Rawson-Clew was reading a letter. It was breakfast time; the letter had missed the afternoon post yesterday, which was what the writer would have wished, and so was not delivered at the hotel till the morning. It was short, from the beginning—"I am so glad you have done it," to the end of the postscript—"this is to-morrow, so good-bye." There was not much to read; yet he looked at it for some time. Did ever man receive such a refusal to an offer of marriage? It was almost absurd, and perhaps hardly flattering, yet somehow characteristic of the writer; Rawson-Clew recognised that now, though it had surprised him none the less. What was to be done next? See the girl, he supposed, and hear what she proposed to do; she wrote that she had arranged "capitally," but she did not say what. He was quite certain she was not going to remain with the Van Heigens; if by some extraordinary accident she had been able to bring that about, she would certainly have told him so triumphantly. He could not think of anything "capital" she could have arranged; he was persuaded, either that she only said it to reassure him, or else, if she believed it, it was in her ignorance of the extent of the damage done yesterday. He must go and see her, hear what she had planned, and what further trouble she was thinking to get herself into, and prevent it in the only way possible; and there was only one way, there was absolutely no other solution of the difficulty; she must marry him, and there was an end of it. He glanced at her refusal again, and liked it in spite of its absurdity; after all, perhaps it would have been better if he had been frank too; one could afford to dispense with the delicate conventions that he associated with women in dealing with this girl. He wished he had gone to her and spoken freely, as man to man, saying plainly that since they had together been indiscreet, they must together take the consequence, and make the best of it—and really the best might be very good.

Soon after he had finished breakfast he set out for the Van Heigens' house. But as yet, though he had some comprehension of Julia, he had not fully realised the promptness of action which necessity had taught her. When he reached the Van Heigens' she had been gone some sixteen hours.

It was Vrouw Van Heigen who told him; she was in the veranda when he arrived, and so, perforce, saw him and answered his inquiries. It was evident, at the outset, that neither his appearance nor name conveyed anything to her; she had not seen him the day of the excursion, and Denah's description, purposely complicated by a cross description of Julia's, had conveyed nothing, and his name had never transpired. He saw he was unknown, and recognised Julia's loyal screening of him, not with any satisfaction; evidently it was part of her creed to stand between a man (father or otherwise) and the consequence of his acts. That was an additional reason for finding her and explaining that he, unlike Captain Polkington, was not used to anything of the sort.

"She has gone?" he said, in answer to Vrouw Van Heigen's brief information. The old lady was decidedly nervous of the impressive Englishman who had come asking after her disgraced companion; she moved her fat hands uneasily even before he asked, "Where has she gone? Perhaps you would be kind enough to give me her address?"

"I cannot," she was obliged to say; "I have not it. I do not know where she is."

Rawson-Clew stared. "But surely," he said, "you are mistaken? She was here yesterday."

"Yes, yes; I know. But she is not here now; she went last night in haste. I will tell you about it. You are a friend? Come in."

Without waiting, she led him into the drawing-room, and there left him in some haste. The room struck him as familiar; he wondered why, until he remembered that it must have been Julia's description which made him so well acquainted with it. It was all just as she described; the thick, dark-coloured carpet, with the little carefully-bound strips of the same material laid over it to make paths to the piano, the stove, and other frequented spots. The highly-polished furniture, upholstered in black and yellow Utrecht velvet, the priceless Chinese porcelain brought home by old Dutch merchants, and handed down from mother to daughter for generations; the antimacassars of crochet work, the snuff-coloured wall-paper, the wonderful painted tiles framed in ebony that hung upon it. It was all just as she had said; the very light and smell seemed familiar, she must somehow have given him an idea of them too.

Just then Vrouw Van Heigen came back, and her husband with her; she had been to fetch him, not feeling equal to dealing with the visitor alone. Mijnheer, by her request, had put on his best coat, but he still had his spectacles pushed upon his forehead, as they always were when he was disturbed in the office.

There was a formal greeting—one never dispensed with that in Holland, then Mijnheer said, "You are, I suppose, a friend of Miss Polkington's father?"

Rawson-Clew, remembering the winter day at Marbridge, answered, "I am acquainted with him."

