Paul's book, The Gates, was published in the spring. Answering, as it did, if not completely, the question upon the solution of which the course of so many human lives depended, it was received as great works were received in the Arcadian days of Victorian literature. It silenced Paul's contemporaries as thunder silences a human orchestra. Only two critics retained sufficient composure to be flippant. No living man commanded so vast an audience as Paul Mario, and now his voice spoke in a new tone. To some it came as a balm, to some it brought disquiet; in each and everyone it wrought a change of outlook. Following a period of strife wherein all save brute force seemed to have perished, it vindicated the claims of him who said that the pen was mightier than the sword. Copies found their way to Berlin but were confiscated by the police. A Vienna firm printed an edition and their premises were raided by the authorities. To the meanest intelligence it was apparent that one had arisen who had something new to say—or something so old that the world had forgotten it. By means of sacrificing half of his usual royalty Paul had contrived that The Gates should be published at a price which placed it within reach of popular purchase. What profits still accrued to him, and these were considerable, he devoted to institutes for the wounded and to the maintenance of Hatton Towers as an officers' convalescent home.

Because he did not seek to depict a modern battlefield, knowing that Shakespeare himself must have waxed trite upon such a theme, the hell-pit of Flanders and the agony of France were draped behind his drama like a curtain. No man had come so near to the truth in naked words. His silence was the silence of genius. The tears of the world flowed through his work, yet no weeping woman was depicted. The word of Christ and the message of Mohammed alike were respected and upheld, but priest and imÁm conspired to denounce him. Rebirth in the flesh he offered as a substitute for heaven and hell. Love and reunion were synonymous. Not for ages unimaginable could man hope to gain that final state which is variously known as Heaven, Paradise and Nirvana; only by the doing of such evil as rarely lies within human compass could he be judged worthy of that extinction which is Hell. No soul could sink thus low whilst another mourned it; and was there a man so vile that no woman loved him? Whilst there was love there could be no Hell, for in Hell there was no reunion. Pestilence and war on earth corresponded with undivinable upheavals on another planet. "Ere a man's body has grown cold on earth he has stirred again in the womb of his mother."

Only by means of certain perversions of natural law, of which suicide was one, could man evade rebirth, and even thus only for a time. Sorrow was not a punishment but merely a consequence. Punishment was man-made and had no place in the wider scheme, could have no place in a universe where all things were self-inflicted. Germany symbolised the culmination of materialism, "the triumph of the Bull." To Germany had been attracted all those entities, converging through the ages, whose progress had been retarded by abandonment to materialism. "Caligula and Nero defile the earth to-day, and others even mightier in evil. A Messalina and a Poppae do not survive individually, for such as these are not human in the strictest sense, in that they lack what is called a soul which is a property common to humanity. The parable of the woman of Corinth who seduced Menippus, a disciple of Apollonius, is misunderstood. We have come to regard all mortal bodies as the tenements of immortal souls. This is true of men but is not always true of women. Such women are not strictly mortal: they are feminine animals and their place in the scheme will be discussed later. To speak of their sins is to misuse the word. They are sinless, as the serpent and the upas tree are sinless...."

Paul had discovered that his vast scheme might not be compassed in a single book. The Gates was the first drama of a trilogy. In it he outlined the universal truth of which the churches had lost sight or which they had chosen to obscure. He offered a glimpse of the shrine but laid down no doctrine nor did he seek to impose a new philosophy upon the world. In his second book he proposed to furnish proofs of the claims advanced in the first, and in his third to draw deductions from the foregoing. In this he had made Euclid his model. Upon the necessity for a hierarchy and a mystic ritual he insisted. He maintained that orthodox Christianity had lost its hold upon Europe, touched upon causes and indicated how the world upheaval was directly due to the failing power of the churches. He proposed to remodel religion upon a system earlier than but not antagonistic to that of Christ. His claim that the systems of Hermes, Krishna, Confucius, Moses, Orpheus and Christ were based upon a common primeval truth he supported by an arresting array of historical facts. All of them had taught that man is re-incarnated, and because Western thought had been diverted from this truth and the fallacies of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory substituted for simple Rebirth, Western thought had become chaotic. The figure of the Pope and the maintenance of a celibate priesthood had prolonged the life of the Church of Rome because, in Paul's opinion, these were survivals of that mysticism upon which the remote hierarchies were builded. "No religion in the world's history has held such absolute sway over a people as that of Ancient Egypt; no figure living in the memory of man has such majesty of awe as that of the royal high-priest of Amen RÂ...."

On the day that The Gates was published, Yvonne came down late to breakfast, a gossamer study all filmy lace, with the morning sun in her hair. The windows were open, and a hint of spring lent zest to every joy, the loamy fragrance of nascent plant life stealing into the room from the little garden. Tulips decorated the sideboard, for Yvonne loved tulips, and a big bowl of pink roses stood upon the centre of the breakfast table. Paul, glancing up from the pages of the Daily Telegraph, became aware of something vaguely familiar yet unexpected in his wife's face. She seemed listless, even slightly pale, and he experienced a sudden pang of an indefinable nature. Looking back over the past two years, he wondered if they had been as significant, as fully crowded with reality, for Yvonne as they had been for him. In Don's manner, when speaking of Yvonne, he had more than once detected a sort of gentle reproof and had wondered why Don, who understood most things, failed to perceive that Yvonne's happiness lay in her husband's work. But, this morning, Paul was thinking more particularly about a remark of Jules Thessaly's. Thessaly had urged him, before commencing his second volume to spend a month in Devon. "You need it, Mario, and your wife needs it more than you do."

Paul did not immediately broach the subject which now became uppermost in his mind, but following some desultory conversation, he said, "I should think Devon would be delightful just now. Suppose we run down for a week or two."

"I should be glad," replied Yvonne. "I should have suggested it earlier, only I knew that you could not finish The Gates away from your library." She spoke in a curiously listless way.

"Could you be ready to go on Thursday, Yvonne?"

"Yes, quite easily."

"I can work upon my notes for the autumn book in Devon better than in London."

"But," began Yvonne, and stopped, staring unseeingly at the roses in the bowl upon the table.

"But what, Yvonne?"

"I was about to propose a complete rest, Paul, but I know it would be useless if the working mood is upon you."

"You realise what it means to me, Yvonne. I should no more be justified in laying down my pen whilst there was more work to do than a soldier would be justified in laying down his sword in the heat of battle. You do not feel that this task which I have taken up has made a gulf between us?"

"It has done so in a sense," replied Yvonne, crumbling a fragment of bread between her fingers. "But I have never been so foolish as to become jealous of your work."

"I might have been in the army and stationed on the other side of the world," said Paul laughing.

"I am not complaining about your work, Paul."

"Yet you are not entirely happy."

"What makes you think so?"

"I don't know. I sometimes feel that you are not."

"I am quite happy," said Yvonne in the listless voice, and presently she went up to her room, Paul looking after her in a troubled way. He was uneasily searching his memory for a clue to the significance of that expression, vaguely familiar but unexpected, which he had noticed in Yvonne's face. He lighted his pipe and went into the study.

Paul already was at work upon the second phase of his huge task. He was seeking to prove that the arts had taken the place of the inspired prophets and sibyls of old, that they were not reflections of the soul of a nation but were expressions of the creative Will—the Od of Baron Reichenbach—and were in fact not effects but causes. Not only did he claim this for the avowed philosophers, but also, in some degree, for every writer, composer, painter or sculptor. In Russian literature he perceived a foreshadowing of the doom of Tzardom and imminent catastrophe. In the literature of France and England he sought to divine the future. The fervent imperialism of Kipling stirred his emotions, but left him spiritually cold. Patriotism was the mother of self-sacrifice, but also of murder, and Paul distrusted all forces which made for intolerance. The delicate word-painting of Pierre Loti, with its typically French genius for exalting the trivial, Paul studied carefully. He found it to resemble the art of those patient, impassive Japanese craftsmen who draw and colour some exquisite trifling design, a bird, a palm tree, and then cut the picture in half in order to fit it into a panel of some quaint little lacquered cabinet as full of unexpected cupboards and drawers as the Cretan Labyrinth was full of turnings. He studied the books of the living as Egypt's priests were wont to study The Book of the Dead, pondering upon Arnold Bennett, who could produce atmosphere without the use of colour, and H. G. Wells who thought aloud. In the hectic genius of D'Annunzio he sought in vain the spirit of Italy. He perceived in those glowing pages the hand of a man possessed, and should have been prepared to find his MSS. written in penmanship other than his own, like those of Madame Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled.

"It all means something, Don," he said one day. "We have been granted an insight to the psychology of the German people, which has enabled us to trace the thread running through their literature, art and music. Oscar Wilde, who wrote, with a style dipped in ambergris, was truly a manifestation of the German spirit which began to invade us subtly at about that time. His scented prose could not conceal this spirit from the perception of Richard Strauss. Strauss recognised it and welcomed it with the music of nebels, kinnors and tabors, as the misguided children of Israel welcomed the golden calf. Nietzche's 'Thou goest among women?—Take thy whip' we see now to be no mere personal expression but the voice of the soul of Germany, a black thread interwoven in their creative art. There is a similar thread, but perhaps of silver, interwoven in our own and in the French art. Where does it begin and whither does it lead?"

Yet those days throughout which Paul laboured unceasingly for the greatest cause of humanity were lotus days for many. London was raided and rationed; London swore softly, demanded a change of government, turned up its coat collar and stumped doggedly along much as usual. Men fought and women prayed, whilst Paul worked night and day to bring some ray of hope to the hearts of those in whom faith was dead. The black thread crept like an ebon stain into the woof of the carpet. The image of the Bull was set up in many a grove hitherto undefiled, and Paul worked the more feverishly because it was one of the inscrutable cosmic laws that the black should sometimes triumph over the white.

Paul's intimacy with Jules Thessaly had grown closer than he realised. Thessaly was become indispensable to him. Paul, had he essayed the task, must have found it all but impossible to disentangle his own ideas, or those due to direct inspiration, from the ideas of Thessaly or those based upon inquiries traceable to the astonishing data furnished by his collection. Item by item he had revealed its treasures to the man who alone had power to wield them as levers to move the world. Remote but splendid creeds, mere hazy memories of mankind, were reconstructed upon these foundations. The Izamal temples of Yucatan were looted of their secrets—the secrets of a great Red Race, mighty in knowledge and power, which had sought to look upon the face of God before the Great Pyramid was fashioned, whose fleets had ruled the vanished seas known to us as the Sahara and North Africa, whose golden capital had looked proudly out upon an empire mightier than Rome—an empire which the Atlantic Ocean had swallowed up. The story of this cataclysm which had engulfed Atlantis, brought to new lands by a few survivors, had bequeathed to men the legend of the Deluge. The riddle of The Sphinx, most ancient religious symbol in the known world, was resolved; for Paul saw it to represent man emerging from the animal and already aspiring to the spiritual state.

War, pestilence and vast geographical upheavals alike were manifestations of spiritual conflict physically reflected. Some of the German philosophers had perceived this dimly, but as one born in blindness fails to comprehend light, their vision was no more than hereditary memory of another pit of doom which had engulfed them. Those who spoke of casting down the spirit of Prussian militarism used metaphor veiling a truth profound as that which underlies the Holy Trinity, and which is symbolised by the Sphinx. As vultures swooped to carrion, as harlots flocked to Babylon, so had the unredeemed souls of the universe descended upon Germany....

Thus his concept of evil was universal, and to those who sought to fix "responsibility" for the war upon this one or that he raised a protesting hand. No man made the Deluge.

By subtle means, insidious as the breath of nard, corruption of primeval sin was spread from race to race. By like means it must be combated, Truth must be disguised if it should penetrate to enemy darkness. A naked truth is rarely acceptable, or, as Don expressed it, "Truth does not strip well." Paul discussed this aspect of the matter with Don and Thessaly one day. "We are all children," he said. "If it were not for such picturesque people as Henry VIII and Charles II we should forget our history for lack of landmarks. Carefully selected words are the writer's landmarks, and in remembering them one remembers the passage which they decorated. I can conjure up at will the entire philosophy of Buddha as epitomised in the Light of Asia by contemplation of such a landmark; Arnold's expression for a sheep, 'woolly mother.' There are other words and phrases which the art of their users in the same way has magically endowed: 'Totem' is one of these. It is for me a Pharos instantly opening up the fairway to a great man's philosophy. 'Damascus,' too, has such properties, and the phrase 'cherry blossom in Japan' bears me upon a magical carpet to a certain street in Yokohama and there unveils to me all the secrets of Japanese mysticism."

"I quite see your point," Don replied. "In the same way I have never ceased to regret that I was not born in Ashby-de-la-Zouch. The possession of such a euphonious birthplace would have coloured all my life."

"But like the Scotsman you would have revered your home from a distance," said Thessaly. "I agree with you that it would have been an ideal birthplace if you had left it at so tender an age that you failed to recall its physical peculiarities. It is the same with women. In order that one should retain nothing but fairy memories of a woman—memories of some poetic name, of the perfume of roses, of beauty glimpsed through gossamer—it is important that one should not have lived with her. Herein lies the lasting glamour of the woman we have never possessed."

II

The world had been discussing Paul Mario's New Gospel as enunciated in The Gates for three weeks or more. On a bright morning when sunbeams filtered through the dust which partially curtained the windows of Guilder's, and painted golden squares and rectangles upon the floor, Flamby stood where the light touched her elfin hair into torch-like flame, removing a very smart studio smock preparatory to departing to Regali's for lunch. There was no one else in the small painting-room, except a wondrous-hued parrakeet upon a perch, from which he contemplated his portrait in oils, head knowingly tilted to one side, with solemn disapproval for Flamby had painted his bill too red and he knew it, apparently.

"Bad," he remarked. "Damn bad."

He belonged to Crozier, the artist famed for "sun-soaked flesh," and Crozier's pupils were all too familiar with this formula. It was so often upon Crozier's lips that Lorenzo the Magnificent (the parrakeet) had acquired it perfectly.

