental picture of Miss Kingsbury arose before him, and it was in vain that he sought to consider her and her kind without rancour. Beauty is a dangerous gift for any girl, making countless enemies amongst her own sex and often debarring her from harmless pleasures open to her plainer sisters. But the Miss Kingsburys of the smaller county towns are an especial menace to such as Flamby, although charity rarely assumes the dimensions of a vice among any of the natives of England's southern shires.

"And your father had intended that you should become a painter?"

Unconsciously, he found himself speaking of the late Michael Duveen as of one belonging to his own station in life, nor did the wild appearance and sometimes uncouth language of Flamby serve wholly to disguise the blue streak in her blood.

"When he was sober," she replied, and suddenly bursting into gay laughter she snatched the drawing and turned away, waving her hand to Paul. "Goodbye, Mr. Mario," she cried. "I like you heaps better than your uncle!"

Her impudence was delicious, and Paul detained her. "You must not run away like that," he said. "Captain Courtier made me promise that I would arrange for you to pursue your art studies——"

Flamby shook her head. "How can I do that?" she asked, in a gust of scorn. Then, as suddenly, her gaze grew wrapt and her face flushed. "But how I would love to!" she whispered.

"You shall. It is all arranged," declared Paul earnestly. "The—special pension which your mother will receive and which Captain Courtier is arranging will be sufficient to cover all costs."

Flamby looked up at him, her eyes aglow with excitement. "Oh, Mr. Mario," she said, "please don't think me ungrateful and a little beast; but—is it true?"

"Why should I mislead you in the matter, Flamby?"

"I don't know; but—if you knew how I've longed and longed to be able to go to London, among people who understand; to get away from these men and women who are really half vegetables!"

Paul laughed gaily. "But you love the country?"

"I could not live long away from it. But the people! And I love the birds and the animals, and—oh!"—her voice rose excitedly—"don't kill it!"

A wasp was humming dangerously about Paul's head, and although his love of all things that had life was as strong as Flamby's, the self-protective instinct had led him to endeavour to knock the wasp away. Now, Flamby extending one motionless hand, the gaudily-striped insect alighted upon her finger and began busily to march from thence to the rosy tip of the next, and so on until it reached Flamby's little curved thumb. Holding the thumb upright, so that the wasp stood upon a miniature tower, she pursed her lips entrancingly and blew the insect upon its way as gently as if borne upon a summer zephyr.

"They only sting if you hurt them," she explained; "and so would you!"

"But," said Paul, who had watched the incident wonderingly, "if all insects were permitted to live unmolested, and all animals for that matter, the world would become uninhabitable for man."

"I know," replied Flamby pensively—"and I cannot understand why nature is so cruel."

Paul studied the piquant, sun-kissed face with a new interest. "Flamby," he said earnestly, "one day you will be a great artist."

She looked into his eyes, but only for a moment, turned and fled. There were a hundred things he had wanted to say to her, a hundred questions he had wanted to ask. But off she ran along the margin of the wood, and where a giant elm stood, a forest outpost at a salient, paused and waved her hand to him.

VII

For all the exquisite sympathy of his nature and intuitive understanding of others, there was a certain trait in the character of Paul Mario not infrequently found in men of genius. From vanity he was delightfully free, nor had adulation spoiled him; but his interest in the world was strangely abstract, and his outlook almost cosmic. He dreamed of building a ladder of stars for all earth-bound humanity, and thought not in units, but in multitudes. Picturesque distress excited his emotions keenly, and sometimes formed ineffaceable memories, but memories oddly impersonal, little more than appreciations of sorrow as a factor in that mystic equation to the solving of which he had bent all his intellect.

On the other hand he was fired by a passionate desire to aid; nor when occasion had arisen had he hesitated to sacrifice self for another's good. But such altruism was born of impulse and never considered. The spectacle of the universe absorbed him, and listening for the Pythagorean music of the spheres he sometimes became deaf to the voices of those puny lives about him. His attention being called to them, however, his solicitude was sweet and sincere, but once removed from his purview they were also dismissed from his mind; and because of his irresistible charm there were some who wept to be so soon forgotten. His intellect was patrician—almost deiform in the old Roman sense. Probably all great masters have been similarly endowed, for if in order that one shall successfully conduct a military campaign he must think in armies and not in squads, so, if another would aspire to guide Thought, presumably must he think in continents. It does not follow that he shall lack genius for love and friendship, but merely that he cannot distract his mind in seeking out individual sorrows. The physician tends the hurts of the body, the priest ministers to the ills of the spirit; Paul Mario yearned to heal the wounds of a stricken world.

But Flamby interested him keenly, and therefore he draped her in a mantle of poesy, obscuring those shades displeasing to his sensibilities; as, an occasional coarseness due to association with her father; and enhancing her charms and accomplishments. Her beauty and spirit delighted the Æsthete, and her mystery enthralled the poet. She had feared Sir Jacques. Why? Paul toyed with the question in his own fashion and made of Hatton Towers a feudal keep and of his deceased uncle a baron of unsavoury repute. The maid Flamby, so called because men had likened the glory of her hair to a waving flambeau, he caused to reside in a tiny cottage beneath the very shadow of Sir Jacques' frowning fortress; and the men-at-arms looking down from battlement and bartizan marvelled when the morning wove a halo around the head of the witch's daughter. (In the poem-picture which grew thus in his mind as he swung along towards Hatton, Mrs. Duveen had become even more shrivelled than nature had made her; her eyes had grown brighter and her earrings longer).

Word of the maid's marvellous comeliness reaching Sir Jacques, he won entrance to the cottage crouching against his outer walls, disguised as a woodman; for the mighty weald had reclaimed its own in the period visited by Paul's unfettered spirit and foresters roamed the greenwood. He wooed maid Flamby, employing many an evil wile, but she was obdurate and repulsed him shrewdly. Whereupon he caused Dame Duveen to be seized as a weaver of spells and one who had danced before Asmodeus at the Witches' Sabbath to music of the magic pipe. To serve his end Sir Jacques invoked inhuman papal witch-law; the stake was set, each faggot laid. But by stratagem of a humble cowherd who loved her with a fidelity staunch unto death, Flamby secured the Dame's escape and the two fled together covertly, through the forest and by night....

VIII

A few paces beyond the giant elm, Flamby paused, breathless, looking down at the drawing which she held in her hand. Then turning, she retraced her steps until she could peep around the great trunk of the tree. Thus peeping she stood and watched Paul Mario until, coming to the stile at the end of the meadow, he climbed over and was hidden by the high hedgerow.

Flamby looked at the sketch again, seized it as if to tear the board across; then changed her mind, studied the drawing attentively, smiled, and looked straight before her, but not at anything really visible. She was dreaming, as many another had dreamed who had heard Paul Mario's voice and looked into Paul Mario's eyes. From these maiden dreams, which may not be set down because they are formless, like all spiritual things, her mind drifted into a channel of reflection.

The memory of Paul's voice came back again and thrilled her as though he had but just spoken. She grew angry because she had imagined his voice to resemble that of Sir Jacques. Poor little Flamby, the very name of Sir Jacques was sufficient to make her shudder, to cast black shadows upon the sunny fields of her dream-world. She dared not believe that Paul's interest was sincere and disinterested—yet her heart believed it.

Almost the earliest recollection of her young womanhood was of a man's interest in her welfare; that was at the big racing stables in Yorkshire where her father had trained for Lord Loamhurst. Flamby was thirteen, then, and already her beauty, later to develop into that elfin loveliness which had excited the wonder of Don, was unusual. The man in question was his lordship's nephew, and his interest had grown so marked that Michael Duveen had spoken to him, had received an insolent reply and had struck down the noble youth with one blow of his formidable fist. The episode had terminated Duveen's career as a trainer.