Mijnheer nodded. "Yes, yes," he said; then, "it is very sad, and much to be regretted. I cannot but give to you, and through you to her father, very bad news of Miss Polkington. She is not what we thought her; she has disgraced—"

But here Rawson-Clew interrupted, but in the quiet, leisurely way which was so incomprehensible to the Hollanders. "My dear sir," he said, "please spare yourself the trouble of these details; I am the man with whom Miss Polkington had the misfortune to be lost on the Dunes."

Vrouw Van Heigen gasped; the gentle, drawling voice, the manner, the whole air of the speaker overwhelmed her, and shattered all her previous thoughts of the affair. With Mijnheer it was different; right was right, and wrong wrong to him, no matter who the persons concerned might be.

"Then, sir," he said, growing somewhat red, "I am glad indeed that I cannot tell you where she is."

Rawson-Clew looked up with faint admiration, righteous indignation, or at all events the open expression of it, was a discourtesy practically extinct with the people among whom he usually lived. He felt respect for the old bulb grower who would be guilty of it.

"I am sorry you should think so badly of me," he said; "I can only assure you that it is without reason. You do not believe me? I suppose it is quite useless for me to say that my sole motive in seeking Miss Polkington is a desire to prevent her from coming to any harm?"

"She will, I should think, come to less harm without you than with you," Mijnheer retorted; and Rawson-Clew, seeing as plainly as Julia had yesterday, the impossibility of making the position clear, did not attempt it.

"I hope you may be right," he said, "but I am afraid she will be in difficulties. She had little money, and no friends in Holland, and was, I have reason to believe, on such terms with her family that it would not suit her to return to England."

"Ah, but she must have gone to England!" Vrouw Van Heigen cried. "She went away in a carriage as one does when one goes to the station to start on a journey."

"She received letters from her family," Mijnheer said sturdily, "not frequently, but occasionally; there was not, I think, any quarrel or disagreement. She must certainly have set out to return home last night. If not, and if she had nowhere to go, why should she leave as she did yesterday? We did not say 'go!' we were content that she should remain several days, until her arrangements could be made."

"She might not have cared for that," Rawson-Clew suggested; "if you insinuated to her the sort of things you did to me; women do not like that, as a rule, you know."

All the same, as he said this, he could not help thinking Mijnheer right; Julia must have had somewhere to go. Her dignity and feelings were not of the order to lose sight of essentials in details, or to demand unreasonable sacrifice of common sense. She must have had some destination in view when she left the Van Heigens yesterday, and, as far as he could see, there was no destination open to her but home.

Mijnheer was firmly of this opinion, although, now that a question about it had been suggested to him, he wished he had made sure before the girl left. Of course, her plans and destination were no business of his—she might even have refused to give information about them on that account; he had dismissed her in disgrace, what she did next was not his concern. But in spite of her bad behaviour he had liked her; and though his notions of propriety, and consequent condemnation of her, had undergone no change, he was kind-heartedly anxious she should come to no harm. Her words about some good people making the merely indiscreet into sinners came back to him, but he would not apply them; Julia had gone home, he was sure of it, and a good thing too; the Englishman with the quiet voice and the grand manner could not follow her there to her detriment. Though, to be sure, it was strange that such a man as he should want to; he was not the kind of person Mijnheer had expected the partner in the escapade to be; truly the English were a strange people, very strange. His wife agreed with him on that point; they often said so afterwards—in fact, whenever they thought of the disgraced companion, who was such an excellent cook.

As for Rawson-Clew, he returned to England; there was nothing to keep him longer in Holland. But as he was still not sure how Julia's "capital arrangement" was going to be worked out, and was determined to bear his share of the burden, he decided to go to Marbridge on an early opportunity.

The opportunity did not occur quite so soon as he expected; several things intervened, so that he had been home more than a week before he was able to fulfil his intention. Marbridge lies in the west country, some considerable distance from London; Rawson-Clew did not reach it till the afternoon, at an hour devoted by the Polkingtons most exclusively to things social. It is to be feared, however, that he did not consider the Polkingtons collectively at all; it was Julia, and Julia alone, of whom he was thinking when he knocked at the door of No. 27 East Street.