"Quite right, Lorenzo," said Flamby, throwing her smock on to a stool. "It's blasted bad."

"Damn bad," corrected Lorenzo. "No guts."

"I don't agree with you there, Lorenzo. It's your nose that I hate."

"No sun!" screamed Lorenzo, excitedly. "The bloodsome thing never saw the sun!"

"Oh, please behave, Lorenzo, or I shall not share my sugar ration with you any more."

"Sugar?" inquired Lorenzo, head on one side again.

Flamby held up a lump of sugar upon her small pink palm, and a silence of contentment immediately descended upon Lorenzo, only broken by the sound of munching. Flamby was just going out to wash the paint from her hands, for she always contrived to get nearly as much upon her fingers as upon the canvas, when a cheery voice cried: "Ha! caught you. Thought I might be too late."

She turned, and there in the doorway stood Don. Less than three months had elapsed since his last leave and Flamby was intensely surprised to see him. She came forward with outstretched hands. "Oh, Don," she cried. "How lovely! However did you manage it?"

An exquisite blush stained her cheeks, and her eyes lighted up happily. Glad surprises made her blush, and she was very sincerely glad as well as surprised to see Don. She had not even heard him approach. She had been wondering what Devonshire was like, for Paul was in Devonshire. Now as Don took both her hands and smiled in the old joyous way she thought that he looked ill, almost cadaverous, in spite of the tan which clung to his skin.

"Craft, Flamby, guile and the subtlety of the serpent. The best men get the worst leave."

"I don't believe it," said Flamby, watching him in sudden anxiety. "You have been ill. Oh, don't think you can pretend to me; I can see you have."

"Bad," remarked Lorenzo in cordial agreement. He had finished the sugar. "Damn bad."

"What!" cried Don—"have you got old Crozier's Lorenzo down here? Hullo! let us see how you have 'percepted' him." He crossed to the easel, surveying Flamby's painting critically. "Does Hammett still talk about 'percepting the subject' and 'emerging the high-lights' and 'profunding the shadows'?"

"He does. You're mean not to tell me."

"What do you want me to tell you, Flamby?—that the drawing is magnificent and the painting brilliant except for the treatment of the bill, which is too brilliant." He turned and met her reproachful gaze. "Perhaps I am mean, Flamby, to frighten you by not replying to your question, but really I am quite fit. I have had a touch of trench-fever or something, not enough to result in being sent home to hospital, and have now got a few days' sick-leave to pull round after a course of weak gruel."

"That's very unusual, isn't it?"

"What, Flamby?"

"To get home leave after treatment at a base hospital? I mean they might as well have sent you home in the first place."

Don stared at her long and seriously. "Flamby," he said, "you have been flirting with junior subalterns. No one above the rank of a second-lieutenant ever knew so much about King's Regulations."

"Own up, then."

Don continued the serious stare. "Flamby," he said, "your father would have been proud of you. You are a very clever girl. If art fails there is always the Bar. I am not advising you to take to drink; I refer to the law. Listen, Flamby, I was wrong to try to deceive you as well as the others. Besides, it is not necessary. You are unusual. I stopped a stray piece of shrapnel a fortnight after I went back and was sent to a hospital in Burton-on-Trent. The M.O.'s have a positive genius for sending men to spots remote from their homes and kindreds—appalling sentence. In this case it was a blessing in disguise. By some muddle or another my name was omitted from the casualty list, or rather it was printed as 'Norton,' and never corrected publicly. I accepted the kindness of the gods. Imagine my relief. I had pictured sisters and cousins and the dear old Aunt dragging themselves to Burton-on-Trent—and I am the only beer drinker in the family. I know you won't betray my gruesome secret, Flamby."

Flamby's eyes were so misty that she averted her face. "Oh, Don," she said unsteadily, "and I wrote to you only three days ago and thought you were safe."

Don unbuttoned the left breast-pocket of his tunic and flourished a letter triumphantly. "Young Conroy has been forwarding all my mail," he explained, "and I have addressed my letters from nowhere in particular and sent them to him to be posted! Now, what about the guile and subtlety of the serpent! Let us take counsel with the great Severus Regali. I am allowed a little clear soup and an omelette, now."

Don and Flamby arrived late at Regali's and were compelled to wait for a time in the little inner room. There were many familiar faces around the tables. Chauvin was there with Madame Rilette, the human geranium, and Hammett; Wildrake, editor of the Quartre d'Arts revue and the Baronne G., Paris's smartest and most up-to-date lady novelist. The Baronne had been married four times. Her latest hobby was libel actions. Archibald Forester, renowned as an explorer of the psychic borderland, and wearing green tabs and a crown upon his shoulder-strap, discussed matters Alpine with an Italian artillery officer. On the whole the atmosphere was distinctly Savage that day. Flamby accepted a cigarette from Don and sat for awhile, pensive. With a jade-green velvet tam-o'-shanter to set off the coppery high-lights of her hair she was a picture worthy of the admiration which was discernible in Don's eyes. Presently she said, "I found you out a long time ago."

"Found me out?"

"Yes, found you out. I don't know to this day how much I really receive from the War Office, because Mr. Nevin won't tell me. He just muddles me up with a lot of figures——"

"You have seen him, then?"

"Of course I have seen him. But one thing I do know. I owe you over a hundred pounds, and I am going to pay it!"

"But, Flamby," said Don, a startled expression appearing upon his face, "you don't owe it to me at all. You are wrong."

Flamby studied him carefully for awhile. "I am going to send it to Mr. Nevin—I have told him so—and he can settle the matter." She laid her hand on Don's sleeve. "Don't think me silly, or an ungrateful little beast," she said, "but I can't talk about it any more; it makes me want to cry. Did you know that Chauvin got me a commission from the War Office propaganda people to do pictures of horses and mules and things?"

"Yes," replied Don, guiltily. But to his great relief Flamby did not accuse him of being concerned in the matter.

"I felt a rotten little slacker," explained Flamby; "I wrote and told you so. Did you get the letter?"

"Of course. Surely I replied?"

"I don't remember if you did, but I told Chauvin and he recommended my work to them and they said I could do twelve drawings. They accepted the first three I did, but rejected the fourth, which both Hammett and Chauvin thought the best."

"Probably it was. That was why they rejected it. But about this money——"

"Please," pleaded Flamby.

Don looked into her eyes and was silenced. He suppressed a sigh. "Have you seen Paul lately?" he asked.

"No. He is away. His book frightens me."

"Frightens you," said Don, staring curiously. "In what way?"

"I don't know that I can explain. I feel afraid for him."

"For Paul?"

"Yes."

"Because he has seen the truth?"

Flamby hesitated. "It must be awful for a doctor who has specialised in some dreadful disease to find——"

"That he suffers from it? This is a common thing with specialists." Don spoke almost heedlessly, but had no sooner spoken than he became aware of the peculiar significance of his words. He sat staring silently at Flamby. Before he had time for further speech Regali attended in person to announce that places were vacant at one of the tables. This table Don and Flamby shared with a lady wearing her hair dressed in imitation of a yellow dahlia, and with a prominent colourist who was devoting his life to dissipating the popular delusion about trees being green. He was gradually educating the world to comprehend that trees were not green but blue. He had a very long nose and ate French mustard with his macaroni. The conversation became cubical and coloured.

"I maintain," said the colourist, who was fiercely cynical, as might have been anticipated of one who consumed such large quantities of mustard, "that humanity is akin to the worm. The myth of Psyche and the idea that we possess souls arose simply out of the contemplation of colour by some primitive sensitive. Very delicately coloured young girls were responsible for the legend, but humanity in the bulk is colourless and therefore soulless. Large public gatherings fill me with intense personal disgust. From Nelson's point of view, a popular demonstration in Trafalgar Square must unpleasantly resemble a box of bait."

"Clearly you have never loved," said Don. "One day some misguided woman may marry you. You will awaken to the discovery that she is different from common humanity."

"Nearly every man considers his own wife to be different from other women—until the third or fourth, day of the honeymoon."

He was incorrigible; French mustard had embittered his life. "Some men are even more gross than women," he declared thoughtfully. "Cubically they are stronger, but their colouring is less delicate."

His yellow-haired companion watched him with limpid faithful brown eyes, hanging upon his words as upon the pronouncements of a Cumaean oracle. Having concluded his luncheon with a piece of cheese liberally coated in mustard he rose, shaking his head sadly.

"Don't shake your head like that," Don implored him. "I can hear your brains rattling."

But smileless, the cynic departed, and Flamby looked after him without regret. "If he painted as much as he talked," she said, "he would have to hire a railway station to show his pictures."

"Yes, or the offices of the Food Controller. His conversation is intensely interesting, but it doesn't mean anything. I have always suspected him of keeping coal in his bath."

Orlando James came in, standing just by the doorway, one hand resting upon his hip whilst he gnawed the nails of the other with his fine white teeth. He wore the colours of a regiment with which he had served for a time, and a silver badge on the right lapel of his tweed jacket. Presently, perceiving Flamby, he advanced to the table at which she was seated with Don. He had all the arrogance of acknowledged superiority. "Hullo, kid," he said, dropping into the chair vacated by the cynical one. "How do, Courtier. You look a bit cheap—been gassed?"

"No," replied Don; "merely a stiff neck due to sleeping with my head above the parapet."

James stared dully, continuing to bite his nails. "When are you going back?"

"As soon as my batman wires me that the weather has improved."

"Have you finished lunch? Let's split a bottle of wine before you go."

"No bottle of wine for me," said Flamby, "unless you want the police in. One glass of wine and you'd be ashamed to know me." She was uncomfortably conscious of a certain tension which the presence of James had created. "Isn't it time we started?" she asked, turning to Don. "Mrs. Chumley will be expecting us."

"Ah!" cried Don gratefully, glancing at his watch. "Of course she will. Where is the waiter?"

"You don't like James, do you?" said Flamby, as the car approached The Hostel.

"No. Vanity in a man is ridiculous, and I always endeavour to avoid ridiculous people. James is a clever painter, but a very stupid fellow. Seeing him to-day reminds me of something I had meant to ask you, Flamby. Just before I last came on leave you wrote at Paul's request to enquire if I considered it wise that you should go about with James and we discussed the point whilst I was home. You remember, no doubt?"

Flamby nodded. Her expression was very pensive. "Then I wrote and asked if you minded my seeing him occasionally for a special purpose, and you wrote back that you had every confidence in my discretion, which pleased me very much. Now I suppose you want to know what the special purpose was?"

"Not unless you wish to tell me, Flamby."

"I do wish to tell you," said Flamby slowly. "That was why I suggested coming here, because I knew all the time of course that Mrs. Chumley was away."

They entered The Hostel, deserted as it usually was at that hour of the day, passing into the courtyard, which already was gay with the flowers of early spring. The window-boxes, too, and vases within open casements splashed patches of colour upon the old-world canvas, the yellow and purple of crocus and daffodil, modest star-blue of forget-me-nots and the varied tints of sweet hyacinth. Flamby's tiny house, which Mrs. Chumley called "the squirrel's nest," was fragrant with roses, for Flamby's taste in flowers was extravagant, and she regularly exhausted the stocks of the local florist. A huge basket of white roses stood upon a side-table, a card attached. Flamby glanced at the card. "James again," she said. "He's some use in the world after all." She composedly filled a jug with water and placed the flowers in it until she should have time to arrange them.

"Is Chauvin expecting you this afternoon?" asked Don.

"No, not to-day. I love Chauvin, but I don't think I shall be able to stay on with him if I am to finish the other eight designs for the War Office people in time. Please light your pipe. Would you like a drink? I've got all sorts of things to drink."

"No, thank you, Flamby. We can go out to tea presently."

"No, let's have tea here. I have some gorgeous cakes I got at Fullers' this morning."

"Right. Better still. I will help."

Flamby tossed her tam-o'-shanter on to a chair, slapped the pockets of Don's tunic in quest of his cigarette-case, found it, took out and lighted a cigarette, and then curled herself up in a corner of the settee, hugging her knees. "Paul thinks I'm fast," she said.

Don, who was lighting his pipe, stared at her so long that the match burned his fingers and dropped into his cap, which lay beside him on the floor.

Flamby's visitors speedily acquired the homely trick of hanging up their hats on the floor. "Flamby!" he said reproachfully, "I know you are joking, but I don't like you to say such a thing even in jest."

"Dulce est desipere," replied Flamby, "but I am not jesting. Oh, that beastly Latin! Do you remember when I quoted Portia to you? It makes me go all goosey to think of some of the awful things I have said to people."

"You have said one thing, Flamby, which I must request you to explain," said Don gravely. "Paul is utterly incapable of harbouring an evil thought about anyone, and equally incapable of misjudging character."

"Ah, I knew you would say that, Don, and it is just that which worries me so."

"I don't understand."

Flamby snuggled her knees up tighter against her round chin and stared wistfully straight before her. A ray from the afternoon sun intruded through the window and touched her wonderful hair into magic flame. "Paul has altered the lives of a lot of people, hasn't he?" she asked.

"He has. I cannot doubt that he will become the centre of a world-wide movement. I received a letter only two days ago from a man who was with us at Oxford, and who entered the Church, assuring me that he had only awaited such a lead to resign his office and seek independently to spread the true doctrine. He is only one of many. I know several Army chaplains who have been troubled with serious doubts for years. They will rally to Paul as the Crusaders rallied to Peter the Hermit."

"I read his book," said Flamby, still staring unseeingly before her, "and something inside myself told me that every word of it was true. I know that I have lived before, everybody knows it, but everybody isn't able to realise it. Dad told me that re-incarnation was the secret of life once when I asked him who his father was. He said, 'Never mind about that. Damn your ancestors!...' Oh! I didn't mean to say it! But, really he said that. 'It is your spiritual ancestry that counts,' he told me. 'There are plenty of noble blackguards, and it wasn't his parents who made a poet of Keats.' Dad convinced me in a wonderful way. He pointed out that a child born of a fine cultured family and one whose father was a thief and his mother something worse didn't start level at all. One was handicapped before he had the sense to think for himself; 'before he weighed in,' was how dad put it. 'If there is a just God,' he said—'and every man finds out sooner or later that there is, to his joy or to his sorrow—there are no unfair handicaps. It wouldn't be racing. Why should an innocent baby be born with the diseases and deformities of it's parents? Why should some be born blind?' What he called 'the hell-fire and brimstone' theory used to make him sick. He considered that most missionaries ought to be publicly executed, and said that in the Far East where he had lived you could see their work 'like the trail of a tin tabernacle across a blasted heath.' That sounds like swearing, but it's Shakespeare."