Thereafter had begun the nomadic life, with its recurrent phases of brawls, drunken debauches by her father, occasional brief intervals of prosperity and longer ones of abject poverty. Lower Charleswood had seemed as an oasis in the wilderness and the employment offered by Sir Jacques too bountiful to be real. Nevertheless, it was real enough, and all went well for a season. Michael Duveen gave the bottle a go-by, and the first real home that Flamby had known established its altars in Dovelands Cottage. The understanding between father and daughter was complete and was rendered more perfect by the necessity for companionship experienced by both. Poor Mrs. Duveen possessed the personality of a chameleon, readily toning with any background; but intellectually she was never present. Why Michael Duveen had selected such a mate was a mystery which Flamby, who loved her mother the more dearly for her helplessness, could never solve. It was a mystery to which Duveen, in his darker moods, devoted himself cruelly, and many were the nights that Flamby had sobbed herself to sleep, striving to deafen her ears to the hateful insults and merciless taunts which Duveen would hurl at his wife.

Following such an outburst, Michael Duveen would exhibit penitence which was almost as shocking as his brutality—but it was always to Flamby that he came for forgiveness, bringing some love-gift which he would proffer shamefacedly, tears trembling in his eyes.

"Ask your mother to come into town with me, Flamby asthore; I've seen a fine coat at Dale's that'll make her heart glad."

It was invariably the same, and never was the olive branch rejected for a moment by his long-suffering wife. Hers was the dog-like fidelity which men of Duveen's pattern have the gift of inspiring in women, and had he been haled to the felon's dock she would gladly and proudly have stood beside her man. So the years stole by, and Flamby crept nearer to womanhood and closer to her father's heart. The drinking-bouts grew less frequent and only once again did Duveen offer violence to his wife. It was on the occasion of a house-party at Hatton Towers, and a racy young French commercial man who was one of Sir Jacques' guests fell to the lure of Flamby's ever increasing charms.

Flamby, who now was wise with a wisdom possessed by few women, and who could confound a gallant with the wit of Propertius, or damn his eyes like any trooper, amused herself with the overdressed youth, and ate many expensive chocolates. Mistaking the situation, and used to the complaisance of the French peasant, M. le Petit-Maitre presented himself at Dovelands Cottage and made certain overtures of a financial nature to Mrs. Duveen. Between his imperfect English, his delicate mode of expressing the indelicate, and his great charm, poor Mrs. Duveen found confusion, brewed tea and reported the conversation to her husband.

Michael Duveen grew black with wrath, and, taking up a heavy dish from the table, he hurled it at the poor, foolish woman. As he did so the door opened and Flamby came in. The dish, crashing against the edge of the door, was shattered and a fragment struck Flamby's bare arm, inflicting a deep wound.

Like a cloak discarded, Duveen's wrath fell from him at sight of the blood on that soft round arm. He was a man suddenly sick with remorse; and, to the last, the faint scar which the wound left was as a crucifix before which he abased himself. He did not even thrash the Frenchman, but was content with sending to that astonished gallant an acknowledgment of his offer couched in such pure and scathing French prose that it stung more surely than any lash.

Duveen's was a strange nature, and to Flamby, as her powers of observation grew keener, he presented a study at once fascinating and mournful. He had deeper scholarship than many a man who holds a university chair; he knew the classics as lesser men know their party politics; and the woodlands, fields and brooks, with their countless inhabitants, held no mysteries for him. Yet he was content to be as Flamby had always known him—a manual labourer. The larder of Dovelands Cottage was well stocked, winter and summer alike, and Mrs. Duveen, who accepted what the gods offered unquestioningly, never troubled to inquire how folks so poor as they could procure game and fish at all proper seasons. Fawkes could have enlightened her; but there was no man in Lower Charleswood, or for that matter in the county, of a hardihood to cross Michael Duveen. Furthermore, Sir Jacques, who was a Justice of the Peace, would hear no ill of him. Finally, one bitter winter's morning in the first year of the war, Flamby learned why.

Sir Jacques, for the first time since the Duveens had resided there, crossed the threshold of Dovelands Cottage, bringing a letter which he had received from Duveen, then newly arrived in Flanders. That memorable visit was the first of many; and the diabolical patience with which Sir Jacques for over two years had awaited his opportunity was further exemplified in his conduct of the affair now that he was truly entered upon it.

At his first word of greeting, Flamby read his secret and her soul rose up in arms; by the time that he took his departure she doubted her woman's intuition—and wondered. Such was the magic of the silver voice, the Christian humility expressed in the bearing of that black figure. And when he had come again, and yet again, the first, true image began to fade more and more, and she listened with less and less misgiving to the words of encouragement which he bestowed upon her drawings. Her father, although himself no draughtsman, understood art as he understood all that was beautiful, and had taught her the laws of perspective and the tricks of the pencil as he had taught her the ways of the woodland and of the creatures who dwelt there. On her sixteenth birthday he had presented Flamby with a complete water-colour outfit, together with a number of text books; and many a golden morning had they spent together in solving the problem of why, although all shadows look black, some are really purple and others blue, together with kindred mysteries of the painter's craft.

Now came Sir Jacques, a trained critic and collector, with helpful suggestion and inspiring praise. He made no mistakes; his suggestions held no covert significance, his praise was never extravagant. Miss Kingsbury, of High Fielding, the local Lady Butler, hearing of Sir Jacques' protÉgÉe, as she heard of everything else in the county, sent a message of honeyed sweetness to Flamby, desiring her to call and bring some of her work. Flamby had never forgotten the visit. The honey of Miss Kingsbury was honey of Trebizond, and it poisoned poor Flamby's happiness for many a day. Strange is the paradox of a woman's heart; for Flamby, well knowing that this spinster's venom was a product of jealousy—jealousy of talent, super-jealousy of youth and beauty—yet took hurt from it and hugged the sting of cruel criticism to her breast. In this, for all her engrafted wisdom, she showed herself a true limb of Eve.

It was Sir Jacques who restored her confidence, and Sir Jacques who seized the opportunity to invite her to study the works in his collection. The original image of the master of Hatton Towers (which had possessed pointed ears and the hoofs of a goat) was faded by this time, and was supplanted by that of a courtly and benevolent patron. Flamby went to Hatton Towers, and meeting with nothing but kindness at the hands of Sir Jacques, went again many times. With the art of a Duc de Richelieu, Sir Jacques directed her studies, familiarising her mind with that "broad" outlook which is essential to the artist. It was done so cleverly that even Flamby the wise failed to recognise whither the rose-strewn path was tending, and might have pursued it to the end but that Fate—or Pan, god of the greenwood, jealous of trespass—intervened and unmasked the presumptuous Silenus.

Like one of those nymphs to whom Don had detected her resemblance, Flamby, throughout the genial months, often betook herself at early morning to a certain woodland stream far from all beaten tracks and inaccessible from the highroads. Narcissi carpeted the sloping banks above a pool like a crystal mirror, into which the tiny rivulet purled through forest ways sacred to the wild things and rarely profaned by foot of man. In their shy, brief hour, violets lent their sweetness to the spot, and at dusk came quiet creatures afoot and awing timidly to slake their thirst at the magic fountain. A verdant awning, fanlike, swayed above, and perhaps in some forgotten day an altar had stood in the shady groves which protected all approaches to this pool whereby Keats might have dreamed his wonder dreams.

One morning as she stepped out like Psyche from her bath, and stood for a moment where an ardent sunbeam entering slyly through the bower above wrapped her in golden embrace, upon that sylvan mystery intruded a sound which blanched the roses on Flamby's cheeks and seemed to turn her body to marble. It was a very slight sound, no more than a metallic click; but like the glance of Gyges it stilled her heart's beating. She had never known such helpless fear; for, without daring, or having power, to turn her head, she divined who hid beside the pool and the purpose of his coming.