The door was opened by a different sort of servant from the one who had opened it to him the last time he came; rather a smart-looking girl she was, with her answers quite ready.

"Miss Julia Polkington was not at home," she said, and, in answer to his inquiry when she was expected, informed him that she did not know.

"There is no talk of her coming home, sir," she said; "she is abroad, I think; she has been gone some time."

"Since when?"

The girl did not know. "In the spring, I think, sir," she said; "she has not been here all the summer."

Then, it seemed, his first suspicion was correct; Julia had not gone home; for some reason or another she was not able to return.

"Is Captain Polkington in?" he asked.

He was not; there was no one at home now; but Mrs. Polkington would be in in about an hour. The maid added the last, feeling sure her mistress would be sorry to let such a visitor slip.

But Rawson-Clew did not want to see Mrs. Polkington; she, he was nearly sure, represented the aspiring side of the family, not the one to whom Julia would turn in straits. The improved look of the house and the servant suggested that the family was hard at work aspiring just now, and so less likely than ever to be ready to welcome the girl, or anxious to give true news of her if they had any to give. Captain Polkington, who no one could connect with the ascent of the social ladder, might possibly know something; at all events, there was a better chance of it, and he certainly could very easily be made to tell anything he did know.

"When do you expect Captain Polkington home?" he asked.

"Not for a month or more, I believe, sir," was the answer; "he is in London just now."

Rawson-Clew asked for his address; it occurred to him that Julia might have gone to her father; it really seemed very probable. He got the address in full, and went away, but without leaving any name to puzzle and tantalise Mrs. Polkington. Of course she was puzzled and tantalised when the maid told her of the visitor. From past experience, she expected something unpleasant of his coming, even though the description sounded favourable; but, as she heard no more of it, she forgot all about him in the course of time.

It was on the next afternoon that Rawson-Clew drove to 31 Berwick Street. There are several Berwick Streets in London, and, though the address given was full enough for the postal authorities, the cabman had some difficulty in finding it, and went wrong before he went right. It was a dingy street, and not very long; it had an unimportant, apologetic sort of air, as if it were quite used to being overlooked. The houses were oldish, and very narrow, so that a good many were packed into the short length; the pavement was narrow, too, and so were the windows; they, for the most part, were carefully draped with curtains of doubtful hue. Some were further guarded from prying eyes by sort of gridirons, politely called balconies, though, since the platform had been forgotten, and only the protecting railings were there hard up against the glass, the name was deceptive.

The hansom came slowly down the street, the driver scanning the frequent doors for 31. He overlooked it by reason of the fact that the number had been rubbed off, but finally located it by discovering most of the numbers above and below. Rawson-Clew got out and rang. In course of time—rather a long time—the door was opened to him by the landlady—that same landlady who had confided to Mr. Gillat the desirability of having a good standing with the butcher.

"Cap'ain Polkington?" she said, in answer to Rawson-Clew's inquiry. "I don't know whether he's in or not; you'd better go up and see; one of 'em's there, anyhow."

She stood back against the wall, and Rawson-Clew came in.

"Up-stairs," she said; "second door you come to."

With that she went down to the kitchen regions; she was no respecter of persons, and she thanked God she had plenty of her own business to mind, and never troubled herself poking into other people's. Consequently, though she might wonder what a man of Rawson-Clew's appearance should want with her lodgers, she did not let it interfere with her work, or take the edge off her tongue in the heated argument she held with the milkman, who came directly after.

Rawson-Clew found his way up the stairs; they were steep, and had rather the appearance of having been omitted in the original plan of the house, and squeezed in as an afterthought, when it was found really impossible to do without. There was no window to give light to them, or air either; hence, no doubt, the antiquity of the flavour of cabbage and fried bacon with hung about them. But Rawson-Clew, when he ascended, found the second door without trouble; there was not room to get lost. He knocked; he half expected to hear Julia's voice; it seemed to him probable that she was the person referred to as "one of them." But it was a man who bade him enter, and, unless his memory played him false, not Captain Polkington.