"I don't see," said Don, as Flamby became silent, "what this has to so with Paul's misjudgment of you, or your misjudgment of Paul. It simply means that you agree with him. You are such an extraordinarily clever girl, and have had so extraordinary a training, that I cannot pass lightly by anything you say seriously. What has led you to believe that Paul thinks ill of you, and why does it worry you that I think him incapable of such a thing?"

Flamby absently flicked cigarette ash upon the carpet. "According to The Gates," she said, speaking very slowly and evidently seeking for words wherewith to express her meaning, "everybody's sorrows and joys and understanding or lack of understanding are exactly in proportion to the use they have made of their opportunities, not just in one life but in other lives before."

Don nodded without speaking.

"A man who had come as near to perfection as is possible in this world would have found his perfect mate, what Paul calls his 'Isis-self.'"

"Embodied, in Paul's case, in Yvonne."

"He would be in no doubt about it, and no more would she. If she was below him he would raise her, if she was above him he might marry, but he would not mistake another woman for the right one. And things that convinced other men would not convince a true initiate. So I am worried about Paul, because if he is not a true initiate, where did he learn the things that are in The Gates?"

Don's face was very grave. "You have been studying strange books, Flamby. What have you been reading?"

"Heaps of things." Flamby blushed. "I managed to get a Reader's ticket for the British Museum. I am interested, you see. But there are things in Paul's book and other things promised in the next which—oh!—I'm afraid I can't explain——"

"You cannot account for such knowledge in an ordinary mortal, and evidently something has occurred which has led you to regard Paul as less than a god. Tell me about it, Flamby."

III

Don stood up, and walking across the room looked out of the window into the quadrangle. The story of the Charleswood photographs, which Flamby had related with many a pause and hesitance, had seemed to cast upon the room a shadow—the shadow of a wicked hypocrite. Both were silent for several minutes.

"And you are sure that Paul has seen these photographs?" said Don.

"You must have noticed the change in him yourself."

"I had noticed it, Flamby. I am afraid you are right. I will go down to Devonshire to-night and——"

"You will not!"

Don turned, and Flamby, her face evenly dusky and her eyes very bright, was standing up watching him. "Please don't be angry," she said approaching him, "because I spoke like that. But I could never forgive you if you told him. If he can think such a thing of me I don't care. What have I ever said or done that he should dare to think such a thing!"

Don took both her hands and found that she was trembling. She looked aside, biting her lower lip. In vain she sought to control her emotions, knowing that they had finally betrayed her secret to this man in whose steadfast eyes she had long ago read a sorrowful understanding. At that moment she came near to hating Paul, and this, too, Don perceived with the clairvoyance of love. But because he was a very noble gentleman indeed, and at least as worthy of honour as the immortal Bussy d'Amboise, he sought not to advantage himself but to plead the cause of his friend and to lighten the sorrow of Flamby. "Have you tried hard not to care so much?"

Flamby nodded desperately, her eyes wells of tears.

"And it was useless?"

"Oh!" she cried, "I am mad! I hate myself! I hate myself!" She withdrew her hands and leapt on to the settee wildly, pressing her face against the cushions.

Don inhaled a deep breath and stood watching her. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his tunic. "Have you considered, Flamby, what a hopeless thing it is."

"Of course, of course! I should loathe and despise any other girl who was such a wicked little fool. Dad would have killed me, and I should have deserved it!"

"Don't blame Paul too much, Flamby."

"I don't. I am glad that he can be so mean," she sobbed. "It helps me not to like him any more!"

"Paul is no ordinary man, Flamby, but neither is he a magician. How could you expect him to know?"

"He never even asked me."

Don, watching her, suddenly recognised that he could trust himself to pursue this conversation no further. "Tell me why you wanted to see Orlando James again," he said.

Flamby looked up quickly, and Don's hands clenched themselves in his pockets when he saw her tear-stained face. "I am afraid," she replied, "to tell you—now."

"Why are you afraid now, Flamby?"

"Because you will think——"

"I shall think nothing unworthy of you, Flamby."

"I went," said Flamby, twisting a little lace handkerchief in her hands, "because I was afraid—for Paul."

"For Paul!"

"You are beginning to wonder already."

"I am beginning to wonder but not to doubt. In what way were you afraid?"

"He is so sure."

"Sure that he has found the truth?"

"Not that, but sure that he is right in making it known."

Don hesitated. He, too, had had his moments of doubt, but he perceived that Flamby's doubts were based upon some matter of which at present he knew nothing. "Paul believes quite sincerely that he has been chosen for this task," he said. "He believes his present circumstances, or Karma, to be due to a number of earlier incarnations devoted to the pursuit of knowledge."

"Do you think if that was true he would make so many mistakes about people?" asked Flamby, and her voice had not yet recovered entire steadiness.

"I have told you that he is not a magician, Flamby, but you have still to tell me why you wanted to see Orlando James."

"I don't believe I can tell you, after all." Flamby had twisted the little handkerchief into a rope and was tugging at it desperately.

"Why?"

"Well—I might be wrong, and then I should never forgive myself. It is something you ought to know, but I can see now that I cannot tell you."

Don very deliberately took up his pipe from the table. "Here's an ash-tray," said Flamby in a faint voice. "Shall we go out to tea and see if we can cheer ourselves up a bit?"

"I think we might," replied Don, smiling in almost the old way. "Some place where there is a band."

As a direct result of this conversation, Paul received a letter two days later from Don. It touched whimsically upon many matters, and finally, "I have decided to add Orlando James to my list of undesirable acquaintances," wrote Don. "Don't let this harsh decision influence your own conduct in any way, but if at any time you chance to go walking with him and meet myself, pardon me if I fail to acknowledge either of you."

Paul read this paragraph many times. He received the letter one morning whilst Yvonne was out, she having gone into the neighbouring village, and when she came back he spoke of it to her. "Have you seen anything of Orlando James recently?" he asked.

Yvonne turned and began to arrange some fresh flowers in a bowl upon the cottage window-ledge. "No," she replied. "I have seen him rarely since the portrait was finished. Why?"

"I was merely wondering. He seems to be establishing a queer sort of reputation. Thessaly has thrown out hints more than once and Don quite frankly dislikes him."

"What kind of reputation, Paul?"

"Oh, the wrong kind for a portrait painter," replied Paul lightly. "I shall send him a cheque for the picture."

"But he has refused to accept any payment whatever."

"It was very flattering on his part to declare that its exhibition was worth so much to him, and to decline a fee, but nevertheless I shall send him a cheque to-night. Did you remember to go to the Post Office?"

"Yes." Yvonne turned slowly. "Here are the stamps."

"I can see," said Paul, "that either I must return to London or have Edwards come down here and put up somewhere in the neighbourhood. I have more work than I can handle unassisted."

"Let us go back to town, then, if you think it is hindering you to stay here."

"There is no occasion for you to return, Yvonne."

"Yes, but—I don't want to stay, Paul, if you are going. Really, I would rather not." There was something pathetic, almost fearful, in the insistency of her manner, and Paul had a glimpse again of that intangible yet tauntingly familiar phantom in his wife's bearing. A revelation seemed to be imminent, but it eluded him, and the more eagerly he sought to grasp it the further did it recede. "You don't want to leave me behind, do you?" said Yvonne.

"Want to leave you behind!" cried Paul, standing up and crossing to where she stood by the window. "Yvonne!" He held her close in his arms, but there was no fire in the violet eyes, only a tired, pathetic expression.

IV

The pageant proceeded merrily; these were merry days. And because it was rumoured that men who fought hard also drank hard, the brethren of the blue ribbon at last perceived their opportunity and seized upon it with all the vigour and tenacity which belong to those reared upon a cocoa diet. Denying the divinity of the grape, they concealed their treason against Bacchus beneath a cloak of national necessity, and denied others that which they did not want themselves. They remained personally immune because no one thought of imposing a tax upon temperance-meetings, hot-water bottles and air-raid shelters. "Avoid a man who neither drinks nor smokes," was one of Don's adages. "He has other amusements."

Paul continued his pursuit of the elusive thread interwoven in modern literature, and made several notable discoveries. "Contemplation of the mountainous toils of Balzac and Dumas fills me with a kind of physical terror," he said to Don on one occasion. "It is an odd reflection that they would have achieved immortality just the same if they had contented themselves respectively with the creation of Madame Marnefle and the girl with the golden eyes, D'Artagnan and Chicot. The memory of Dumas is enshrined in his good men, that of Balzac in his bad women. One represents the active Male principle, the Sun, the other the passive Feminine, or the Moon. I have decided that Dumas was the immediate reincarnation of a musketeer, and Balzac of a public prosecutor."

"Pursuing this interesting form of criticism," said Don, "at once so trenchant and so unobjectionable, to what earlier phase should you ascribe the wit of G. K. Chesterton for example?"

"To the personal influence of Dr. Johnson and his contemporaries. H. G. Wells would seem to have had no earthly experiences since he was a priest of Bel, or if he had they were comparatively colourless. Rudyard Kipling knew and loved the spacious times of Elizabeth. How clearly we can trace the Roman exquisite in Walter Pater and the bravo in George Moore. Stevenson was a buccaneer in whom repentance came too late, and who suffered the extreme penalty probably under Charles II. The author of The Golden Bough was conceivably a Chaldean librarian, and from the writings of Anatole France steps forth shadowy a literary religieux of the sixteenth century; but it is when we come to consider such cases as those of Spencer and Darwin that we meet with insurmountable obstacles. The patientiotype process of Victor Hugo defies this system of analysis also, as does the glorious humanity of Mark Twain, and although Pinero proclaims himself a wit of the Regency, Bernard Shaw's spiritual pedigree is obscure. Nevertheless, all are weavers of the holy carpet, and our lives are drawn into the loom. All began weaving in the childhood of the world and each has taken up the thread again at his appointed hour."

Paul spent a great part of his time in Jules Thessaly's company. Thessaly had closed his town house, and was living in chambers adjoining Victoria Street. His windows commanded a view of an entrance to Westminster Cathedral, "from whence upward to my profane dwelling," he declared, "arises an odour of sanctity." From Thessaly's flat they set out upon many a strange excursion, one night visiting a private gaming-house whose patrons figured in the pages of Debrett, and, perhaps on the following evening, Thessaly's car would take them to a point in the West India Dock Road, from whence, roughly attired, they would plunge into the Asiatic underworld which lies hidden beneath the names of Three Colt Street and Pennyfields. They visited a foul den in Limehouse where a crook-backed Chinaman sat rocking to and fro before a dilapidated wooden joss in the light of a tin paraffin lamp, listened to the rats squealing under the dirty floor and watched men smoke opium. They patronised "revue" East and West, that concession to the demand of youth long exiled from feminine society which had superseded the legitimate drama. "There are three ingredients essential to the success of such an entertainment," Thessaly pronounced: "fat legs, thin legs, and legs." They witnessed a knuckle-fight in Whitechapel between a sailorman and a Jewish pugilist. The referee was a member of a famous sporting club, and the purse was put up by a young peer on leave from the bloody shambles before Ypres. "Our trans-Tiber evenings," Paul termed these adventures.

He had seized upon a clue to the ills of the world and he pursued it feverishly. "If men realised, as they realise that physical illness follows physical excess, that for every moment of pain unnecessarily inflicted upon any living creature—a horse, a dog, a cage-bird—they must suffer themselves a worse pang, would not the world be a better place?" he asked. "That fighting peer is accounted a fine fellow by his companions, and in an earlier life, when the unshaped destinies of men were being rough-hewn with sword and axe, he was a fine fellow. But that earlier influence now is checking his development. If he could realise that he will probably be reborn a weakling doomed to suffer the buffets of the physically strong, he would doubtless reconsider his philosophy. He has lost track of himself. Our childish love of animals, which corresponds to a psychic pre-natal phase, is a memory which becomes obscured as the fleshly veil grows denser—which the many neglect, but which the wise man cherishes."

"Heredity plays its part, too," said Thessaly.

"Quite so. It is difficult, sometimes almost impossible, to distinguish between the influences of heredity and those of pre-existence."

"More especially since few of us know our own fathers, and none of us our grandfathers. If our family tree record a line of abstemious forbears, and we mysteriously develop a partiality for neat rum and loose company, we hesitate whether to reproach ourselves for the vices of a previous existence or to disparage the morality of our grandmother."

Strange stories won currency at this time, too. Arising as he had done out of a cataclysm, Paul Mario by many was accepted as the harbinger of a second Coming. His claims were based upon no mere reiteration of ancient theories, but upon a comprehensible system which required no prayer-won faith from its followers, but which logically explained life, death, and those parts of the Word of Jesus Christ which orthodoxy persisted in regarding as "divine mysteries." Paul's concept of God and the Creation was substantially identical with that of Jacob Boehme and the Hermetic Philosophers. He showed the Universe to be the outcome of a Thought. Unexpressed Will desired to find expression, to become manifest. Such was the birth of Desire. Since in the beginning this Will was an Eye which beheld nothing because nothing outside Itself existed, It fashioned a Mirror and therein saw all things in Itself. This Mirror was the Eternal Mother, the Will the Eternal Father. The Eternal Father, beholding Himself and His wonders mirrored in the Eternal Mother, willed that being passive they should become active. Thought became materialised, force and space begot Motion and the Universe was. As illustrating the seven qualities through which the Divine energy operated, Paul quoted the following lines:—

It seemed as though all mysticism had culminated in Paul Mario, and so immense was his influence that the English Church was forced into action. Such heterodox views had been expressed from the pulpit since The Gates had cast its challenge at the feet of orthodoxy that the bishops unanimously pronounced its teachings to be heretical, and forbade their adoption under divers pains and penalties. A certain brilliant and fashionable preacher resigned his living, and financed by a society established for the purpose, prepared to build a great church upon a site adjoining the Strand, to be called the New Temple. A definite schism thereupon was created, and so insistent became the demand for more light, for a personal message, that Paul was urged by a committee, including some of the foremost thinkers of the day, to deliver a series of addresses at the Albert Hall. He had lighted a veritable bonfire, and its flames were spreading to the four points of the compass. Even IslÂm, that fanatic rock against which reform dashes itself in vain, was stirred at last, and the SherÎf of Mecca issued a firmÂn to the mosques within his province authorising an intensive campaign against the KorÂn InglÎsi—for Paul had embraced the tenets of the Moslem faith within his new Catholic creed.