In great leaps her heart resumed its throbbing, and Flamby, trembling and breathless, sprang into the undergrowth upon that side of the pool farthest from the high bank which masked the intruder and there crouched pitifully, watching. Another than she might have failed to discern him, so craftily did he crawl away; but Flamby, daughter of the woods, saw the wriggling figure, and knew it; moreover she knew, by the familiarity with the pathway which he displayed, that this was not the first time Sir Jacques had visited the spot.

She returned to the cottage, her courage restored and a cold anger in her breast, to find her mother alternately laughing and sobbing—because Michael Duveen would be home that day on leave. Whatever plan Flamby had cherished she now resigned, recognising that only by silence could she avert a tragedy. But from that morning the invisible guardians of the pool lamented a nymph who came no more, and the old joy of the woods was gone for Flamby. At one moment she felt that she could never again suffer the presence of Sir Jacques, at another that if she must remain in Lower Charleswood and not die of shame she must pretend that she did not suspect him to have been the intruder. The subterfuge, ostrich-like, woman-like, finally was adopted; and meeting Sir Jacques in Babylon Lane she managed to greet him civilly, employing her mother's poor state of health as an excuse for discontinuing her visits to Hatton Towers. But if Flamby's passionate spirit had had its way Sir Jacques that day must have met the fate of Candaules at the hands of this modern Nyssia.

Standing there beneath the giant elm, Flamby lived again through the sunshine and the shadows of the past, her thoughts dwelling bitterly upon the memory of Sir Jacques and of his tireless persecution, which, from the time that she ceased her visits to Hatton Towers, became more overt and pursued her almost to the day of Sir Jacques' death. Finally, and inevitably, she thought again of Paul Mario, and still thinking of him returned to Dovelands Cottage.

Mrs. Duveen had gone into the town, an expedition which would detain her for the greater part of the day, since she walked slowly, and the road was hilly. Therefore Flamby proceeded to set the house in order. A little red-breasted robin hopped in at the porch, peeped around the sitting-room and up at the gleaming helmet above the mantelpiece, then finding the apartment empty hopped on into the kitchen to watch Flamby at work. Sunlight gladdened the garden and the orchard where blackbirds were pecking the cherries; a skylark rose from the meadow opposite the cottage, singing rapturously of love and youth—so that presently, the while she worked, Flamby began to sing, too.

IX

It was late on the following afternoon when the solicitors left Hatton Towers, and Paul, who detested business of every description, heaved a great sigh of relief as he watched the dust resettle in the fir avenue behind the car which was to bear the two legal gentlemen to the station. The adviser of the late Sir Jacques had urged him to keep up Hatton Towers, "in the interests of the county," even if he lived there only occasionally, and his own solicitor seemed to agree with his colleague that it would be a pity to sell so fine a property. A yearning for solitude and meditation was strong upon Paul, and taking a stout ash stick he went out on to the terrace at the rear of the house, crossed the lawns and made his way down to the winding path which always, now, he associated with Don.

An hour's walk brought him to the brink of the hilly crescent which holds the heathland of the county as a giant claw grasping a platter. Below him lay mile upon mile of England, the emerald meadows sharply outlined by their hedges, cornfields pale patches of gold, roofs of farms deep specks of grateful red, and the roads blending the whole into an intricate pattern like that of some vast Persian carpet. Upon its lighter tones the heat created a mirage of running water.

Human activity was represented by faint wisps of smoke, and by specks which one might only determine to be men by dint of close scrutiny, until a train crept out from the tunnel away to the left and crossed the prospect like a hurried caterpillar, leaving little balls of woolly vapour to float away idly upon the tideless air. A tang of the heather rose even to that height, and mingled its scent with the perfume of the many wildflowers cloaking the hillside. The humming of bees and odd chirping of grasshoppers spoke the language of summer, and remotely below childish voices and laughter joined in the gladness.

Paul began to descend the slope. In the joyous beauty of English summer there was something at variance with his theme, and he found himself farther than ever from the task which he had taken up. Almost he was tempted to revise his estimate of the worth of things worldly and of the value of traditional beliefs. His imagination lingered delightedly over a tiny hamlet nestling about a Norman church as the brood about the mother. He pictured the knight of the Cross kneeling before the hidden altar and laying his sword and his life at the feet of the Man of Sorrows. He saw, as it is granted to poets to see, the plumed Cavalier leading his lady to that same altar and saw the priest bless them in the holy name. Almost he could read the inscriptions upon the tombs which told of generations of country gentlemen who had worshipped at the simple shrine, unquestioning, undoubting. The Roundheads dour, with their pitiless creed, had failed to destroy its fragrant sanctity, which lingered in those foot-worn aisles like the memory of incense, the echo of a monkish prayer. Was it all a great delusion?—or were our fathers wise in their simplicity? In the past men had died for every faith; to-day it would be hard to find men having any faith to die for.

A shadow crept over his mind, and although in his preoccupation he failed to observe the fact, it corresponded with the coming of an ominous cloud over the hill crest above and behind him; for we are but human lutes upon which nature plays at will, now softly and gently, now sounding chords of gladness, now touching to deep melancholy and the grandeur of despair. The promise of those days of tropical heat was about to be fulfilled, and already, three miles behind, black banks lowered over the countryside turning its smile to a frown.

But even the remote booming of thunder failed to awaken Paul to the reality of the brewing tempest; it reached him in his daydream, but as a message not of the wrath of heaven but of the wrath of man. He mistook it for the ceaseless voice of the guns and weaved it into his brooding as Wagner wove the Valkyrie theme into the score of the NibelÜngen. A faint breeze whispered through the tree-tops.

Paul came to the foot of the slope; and below him ran a continuous gully roofed over by stunted trees and conforming to the hillside as a brim conforms to a hat. Entrance might be made through any one of several gaps, and Paul, scrambling down, found himself in a dark tunnel, its brown, leafy floor patched at irregular intervals by grey light reflected from the creeping thunder cloud. Right and left it went, this silent gallery, and although he was unaware of the fact, it joined other like galleries which encircled the slopes and met and intercrossed so that one might wander for hours along these mystic aisles of the hills. Below again, beyond a sloping woody thicket, lay the meadows and farmlands sweeping smoothly onward to the heath. Now, the shadow of the storm had draped hillside and valley and was touching the bloom of the heather with the edge of its sable robe. Bird voices were still and all life was hushed before the coming of the tempest. The ghostly trees bending low above the aisles whispered fearfully one to another, and about Paul was a darkness like that of a crypt. The earth and her children shrank as from an impending blow.

Several large raindrops, heralds of the torrent to come, fell through an opening above and pattered upon the dusty carpet at Paul's feet. He glanced upward at the darkening pall which seemed to rest upon the hill top. Its oppressive blackness suggested weight, so that one trembled for the stability of the chalky scarp which must uphold that ebon canopy. Paul moved further along the aisle to a spot where the foliage was unbroken, as rain began a rapid tattoo upon the leafy roof. In the following instant the hillside was illuminated wildly as lightning wrote its message in angular characters across the curtain of darkness. Life cowered affrighted to the bosom of mother earth. The raindrops ceased, awaiting the crashing word of the thunder. It came, deafening, awesome; buffeting this bluff and that rebounding, rebounding again and muttering down the valleys and the aisles of the hills. Then burst the rain, torrential, tropical.

In the emotional vision of Paul, horror rode the tempest. Man, discarding the emblem of the Cross and prostrating himself at the feet of strange idols, now was chained to a planet deserted by God, doomed and left to the mercy of monstrous earth spirits revitalised by homage and made potent again. To this gruesome fancy he resigned himself with the spiritual abandonment whereof he was capable and his capacity for which had made his work what it was: he grovelled before a nameless power which dwelt in primeval caverns of the underworld and spoke with the voice of the storm. Fear touched him, because the Divine face was turned from man. Awe wrapped him about, because the Word had failed to redeem, and a new message must be given. The Prince of Darkness became a real figure—and seemed to be very near him. As if the lightning had been a holy fire, with it enlightenment burst upon his mind, and he saw himself no longer unwanted, flotsam, a thing supine, but a buckler—a shield—one chosen and elected to a mighty task. The words of Don had first raised the curtain; now it was rent as the Temple veil and his eyes were dazzled. The Gate of Tophet had opened and Something had crept out upon the world; it was for him to cast It back into the Pit!