It was not the Captain, it was Johnny Gillat. He was reading the newspaper—Captain Polkington had it in the morning, he in the afternoon; he wore, or attempted to (they fell off rather often), very old slippers indeed, and a coat of surprising shabbiness which he reserved for home use. For a moment he stared at his visitor in astonishment, and Rawson-Clew apologised for his intrusion. "I was looking for Captain Polkington," he said. "I was told he was probably here."

"Ah!" Mr. Gillat exclaimed, his face lighting into a smile. "Of course, of course! Captain Polkington's out just now, but he'll be in soon. Come in, won't you; come in and wait for him."

He hospitably dragged forward the shabby easy-chair. "Try that, won't you?" he said. "It's really comfortable—not that one, that's a little weak in the legs; it ought to be put away; it's deceptive to people who don't know it."

He pushed the offending chair against the wall, his slippers flapping on his feet, so that he thought it less noticeable to surreptitiously kick them off. "My name's Gillat," he went on. "Captain Polkington is an old friend of mine."

"Mr. Gillat?" Rawson-Clew said. He remembered the name, and something Julia had said about the bearer of it. It was he who had given her the big gold watch she wore, and he of whom she had seemed fond, in a half-protecting, half-patient way, that was rather inexplicable—at least it was till he saw Mr. Gillat.

"Perhaps," Rawson-Clew said, "you can tell me what I want to know—it is about Miss Julia Polkington. I met her in Holland during the summer."

He may have thought of giving some idea of intimacy, or of explaining his interest; but, if so, he changed his mind; anything of the kind was perfectly unnecessary to Mr. Gillat, who did not dream of questioning his reason.

"Ah, yes," he said; "Julia is in Holland; she has been there a long time."

"Is she there still?" Rawson-Clew asked. "Can you give me her address?"

"Well," Johnny said regretfully, "not exactly. But she is abroad somewhere," the last with an increase of cheerfulness, as if to indicate that this was something, at all events.

"You don't know where she is?" Rawson-Clew inquired. "Does her father? I suppose he does—some one must."

"No," Johnny said. "No; I'm afraid not. Certainly her father does not, nor her mother—none of us know; but, as you say, somebody must know—the people she is with, for instance."

Rawson-Clew grew a little impatient. "Do you mean," he said, "that her family are content to know nothing of her whereabouts? Have they taken no steps to find her?"

"Well, you see," Johnny answered slowly, "there aren't any steps to take. They don't want to find her; she is quite well and happy, no doubt, and she will come back when she is ready. Mrs. Polkington—do you know Mrs. Polkington? A wonderful woman! She is very busy just now, she is shining. Miss ChÈrie is quite a belle. They really have not—have not accommodation for Julia; it is not, of course, that they don't want her—they have not exactly room for her."

"But surely they want to know where she is?" Rawson-Clew persisted.

"No, they don't," Johnny told him. "They know she is all right; she told them so, and told them she did not want to be found. They are satisfied—" He broke off, feeling that the visitor was more astonished than admiring of such a state of affairs. "Family emotions and sentiments, you know," he explained in defence of this family, "are not every one's strong point; the social, or the religious, or—" (he waved his hand comprehendingly) "or the national may stand first, and why not?"

"Are you satisfied?" Rawson-Clew asked briefly.

"I'd sooner be able to see her," Johnny admitted. "I'm fond of her; yes, she's been very kind and good; I miss seeing her. But, of course, she has her way to make in the world."

"But are you satisfied that she should make it thus? That she should leave the Dutch family she was with and disappear, leaving no address?"

"Sir," Johnny said with dignity, "I am quite satisfied, and if any one says that he is not, I would be pleased to talk to him."

But the dignity left Mr. Gillat's manner as quickly as it came; before Rawson-Clew could say anything, he was apologising. "You must forgive me," he said; "I am very fond of that little girl; and I thought—but I had no business to think; I'm an old fool, to think you meant—"

"I only meant," Rawson-Clew said, speaking with unconscious gentleness, "that I was afraid she might be in difficulties. She may be in trouble about money, or something."

"Oh, no," Johnny said cheerfully; "she has a fine head for money matters. I have sometimes thought, since she has been gone, that she has the best head in the family! She's all right—quite right; there's no need to be uneasy about her. I'll show you the letter she wrote me."

He opened a shabby pocket-book, and took out a letter. "There, you read that," he said.