At one of his clubs, which he visited rarely, he met one evening a bishop famed as a religious educationalist, a large red cleric having bristling eyebrows resembling shrimps and the calculating glance of a judge of good port. This astute man of the world attacked him along peculiar lines. "There must always be a hierarchy, Mr. Mario," he said. "Buddha—if such a personage ever existed—endeavoured to dispense with a priesthood and a ritual, but his followers have been unable to do so. You aver that the Kingdom of God is within ourselves, but if every man were able to find the Kingdom of God within himself he would have no occasion to pay others to find it for him. What would become of the poor churchman?"

"I have not proposed the abolition of the old priesthood," Paul replied. "I have proposed the establishment of a new. Only by appreciation of the fact that Man is the supreme Mystery can man solve the Riddle of the Universe, and what is there of mystery about your tennis-playing curate? The gossiper whom we have seen nibbling buttered scones at five o'clock tea mounts the pulpit and addresses us upon the subject of the Holy Trinity. On this subject naturally he has nothing to tell us, and naturally we are bored. Rather than abolish ritual I would embellish it, calling to my aid all the resources of art and music. I would invest my ritual with awe and majesty, and my priests should be a class apart."

"Such an appeal is not for every man, Mr. Mario. Your New Temple would be designed to inculcate the truth upon minds which have already received it; a thankless task. We seek the good of the greatest number, and you must bring your gods to earth if you would raise your worshippers to heaven. After all, simplicity rather than knowledge is the keynote of happiness."

"You would trick your penitents into paradise?"

"Perhaps I am obtuse, but it seems to me that this is your design, not mine."

"What does the Church offer," said Paul, "that the human mind can grasp? What hope do you extend to the sorrowing widow of a man who has died unrepentant and full of sin? Eternal loss. Is this to be her reward for years of faithful love? If, upon her death-bed, the woman of atrocious life can be bullied into uttering words of penitence she is 'saved.' If she die as she lived, if a shot, a knife, a street accident cut her off in the midst of her sinning, she is 'lost.' A moment of panic wins salvation for the one; a life-time of self-denial counts for nothing in the case of another. If I go out into the street and strike down a bawd—a thing lower than the lowest animal and more noxious—I hang. If I don the King's uniform and accept the orders of an officer, I may slay good men and bad, come who may, and die assured of heaven. It is war. Why is it war? Simply because it is slaughter as opposed to slaying. Our cause, you will say, is just. So is my cause against the pander."

"You are, then, a novel sort of conscientious objector?"

"Not at all. If at the price of my life I could exterminate every living thing that is Prussian I should do it. But I know why I should do it, and why I should be justified. If one troubled with doubts upon such a score were to ask your cloth to resolve them, he would be told that he fought for King and Country, or something equally beside the point. Patriotism, my lord, becomes impossible when we realise that in turn we have inhabited many countries. You were once perhaps an Austrian, and may yet be a Turk."

"The theory of re-incarnation, Mr. Mario, helps to people our lunatic asylums. I was assured recently by a well-known brain specialist that the claimants to the soul of Cleopatra would out-number the Hippodrome 'Beauty Chorus.'"

"You speak of the 'theory' of re-incarnation, yet it was taught by Christ."

"There we arrive at a definite point of divergence, Mr. Mario," said his lordship. "Let us agree to differ, for I perceive that no other form of agreement is possible between us."

"There is something frightfully unsatisfactory about bishops," declared Thessaly, when Paul spoke of this conversation to him. "Many vicars and deans are quite romantic people, but immediately they are presented with a mitre they become uninteresting and often begin to write to the Times. Besides, no one but Forbes Robertson could hope to look impressive in a mitre. It is most unsuitable headgear for an elderly gentleman."

V

Don remained in London for several months, performing light duties at the War Office. No one but Paul ever knew how far he had penetrated into the grim valley, how almost miraculous had been his recovery. And not even Paul knew that if Flamby's heart had been free Don might never have returned to France. In despite of his shattered health he refused the staff appointment which was offered to him and volunteered for active service, unfit though he was to undertake it.

"We don't seem to be able to realise, Paul," he said, "that the possession of an artificial leg and a Victoria Cross does not constitute a staff officer. My only perceptible qualification for the post offered is my crocky condition. The brains of the Army should surely be made up not of long pedigrees and gallant cripples, but of genius fit to cope with that of the German High Command. A cowardly criminal with a capacity for intrigue would probably be a greater acquisition than that of the most gallant officer who ever covered a strategic 'withdrawal.'"

Poor Flamby smiled and jested until the very moment of Don's departure and cried all day afterwards. Then she sat down at the little oak bureau and wrote a long letter declaring that she had quite definitely and irrevocably decided to forget Paul, and that she should have something "very particular" to confide to Don when he returned. Whilst searching for a stamp she chanced upon a photograph of Paul cut from a weekly journal. Very slowly she tore the letter up into tiny pieces and dropped them in a Japanese paper-basket. She went to bed and read The Gates until she fell asleep, leaving the light burning.

The fear of which she had spoken to Don oppressed her more and more. That Paul had grasped the Absolute Key she could not doubt, but it seemed to Flamby that he had given life to something which had lain dormant, occult, for untold ages, that he had created a thing which already had outgrown his control. In art, literature and music disciples proclaimed themselves. One of France's foremost composers produced a symphony, Dawn, directly inspired by the gospel of Paul Mario; in The Gates painters found fresh subjects for their brushes, and the literature of the world became a mirror reflecting Paul's doctrine. Here was no brilliant spark to dazzle for a moment and die, but a beacon burning ever brighter on which humanity, race by race, fixed a steadfast gaze. Theosophy acclaimed him the new Buddha, and in Judaism a sect arose who saw, in Paul, Isaiah reborn.

But Flamby was afraid. Paul's theory that the arts had taken the place of the sibyls, that man was only an instrument of higher powers which shaped the Universe, dismayed her; for upon seeking to analyse the emotions which The Gates aroused she thought that she could discern the origin of this fear in an unfamiliar note which now and again intruded, a voice unlike the voice of Paul Mario. He was sometimes dominated by an alien influence, perhaps was so dominated throughout save that the control did not throughout reveal its presence. His own work proved his theory to be true. It was a concept of life beyond human ken revealed through the genius of a master mind. Such revelations in the past had only been granted to mystics who had sought them in a life of self-abnegation far from the world. It was no mere reshuffling of the Tarot of the Initiates, but in many respects was a new gospel, and because that which is unknown is thought to be wonderful, in questing the source of Paul's inspiration Flamby constantly found her thoughts to be focussed upon Jules Thessaly.

At this time she had won recognition from the artistic coterie, or mutual admiration society, which stands for English art, although her marked independence of intellect had held her to some extent aloof from their ever-changing "cults." But she had met those painters, illustrators, sculptors, critics, dealers and art editors who "mattered." Practically all of them seemed to know Thessaly; many regarded him as the most influential living patron of art; yet Flamby had never met Thessaly, had never even seen him. She had heard that he possessed a striking personality, she knew that he often lunched at Regali's and sometimes visited the CafÉ Royal. People had said to her, "There goes Jules Thessaly"—and she had turned just too late, always too late. Orlando James had arranged for her to meet him at luncheon one day, and Thessaly had been summoned to Paris on urgent business. At first Flamby had thought little of the matter, but latterly she had thought much. To Don she had refrained from speaking of this, for it seemed to savour of that feminine jealousy which regards with suspicious disfavour any living creature, man, woman or dog, near to a beloved object. But she was convinced that Thessaly deliberately avoided her and she suspected that he influenced Paul unfavourably, although of this latter fact she had practically no evidence.

Similar doubts respecting the motive which might be attributed to her had prevented Flamby from telling Don why she wished to keep in touch with Orlando James. Paul's philosophy was a broad one, and imposed few trammels upon social intercourse between the sexes. He regarded early-Victorian prudery with frank horror, and counted the narrowness of middle-class suburban life as directly traceable to this tainted spring. Don had once declared a suburban Sunday to be "hell's delight. Rock of Ages," he said, "(arrangement for piano) has more to answer for than the entire ritual of the Black Mass." Paul applauded breadth of outlook; nevertheless Flamby doubted if Paul would have approved certain clandestine visits to James's studio. It was Flamby's discovery of the identity of the tall lady, closely veiled, whom she had seen one night descending from a cab and hurrying under the arch into the little courtyard of the faun, which first had awakened that indefinite fear whereof she had spoken to Don. On several successive evenings she had invented reasons for remaining late at Chauvin's, and at last had been rewarded by seeing the veiled visitor admitted to James's studio. The light shining out upon her face had revealed the features of Yvonne Mario. Flamby had spied and had counted her espionage justified. Any other woman in like circumstances would have spied also, justified or otherwise. For women in some respects are wiser than men, and he who counts woman supine has viewed his world awry; but the true deeps of a woman's soul may only be stirred by passion. Honour and those other temporal shadows at whose beck men lay down life leave women unstirred. What man of honour would tear open a letter addressed to another, though he suspected it to contain his death-warrant? What woman, in like case, would hesitate to steam it?

VI

High Mass in Westminster Cathedral was about to conclude. The air was heavy with incense, and the organ notes seemed to float upon it buoyantly, rebounding from marble wall and Byzantine pillar to remain indefinitely suspended ere sinking into silence. The voice of the officiating priest fascinated Paul Mario strangely. He found himself following the rhythm but not the meaning of the words. That solitary human voice was the complement of a theme whereof the incense and the monotonous music made up the other parts. Comprehension of words and syllables was unnecessary. Detached, no portion of the ritual had meaning; its portent lay in the whole. The atmosphere which it created was not that of the Mount, but was purely mediaeval, nor had the Roman fashion of the vast interior power to hold one's imagination enchained to the Cross of Calvary. The white robes of the altar servants, broidered vestments of the priests and pallid torches of a hundred candles belonged to the Rome of Caesar Borgia and not to the Rome of Caesar Nero. Into that singular building, impressive in its incompleteness, crept no echo of the catacombs, and the sighing of the reed notes was voluptuous as a lover's whisper, and as far removed from the murmurs of the Christian martyrs. Here were pomp and majesty with all their emotional appeal. Mystery alone was lacking. The robes of Cardinal Pescara lent a final touch of colour to the mediaeval opulence of the scene.

It was to hear the cardinal speak that Paul had come. The occasion was an impressive one, and the great church was sombre with mourning. Men of a famous Irish regiment occupied row after row of seats, and from the galleries above must have looked like a carpet of sand spread across the floor. The sermon had proved to be worthy of the master of rhetoric who had delivered it. The silvern voice of the Cardinal, from the pronouncement of his opening words to the close of his peroration when he stood with outstretched arms and eyes uplifted pitifully in illustration of the Agony of Golgotha, charmed his hearers as of old the lyre of Apollo had power to charm. His genius invested the consolation of the church with a new significance, exalting the majesty of bereavement to a higher sovereignty. His English was faultless, beautified by a soft Italian intonation, and his sense of the dramatic and of the value of sudden silences reminded Paul of Sir Henry Irving, whom he had seen once during his first term at Oxford and had never forgotten. Dramatically it was a flawless performance; intellectually it was masterful. That crucified pitiful figure stood majestic above a weeping multitude dominating them by the sheer genius of oratory. Chord after chord of his human instrument he had touched unerringly, now stirring the blood with exquisite phrases, now steeping the mind in magnetic silence. Paul recognised, and was awe-stricken, that this white-haired ascetic man wielded a power almost as great as his own.

When finally he passed out from the Cathedral, the impression of the Mass had lost much of its hold upon him, but the haunting cadences of that suave Italian voice followed him eerily. Near the open doors a priest, wearing cassock and biretta, stood narrowly scrutinising each face, and as Paul was about to pass he extended his hand, detaining him. "Mr. Paul Mario?" he said.

"I am Paul Mario, yes."

"His Eminence, Cardinal Pescara, begs the favour of a few moments' conversation."

Opening a private door the priest led Paul along a bare, tiled corridor. Paul followed his guide in silence, his brain busy with conjectures respecting how and by whom his presence in the Cathedral had been detected. His appearance was familiar to most people, he was aware, but he had entered unostentatiously among a group of black-clad women, and had thought himself unrecognised. In the mode of making his acquaintance adopted by the Cardinal he perceived the working of that subtle Italian intellect. The unexpected summons whilst yet his mind was under the influence of ceremonial, the direct appeal to the dramatic which never fails with one of artistic temperament; it was well conceived to enslave the imagination of the man who had written Francesca of the Lilies. He was conscious of nervousness, of an indefinable apprehension, and ere he had come to the end of the bare corridor, the poet, deserting the man, had posted halberdiers outside the door which the priest had unlocked and had set a guard over that which they were approaching. His guide became a cowled familiar of the Holy Office, and beyond the second door in an apartment black-draped and sepulchral and lighted by ghostly candles, inquisitors awaited him who, sweetly solicitous for his spiritual well-being, would watch men crush his limbs in iron boots, suspend him by his thumbs from a beam and tear out his tongue with white-hot pincers. Then if spark of life remained in his mutilated body, they would direct, amid murmured Aves, that his eyes be burned from their sockets in order that he might look upon heresy no more. His guide rapped upon the door, opened it and permitted Paul to enter the room, closing the door behind him. He found himself in a small square apartment panelled in dark wood. A long narrow oak table was set against the wall facing the entrance, and upon it were writing materials, a scarlet biretta and a large silver crucifix. On the point of rising from a high-backed chair before this table was a man wearing the red robe of a Cardinal. He turned to greet his visitor and Paul looked into the eyes of Giovanni Pescara. There was a clash definite as that of blade upon blade, then the Cardinal inclined his head with gentle dignity and extended a delicate white hand. A padded armchair stood beside the end of the table.