He seemed to grow physically cold. Again the lightning blazed; and Paul, starting as one rudely awakened from sleep, saw that a man was standing close beside him.

X

That inclination to the marvellous which belongs to creative temperaments led Paul to invest the stranger with the attributes of an apparition; he seemed to be a materialisation of the darkness which cloaked the modern world, a menace and a challenge; to stand for Lucifer. He was a man above average height, having a vast depth of chest and weight of limb, a strong, massive man. His suit of blue serge displayed his statuesque proportions to full advantage, and Paul's all-embracing glance did not fail to take note of the delicacy of hand and foot which redeemed the great frame from any suggestion of grossness. The stranger's head was bare, for he held in one gloved hand a hard black felt hat, flat topped and narrow of brim; and his small head, with close tight curls, set upon a neck like that of a gladiator, was markedly Neronian. The hue of this virile curling hair was a most uncompromising and fiery red, and equally red were the short moustaches and close-cut curling beard. It was a remarkable head, the head of a pagan emperor, rendered even more statuesque by an unusual ivory pallid skin and by large and somewhat prominent eyes of limpid golden brown.

He was staring at Paul, as Paul was staring at him; and, out of the darkness which instantly fell again, as the booming of thunder went rolling, demoniac, along the valleys, he spoke. His voice was rich and cultured.

"I fear I startled you—and you certainly startled me. I did not observe your approach."

Paul laughed. "Nor I yours. But I believe I was preoccupied, for I failed to notice the gathering storm until the rain attracted my attention."

"I can guess at the nature of your preoccupation," continued the deep voice. "Unless the illustrated press has deceived me I have the pleasure of sharing this shelter with Mr. Paul Mario."

"That is my name. May I ask if you are one of my neighbours?"

"I am called Jules Thessaly, and I have made Babylon Hall locally unpopular for some time past."

"A stormy meeting but none the less a welcome one, Mr. Thessaly. We have several mutual friends. Captain Courtier spoke of you to me only yesterday."

"Captain 'Don' Courtier?—a clever artist and I believe a useful officer. I should have appreciated an opportunity of meeting him again. He has leave?"

"A few days; but the usual demands upon his time, poor fellow. You were also, I think, a friend of my late uncle?"

"I was acquainted with Sir Jacques—yes. Mr. Mario, our present meeting is more gratifying to me than I can hope to express. I may say that I had designed to call upon you had Fate not taken a hand."

"Your visit would have been very welcome. I have been so busy with unavoidable affairs since my arrival, that I fear I have quite neglected social duties. With one or two exceptions I know nothing of my neighbours. May I count upon the pleasure of your company at dinner to-night?"

"You forestall me, Mr. Mario. I was about to ask you to come over to me. Apart from my natural interest in yourself there is a matter which I particularly desire to discuss with you. I trust you will excuse my apparent rudeness, but indeed I know you will. Social dogma is the armour of the parvenu."

Paul laughed again; Jules Thessaly was a welcome stimulant. "Clearly we have many things in common," he said. "I shall be more than glad to join you. Fascinating rumours are afloat concerning your collection of Eastern wonders. May I hope that it is housed at Babylon Hall?"

A blaze of lightning came, illuminating the two figures, showing Paul Mario's fine face turned expectantly toward Jules Thessaly, and alive with an eagerness almost boyish; showing the Neronian countenance of the other, softened by a smile which revealed small, strong teeth beneath the crisp red moustache.

"Rumour is a lying jade, Mr. Mario. My collection I admit is a good one, but there are at least three others in Europe and two in America which are better. It is unique in one particular: the section containing religious objects, totems, and gods of all ages is more complete than that of any other collector, or of any museum. The bulk of it unfortunately is at my house in London."

"In these days of air raids would it not be safer at Babylon Hall?"

"If all the gods to whom man has offered prayer cannot protect their images in Park Lane, they cannot protect them in Lower Charleswood."

"Diogenes speaks from his tub!"

"The truth is often cynical."

"I fear that life has not a single illusion left for you."

"All men work like rebels, Mr. Mario, to win freedom from youth's sweetest mistress—illusion, and spend the twilight of old age groping for what they have lost."

"Yours must be a barren outlook. If I thought all the world a mere dream of some wanton god I should lay down my pen—for I should have nothing to say."

"There can be nothing really new to say until man climbs up to another planet or until creatures of another planet climb down to this one."

"A doctrine of despair."

"Not at all—unless for the materialist."

"How is that?"

"Would you trammel the soul with the shackles of the flesh?"

"You mean that literature and art persistently look in the gutter for subjects when they would be more worthily employed in questioning the stars?"

"I mean that if literature and art were not trades, inspiration might have a chance."

"And you regard inspiration as a spiritual journey?"

"Certainly; and imagination as the memory of the soul. There is no such thing as intellectual creation. We are instruments only. John Newman did not invent The Dream of Gerontius; he remembered it. There is a strain in the music of Samson et Dalila which was sung in the temples of Nineveh, where it must have been heard by Saint SaËns. The wooing of Tarone in your Francesca of the Lilies is a faithful account of a scene enacted in Florence during the feuds between the Amidei and Buondelmonti."

Paul Mario fell silent. The storm was passing, and now raged over the remote hills which looked out upon the sea; but the darkness prevailed, and he became aware of a vague disquiet which stirred within him. The conversation of Jules Thessaly impressed him strangely, not because of its hard brilliance, but because of a masterful certainty in that quiet voice. His words concerning Newman and Saint SaËns were spoken as though he meant them to be accepted literally—and there was something terrifying in the idea. For he averred that which many have suspected, but which few have claimed to know. Presently Paul found speech again.

"You believe, as I believe, that our 'instincts' are the lessons of earlier incarnations. Perhaps you are a disciple of Pythagoras, Mr. Thessaly?"

"I am, in one sense. I am a disciple of his Master."

"Do you refer to Orpheus?"

Jules Thessaly hesitated, but the pause was scarcely perceptible. "The Orphic traditions certainly embody at least one cosmic truth."

"And it is?"

"That for every man there is a perfect maid, and for every maid a perfect lover; that their union will be eternal, but that until it is accomplished each must remain incomplete—a work in two volumes of which one is missing."

"Would you then revive the Eleusinian Mysteries?"

"Why not?"

"You would scandalise society!"

"In other words become the pet of the petty. You care as little for the institution called 'Society' as I do, Mr. Mario. Moreover, there is no Society nowadays. Murray's has taken its place."

Again the lightning flashed—less vividly; and in the glimpse thus afforded him of the speaker's face Paul derived the impression that Jules Thessaly was laughing, but of this he could not be sure. The thunder when it came spoke with a muted voice, for the storm was speeding coastward, and a light cool breeze stole through the aisles of the hills. A grey eerie light began to spread ghostly along the gallery. The ebon cloud was breaking, but torrents of rain continued to descend. Paul's keen intuition told him that Jules Thessaly was indisposed to pursue the Orphic discussion further at the moment, but he realised that the owner of Babylon Hall was no ordinary man, but one who had delved deeply into lore which had engaged much of his own attention. He found himself looking forward with impatient curiosity to his visit to the home of this new acquaintance.

"You are comparatively a new-comer in Lower Charleswood, Mr. Thessaly?"

"Yes, Babylon Hall had been vacant for some years, having formerly belonged to a certain Major Rushin, a retired Anglo-Indian of sixty-five, with a nutmeg liver and a penchant for juvenile society. He was drowned one morning in the lake which lies beyond the house, whilst bathing with three young ladies who were guests of his at the time. He was one of the pillars of the late Sir Jacques' church."

Paul laughed outright. "Do you quarrel with the whole of humanity, Mr. Thessaly?"