Rawson-Clew read, and at the end was little wiser. Julia said she had left one situation (reason not even suggested), and had got another. That she did not wish to give her new address, or to hear from Mr. Gillat, or her family, at this new place, as it might spoil her arrangements. Rawson-Clew recognised the last word as a favourite of Julia's; with her it was elastic, and could mean anything, from a piece of lace arranged to fill up the neck of a dress, to a complex and far-reaching scheme arranged to bring about some desired end. What it meant in the present instance was not indicated, but clearly she did not wish for interference, and, with some wisdom, took the surest way to prevent it by making it well-nigh impossible. She had left one means of communication, however, though apparently that was for Johnny only. "If you and father get into any very great muddle," she wrote, "you must let me know. Put an advertisement—one word, 'Johnny,' will do—in a paper; I shall understand, and, if I can, I will try to do something." A paper was suggested; it was a cheap weekly. Rawson-Clew remembered to have seen it once in the small Dutch town that summer, so it was to be got there. Unfortunately, as he also remembered, it was to be got in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and Paris and Berlin too.

He folded the letter, and returned it to Mr. Gillat. "Thank you," he said; "evidently, as you say, she does not wish to be found, and it would seem she has got some sort of employment, although I am afraid it cannot be of an easy or pleasant sort."

He did not explain the reason he had for thinking so, and Mr. Gillat never thought of asking. Soon after he went away.

Clearly there was nothing to be done. Julia did not mean to have his help and protection; and, with a decision and completeness which, now he came to think of it, did not altogether surprise him, she has taken care to avoid them. That absurd refusal of hers was, after all, a reprieve, although until now he had not looked upon it in that light. No doubt it was a good thing affairs had turned out as they had; the marriage would have been in many ways disadvantageous. Yet he certainly would have insisted on it, and taken trouble to do so, if she had not put it altogether out of his power. All the same, he did not feel as gratified as he ought, perhaps because the arrogance of man is not pleased to have woman arbitrator of his fate, and the instinct of gentleman is not satisfied to have her bear his burden, perhaps for some other less clear reason. He really did not know himself, and did not try to think; there seemed little object in doing so, seeing that incident was closed.

The next day he went north, and by accident travelled part of the way with a lady of his acquaintance. She was young, not more than five or six and twenty, nice looking too, and very well dressed. She had a lot of small impediments with her—a cloak, a dressing-bag, sunshade, umbrella, golf clubs—some one, no doubt, would come and clear her when the destination was reached; in the mean time, she and her belongings were an eminently feminine presence. She talked pleasantly of what had happened since they last met; she had been to Baireuth that summer, she told him, and spoke intelligently of the music, the technique and the beauty of it, and what it stood for. She was surprised to hear he had got no further than Holland, and more surprised still that he had not even seen Rembrandt's masterpiece while he was there. Her voice was smooth and even, a little loud, perhaps, from her spending much time out of doors, not in the least given to those subtle changes of tone which express what is not said; but as she never wanted to express any such things, that did not matter.

She did not bore him with too much conversation; she had papers with her—some three or four, and she glanced at them between whiles. Afterwards she commented on their contents—the political situation, the war (there is always a war somewhere), the cricket news, the new books; touching lightly, but intelligently, on each topic in turn.

Rawson-Clew listened and answered, polite and mildly interested. It was some time since he had heard this agreeable kind of conversation, and since he had come in contact with this agreeable kind of person. He ought to have appreciated it more, as men appreciate the charm of drawing-rooms who have long been banished from them. He came to the conclusion that he must be growing old, not to prefer the society of a pretty, agreeable and well-dressed woman to an empty railway carriage.

The girl had two fine carnations in her coat; the stalks were rather long, and so had got bruised. She regretted this, and Rawson-Clew offered to cut them for her. He began to feel for a knife in likely and unlikely pockets, and it was then that he first noticed a faint, sweet smell; dry, not strong at all, more a memory than a scent. He did not recognise what it was, nor from where it came, but it reminded him of something, he could not think what.

He puzzled over it as he cut the flower stalks, then all at once he laid hold on the edge of a recollection—a pair of dark eyes, in which mirthful, mocking lights flickered, as the sun splashes flicker on the ground under trees—a voice, many-noted as a violin, that grew softest when it was going to strike hardest, that expressed a hundred things unsaid.