"I am sincerely indebted to you, Mr. Mario, for granting me this unconventional interview. My invitation must have seemed brusque to the point of the uncouth, but chancing to learn of your presence I took advantage of an opportunity unlikely to repeat itself. I return to Rome to-night."

"Your Eminence's invitation was a command," replied Paul, and knew the words to be dictated by some former Mario, or by an earlier self in whose eyes a prince of the Church had ranked only second to the King. "I am honoured in obeying it."

Giovanni Pescara, in spite of his frail physique, was a man of imposing presence, the aristocrat proclaiming himself in every gesture, in the poise of his noble head, with its crown of wavy silver hair, in the movements of his fine hands. He had the prominent nose and delicate slightly distended nostrils of his family, but all the subtlety of the man was veiled by his widely opened mild hazel eyes. Seen thus closely, his face, which because of a pure white complexion from a distance looked statuesquely smooth, proved to be covered with a network of tiny lines. It was a wonderful face, and his smile lent it absolute beauty.

"I should have counted my brief visit incomplete, Mr. Mario, if I had not met you. Therefore I pray you hold me excused. In Italy, where your fame is at least as great as it is in England, we are proud to know you one of ourselves. Many generations have come and gone since Paolo Mario settled in the English county of Kent, but the olive of Italy proclaims itself in his descendant. No son of the North could have given to the world the beautiful Tarone called Francesca of the Lilies. The fire of the South is in her blood and her voice is the voice of our golden nights. I have read the story in English, and it is magnificent, but Italian is its perfect raiment."

"It is delightful of you to say so," said Paul, subtly flattered by the knowledge of his ancestry exhibited by the Cardinal, but at the same time keenly on the alert. Giovanni Pescara did not study men at the prompting of mere curiosity.

"It is delightful to have been afforded an opportunity to say so. Your love of Tuscany, which is natural, has sometimes led me to hope that one day you would consent to spend your winters or a part of them amongst us, Mr. Mario. No door in Italy would be closed to you."

"You honour me very highly, and indeed I know something of your Italian hospitality, but there are so many points upon which I find myself at variance with the Church that I should hesitate to accept it under false pretences."

Cardinal Pescara gazed at him mildly. "You find yourself at variance with the Church, Mr. Mario? Frankly, your words surprise me. In which of your works have you expressed these dissensions?"

"Notably in The Gates."

"In that event I have misunderstood your purpose in writing that fine and unusual book. I do not recall that his Holiness has banned it."

Paul met the questioning glance of the hazel eyes and knew himself foiled. "I must confess that I have not expressly inquired into that matter," he said; "but it was only because I had taken inclusion in the Index for granted."

"But why should you do so, Mr. Mario? Have you advocated the destruction of the Papal power?"

"Emphatically no. An organisation such as that of Rome and resting upon such authority is not lightly destroyed."

"Have you denied the mission of the heir of St. Peter to preach the Word of the Messiah?"

"I have not."

"Have you denied the divinity of Christ or the existence of Almighty God?"

"Certainly not."

"Then why should you expect Rome to place its ban upon your book?"

"I have not questioned the authority of Rome, your Eminence, but I have questioned Rome's employment of that authority."

"As you are entitled to do being not a priest but a layman. We have many Orders within the Church, and upon minor doctrinal points they differ one from another, but their brotherhood is universal and his Holiness looks with equal favour upon them all. Amongst Catholic laymen we have kindly critics, but Rome is ever ready to reply to criticism and never disregards it. If you are conscious of imperfections in the administration of the Church, the Church would welcome your aid in removing them."

The facile skill with which the Cardinal had disarmed him excited Paul's admiration even whilst he found himself disadvantaged by it. "My conception of the life of the spirit differs widely from that of Catholicism," he said, speaking slowly and deliberately. "We stand upon opposite platforms, and our purposes are divided. I regard not one man in a million, however admirable his life, as fit for that perfect state called Heaven and not one in a hundred millions, however evil, as deserving of that utter damnation called Hell. I say that there are intermediate states innumerable. Is Rome open to consider such a claim?"

"To consider it, Mr. Mario? Rome has always taught it. Have we not a Purgatory?"

"For the justified, but what of the sinner?"

"Have we no prayers for the dead? You maintain that no man is fit for Heaven; so does Rome—that no soul is lost whilst one prayer is offered for its redemption. We agree with you. In The Gates you have done no more than to analyse the symbolism of Roman ritual, defining Purgatory as a series of earthly experiences and Heaven as their termination. Have you considered, Mr. Mario, that whatever a man's belief may be, he can do no more than to be true to himself?"

"And is Rome true to Rome, your Eminence? Before the horrors of war the spirit stands aghast, but are the horrors perpetrated by Prussia reconcilable with the teachings of St. Peter? For lesser crimes, thousands burned at the stake during the Pontificate of Innocent VIII; yet Rome to-day hears German prelates calling upon God to exalt the murderer, the ravisher, and is silent. If Rome is untrue to Rome the rock upon which the Church of St. Peter stands may yet be shattered."

Cardinal Pescara twisted the ring upon his finger, regarding Paul with a glance of almost pathetic entreaty. "You hurt me, Mr. Mario," he said. "I do not recall that you have levelled this charge against the Catholic Church in your book. But it seems to me to be rather a criticism of internal administration than of doctrine, after all. If no man be worthy of hell, why should his Holiness abandon sinful Germany? It is for him to decide, since all laws are locked within the bosom of the Pope."

"I would unlock those laws, your Eminence, and set them up before the world in place of empty dogmas. I would have open sanctuaries and open minds. Humanity has outgrown its childhood and demands more reasonable fare than that which sufficed for its needs in the nursery."

"That you honestly suppose this to be so I cannot question; but what you term 'open-mindedness'—implying a state of receptivity—is in fact an utter rejection of all established spiritual truths. The open-minded and the atheistical draw dangerously closer day by day. The only thing of which they are sure is that they are sure of nothing and their credo is 'I do not believe.' Broadly speaking, Mr. Mario, our differences may be said to revolve around one point. Of the construction which you place upon the Word of the Messiah I shall say nothing, but it is your projected second book in which, if I understand your purpose, you propose to lay bare the 'arcana of the initiates' (the words are your own) which, if it ever be published, will indisputably occasion action by the Holy See. Let me endeavour to bring home to you the fact that I believe you are about to make a dreadful and irrevocable mistake."

The hazel eyes momentarily lost their softness and the Cardinal's expression grew gravely imperious. Paul felt again the shock of this man's powerful will and braced himself for combat.

"I shall always listen to your Eminence with respect."

"Respect, Mr. Mario, is due to any man who is sincere in his efforts to promote the well-being of his fellows, even though his efforts be mistaken. In the symbolism of the Church and even in the form of the Papal crown you have recognised the outward form of an inner truth. You have applauded the ritual of the Mass and the traditions of the Catholic priesthood because they approach so nearly to that mystic ideal which gave potency to the great hierarchies of the past, notably to that of Ancient Egypt. I shall venture to ask you a question. Outside the sacred colleges of the Egyptian priesthood what was known in those days of the truth underlying the symbols, Isis, Osiris and Amen-RÂ?"

"Nothing."

"Then why did you admire a system diametrically opposed to that which you would set up?"

"Because it was ideally suited to the age of the Pharaohs. The world has advanced since those days but religion has tried to stand still."

"The world has advanced, and in The Gates we hear the tap of the cripple's crutch upon the pavements of our enlightened cities. The world has advanced, Mr. Mario, and is filled with sad-eyed mothers and with widows who have scarcely known wifehood. Where is your evidence that this generation is ready for the 'blinding light of truth'? You believe that you have been given a mission. I do not question your good faith. You believe that throughout a series of earlier physical experiences you have been preparing for this mission. Granting for a moment that this is so, what proof can you offer of your having attained to that state of perfection which you, yourself, lay down as a sine qu non of mastership? If it should be revealed to you that you have actually lived before, but as a man enthusiastic, ardent and blinded by those passions which are a wall between humanity and the angels, should you not take pause? You have granted the authority of Rome. Wherein does your own reside? Are you sure that for you the veil is wholly lifted? Are you sure that you have no false friends? Are you sure that you comprehend the meaning of your own tenet—'Perfect Love and Fulfilment'? If you have any doubts upon these points, Mr. Mario, hold your hand. It can profit the world nothing to restir the witches' cauldron. Love must always be the mainspring of life and honour its loftiest ideal. Teach men how to live and leave it to Death to reveal the hereafter. Not for the good of mankind do I tremble—God has the world in his charge—but for yourself. We all are granted glimpses of our imperfections, perhaps in the form of twinges of conscience, or dreams, or as you would say in the form of hazy memories inherited from earlier imperfect lives. If these gentle lessons fail, swift blows rain upon us. But we are never permitted to fall into error unchecked. Read well the tablet of your soul and read between the lines. Measure your strength and test your purity ere you dare to attempt to shatter at a blow the structure of the ages. When Lucifer fell from the Divine order, it was lust of knowledge that prompted him to set his own will in opposition to the Almighty. I speak in figures which you will understand. Lucifer became the great Self-Centre as opposed to the greater God-Centre. He is more active amongst us to-day than he has been for many ages. He has numerous servants and handmaidens. Are you sure, Mr. Mario, that you can recognise them when they pass you by? Remember that the Devil is a philosopher. If we may learn anything from the ancient creeds surely it is that the secret of governing humanity is never to tell humanity the truth."

VII

Some days later Flamby was taking tea by appointment in Orlando James's studio. Don had written from France urging her to divulge the nature of her misgivings respecting Paul and their connection with James, and Flamby, greatly daring, had determined to obtain confirmation of the doubts which troubled her. She wore the Liberty dress of grey velvet, and as she bent over an Arab coffee-table and her pretty hands busied themselves amid the old silver of the tea-service, Flamby made a delectable study which Orlando James who watched her found to be exceedingly tantalising. He flicked cigarette ash on to the floor and admired the creamy curve of Flamby's neck as she lowered her head in the act of pouring out tea.

"What a pretty neck you have, kid," he said in his drawling self-confident way.

"Yes," replied Flamby, dropping pieces of sugar into the cups, "it isn't so bad as necks go. But I should have liked it to be white instead of yellow."

"It isn't yellow: it's a delicious sort of old-ivory velvet which I am just itching to paint."

"Then why don't you?" inquired Flamby, composedly settling herself in a nest of cushions on the floor.

"Because you will never pose for me."

"You have never asked me."

"Why I asked you only a few days ago to pose for my next big picture."

Flamby sipped hot tea and looked up at James scornfully. "Do you think I'm daft!" she said. "I am a painter not a model. If you want to paint my portrait I don't mind, but if you've got an idea in your head that I am ever likely to pose for the figure you can get it out as quick as lightning."

James lounged in a long rest-chair, watching her languidly. "You're a funny girl," he said. "I thought I was paying you a compliment, but perhaps it's a sore point. Where's the flaw, kid?"

"The flaw?"

"Yes, what is it—knotty knees? It certainly isn't thick ankles."

Flamby had much ado to preserve composure; momentarily her thoughts became murderous. This was truly a 'sore point,' but mentally comparing Orlando James with Sir Jacques she was compelled to admit that the bold rouÉ was preferable to the masked satyr. She placed her tea cup on a corner of the Arab table and smoothed her skirt placidly.

"Spotty skin," she replied. "Haven't you seen my picture in the newspapers advertising somebody's ointment?"

James stared in the dull manner which characterised his reception of a joke. "Is that funny, Flamby?" he said, "because I don't believe it is true."

"Don't you? Well, it doesn't matter. Do you want any more tea?"

He passed his cup, watching her constantly and wondering why since he had progressed thus far in her favour not all his well-tried devices could advance him a single pace further. He had learned during a long and varied experience that the chief difficulty in these little affairs was that of breaking down the barrier which ordinarily precludes discussion of such intimately personal matters. Once this was accomplished he had found his art to be a weapon against which woman's vanity was impotent. Unfortunately for his chance of success, Sir Jacques had also been a graduate of this school of artistic libertinage.

"There is something selfish about a girl who keeps her beauty all to herself when it might delight future generations," he said, taking the newly filled cup from Flamby. "Besides, it really is a compliment, kid, to ask you to pose for a big thing like The Dreaming Keats. It's going to be my masterpiece."

"Our next picture is always going to be our masterpiece," murmured Flamby wisely, taking an Egyptian cigarette from the Japanese cabinet on the table.

"But I think I can claim to know what I'm talking about, Flamby. It means that I regard you as one of the prettiest girls in London."

"Your vanity is most soothing," said Flamby, curling herself up comfortably amid the poppy-hued cushions and trying to blow rings of smoke.

"Where does the vanity come in?"

"In your delightful presumption. Do you honestly believe, Orlando, that any woman in London would turn amateur model if you asked her?"

"I don't say that any woman would do so, but almost any pretty woman would."

"I don't believe it."

"You know who my model was for Eunice, don't you?"

"I have heard that Lady Daphne Freyle posed for it and the hair is like hers certainly, but the face of the figure is turned away. Oh!—how funny."

"What is funny?"

"It has just occurred to me that a number of your pictures are like that: the figure is either veiled or half looking away."

"That is necessary when one's models are so well-known."