"Not at all. I love every creature that has life; I share the very tremors of the sheep driven to the slaughter-house. Human sorrow affects me even more profoundly."

"But you are hotly intolerant of human hypocrisy? So am I."

"Yet it may be one of the principles of nature. Witness the leaf insect."

"You don't believe it to be, though. You probably regard it as a hateful disguise imposed upon man by a moral code contrary to that of nature."

"Mr. Mario, your words contain the germ of a law upon the acceptance of which I believe humanity's spiritual survival to depend."

The elfin light was growing brighter by perceptible degrees; and Paul, looking toward the speaker, now was able to discern him as a shadowy bulk, without definite outline, but impressive, pagan—as a granite god, or one of those broken pillars of MedÎnet HabÛ. Either because Jules Thessaly had moved nearer to him, or by reason of an optical delusion produced by the half-light, the space between them seemed to have grown less—not only physically, but spiritually. The curves of their astral selves were sweeping inward to a point of contact which Paul knew subconsciously would be electric, odic, illuminating. He felt the driving force of Jules Thessaly's personality, and it struck from the lyre of his genius strange harmonious chords. He knew, as some of the ancients knew, that the very insect we crush beneath our feet is crushed not by accident, but in accordance with a design vast beyond human conception; and he wondered what part in his life this strange, powerful man was cast to play. His thoughts found expression.

"There is no such thing as chance," he said dreamily.

"No," answered Jules Thessaly. "There is no such thing in the universe. Our meeting to-day was an appointment."

XI

Jules Thessaly, like the Indian rope trick, was a kind of phenomenon twice removed. In every capital throughout the world one heard of him; of his wealth, of his art collection, of his financial interests; but one rarely met a man who actually claimed to know him although every second man one met knew another who did.

When he acquired Babylon Hall, for so long vacant, the county was stirred from end to end. Lower Charleswood, which lacked a celebrity, felt assured at last of its place in history and ceased to cast envious glances toward that coy hamlet of the hills which enshrined the cottage of George Meredith. The Vicar of High Fielding, who contributed occasional "Turn-overs" to the Globe, investigated the published genealogy of the great man, and caused it to be known that Jules Thessaly was a French Levantine who had studied at Oxford and GÖttingen, a millionaire, an accomplished musician, and an amateur of art who had exhibited a picture in the Paris Salon. He was a member (according to this authority) of five clubs, had other country seats, as well as a house in Park Lane, was director of numberless companies—and was unmarried. Miss Kingsbury called upon the reverend gentleman for further particulars.

But when at last Jules Thessaly actually arrived, Lower Charleswood experienced a grievous disappointment. He brought no "introductions," he paid no courtesy calls, and those who sought him at Babylon Hall almost invariably were informed that Mr. Thessaly was abroad. When he entertained, his guests arrived from whence no one knew, but usually in opulent cars, and thereby departed no one knew whither. Lower Charleswood was patient, for great men are eccentric; but in time Lower Charleswood to its intense astonishment and mortification realised that Jules Thessaly was not interested in "the county." Lower Charleswood beheld itself snubbed, but preferred to hide its wounds from the world, and therefore sent Jules Thessaly ceremoniously to Coventry. He was voted a vulgar plutocrat and utterly impossible. When it leaked out that Lady James knew him well and that Sir Jacques frequently dined at Babylon Hall, Miss Kingsbury said, "Lady James? Well, of course"—And Sir Jacques, as the only eligible substitute for a real notability, was permitted a certain license. He was "peculiar," no doubt, but he had built a charming church and was a bachelor.

Urged to the task by Miss Kingsbury, the Vicar of High Fielding made further and exhaustive enquiries. He discovered that it was impossible to trace Jules Thessaly's year at Oxford for the same reason that it was impossible to trace anything else in his history. One man knew another man whose brother was at Oriel with Thessaly; a second man had heard of a third man who distinctly remembered him at Magdalen. The vicar's cousin, a stockbroker, said that Thessaly's father had been a Greek adventurer. Miss Kingsbury's agent—who sometimes succeeded in disposing of her pictures—assured Miss Kingsbury that Jules Thessaly was a Jew. When war began all the county whispered that Jules Thessaly was a big shareholder in Krupps.

The constitution of his establishment at Babylon Hall was attacked in the local press. Babylon Hall was full of dangerous aliens. Strains of music had been heard proceeding from the Hall at most unseemly hours—by the village innkeeper. Orgies were held there. But Jules Thessaly remained silent, unmoved, invisible. So that at the time of Sir Jacques' death Lower Charleswood had passed through three phases: pique, wonder, apathy. One or two folks had met Thessaly—but always by accident; had acclaimed him a wonderful man possessing the reserve of true genius. Finally, Miss Kingsbury had met him—in Lower Charleswood post office, and by noon of the following day, all "the county" knew that he was "a charming recluse with the soul of a poet."

And this was the man with whom Paul Mario paced along the green aisles toward the point where they crossed that Pilgrim's Way which linking town to village, village to hamlet, lies upon the hills like a rosary on a nun's bosom.

"My car is waiting below," said Jules Thessaly. "You will probably prefer to drive back?"

Paul assented. He was breathing deeply of the sweet humid air, pungent with a thousand fresh scents and the intoxicating fragrance of rain-kissed loam. The sound of greedily drinking plant things arose from the hillside. Beyond the purple heath hung the midnight curtain, embroidered fitfully with silver, and he removed his hat that the cool breeze might touch him. Hatless he was magnificently picturesque; AntinÖus spared to maturity; the nature-worshipper within him stirred to quickness by magic perfumes arising from the breast of Mother Earth, he resembled that wonderful statue of the Bithynian which shows him as Dionysus the Twice-born, son of the raincloud, lover of the verdure.

"The world," said Jules Thessaly, "is waiting for you."

Through his abstract Orphic dreams the words reached Paul's mind; and they were oddly familiar. Who had spoken them—now, and once before? He awoke, and remembered. Don had said that the world awaited him. He turned and glanced at his companion. Jules Thessaly was regarding him fixedly.

"You spoke," said Paul. "Pardon my abstraction; but what did you say?"

"I said that when Nature endows a man at once with the genius of Dante and the appearance of a Greek god, that man holds the world in the hollow of his hand. He was born with a purpose. He dares not seek to evade his destiny."

Paul met the glance of the golden, prominent eyes, and it held him enthralled. "I do not seek to evade it," he replied slowly. "I accept it; but I am afraid."

A low-pitched powerful French car stood at the foot of the slope, the chauffeur in his seat and a footman standing beside the open door. Poised ethereally betwixt solid earth and some sphere remote peopled by Greek nature-myths, Paul found himself beside Jules Thessaly, and being borne swiftly, strongly upward to the hills. At the gap beyond the toll-gate, where one may view a prospect unique in all the county, the car stopped, perhaps in obedience to a summons of the master. From the open window Paul looked out over the valley; and a rainbow linked the crescent of the hills, point to point. Backed by the murk of the moving storm, Babylon Hall looked like a giant sarcophagus behind which Titan hands had draped a sable curtain; and it seemed to Paul as he looked, wondering, that the arc of heaven-born colours which no brush may reproduce, rested upon the hidden roof of Dovelands Cottage, crossed Babylon Hall, and swept down to the rain mist of the horizon, down to the distant sea. The palette of the gods began to fade from view, and Paul turned impulsively to his companion.

Jules Thessaly, his elbows resting upon his knees, was staring down, apparently at the flat-crowned black hat which he held in his hands. The car had resumed its smooth progress.

"An omen!" cried Paul. "The world is not past redemption!"

He spoke wildly, emotionally, not choosing his words, scarce knowing what he desired to convey. Jules Thessaly glanced aside at him.

"The world desires redemption," he said. "It is for you to gratify the world's desire."