He looked across at the owner of the carnations, and wondered by what perversity of fate it was decreed that any one who could buy such good boots, should have such ill-shaped feet to put into them; and why, if fate so handicapped her, why she should exhibit them by crossing her knees. He also wondered what possessed her to wear that hat; every other well-dressed girl had a variation of the style that year, it was the correctest of the correct for fashion, but he did not take note of that. Men are rather blockheaded on the subject of fashion, and seldom see the charm in the innately unbecoming and unsuitable, no matter what decrees it.

He looked back to the empty opposite corner, and, though until that moment he had not really thought of Julia since he left Mr. Gillat yesterday, he put her there in imagination now. He did not want her there, he did not want her anywhere (there are some wines which a man does not want, that still rather spoil his taste for others). She would not have made the mistake of wearing such a hat; her clothes were not new, they were distinctly shabby sometimes, but they were well assorted. As to the boots—he remembered the day he tied her shoe—he could imagine the man she married, if he were very young and very foolish, of course, finding a certain pleasure in taking her arched foot, when it was pink and bare, in the hollow of his hand. If she were in that corner now, the quiet, twinkling smile would certainly be on her face as she listened to the talk of books, and men, and places, and things. He did not picture her joining even when they spoke of things she knew, and places she had been to—he remembered he had once heard her speak of a town which had been spoken of this afternoon. She had somehow grasped the whole life of the place, and laid it bare to him in a few words—the light-hearted gaiety and the sordid misery, the black superstition and the towering history which overhung it, and the cheerful commonplace which, like the street cries and the gutter streams, ran through it all—the whole flavour of the thing. The girl opposite had been to the place too; she told him of the historic spots she had visited; she knew a deal more about them than Julia did. She spoke of the quaint pottery to be bought there—it had not struck Julia as quaint, any more than it did its buyers and sellers. And she referred to the sayings and opinions of a great pose writer, who had expressed all he knew and felt and thought about it, and more besides. Julia, apparently, had not read him—what reading she had done seemed to be more in the direction of Gil Blas, and Dean Swift, and other kindred things in different languages.

Julia
"Julia"

The owner of the carnations glanced out of window, and commented on the scenery, which was here rather fine—Julia would not have done that; all the same, she would have known just what sort of country they had passed through all the way, not only when it was fine; she would have noticed the lie of the land, the style of work done there, the kind of lives lived there, even, possibly, the likely difficulties in the way of railway-making and bridge building. She would certainly have taken account of the faces on the platforms at which they drew up, so that without effort she could have picked out the porter who would give the best service; the stranger in need of help, and he who would offer it; and the guard most likely to be useful if it were necessary to cheat the company—it was conceivable that cheating companies might sometimes be necessary in her scheme of things.

He cut another piece off the carnation stalks, they were still too long. He did not wish Julia there; he fancied that it was likely she would not easily find her place among the people he would meet at his journey's end. But if there were no end—if he were going somewhere else, east or west, north or south—say a certain old oriental town, old and wicked as time itself, and full of the mystery and indefinable charm of age, and iniquity, and transcendent beauty—she would like that; she would grasp the whole, without attempting to express or judge it. Or a little far-off Tyrolean village, remote as the mountains from the life of the world—she would like that; the discomfort would be nothing to her, the primitiveness, the simplicity, everything. If he were going to some such place—why, then, there were worse things than having to take the companion of the holiday too.

He handed back the carnations, and then unthinkingly put his hand into his coat-pocket. His fingers came in contact with some dry rubbish, little more than stalks and dust, but still exhaling something of the fragrance which had been sun distilled on the Dunes. He recognised it now—Julia's flowers, put there in the wood, and forgotten until now.

"Thanks so much for cutting them," said the girl with the carnations, smelling them before she fastened them on again. "I really think they are my favourite flower; the scent is so delicious—quite the nicest flower of all, don't you think so?"

"I'm not sure," Rawson-Clew said thoughtfully, and when he spoke thoughtfully he drawled very much, "I'm not sure I don't sometimes prefer wild thyme."