Flamby hugged her knees tightly and gazed at the speaker as if fascinated. She was endeavouring to readjust her perspective. Vanity in women assumed many strange shapes. There were those who bartered honour for the right to live and in order that they might escape starvation. These were pitiful. There were some who bought jewels at the price of shame, and others who sold body and soul for an hour in the limelight. These were unworthy of pity. But what of those who offered themselves, like ghawÂzi in a Keneh bazaar, in return for the odious distinction of knowing their charms to be "immortalised" by the brush of Orlando James? These were beyond Flamby's powers of comprehension.

"But Lady Daphne is an exception. I am only surprised that she did not want a pose which rendered her immediately recognisable."

"She did," drawled James, "but I didn't."

"Was she really an ideal model or did you induce her to pose just to please your colossal vanity?"

"My dear Flamby, it is next to impossible to find a flawless model among the professionals. Hammett or anybody will tell you the same. They lack that ideal delicacy, what Crozier calls 'the texture of nobility,' which one finds in a woman of good family. Half the success of my big subjects has been due to my models. This will be recognised when the history of modern art comes to be written. I am held up at the moment, and that is the reason why I am anxious to start on Keats."

"What is holding you up?"

"My model for The Circassian has jibbed. Otherwise it would be finished."

"There are disadvantages attaching to your method after all?"

"Yes. I shall avoid married models in future. Husbands are so inartistic."

"You don't want me to believe that some misguided married woman has been posing for The Circassian?"

"Why misguided? It will be a wonderful picture."

"It is that Eastern thing is it not?—the marble pool and a half veiled figure lying beside it with one hand in the water?"

"Yes, but I've had to shelve it. Did I show you that last sketch for the Keats picture?"

"You did, Orlando; but dismiss the idea that I am going to play Phryne to your Apelles. It won't come off. It may work successfully with daft society women who have got bored with pretending to be nurses and ambulance drivers but you really cannot expect Flamby Duveen to begin competing with the professional models. I could quote something from Ovid that would be quite to the point but you wouldn't understand and I should have to laugh all by myself."

"You are a tantalising little devil," said James, his dull brain seeking vainly a clue to the cause of Flamby's obduracy.

Flamby, meanwhile maturing her plan, made the next move. "Is the Keats picture to be more important than The Circassian?" she asked naively.

"Of course," James replied, believing that at last a clue was his. "I have told you that it will be my masterpiece." He had offered an identical assurance to many a hesitant amateur.

"Is your model for The Circassian really very pretty?"

"She is; but of a more ordinary type than you, kid. You are simply a nymph in human shape. You will send the critics crazy."

He watched her with scarcely veiled eagerness, and Flamby, placing the end of her cigarette in a silver ash-tray, seemed to be thinking.

"Is she—well-known?"

James recognised familiar symptoms and his hopes leapt high. "If I show you the canvas and you recognise the model will you promise not to tell anybody? I am painting it by a new process. I got the idea from Wiertz. The violet gauze of the veil is only indicated yet."

Flamby nodded, watching him wide-eyed. Her expression was inscrutable. He crossed the big studio and wheeled an easel out from the recess in which it had been concealed. The canvas was draped and having set it in a good light he turned, taking a step forward. "No telling," he said.

"No," replied Flamby, rising from her extemporised diwÂn.

James towered over her slight figure vastly. "Give me a kiss and I will believe you," he said.

Flamby felt a tingling sensation and knew that a flush was rising from her neck to her brow, but with success in view she was loth to abandon her scheme. "Show me first," she said.

"Oh, no. Be a sport, kid. You might do me no end of harm if you blabbed. Give me a kiss and I shall know we are pals." He placed his hand on Flamby's shoulder and she tried not to shrink. The rich colour fled from her cheeks and her oval face assumed that even, dusky hue which was a danger signal, but which Orlando James failed to recognise for one.

"I don't want to kiss you; I want to see the picture."

"And I don't want you to see the picture until you have kissed me," replied James, smiling confidently and clasping his arm around Flamby's shoulders. "Only one tiny kiss and I shall know I can trust you."

He drew her close, and Flamby experienced a thrill of terror because of the strength of his arm and her own helplessness. But she averted her face and thrust one hand against James's breast, fighting hard to retain composure. He bent over her and thereupon Flamby knew that the truce must end. Her heart began to throb wildly.

"I won't kiss you!" she cried. "Let me go!"

Orlando James looked into her face, now flushed again and found the lure of Flamby's lips to be one beyond his powers of rejection. "Don't get wild, kiddie," he said softly. "You need not be cruel."

"Let me go," repeated Flamby in a low voice.

He held her closer and his face almost touched hers. Whereupon the storm burst. "Are you going to let me go?" said Flamby breathlessly; and even as she spoke James sought to touch her lips. Flamby raised her open hand and struck him hard upon the cheek. "Now will you let me go!"

Orlando James laughed loudly. "You lovely little devil," he cried. "I shall kiss you a hundred times for that."

Backward swung Flamby's foot and James received a shrewd kick upon his shin. But the little suede shoes which Flamby wore were incapable of inflicting such punishment as those heavy boots which once had wrought the discomfiture of Fawkes. James threw both arms around her and lifted her bodily, as one lifts a child, smiling into her face. She battled against him, hand and foot, but could strike with slight force because of her helpless position. He crushed her to him and kissed her on the lips. As he did so she remembered the form of her French shoes and raising her right foot she battered madly at his knee with the high wooden heel. One of the blows got home, and uttering a smothered curse James dropped her, but did not release her.

"You low dirty swine!" she cried at him.

He held her by her arms and now she suddenly twisted violently, writhed and wrenched herself free, leaving a velvet sleeve in James's grasp and leaping back from him, one creamy shoulder bared by the tattered gown and her wonderful hair loosened and foaming about her head to lend her the aspect of a beautiful BisharÎn girl, wild as the desert gazelle. James saw that she wore an antique gold locket upon a thin chain about her neck. He clutched at her, but she bounded back again, her eyes blazing dangerously and snatched up the Japanese cabinet. With all her strength she hurled it at his head.

"Take that," she screamed, flushing scarlet—"blast you!"

He ducked, inhaling sibilantly, but a corner of the little cabinet struck his forehead, and he stumbled, caught his foot against a cushion and fell across the table amid a litter of china and silver ware. He clutched at the draped picture, and canvas and easel fell crashing to the floor, revealing the nearly completed Circassian. Flamby sprang across the studio, wrenched open the door and ran out banging it behind her. As it closed she fell back against it, panting—and saw Paul Mario approaching from the direction of Chauvin's.

VIII

In the glance which Paul gave Flamby there was something odic and strange. He experienced a consciousness of giving and a consciousness of loss. Flamby was aware of intense shame and mad joy. She threw her arm over her bare shoulder to hide it and shrank back against the door not daring to raise her eyes again. She was trembling violently. Beneath her downcast lashes she could see the door of Chauvin's studio, and suddenly she determined to fly there for shelter, as had been her original intention. She started—but Paul held her fast. Flamby hid her face against his coat.

"Flamby—who has done this?" Paul's voice was very low and very steady.

Flamby swallowed emotionally, but already her quick wit was at work again and she realised that Paul must be prevented from entering James's studio, must be spared a sight of the picture which lay upon the floor. "We were—just ragging," she said tremulously, "and it got too rough. So I—ran out My dress is torn, you see." She did not look up. Paul's Harris tweed coat had a faint odour of peat and tobacco. She realised that she was clutching him for support.

He was carrying a light Burberry on his arm, and he held it open for her. "Slip this on, Flamby," he said, in the same low, steady voice, "and sit there on the ledge for a moment." He helped her to put on the coat, which enveloped her grotesquely, led her to the low parapet which surrounded the figure of the dancing faun and stepped toward the door of James's studio.

Flamby leapt up and clutched his arm with both hands. "No, no!" she cried. "You must not go in there! Oh, please listen to me! I don't want you to go in."

Paul half turned, looking down at her. "Don't excite yourself, Flamby. I shall not be a moment."

But she clutched him persistently until, looking swiftly up at him, she saw the pallor of his olive skin and the expression in his eyes. She allowed him to unlock her fingers from his arm and she dropped down weakly on to the narrow stone ledge as he crossed to the studio door. It was very still in the courtyard. Some sparrows were chirping up on a roof, but the sounds of the highroad were muted and dim. Paul grasped the brass handle and sought to turn it. As he did so Flamby realised that James had bolted the door. Paul stood for a moment looking at the massive oak and then turned away, rejoining Flamby. "Come along to Chauvin's," he said. "I will get a cab for you."

The only occupant of Chauvin's studio was a romantic-looking man wearing a very dirty smock, a man who looked like an illustration for La Vie de BohÈme, so that a stranger must have mistaken him for a celebrated artist although he actually combined the duties of a concierge with those of a charwoman. He displayed no surprise when Flamby came in, wild-haired, arrayed in Paul's Burberry.

"See if you can get a taxi, Martin," said Flamby, dropping into a huge Jacobean arm-chair over which a purple cloak was draped. A King Charles spaniel who had been asleep on a cushion awoke immediately and jumped on to her knees. Flamby caressed the little animal, looking down at his snub-nosed face intently. Paul walked up and down the studio. He began speaking in a low voice.

"I had hoped, Flamby, that you had done as I once asked you to do and dropped—Orlando James."

"I did," said Flamby quickly and continuing to caress the spaniel. "I wrote to Don the very night you told me to."

"And I am sure that Don agreed with me."

"He did, yes. But—Don knows I still pretend to be friends with—James."

Paul stood still, facing her, but she did not look up. "Don knows this?"

Flamby nodded her head. She did not seem to care that her hair was in disorder. "He knows that I hate James, though," she added.

"I don't understand at all. Whatever can have induced you to trust yourself in that ruffian's studio?"

"I've been before. It was my fault. I made him think he was doing fine."

"Doing fine?"

"He is so infernally conceited. I wanted to let him down. But he got desperate. He is not a man; he's a pig. But I threw a cabinet at him."

"Did you hit him?" asked Paul grimly.

"Yes; but I wish it had been a brick."

"So do I," replied Paul. "I shall not ask you for particulars, Flamby, but I shall take certain steps which will make London too hot to hold Mr. Orlando James." His restrained passion was electric and it acted upon Flamby in a curious way and seemed to set her heart singing.

When Martin returned to report that a cab waited, Paul walked out under the arch to the street and having placed Flamby in the cab, he held her hand for a moment and their glances met. "Dear little wild-haired Flamby," he said, and his voice had the same note of tenderness which she had heard in it once before and of which she had dreamed ever since. "Take care of yourself, little girl. You belong to the clean hills and the sweet green woods which I almost wish you had never left."

For long after the cab had passed around the corner Paul stood by the archway staring in that direction, but presently he aroused himself and returned to the courtyard. He tried the handle of James's door but learned that the bolt remained fastened, whereupon he determined to proceed to Thessaly's flat.

A definite change had taken place in the relations existing between himself and Flamby. For all her wildness and her reckless behaviour, that day she had appealed to him as something fragrantly innocent and bewilderingly sweet. The memory of the Charleswood photographs had assumed a different form, too, and he suddenly perceived possibilities of an explanation which should exculpate the girl from a graver sin than that of bravado. He had seen something in her eyes which had rendered such an explanation necessary, had found there something stainless as the heart of a wild rose. Devil-may-care was in her blood and he doubted if she knew the meaning of fear, but for evil he now sought in vain and wondered greatly because he had so misjudged her. He experienced a passionate desire to protect her, to enfold her in careful guardianship. He knew that he had not wanted to leave her at the gate of the studios, but he had only recognised this to be the case at the very moment of parting. He had never entertained an interest quite identical in anyone and he sought to assure himself that it was thus that a father thought of his child. He wondered if it had been her hair or her lips which had maddened Orlando James; he wondered why she had been in the studio; and a cold hatred of James took up a permanent place in his heart.

In the narrow thoroughfare connecting Victoria Street with that in which Thessaly's flat was situated were a number of curious shops devoted to the sale of church ornaments, altar candlesticks, lecterns, silk banners, cassocks and birettas, statuettes of the Virgin, crucifixes and rosaries. Paul stood before the window of one, reading the titles of the books which were also displayed there, Garden of the Soul, The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi. A phrase arose before him; he did not seem to hear it but to see it dancing in smoky characters which partially obscured a large ivory crucifix: "To shatter at a blow the structure of the ages." He recalled that Cardinal Pescara had used those words. His mood was unrestful and his brain was haunted by unaccountable memories, so that when he found himself in the shadow of the lofty campanile of Westminster Cathedral his spirit became translated to an obscure lane in Cairo. Faint organ notes reached his ears.

Thessaly received him in a little room having a balcony which overhung the street. Delicate ivory plaques decorated the walls and the fanciful curtains of Indian muslin hung like smoke of incense in the still air. There were some extraordinary pastels by Degas forming a kind of frieze. The evening was warm and the campanile upstood against a sky blue as a sapphire dome. The Cairo illusion persisted.

"Do you know, Thessaly," said Paul, "to-night I cannot help thinking of a scene I once witnessed in El Wasr. I formed one of a party of three and we were wandering aimlessly through those indescribable lanes. Pipes wailed in the darkness to an accompaniment of throbbing—throbbing of the eternal darÂbukeh which is like the pulsing of evil life through the arteries of the secret city. Harsh woman-voices cried out in the night and bizarre figures flitted like bats from the lighted dance halls into the shadows of nameless houses. We came to a long, narrow street entirely devoted to those dungeon-like chambers with barred windows whose occupants represent all the classified races of the East and all the unclassified sins of the Marquis de Sade. Another street crossed it at right angles and at the cross roads was a mosque. The minaret stood up blackly against the midnight sky and as we turned the corner we perceived what appeared to be another of the 'cages' immediately facing the door of the mosque. Out of the turmoil of the one street we came into this other and leaving discord and evil behind us entered into silence and peace. We looked in at the barred window. Woman voices reached us faintly from the street we had left and the muted pulse of the darÂbukeh pursued us. Upon a raised dais having candles set at his head and feet reposed a venerable sheikh, dead. His white beard flowed over his breast. He reclined in majestic sleep where the pipes were wailing the call of El Wasr, and the shadow of the minaret lay upon life and upon death. Is it not strange that this scene should recur to me to-night?"