XII

The mystery which steals out from the woods, creeps down from the hills, and lurks beneath the shadowed hedgerows at beckoning of dusk, was abroad and potent when Paul Mario that evening walked up Babylon Lane towards the Hall. Elemental forces, which the ancients clothed in semi-human shape and named and feared, moved beside him and breathed strange counsels in his ear. The storm had released uneasy spirits from their bondage in crannies of primeval hills, and it was on such a night as this that many a child has glimpsed the Folk tripping lightly around those fairy-rings which science would have us believe due to other causes than the mystic dance. The Pipes of Pan were calling, and up in the aisles of the hills moonbeams slyly sought and found bare-limbed dryads darting from the eagerness of wooing fauns. Progress has banished those Pandean spirits from the woodlands, but the moon is the mother of magic, and her children steal out, furtive, half fearful, when she raises her lamp as of old.

Between prescience and imagination the borderline is ill defined. Although Dovelands Cottage was seemingly sleeping, or deserted, Paul pictured Flamby standing by the stile beyond, where the orchard path began. And when, nearing it, he paused, looking to the right, there was she, a figure belonging to the elfin world of which he dreamed, and seemingly on the point of climbing over the stile.

"Flamby!" he cried.

She turned, descended, and came forward slowly, a wild-haired nymph; and that odd shyness which sat so ill upon her was manifest in her manner. She had expected Paul; had really been waiting for him—and she felt that he knew it.

"Were you dreaming in the twilight?" he asked, merrily.

Flamby stood a little apart from him, staring down at the dusty road. "No," she replied. "I was scared, so I came out."

"Scared? Of what?"

"Don't know. Just scared. Mother is over at Mrs. Fawkes', and it's not likely I was going with her."

"Why not?"

"She hates me," explained Flamby, with brief simplicity.

"But why should she hate you?"

"Don't know," said Flamby, busily burrowing a little hole in the road with the heel of her left shoe. Her shoes were new ones, and boasted impudently high heels. She had been proud of her arched instep when first she had worn the new shoes, and had been anxious that Paul, who hitherto had seen her shod in the clumsy boots which she called her "workers," should learn that she possessed small feet and slim ankles. Now, perceiving his glance to be attracted to the burrowing operation, she flushed from brow to neck, convinced that he believed her to have worn the shoes for his particular admiration—which was true; and to have deliberately drawn his attention to them—which was untrue. She had been longing to hear Paul's voice again, and now that he stood before her she told herself that he must be comparing her with the hundreds of really pretty girls known to him, and thinking what an odd-looking, ignorant little fool she was. Gladly would Flamby have fled, but she lacked the courage to do so.

"So you were afraid," said Paul, smiling; "but not, on this occasion, of my late uncle, I hope?"

Flamby had half expected the question, but nevertheless it startled her. A Latin tag entered her mind immediately. "O," she began—and her strange shyness overwhelming her anew, said no more.

Paul assumed that he had misunderstood her. "Pardon me," he prompted, "but I'm afraid I failed to catch what you said."

"I said 'no,'" declared Flamby untruthfully, and silently blessed the dusk which veiled her flaming cheeks. Paul Mario abashed her. She delighted to be with him, and, with him, longed to run away. She had been conscious of her imperfections from the very moment that she had seen him in Bluebell Hollow, had hesitated to speak, doubting her command of English, had ceased to joy in her beauty, and had wondered if she appeared to Paul as a weird little gnome. Now, she was resolved never to see him again—to hide away from him, to forget him—or to try.

"You are a true artist, Flamby," he said; "a creature of moods. Perhaps to-night the fairy gates have opened for you as they have opened for me. Titania has summoned you out into the woods, and you are half afraid. But the artist lives very near to Nature, and has nothing to fear from her. Surely you love these nights of the early moon?"

And as he spoke Flamby's resolution became as naught, and she knew that to hear him and to share his dreams was worth any sacrifice of self-esteem. Never since her father's death had she had a confidant to whom she might speak of her imaginings, from whom she might hope for sympathy and understanding. She forgot her shyness, forgot her new shoes.

"I have always loved the moon," she confessed. "Perhaps I thought of her as Isis once long ago."

Now it was Paul who hesitated and wondered, his respect for Flamby and for the complex personality who had tutored her growing apace.

"But in London they must hate the moon," she added, and the tone betokened one of her swift changes of mood.

"Yes," said Paul, raising his eyes, "the old goddess of the Nile seems to have transferred her allegiance to the Rhine." He glanced at the luminous disc of his watch. "I fear I am late. I shall call upon your mother to-morrow, if I may, and see if we can arrange something definite about your studies."

"Oh!" cried Flamby—"what time will you come?"

"May I come in the morning?"

"Of course."

"In the morning, then, about eleven o'clock. I must hurry, or Mr. Thessaly will be waiting. What do you think of your new and wonderful neighbour?"

"I have heard that he is a clever man and very rich; but I have never seen him."

"Never seen him? And Babylon Hall is only a few hundred yards away."

"I know. But I have never seen Mr. Thessaly."

"How very queer," said Paul. "Well, good night, Flamby."

He took off his soft grey hat and extended his hand. All Flamby's shyness descended upon her like the golden shower on Danae, and barely touching the outstretched hand she whispered, "Good night, Mr. Mario," turned and very resolutely walked away, never once looking back.

At the gate of the cottage she began to limp, and upon the instant of entering the sitting-room, where Mrs. Duveen, returned from her visit, was lighting a large brass table lamp, Flamby dropped cross-legged upon the floor and tenderly removed her left shoe. Having got it free of her foot, she hurled it violently into the kitchen.

"Hell!" she said, succinctly.

"Flamby!" cried her mother, in a tone of mild reproval. "How can you swear like that!"

Flamby began to remove her stocking. "You'd swear if you had a damn great nail sticking in your heel!" she retorted.

XIII

Paul arrived at Babylon Hall exactly eight minutes late for his appointment. In the wonderful dusk unknown to the tropics, when sun contests with moon, disputing the reign of night, he walked up the long avenue past the silent lodge, and was shown into a small room adjoining the entrance hall. Of the latter he derived no very definite impression, except that it was queerly furnished. Wherein this queerness was manifested he found himself unable to decide on subsequent reflection. But the ante-room was markedly Eastern, having Arabesque mosaics, rugs and low tables of the Orient, and being lighted by a brass mosque-lamp. The footman who had opened the door for him was a foreigner of some kind, apparently a Greek.

He wondered at his reception; for the servant merely bowed and departed, without relieving him of hat and coat. Indeterminate, he stood, vaguely conscious of misgiving and questioning the stillness of the great house. But almost immediately a young man entered whose face expressed the utmost concern. He was clean-shaven, except for those frustrated whiskers once sacred to stage butlers, but latterly adopted as the sigil of the New Bohemia. He had pleasing dark brown hair, and if nature had not determined otherwise, might have been counted a handsome brunette. His morning-dress was worthy of Vesta Tilley's tailor. Paul detected the secretary even before the new arrival proclaimed his office.

"You have missed Mr. Thessaly by less than three minutes," he said, glancing at his watch. "I am his secretary, and upon me devolves the very delicate task of explaining his departure. In the absence of a hostess—this is a bachelor establishment—the position is peculiarly unfortunate—"

"Pray say no more, Mr.——"

"My name is Caspar."

"I beg you to offer no apologies, Mr. Caspar. Believe me, I quite understand and sympathise. Mr. Thessaly has been called away at the last moment by affairs of urgent importance."

"Exactly. I am indebted to you, Mr. Mario. The news—of a distressing nature—only reached us over the telephone five minutes ago. A groom was despatched immediately to Hatton Towers, but he seems to have missed you."

"Nothing of a family nature, I trust."

"Not exactly, Mr. Mario; but a matter of such urgency that there was no time for hesitation. Mr. Thessaly is already upon his way to London. He will write you a full explanation, and for that purpose took writing materials in the car. His letter should reach you by the first post in the morning. You will readily understand that the hospitality of Babylon Hall——"

Paul interrupted him. "My dear Mr. Caspar, I could not think of intruding at a time of such distress and uncertainty. I can return to Hatton Towers in less than twenty minutes and the larder is quite capable of satisfying my modest requirements. Please say no more. Directly you are able to communicate with him express to Mr. Thessaly my sincere condolence."

"A car is at your service, Mr. Mario."

"I appreciate the kindness fully, but I should much prefer to walk. Please banish from your mind any idea that you have inconvenienced me. Good night, Mr. Caspar."

The several extraordinary features of the incident he did not come to consider until later, but as he walked contemplative along Babylon Lane he detected sounds of distant gunfire, distinct from the more remote rumbling which was the voice of the battle front. He stood still—listening. An air raid on London was in progress.

"Thank God that Yvonne is out of it," he said earnestly—"and may He be with every poor soul to-night who needs Him."

Jules Thessaly and Babylon Hall were banished from his mind, although the raid on London might very well prove to be the explanation of Thessaly's sudden departure. From the stricken area his imagination recoiled, and in spirit he stood in a quaintly rambling village street of Devon before a rose-smothered cottage, looking up to an open casement window. It was there that Yvonne was, perhaps already sleeping—Yvonne, his wife. And all the old fear visited him as he contemplated their happiness, their immunity from the horrors, the sacrifices of an anguished world. Why was he spared when others, seemingly more worthy, suffered? True, he had suffered in spirit, which is the keenest torture of all; but he had emerged to a greater happiness, to a reunion with Yvonne which had been like a second and sweeter honeymoon. It could only be that he was spared for a great purpose, that he might perform a giant task. He was permitted, untrammelled, to view the conflict, the sorrow and the agony of mankind from an Olympic height, serene and personally untouched, only in order that he might heal the wounds laid bare before him. "The world is waiting for you," Don had said. Paul silently prayed that the world might not wait in vain.

"Master of Destiny, inscrutable God, grant me light that I may see to perform the duty laid upon me. Use me, mould me, make of me an instrument. Millions have offered all and lost all. Guide my steps. If death lies upon the path I will not shrink, but suffer me to be of some little use to thy scarred and bleeding world. Amen."

The ominous gunfire had ceased when he retired to his room that night after a lonely dinner, and even the more distant booming to which he was growing accustomed was not audible. The lantern of the moon hung above such a serene countryside that thoughts of war were all but impossible, and Paul likened the heavens to the jewelled dome of some vast mosque wherein were gathered together all the clashing creeds of mankind, their differences forgotten in a universal love.

The summer days slipped by, each morning bringing a letter from Yvonne, each night a longing that it might be the last of their separation. But the affairs of the late Sir Jacques' estate were not easily dismissed, and Paul, eager with the ardent eagerness of a poet to set to work upon his task, yet found himself chained to Lower Charleswood. The place itself enchanted his imagination, and had his mind been free (and if Sir Jacques had never occupied Hatton Towers and impressed his individuality upon the house) Paul might have been content to stay—with Yvonne for a companion. But London called him urgently and inaction grew irksome.

Flamby Duveen he never tired of studying; she fascinated him like some rare palimpsest or Pythagorean problem. But Flamby was going to London as soon as arrangements could be made for her mother and herself to leave Dovelands Cottage. Mrs. Duveen had raised no objection to the proposed change; Mrs. Duveen had never raised an objection to anything throughout the whole of her docile career; and already Paul was weaving this oddly assorted pair into the scheme of that book which he projected as a challenge to the latent good in man.

Some of his neighbours he met, willy nilly, but they took no place in his mental record of things, save perhaps the place of punctuation marks, commas and semicolons for the most part, rarely rising to the definite degree of a full point and never approaching the dramatic significance of an exclamation mark. Already he floated above the common world, looking down upon its tortured contours and half-defaced frontiers—for the true poet is a fakÎr who quits his physical body at the beck of inspiration, to return laden with strange secrets.

Jules Thessaly's letter explaining his extraordinary breach of good behaviour had been characteristic of the man. For whilst it was couched in more or less conventional terms of apology, the writer obviously regarded his action as justified and assumed in Paul an understanding which rendered pique impossible. Paul's theory regarding Thessaly's sudden departure had been correct.

"The gods are all dead," ran one passage in the letter. "A shell, one of our own, fortunately imperfect, entered the upper storey of my house and rudely forced a passage through one floor and the outer wall. Some slight damage has been done to my collection"—etc.

The tangled details of Paul's legacy became disentangled at last, and he fixed a definite date for his departure. That same evening the weather broke and grey clouds veiled the stars. He was keenly susceptible to climatic changes, and this abrupt interruption of summer plunged him into a dark mood. Gone were the fairies from the meadows, gone the dryads from the woods. The birds grew mute and roses drooped their heads. He found himself alone facing a sorrowful world and sharing its sorrows. The shadow of the black hat in the dining-room portrait lay darkly on Hatton Towers.

When such a mood was upon him he would resign himself to it with all that spiritual and intellectual abandon of which he was capable, savagely goading himself to blacker despair and contemplating his own condition with the critical faculty of his mind, which at these times remained undisturbed. Whilst the rain beat upon the windows and draperies billowed eerily in the draught, he passed from the library into the study and unlocked that high black oak bureau which concealed the private collection of works artistic and literary which had informed him of the true character of his late uncle. He had caused a huge fire to be made up in the old open hearth in the dining-room and he proposed to spend the evening in building a pyre which should consume the memory of the secret Sir Jacques.

The books, many of them in handsome bindings, he glanced at, in order that no one worthy of life should be destroyed. The verdict pronounced he either laid the book aside or broke it up and threw it on to the great fire in the adjoining room. He worked for an hour, eagerly, savagely, his coat stripped off and his shirt sleeves rolled above the elbow. The collection, though valuable, was small, and within the hour the bulk of it was ashes. Paul the iconoclast then turned his attention to the portfolios of water-colours, etchings and photographs which occupied the lower and deeper shelves of the bureau.

Here he found exquisite reproductions of Pompeiian frescoes, illustrations in line and colour to divers works, as Pierre Louys' Aphrodite, the Satyricon of Petronius, and Ovid's Amours. The crowning horror of the thing was the artistic skill which had been prostituted to such ends. Technically, many of the pictures were above criticism; morally all were beyond. He consigned the entire heap of them to the flames.

Only the photographs remained, and a glance at the first of these resulted in a journey to the dining-room with laden arms. By impish chance two large and tastefully mounted panels both representing a sun-kissed nymph posed beside a pool slipped from the bundle and fell at his feet. Kicking the ash-stifled fire into a blaze, he stooped to recover them. So stooping he remained, staring down at the pictures on the floor. Then slowly, dazedly, he took them up, one in either hand. They were photographs of Flamby.

The fire roared up the brick chimney, the wind fought for entrance from above, rain beat dismally upon the high windows. The fire died down again, seeming to retire into the mound of grey ashes which it had created; and the photographs fell from Paul's grasp.

A wrought-iron poker hung from a rack in the hearth, and, his face set like a mask, Paul took the crude weapon in his hand, and slowly raised his head until he was looking up at the oil-painting above the mantelpiece. The sound of a dry and discreet cough close behind him drew his attention to the presence of Davison. He turned, a strange figure, something very menacing in his eyes. Davison glanced furtively under the gate-legged table.

"Mr. Thessaly has called, sir," he said, and held out a salver upon which lay a visiting-card.

"Where is he?"

"He is in the library, sir."

"Very good. I will join him there in a few moments."

The portrait of Sir Jacques had been spared to posterity by that admirable tradition which denies an English gentleman any display of emotion in the presence of a servant.

XV

"I have seized the first opportunity," said Thessaly, as Paul, composure restored, entered the library, "of offering a personal explanation of my behaviour."