"Strange and uncomplimentary," replied Thessaly. "Whilst I have no objection to your finding an analogy between my perfectly respectable neighbours and the women of the Wasr, the rÔle of a defunct and saintly Arab does not appeal to me." Some reflection of the setting sun touched him where he stood and bathed him as in fire. The small tight curls of hair and beard became each a tongue of flame and his eyes glittered like molten gold. "Pardon my apparent rudeness, but I don't think you are listening."

"I am not," murmured Paul. "Your words reach me from a great distance. My spirit is uneasy to-night, and whilst myself I remain in your ivory room and hear you speak another self stands in a vast temple of black gleaming granite before the shrine of a golden bull."

"You are possibly thinking of Apis. From Cairo you have proceeded to SakkÂra. Or are the gaudy hue of my hair and the yeoman proportions of my shape responsible for the idea?"

"I cannot say, nor was I actually thinking of the Serapeum."

"You are not yourself. You have been studying the war news or else you have passed a piebald horse without spitting twice and crossing your fingers."

Paul laughed, but not in the frank boyish way that was so good to hear. "I am not myself, Thessaly, or if I am I do not recognise myself."

"You have committed some indiscretion such as presenting your siren-haired protÉgÉe, Flamby Duveen, to your wife."

"I have not," said Paul sharply.

"I am glad. He who presents one pretty woman to another makes two lifelong enemies."

"I did not know that you had met Flamby."

"She has been described to me and she sounds dangerous. I distrust curly-haired girls. They are full of electricity, and electricity is a force of which we know so little. Does the idea of a cocktail appeal to you? I have a man who has invented a new cocktail which he calls 'Fra Diavolo.' Viewed through the eyes of Fra Diavolo you will find the world a more cheery globe."

"Thanks, no. But I will smoke." From his coat pocket Paul took out a briar pipe and the well-worn pouch. "In a month, Thessaly, The Key will be in the printer's hands. I found myself thinking of Pandora this morning. There are few really virtuous women and truth is a draught almost as heady I should imagine as Fra Diavolo."

"My dear Mario, you must admit that virtue is the least picturesque of the vices. When aggressive it becomes a positive disfigurement. The 'on guard' position, though useful in bayonet-fighting, leaves the Æsthete cold. You would not have us treat our women as the Moslems do?"

"Women can rarely distinguish the boundary between freedom and license. Honestly I should like to revise the position of woman in Europe and America before I entrusted The Key to her keeping. Unmarried, she has quite enough freedom, married she has too much."

"Therefore she conceals her age and dyes her hair."

"Showing that she is not invulnerable to flattery."

"No woman is, and flattery may be likened to the artillery preparation which precedes a serious advance. But, my dear Mario, to deprive a woman of admiration is to deprive a fish of water. In London when a woman ceases to interest other men she ceases to interest her husband, unless he is not as other men. In StambÛl on the contrary the odalisque who bathes in rival glances finally bathes in the Bosphorus with her charming head in a sack. Fortunately we are at war with Turkey."

"Have you considered, Thessaly, what appalling sins must have been committed by the present generation of women in some past phase of existence?"

"There are instances in which the sins belong to the present phase. But I agree with you that the women are suffering more than the men. Therefore their past errors must have been greater. They are being taught the value of love, Mario. In their next incarnation they will remember. They will be reborn beneath a new star—your star. Something perturbs you. You are harassed by doubts and hunted by misgivings. I have secured permission to toil up hundreds of stairs in order that I may emulate the priests of Bel and look out upon the roofs of Babylon. This spectacle will cheer you. Join me, my friend, and I will show you the heart of the world."

IX

"Look," said Jules Thessaly, "below you stretches the Capital of the greatest empire man has ever known."

They stood in the topmost gallery of the campanile looking down upon a miniature London. The viridescent ribbon of the Thames bound bridge to bridge running thematically through a symphony of grey and green and gold. A consciousness of power leapt high within Paul. Only the sun was above him, the sun and the suave immensity of space. How insignificant an episode was a human life, how futile and inept; a tiny note in a monstrous score. Below in the teeming streets moved a million such points, each one but a single note in this vast orchestration, a bird note, faint, inaudible 'mid the music of the spheres. Yet each to each was the centre of the Universe; all symbolised the triumph to the false Self-centre as opposed to the true God-centre. Men lived for the day because they doubted the morrow. Palaces and hovels, churches and theatres, all were products of this feverish striving of the ants to plumb the well of truth and scale the mountain of wisdom; to drain at a draught the gourd of life which the gods had filled in the world's morning. Thessaly began to speak again, standing at Paul's elbow, and his deep rich voice carried power and authority.

"Look at London and you look at an epitome of humanity. The best that man can do, and the worst, lie there beneath you. In that squat, grey, irregular mound which from earth level we recognise to be the Houses of Parliament, men are making laws. The laws which they are making are the laws of necessity—the necessity of slaying Prussians. Many of the larger buildings in the neighbourhood are occupied by temporary civil servants engaged in promulgating those laws. Thus by the passing of an Act having twenty clauses, twenty thousand clerks are created and five more hotels sequestered for their accommodation. No laws which do not bear directly or indirectly upon the slaying of Prussians have been made in recent years. This is sometimes called government, but used to be known as self-preservation when men dressed in yellow ochre and carried stone clubs.

"Eastward over the Thames hangs a pall of smoke. It is the smoke of Silvertown. Left, right, and all about are other palls. They are created by the furnaces of works which once were making useful things and beautiful things; paints and enamels and varnishes, pottery and metal ware, toys for sport and instruments of science. To-day they make instruments of death; high explosives to shatter flesh and bone to pulp and powder, deadly gases to sear men's eyes, to choke out human life. It is called work of national importance, but Christ would have wept to see it. Squatting in Whitehall—look, the setting sun strikes venomous sparks from its windows—is the War Office. Ponder well the name of this imposing pile—the War Office. Nearly two thousand years have elapsed since the last of the Initiates delivered His Sermon on the Mount. See! the city bristles with the spires of His churches; they are as thorns upon a briar-bush. Look north, the spire of a church terminates the prospect; south, it is the same; east and west—spires, spires, spires. And squatting grimly amid a thousand shrines of Jesus Christ is the War Office—the War Office, my friend. Watch how the spears of light strike redly into that canopy of foulness hanging above Kynoch's Works. A Ministry of Munitions controls all that poisonous activity. Mario, it is the second Crucifixion. The Jews crucified the Body; all the world has conspired to crucify the Spirit.

"The Word has failed. There lies the reading of your day dream, Mario, your dream of the Sheikh of El Wasr. Look how the shadow of the campanile creeps out beneath us, over church and War-Office-Annexe, over life and over death. Religion is a corpse and the world is its morgue. But out of corruption comes forth sweetness. No creature known to man possesses more intense vitality than the dermestes beetle which propagates in the skull of a mummy. From the ashes of the Cross you arise. Christ is dead; long live Christianity. Behold the world at your feet. Courage, my friend, open the Gates and lead mankind into the garden of the gods."

X

That Paul had established a platform strong enough to support the tower of a new gospel became evident. His second book of Revelations, The Key, was awaited eagerly by the whole of the civilised world. In determined opposition to the wishes of Bassett, unmoved by an offer from an American newspaper which would have created a record serial price, Paul had declined to print any part of The Key in a periodical. With the publication of The Gates, which but heralded a wider intent, he had become the central figure of the world. Politically he was regarded as a revolutionary so dangerous that he merited the highest respect, and the tactful attitude of the Roman Church was adopted by those temporal rulers who recognised in Paul Mario one who had almost grasped a power above the power of kings.

"In Galileo's days," said Thessaly on one occasion, "a man who proclaimed unpalatable truths was loaded with chains and hurled into a dungeon. Nowadays we load him with honours and raise him to the peerage, an even more effectual method of gagging him. Try to avoid the House of Peers, Mario. Your presence would disturb the orthodox slumbers of the bishops."

On the eve of the opening of the German offensive Paul received a long letter from Don which disturbed him very much. It was the outcome of Don's last interview with Flamby and represented the result of long deliberation. "I have had a sort of brain-wave," wrote Don in his whimsical fashion, "or rush of intellect to the brow. I suppose you recognise that you are now the outstanding figure of the War and consequently of the world? Such a figure always arises out of a great upheaval, as history shows. His presence is necessary to the readjustment of shattered things, I suppose—and he duly arrives. I take you to stand, Paul, for spiritual survival. You are the chosen retort of the White to the challenge of the Black, but I wonder if you have perceived the real inwardness of your own explanation of the War?

"You show it to be an upcrop of that primitive Evil which legend has embodied in the person of Lucifer. Has it occurred to you that the insidious process of corruption which you have followed step by step through the art, the music, the literature, the religion and the sociology of Germany may have been directed by someone? If you are the mouthpiece of the White, who is the mouthpiece of the Black? It is difficult to visualise such a personality, of course. We cannot imagine Pythagoras in his bath or even Shakespeare having his hair cut, and if What's-his-name revisited earth to-morrow I don't suppose anybody would know him. I often find it hard to realise that you, the old Paul with the foul briar pipe and the threadbare Norfolk, really wrote The Gates, not to mention Francesca. But you did, and I have been wondering if the Other Fellow—the Field-Marshal of the Powers of Darkness—is equally disappointing to look at—I mean, without halos, or, in his case, blue fire. In short, I have been wondering if, meeting him, one would recognise him? I have tried to imagine a sort of sinister Whisperer standing at the elbows of Germany's philosophers, scientists, artists and men of letters; one who was paving the way for a war that should lay religion in ashes. And now, Paul, forgive me if I seem to rave, but conditions here are not conducive to the production of really good literature—I wonder if you will divine where this line of reflection led me? The Whisperer, upon the ruins of the old creeds, would try to uprear a new creed—his own. You would be his obstacle. Would he attack you openly, or would he remain—the Whisperer? To adopt the delightful mediaeval language of the Salvation Army, watch for the Devil at your elbow.... I wish I could get home, if only for a day, not because I funk the crash which is coming at any moment now but because I should like to see The Key before, it goes to press...."

Paul read this strange letter many times. "The Whisperer ... would try to uprear a new creed—his own." Paul glanced at a bulky typescript which lay upon the table near his hand. The Key was complete and he had intended to deliver it in person to Bassett later the same morning. Strange doubts and wild surmises began to beat upon his brain and he shrank within himself, contemplative and somewhat fearful. A consciousness of great age crept over him like a shadow. He seemed to have known all things and to have wearied of all things, to have experienced everything and to have found everything to be nothing. Long, long ago he had striven as he was striving now to plant an orchard in the desert of life that men might find rest and refreshment on their journey through pathless time. Long, long ago he had doubted and feared—and failed. In some dim grove of the past he had revealed the secret of eternal rebirth to white-robed philosophers; in some vague sorrow that reached out of the ages and touched his heart he seemed to recognise that death had been his reward, and that he had welcomed death as a friend.

So completely did this mood absorb him that he started nervously to find Jules Thessaly standing beside his chair. Thessaly had walked in from the garden and he carried a flat-crowned black felt hat in his hand.

"If I have intruded upon a rich vein of reflection forgive me."

Paul turned and looked at the strong massive figure outlined against the bright panel of the open window. The influence of that mood of age lingered; he felt lonely and apprehensive. He noticed a number of empty flower vases about the room. Yvonne used to keep them always freshly filled. He wondered when she had ceased to do so and why. "You have rescued me from a mood that was almost suicidal, Thessaly. A horrible recognition of the futility of striving oppresses me this morning. I seem to be awaiting a blow which I know myself powerless to avert. If we were at your place I should prescribe a double 'Fra Diavolo' but, failing this, I think something with a fizz in it must suffice. Will you give the treatment a trial?"

"With pleasure. Let it be a stirrup-cup, or, as our northern friends have it, a doch-an-dorroch."

Paul stood up and stared at Thessaly. "Do I understand you to mean that you are about to set out upon a journey?"

"I am, Mario. Like Eugene Sue's tedious Jew, I am cursed with a lack of repose. I sail for New York to-morrow or the following day."

"Shall you be long absent?"

"I cannot say with any certainty. There seems to be nothing further for me to do in England at present. I feel that England has ceased to be the pivot of the world. I am turning my attention to America, not without sparing a side glance for the island kingdom of the Mikado. You know how unobtrusive I am, Mario; I am taking no letter of introduction to President Wilson, nor if I visit Japan shall I trouble official Tokio. Mine is a lazy life, but not an idle one. I am an enthusiastic onlooker."

Paul gazed at him reproachfully. "You never even warned me of your projected journey, Thessaly. Do you leave all your friends with equally slight regret?"

Thessaly gazed into the peculiar hat, and something in the pose of his head transported Paul to the hills above Lower Charleswood, where, backed by the curtain of a moving storm, he seemed to see Babylon Hall framed in a rainbow which linked the crescent of the hills. "You misjudge me," replied Thessaly. "What I have said is true, but I go in response to a sudden and unforeseen summons. Death and a frail woman have tricked me, and at one stroke have undone all that I had done. I am compelled to go."

Paul detected in the deep voice a note of pathos, of defeat. "I am sorry," he said simply. "I value your friendship."

"Friendship, Mario, is heaven's choicest gift. The love of woman is sometimes wonderful, but it always rests upon a physical basis. The love of a friend is the loftiest sentiment of which man is capable. Its only parallel is the unselfish devotion of a dog to his master."

A servant came in with the refreshments which Paul had ordered. Directly she had departed Thessaly began speaking again. "I have lived in Germany, Mario, and in my younger student days—for I am perhaps an older man than you imagine me to be—I have met those philosophers, or some of them, to whom Germany owes a debt of hatred which cannot be repaid even unto the third and fourth generation. I have lived in France, and in many a sunset I have seen the blood that would drench her fairest pastures. I have watched the coming of the storm, and I saw it break upon the rocks of these inviolable islands. I thought that I knew its portent; I thought that I had discerned the inner meaning of the Day. Mario, I was wrong. Humanity has proved too obstinate."