Paul took his extended hand, waiving the proferred explanation. "Except as regards the damage done to your property, I am not interested. Had your disappearance been dictated by nothing more than a sudden desire for solitude I should have understood. If I should ever be called upon to act as you did on that occasion I should know that a friend would understand. If he misunderstood he would not be a friend. I fear I am somewhat dusty. I have been destroying a portion of my legacy."

Jules Thessaly, dropping back into the padded arm-chair in which he had been seated, stared hard at Paul.

"Not the illustrations to that portion of Scheherazade's narrative invariably expunged from all respectable editions of the Thousand and One Nights?"

Paul nodded, pushing a box of cigars across the table. "You know them?"

"I know that Sir Jacques possessed such pictures."

"I have destroyed them."

"Why?"

Paul selected a cigar ere looking up to meet the faintly amused glance of Thessaly. "They bore witness to a phase of his life which he chose to conceal from the world. I could do no less."

"You speak with contempt."

"The hypocrite is contemptible. A frank libertine may be an amusing fellow. If we do not think so, we can avoid him."

"I agree with you up to a point. But in justice remember that every man has pages in his history which are never displayed to the world."

"Very likely. But every man does not pose as a saint. Those who seek the company of a professed rake do so at their own peril. But the disguised satyr is a menace to the innocent."

"I would suggest that some specific 'innocent' occurs to your mind?"

"The adder does not bite itself. Were there no stories?"

"A few. But Sir Jacques was a model of discretion; as an under-secretary he would have glittered in the political firmament. There was a pretty village girl who promised at one time to provide the district with agreeable table-talk, but unfortunately for Miss Kingsbury and company the affair apparently fell through."

"He was, as you say, a model of discretion."

"Ah. There are records? Well, you were justified in destroying them."

"It is hard to understand."

"To understand whom—Sir Jacques or the girl? You cannot mean the girl. A man who reaches the age of thirty without understanding women is like a bluebottle who devotes a summer morning to an endeavour to fly through a pane of glass."

"You speak like an early Roman."

"What more admirable model? Consider the Roman institutions; perfect sanitation and slavery. We abolish one and adopt the other, with the result that a healthy democracy has swallowed us up. The early Romans were sages."

"You have no sympathy for Sir Jacques' victims?"

"Except where the chivalrous warriors of Prussia are concerned, and with other rare exceptions, I never think of women as victims, Mr. Mario."

"Not even in the case of an aged hypocrite who probably posed as the Platonic friend?"

"Platonic friendship is impossible up to sixty-five. The most ignorant girl knows it to be so, for every woman has hereditary memory."

"Your creed is a harsh one. You take no count of snares and pitfalls."

"Snares and pitfalls cannot be set upon the highroad."

"And how should you define this highroad?"

"As the path selected by our unspoiled instincts. It is ignorance posing as education that first blunts those instincts, dogma disguised as religion and hypocrisy misnamed 'good behaviour.'"

"You would allow instinct to go unfettered?"

"Provided it remains unspoiled. But first I would sweep the world of lies."

"Then you think the world ready for the truth?"

"I know that the world waits for it."

"Do you think the world will recognise it?"

"In part the world has already recognised it. We lived in an age which was eternally demanding 'proofs'—and which rejected them when they were offered. But the great catastrophe which has overwhelmed us has adjusted our perspective. Few of us to-day dare to doubt the immortality of the soul. We failed to recognise joy as a proof of our survival after death, but we cannot reject the teaching of sorrow."

"Love and friendship, of course, are proofs not only of immortality, but of pre-existence and the survival of the individual."

"And can you make the disciples of the clap-trap which passes for religion believe this, Mr. Mario?"

"I propose to try. But the task is hard. There are pieces difficult to fit into the scheme."

"You agree with me that the war, which was born of ignorance, will bear the fruit of truth?"

"I agree that it will bear the fruit of truth, but I do not agree that it was born of ignorance. Men did not cause the war. It is a visitation from higher powers, and therefore has a grand purpose. There are no accidents in the scheme of the universe."

"You think those higher powers are powers of good?"

"Wherever the powers of darkness walk the Powers of Light stand arrayed before them."

There was a muffled crash in the adjoining room, which brought Paul, startled, to his feet. He crossed the library and entered the panelled dining-room. The portrait of Sir Jacques had fallen from its place above the mantelpiece, breaking a number of ornaments as it fell. Davison was already on the spot and stood surveying the wreckage.

"The 'eat of the extraordinary fire, no doubt, sir," he said. "The 'ook is loosened, as you observe."

Paul stared at the man with unseeing eyes; he was striving to grasp the symbolic significance of the incident, but it eluded him, and presently he returned to the library, where Jules Thessaly was glancing at a book which he had taken from a shelf apparently at random.

"An accident?"

"Yes. A picture has fallen. Nothing serious."

"Ah. Do you know this war-writer?" Thessaly held up the book in his hand—"Rudolf KjellÈn."

"By name," replied Paul, absently. "Does he understand?"

"Up to a point. His thesis is that a great and inevitable world-drama is being played and that he who seeks its cause in mere human plotting and diplomacy is a fool. States are superhuman but living biological personalities, dynamic, and moving toward inevitable ends beyond human control."

"He is mad. All the German propagandists are mad. The insanity of Germany is part of the scheme of the world-change through which we are passing. He recognises the superhuman forces at work and in the same breath babbles of 'states.' There is only one earthly State and to that State all humanity belongs."

Jules Thessaly returned KjellÈn's work to its place. "If I do not misunderstand you," he said, fixing his gaze upon Paul, "you contemplate telling the world that the churches have misinterpreted Revelation and that Christ as well as the other Masters actually revealed reincarnation as the secret of heaven and hell?"

"That is my intention."

"Your audience is a vast one, Mr. Mario. No man for many generations has been granted the power to sway thought, which nature has bestowed upon you. Your word may well prevail against all things—even in time against Rome. You recognise that you are about to take up a mighty weapon?"

"I do. Publicity is the lever of which Archimedes dreamed; and I confess that I tremble. You think the churches will oppose me?"

"Can you doubt it?"

"I fear you are right, yet they should be my allies, not my enemies. In the spectacle of a world in arms the churches must surely recognise the evidence of failure. If they would survive they must open their doors to reform."

"And what is the nature of the reform you would suggest?"

"Conversion from nineteen centuries of error to the simple creed of their Founder."

"Impossible. Churches, like Russian securities, may be destroyed but never converted."

"Yet in their secret hearts millions of professed churchmen believe as I believe——"

"——That heaven and hell are within every man's own soul and that the state in which he is born is the state for which he has fitted himself by the acts of his pre-existence?"

Paul inclined his head. "No other belief is possible to-day."

"There are higher planets than Earth, perhaps lower. The ultimate deep is Hell, the ultimate height Heaven. The universe is a ladder which every soul must climb."

From a catechism Jules Thessaly's words had developed into a profession of faith, and Paul, who stood watching the speaker, grew suddenly aware—a phenomenon which all have experienced—that such a profession had been made to him before, that he had stood thus on some other occasion and had heard the same words spoken. He knew what Jules Thessaly was about to say.

"The knowledge which is yours is innate knowledge beyond human power to acquire in one short span of life; it is the result of many lives devoted to study. For the task you are about to take up you have been preparing since the world was young. All is ordained, even your presence in this room to-night—and mine. Where last did we meet—where first? Perhaps in Rome, perhaps Atlantis; but assuredly we met and we meet again to fulfil a compact made in the dawn of time. I, too, am a student of the recondite, and it may be that some of the fragments of truth which I have collected will help you to force recognition of the light from a world plunged in darkness."

"In utter darkness," murmured Paul. And clearly before him—so clearly as almost to constitute hallucination—arose a vision of Flamby Duveen as she appeared in the secret photographs.

"You have definitely set your hand to the plough?"

"Definitely."

Jules Thessaly advanced, leaning forward across the table. He stared fixedly at Paul. "To-night," he said, "a new Star is born in the West and an hour will come when the eyes of all men must be raised to it."