He spoke with a suppressed vehemence that was startling. "The point of this escapes me," said Paul, watching him. "For what or for whom has humanity proved too obstinate?"

"For us, Mario—for us. There is many an ancient knot to be untied before man can be free to think unfettered. The myth, Imperialism, alone is an iron barrier to universal brotherhood. Not even in the spectacle of the Germanic peoples pouring out their blood in pursuit of that shadow has the rest of the world perceived a lesson. A colony is like a married son with whose domestic arrangements his father persists in interfering. The jewels in an imperial crown mean nothing even to the wearer of that crown, except additional headache. But attack the blood-stained legend of Imperialism and you attack Patriotism, its ferocious parent. Humanity has grown larger since the wolf suckled Romulus, but no wiser, and strong wine is not for weak intellects."

He laid his hand upon the typed pages of The Key. "Is our friendship staunch enough to sustain the shock of real candour, Mario?"

Paul was deeply and unaccountably moved by something in Thessaly's manner. "I trust so," he replied.

"Then—forgive me—burn The Key. It is not yet too late."

"Thessaly! You offer me this counsel! Do you realise what it means to me?"

"Some day, Mario, you may comprehend all that it meant to me."

Paul stared at him truly dumfounded. "What can have happened thus suddenly to divert the current of your life and the tenor of your philosophy?"

"The inevitable, against which we fight in vain."

"And your advice—that I burn The Key—is given sincerely?"

"It is."

"I cannot realise that you mean it, Thessaly. I cannot realise that you are going."

"I am sorry, Mario. In these troublous days a cloud of misgiving hangs over every parting, since au revoir may mean good-bye. But I must go, following the precept of that wise man who said, 'Live unobserved, and if that cannot be, slip unobserved from life.'"

An hour later Paul was about to leave the house when a telegram was brought to him. He experienced great difficulty in grasping its purport. He could not make out from whom it came, and it seemed at first to be without meaning....

"Regret to inform you Captain Donald H. Courtier,—Coy., Irish Guards, killed in action...."

XI

On the following day a phenomenal storm burst upon London out of a blue sky. Tropical rain beat down into the heated streets and thunder roared in Titan anger. Paul came out of the War Office and stood on the steps for some moments watching a rivulet surging along the edge of the pavement.... "I am sorry, Mario, but it was mercifully swift, and his end was glorious. Ireland has disappointed some of us, but fellows like Courtier and those who went with him make one think...."

Paul walked out into the lashing rain, going in the direction of Charing Cross. He was thinking of another storm which had struck swiftly out of a fair sky, of the aisles of the hills, and of one that he had met there. To-day Jules Thessaly was leaving England. Don was dead. Some who knew Paul and who saw him driving on through the downpour as if fury-ridden or sped by some great urgency, wondered and later remembered. But to him London was empty, and heedless of the curiosity of men and the tumult of the elements he pressed on. Nothing penetrated to his consciousness save the eternal repetition of his own name and the name of his book. Evidences of his influence seemed to leer at him from window and hoarding. A performance of the French symphony, Dawn, was advertised to take place at the Queen's Hall, and he found one bill announcing an exhibition of pictures by an ultra-modern Belgian—pictures which their painter declared to be "illustrations" of The Gates. And in his pocket were the papers deposited with Nevin to be given to Paul only in the event of Don's death. Paul had read them, and whilst he longed with a passionate longing to go to Flamby, he knew that to-day he dared not trust himself within sight of the clear grey eyes, of the alluring lips, within touch of the red-brown hair. But he recognised that he must go ultimately, and so he drove on through the storm and right and left of him were traces of his mark upon the world.

Tropical heat prevailed throughout the following day and Paul spent the morning pacing up and down his study. Yvonne was in Brighton. Paul long since had realised that the sympathy between them was imperfect, but always he had counted upon re-establishing the old complete comradeship when his great task should be at last concluded. This morning he had learned the truth, that Yvonne was with Orlando James, but his brain was still too numb fully to appreciate it. Towards noon he sat down at his writing-table and began to read with close attention the typed pages of The Key. Bassett was becoming anxious and had rung up more than once during the morning. Arrangements had been made to publish simultaneously in the principal capitals of the world, and the publishers had been busy for several months accumulating paper to meet the unparalleled demand for this vast first edition.... Eustace knocked three times at the study door to announce that luncheon was served, but Paul continued his reading. During the afternoon he caused a fire to be lighted in the study grate.

It was late evening before he left the house, and he set out with no conscious objective in view, yet subconsciously he was already come to his journey's end. His ideas were chaotic, and he seemed to be spiritually adrift. That his book was indeed the Key he was unable to doubt. He had truly grasped the stupendous truth underlying that manifestation called life, but seeking to discern retrospectively the path whereby he had pierced to the heart of the labyrinth he found confusion and stood dismayed before the dazzling jewel which he had unearthed. The past intruded subtly upon him, and he was all but swept away by sorrowful memories of Don. He saw him coming along the Pilgrim's Way and heard his cheery greeting as he stepped upon the terrace of Hatton Towers.

Where that night's wandering led him he knew not, but there were those who saw him passing along Limehouse Causeway as if in quest of the Chinese den where once he and Thessaly had watched men smoke opium, and others who spoke to him, but without receiving acknowledgment, in the neighbourhood of Westminster Cathedral. He appeared, too, at the CafÉ Royal, standing just within the doorway and looking from table to table as one who seeks a friend, but went out again without addressing a word to anyone. At a late hour he saw a light shining from a casement window and mechanically he pressed the knob of a bell above which appeared the number 23. Flamby opened the door and Paul stood looking at her in the dusk.

XII

"Oh," said Flamby, "I had given you up."

She wore a blue and white kimono and had little embroidered Oriental slippers on her feet. Under the light of the silk-shaded lamp her hair gleamed wonderfully. She had matured since that day in Bluebell Hollow, when Paul and Don had first seen her. The world had not hardened her and the curves of her face were almost childlike, yet there was something gone from her eyes and something new come to replace it. Resourcefulness was there, but no hint of boldness and her moods of timidity were exquisite. Now, having naively confessed her dreams, her sudden confusion was lovable.

"I scarcely know," declared Paul. "I scarcely know why I have come at such an hour. It is not fair to you, and it is not practising what I preach."

"Please come in. You are welcome at any time, and as nobody will see you there can be no harm done."

Paul entered and stood looking vaguely at the parcel which he carried. It contained the manuscript of The Key. Thus reminded of its presence he found himself wondering why since he had forgotten that he carried it, he had not absently left it behind somewhere during his aimless wanderings. He laid it with his hat on the open bureau. The little apartment had assumed very marked individuality. Many delightful sketches and water-colour drawings ornamented the walls and a delicate pastel study of Dovelands Cottage hung above the famous clock on the mantelpiece. Paul crossed and examined this picture closely.

"Who is living in Dovelands Cottage now, Flamby?" he asked. "I believe Nevin told me that it had been sold."

Flamby turned aside to take up a box of cigarettes.

"Don bought it," she said slowly. "I don't know why he didn't want you to know, but he asked me not to tell you."

Paul continued to stare at the picture, until Flamby spoke again. "Will you have a cigarette?" she asked, her voice low and monotonous.

"No, thank you very much."

"I can make coffee in a minute."

"Please don't think of it."

Through the little mirror immediately below the pastel Flamby studied Paul covertly. He had aged; all the beauty of his face resided now in his eyes. Two years had changed him from a young and handsome man to one whose youth is left behind, and who from the height of life's pilgrimage looks down sadly but unfalteringly into a valley of shadows. He turned to her.

"Mrs. Chumley?"

"I was with her this morning. She is staying for a while at the cottage. I think she is nearly broken-hearted. From the time that his mother died, when Don was very little, Mrs. Chumley looked after him until he went away to school. You know, don't you? But she is so brave. I wish," said Flamby, her voice sunken almost to a whisper, "I wish I could be as brave ..." She sat down on the settee, biting her lower lip and striving hard to retain composure.

"You are very brave indeed, and very loyal," answered Paul, but he did not approach her where she sat. "You have taught me that there are women as far above pettiness and spitefulness as every man should be, but as every man is not."

"I wasn't like it before I knew Mrs. Chumley and—Don."

"You were always true to yourself, and there is no higher creed. Flamby, I have received some papers which Don left with Nevin to be delivered to me. You thought me so mean and lowly, so ignorant and so vainglorious that I could judge a girl worthy of Don's love to be unworthy of my friendship. You were right. No! please don't speak—yet You were right, but you suffered in silence, and you did not hate me. I don't ask you to forgive me, I only thank you very, very sincerely."

Flamby held a handkerchief tightly between her teeth, and stared fixedly at a photograph of one of her propaganda pictures which hung on the wall to the right of the bedroom door.

"There on your bureau," continued Paul, "lies my second book. It contains the key to mysteries which have baffled men since the world began. I do not say it with vanity; vanity is dead within me. I say it with fear, for I did not unravel those mysteries; I did not write that book."

"Oh," whispered Flamby.

"Yes—again you saw clearly, little wonder-girl. Don has told me how you traced the black thread running through the woof of The Gates, and that black thread was truth. It is truth that slays and truth that damns. Not for a million ages can men be sufficiently advanced to know and to live. Hypocrisy triumphs; for the few is the fruit of knowledge—for the multitude, the husk. I have seen the Light of the World, but I stand in the shadow. Yet from the bottom of my heart I thank God that at the price of happiness I have bought escape from a sin more deadly than that which any man has committed. Only by renouncing the world may we win the world. This is the lesson of Golgotha. Behind the curtain of the War move forces of incalculable evil which first found expression in Germany to-day as they found expression there in the Middle Ages. It was in a Rhine monastery that the first Black Mass was sung. It was in a Rhine town that Lucifer opened his new campaign against mankind; it was in German soil that he planted his seed. Flamby, I tell you that the Hohenzollerns are a haunted race, ruling a haunted land, doomed and cursed. About them are obscene spirits wearing the semblance of men—of men gross and heavy, and leaden-eyed; and upon each brow is the mark of the Bull, the sigil of Hell."

Flamby watched him, listening spellbound to his strange words. He was inspired; anger and sorrow drove him remorselessly on and a chill finger seemed to touch Flamby's heart as she listened; for resignation and finality informed his speech.

"Each human soul must fight its way out of the night of the valley, Flamby, before it can pass the gates of dawn. Each error is a step in the path and there are steps right to the top. To me it was given to see but not to understand until this very hour. What I have done it was ordained that I should do; what I was about to do God forbade." He paused, glancing at Flamby and quickly away again. "Don's letter has opened my eyes, which were blinded. I shall not ask you for what purpose you risked so much to visit the studio of Orlando James. I know. Your fire is laid, Flamby; may I light it?"

"Of course, if you wish."

Paul stooped and held a match to the paper, watching the tongues of flame licking the dry wood; and ere long a small fire was crackling in the grate. He turned to Flamby, pointing to the parcel which lay upon the bureau. "The purpose with which I set out recurs to me," he said. "I have destroyed all the typed copies and every note. It is my wish that you shall destroy the manuscript."

"Of The Key?" she whispered.

"Please."

"But—are you sure?"

"Quite sure."

Flamby met his set gaze and unwrapping the manuscript she approached the fire. Paul stood aside, resting his elbow upon a corner of the mantelshelf. Flamby's hands were very unsteady.

"Tear out the pages," said Paul, "and throw them loosely on the flames. They will burn more readily."

Flamby obeyed him, and page by page began to destroy the book containing truths which were known in the sanctuaries of Memphis but which the world was yet too young to understand. Excepting the voice of the flames there was no sound in the room until Flamby had laid the last page upon the pyre, when she sank upon her knees and hid her face in her hands. Her hair rippled down and veiled her redly.

Paul watched her for a while and then, irresistibly, inevitably, he was drawn down beside her; his arm crept around the bowed shoulders and he pressed his cheek against fragrant curls. "Flamby," he said, "dear little wild-haired Flamby. The sorrow of the world has claimed us both. Let us both be brave—and true." And although he would have bartered many things once accounted of price for the right to crush her in his arms he rose to his feet again and moved away to the corner of the mantelshelf, for the nearness and the touch of her intoxicated him. Flamby did not stir. The mound of ashes settled lower in the grate. Paul took up his hat and walked to the door.

"Good night, Flamby," he said. "Wait for me. I shall be waiting for you."

The door closed and Flamby heard footsteps retreating along the gallery. As the sound became inaudible, a maroon burst dully at no great distance away. Flamby leapt to her feet. Her eyes were wild as she stood there, hands clenched tightly, and listened. A second maroon gave warning of the approaching air raiders. Flamby ran to the door, threw it open and sprang out into the brilliant moonlight as police whistles began to skirl in the distance. The slender chain about her neck parted unaccountably and unperceived by Flamby her locket fell at her feet.

"Paul!" she cried. "Paul! come back—come back!"

But only an echo which dwelt in the arch of the entrance answered her, saying sadly: "Paul ... Paul ..."

Heedless of those who urged him to take cover, of the flat shrieking of whistles and later of the roar of the barrage, Paul walked on under the stars of a perfect night and above him droned the Gotha engines. He prayed silently.

"Master of Destiny, all-Merciful God, suffer me to die that I may be reborn a wiser and a better man. Of Thine infinite mercy guide the steps of Yvonne who was my wife. Grant her the happiness for which she sought and which I denied her. To those who wait give faith and fortitude: to me, O God, give death. Amen."

A bomb fell shrieking through the air and burst with a rumbling monstrous peal, digging a pit, a smoking grave, on the spot where Paul had stood. His body was scattered like flock by the wind; his spirit was drawn into the ceaseless Loom.

OM MANI PADME HUM.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE NORTHUMBERLAND PRESS, THORNTON STREET, NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE