"It is May," said Ned Blackborough in rather a strained voice, "and you promised to come to Cwmfaernog in May. You look as if you needed a holiday. Come!"

Yes, it was May. Four whole months had passed since Myfanwy Jones' dress had upset Aura's cosmogony, and she had fled to find some foothold in the slums of the city. She had found a faith there, and had spent four months in trying to put that faith into practice.

It had been up-hill work, but her courage had not wavered.

Her eyes were clear as she looked back at Ned, who had come in to find her, as she so often was nowadays, alone. For Ted's first great success had been but a preliminary to months of daily excitement spent in gaining, losing, gaining again, in the midst of which he seemed to have lost sight of the future altogether. And for the present he was too busy to care. Then underlying all things was his consciousness of youth. The outlook before him was long; he could not but see that chance might come into it. Why! in five years time he would be just reaching the age at which it was prudent for a business man to marry; for, of course, his marriage to poor dear Aura had been grossly imprudent, though, but for this one disappointment,--which naturally meant more to her than to him--it had turned out very well. If only she would have condescended to amuse herself like other girls--like Rosa Hirsch, for instance--they might have had a jolly time together in the various European capitals whither his business took him. But what was the use of taking her when the only places in which Aura was not shy and ill at ease were musty fusty old picture galleries and dreary botanical gardens. And "the Zoo," of course; she had always been at home in "the Zoo"; but then there was that beastly smell of smaller mammals all over the shop. So he had gone his way, kindly, quite affectionately, wholly without sympathy. To Aura it was rather a relief; it gave her time to rearrange her world.

She was looking a little weary over a pile of household accounts. There was no need nowadays for heartburnings as to expense; but none the less Ted expected a properly-balanced book, and the items were terribly numerous. It was the herring-and-a-half problem expressed in pounds instead of pence, and there was quite a wrinkle of thought between Aura's eyebrows, for she was no arithmetician.

To Ned that wrinkle was a tragedy; but then it is always a tragedy for a man to watch from a distance the woman he loves trying to reconstruct her life, and reconcile herself to the lack of what he knows he could give her; and the greater her success the greater--in a way--is the tragedy.

Ned had felt this every instant of those four months during which the memory of that pitiful protest, "Not you Ned. Ah! Ned, not you!" had come between him and even apology. When he had gone back that evening to fling himself into a chair and gloom over the fire for a few minutes, he had told himself he was a fool. He had told himself so hundreds of times since that evening, until there had grown up in him the conviction that this sort of thing could not possibly last for ever. Why should it? Why should three human beings be sacrificed? And in heaven's name to what? Not to a marriage of either soul or body. They all needed something which they had not got. Ted needed, or would need, a wife and children. These might be his if Aura were taken away. She needed the old, free, natural life. This Ned could give her in that island on the southern seas. And how much more? Ye gods! how much more of love--true love, and tenderness and truth! As for his own needs, they were simple, being summed up in that one word--Aura. He needed her every instant of the day and night. He could not be content without her. Love had left his body; it had invaded his mind; it had not yet touched his soul. The personal element was still too strong for him, so by degrees he had brought himself to believe that perhaps the best way out of the impasse for all the three actors in the tragedy would be for him to beguile her away--if he could.

"You know you promised me last year," he reiterated.

"Yes! I promised," she said sadly, and he knew where her thoughts had fled. He used to see her so often in his dreams, wandering through great drifts of purple iris, the flower which brings the messages of the gods, leading a little child by the hand. She was there now, and a sudden dread came over him again lest nothing short of that would ever make her really happy. But the next moment he had roused himself. "I should love to go, of course," she went on. "Fancy seeing Cwmfaernog and the floor of heaven! Only I can't, can I? till Ted returns, and that may be----"

"Never, perhaps!" interrupted Ned sarcastically. "He hasn't been much at home lately, has he?"

She flushed up hastily. "Why should he be? he is not like you--you are an idle man; besides----" she paused, her pride refusing to justify her husband even to Ned. "It may not be for a fortnight," she went on coldly, "he never can tell. And by that time the hyacinths will be over, and it would be no good. So--so it is no use thinking of it."

But her very readiness in the self-defence of this refusal to blame her husband, decided him. If that went on much longer, the tragedy would become permanent. A sudden weariness of the whole foolish muddle seized on him. He was not going to have Aura spend her days in saintliness and martyrdom, growing more and more dignified and gracious, more and more motherly in the look of brimming affection she never failed to give to him--to him her lover!

It was beyond bearing. He would break down the prison walls at all costs. He was tired to death himself of civilisation; they would go into the wilderness and be happy.

"I will ask Mrs. Ramsay to come with us," he said, knowing that he had not the slightest intention of so doing; but if he was to take the law into his own hands, he would require a few days to mature his plans.

"She can't come," he said two days afterwards; "she isn't quite up to it."

Aura looked for a moment as if she were back in the iris fields. "I'm sorry," she began.

"But," went on Ned coolly, "I believe I could take you there and back by the four-cylinder Panhard in a day--if you don't mind starting rather early. Do come. I--I want a holiday too--badly."

He looked like it.

"Poor Ned," she said softly, for she had begun to realise her responsibilities towards him also. That was the worst of life; the great hidden tie between all creatures could so seldom be felt or seen until some wound stripped the quivering flesh, and left the ligaments bare. "Yes! I will come," she said after a pause, making up her mind that there, standing on the floor of heaven, she would try and make him understand that she was worth no man's passionate love. "When shall we go?"

Something seemed to rise in his throat and choke him. "The first fine day. Shall we say to-morrow? But we must start at five; and breakfast by the way."

"At five!" she echoed joyously, looking more like herself than she had done for months. "Oh Ned! how jolly! I haven't been up at five for ages and ages. It disturbs Ted so--and then," she hurried on--"the servants loathe it. They hate you to know how late they are."

She was ready waiting for him, with quite a colour in her cheeks when he drove up. It was a delicious morning, cool, clear, full of shafted lights and shadows from the rising sun. Aura tilted back her head triumphantly and gazed up at the little white fleecy clouds that were drifting steadily overhead before the westerly breeze.

"I'm not going to look at anything grimy to-day," she said with a laugh; "and even Blackborough can't soil those! They are too gladly far away. Do you know that often when I've nothing else to comfort me, I lie on my back in the garden and dream they are just feathers out of a great, soft pillow where I am finding rest!"

He felt a pang for her innocent self-betrayal, but he retorted gravely, "That is your fault for not being contented with a good civilised wire-mattress."

She laughed out loud. "How nice of you to talk nonsense! It is exactly like old times; exactly!" she cried. "Ned! do you think we were made to forget? I don't."

"Some things," he said soberly, "are best forgotten."

"Not many," she replied cheerfully. "Sometimes, Ned, I seem to get at the meaning of so much by remembering, and then I see how all these little lives of ours work into one big whole; and then--and then." She was silent, her eyes still upon the clouds.

"If her Majesty will deign to look upon this poor world," said Ned Blackborough after quite a long while, "she will see primroses."

They were beyond the grime. The skies were blue, the trees, the grass were green, and far away the distant hills showed purple through the blossoming apple orchards.

What need was there for more?

Not once, not twice, but many times that day, as the car sped almost noiselessly through lanes and past homesteads and fields where the lambs lay white like little clouds dropped from heaven, Ned told himself joyfully that this was but the beginning of an end which would never come.

"Why are you putting on your goggles?" she asked, as, by the low road round the coast--for the straight hilly pitch over the head of the valley was too bad for the motor--they came within measurable distance of Dinas.

"There are a lot of slate spiculÆ on the road," he replied coolly, "and one got into my eye once. You had better put on a veil too. I brought one on purpose."

"You think of everything, Ned," she replied gaily. "I never knew any one like you."

Except Guy Fawkes, or some arch traitor of that sort, he felt with a pang; but one had to take precautions, and if you set yourself up as a Deus ex machine to get people out of a muddle--why, some mud was likely to stick.

So, disguised out of all recognition, they swept through the village of Dinas, and, passing the staring schoolhouse, took the turn towards Cwmfaernog.

The villagers looked after them with slack curiosity, for Dinas was, as it had always been, immersed in its own trivialities. The revival had passed away, leaving its traces physical and mental no doubt, but ceasing to bring any new interest into life. At the present moment, however, the village had an absorbing interest of its own; for in two days time the Reverend Hwfa Williams was to marry Alicia Edwards, and all the other young women in the place were in that curious state of mingled spitefulness and vicarious nervous excitability which a wedding so often provokes in the feminine sex.

"They will not find any one at Cwmfaernog, whatever," said Isaac Edwards at his door, "for Martha Bate and her husband went for a jaunt the day before yesterday. It is only old Evans from the shepherd's hut that is to milk the cows and feed the cocks."

Meanwhile the motor sped on, curving round the rocks.

"There is no more slate here, anyhow," cried Aura joyfully, tearing off her veil. "Oh Ned! look, look! The floor of heaven? Ah! do stop and let us look."

He did not answer. The engine slowed, quivered, sunk to silence. Now, at last, he understood. Now he knew what he had seen in the boat so long ago, when the swift southern storm was sweeping up unseen behind him. This was the blue mist which had enveloped him and held him. A blue mist hiding the earth, hiding even every green thing from sight as it lay in wreaths in the hollows or crept up and up and up, leaving itself in clouds to cover all things until it met the sky.

The floor of heaven indeed!

Not quite so blue perhaps as that distant roof of heaven over which the heat of the day had spread a faintly violet haze; but still--the floor of heaven!

No other words expressed it. Here, surely the angels of God might tread with unsoiled feet.

"Does not everything of earth seem to fall away," came Aura's voice all hushed and quiet, "and leave one ... free at last!"

She was out of the car standing, her sandalled feet just touching the carpet of hyacinths, her hands stretched out towards them, her face full of absolute undimmed joy. "See!" she continued, "the dear things grow on to our very path--we won't hurt them, will we? Let us walk on to the house and see Martha, then I will take you through a path in the woods to the best place of all." She paused and looked at him curiously. "Ned--what is it? Something is wrong! What is it?"

"There is nothing wrong," he answered quietly, "and I may as well tell you here as elsewhere. Martha is not at the house."

She paled a very little. "She is not there," she echoed; "why?"

"Because I sent her away."

"You sent her away?"

"Yes! because I wanted to be alone with you--and--we are alone--alone with nothing but our love between us--for you do love me? Aura!" he cried, his quiet giving way as he seized her hands and drew her towards him. "Why should we go back to all the grime--to the dull, useless, foolish life? Come with me! No one wants us, no one will miss us, not even Ted! It has all been a mistake from the beginning. There is but one way to set things straight--to leave him free to do as he chooses--come----"

"My poor Ned!"

She stood unresisting before him, with all the motherhood that was in her, looking at him through eyes that brimmed over with tears, and her voice, full of an overwhelming pity, smote on his ears, a knell to all his hopes. He knew it, he felt it to be so even as he listened. He let her hands fall with a sense of impotence to hold her.

"It is my fault, dear," she said softly, "I ought to have told you--I ought to have made you understand. Ned! I am worth no man's love. I shall never----"

He interrupted her with an angry impatient laugh. "But I do understand. It is you who cannot understand that love lives untrammelled by such trivialities. Aura! were I your husband now, you would be a thousand times more dear--the tie between us would be a thousand times more strong----"

"Hush!" she said, with a world of mysterious solemnity in her voice. "If that is true, Ned; if love really can live untrammelled by the body, why should it not live untrammelled by the mind? You want to see me, to hear me, to--to touch me--perhaps! But Ned! There is something that is beyond all this--that is beyond everything--beyond you and me, and yet it is you and I--that is ours now----" Suddenly her tone rose swift and sharp--"Come, Ned! let us forget the rest----is this not enough?"

He looked around him and, even amid such transcendental beauty as was there, shook his head. "I cannot live on air, Aura," he said bitterly. "No man can."

Her face melted into gentle smiles. "There is the lunch-basket," she said.

He turned aside almost with a curse. "It is easy to laugh," he began.

"Is it so easy?" she asked, and once again her voice brought to him that sense of infinite pity, infinite denial. "Then let us laugh, Ned, while we can. Come, let us lose ourselves. Oh Ned! give me one day unspotted by the world, untouched by trivialities, just this one day!"

And as she took his hand, the glamour, not of this world, but of that which lies hidden beyond it, above it, claimed possession of his soul. The blue mist closed in on them. They stood on the floor of heaven with the sky above them.

* * * * *

Down in the hollows with the silken fans of the half-opened beech-leaves overhead, a saffron-coloured azalea dropping its gold upon the blue, the pink campion struggling for a place amongst the blossoms, a tuft of white poet's-narcissus looking up from the pool of water into which a scarce-seen runlet dripped and dropped. What colour! What almost unimaginable beauty.

* * * * *

Out in the open, in a cup in the hills where the carpet of heaven-blue hyacinths dwarfed into closer growth showed like a shadowy cloud against the clearer blue of the sky. What dreamfulness! What peace!

* * * * *

Away on the springing heather on the mountain-top, with half Wales spread before you, and the westering sun obscured by just such a shadowy cloud, sending a great sloping corona of light rays to nestle in the dimples of the hills, and shine in shafted reflections on the distant sea.

What visions of unending space, of ceaseless life!

* * * * *

"Is it not time?" she said at last as they sat in the sheep-shelter.

The sun was beginning to sink in the west calmly, serenely. The light shone round them, purest gold. Down in the valley, the blue hyacinth mist grew darker, colder.

"Yes! It is time," he said quietly.

"It has been quite perfect," she said again.

"Almost perfect," he assented; after all he was but human, and humanity does not live by sight alone. It craves to touch also.

The motor was awaiting them where they had left it.

She laid her hand on his for a second ere he started it.

"Say it has been quite perfect, Ned," she pleaded.

He looked at her and smiled. "I will not say it--you can say it for me."

She was silent for a moment and then she spoke.

"It has been quite perfect!"

The motor sped on, the mist wreaths of the hyacinths grew dulled by young green sprouting ferns, and the rocks closed in for the swift turn by the school. The children were already out, and a group of them were playing on the road. They scattered, leaving it clear. And then, suddenly, from the shadow of the parapet-wall a little toddling child, escaping from the hand of its wide-eyed curiosity-struck elder, lurched out into the open.

"Oh Ned! Take care--the child--the child!"

Aura stood up, and in Ned's sudden swerve inwards, an overhanging root from the high rocky bank above struck her full upon the temple.

The child, shrieking more from joyous excitement than fear, lurched back with outstretched arms to the shadow; but Aura sank back, her head resting on Ned's shoulder.

"My God! Aura!" he cried. There was no answer. He did not stop the car, but sweeping it round the open space by the school, raced back to Cwmfaernog. There, he knew, all was ready for her reception, there everything would be to hand. As he sped through the misty blue cloud once more, he saw nothing of it. His eyes were on her whitening face.

Dear God! How limp she felt, as he lifted her in his arms and carried her across the drawbridge, and so through the garden to the house. A scent of violets and primroses, of lilies of the valley, of all things sweet assailed him as he entered the door that was only latched. He had brought the flowers when he had come down secretly to see that all things were prepared. He had brought them for her! And the table set out with flowers and fruit--that was for her also.

He stumbled up the stairs with his heavy burden to her room. He had not entered that. He had only climbed once more to her window-sill to set it abloom with white and purple iris--the messengers of the gods. How they mocked him now with their tale of immortality. His mind went back to many a Kashmir grave which he had seen, long and narrow like the sill set as thick with irises, high upon the hills, low amongst the dales.

But she could not be dead!

Yet her head lay on the pillow just as it had touched it, her arm slipping from his support sank, till it could sink no more.

"Aura!" he muttered faintly "Aura!"

He knelt and laid his ear to her heart--oh! sweetest resting--place in all the world!

There was no sound, no beat. Yes! she was dead!

He turned his face round into the soft pillow of her breast and whispered "Aura." It seemed to him as on that midsummer night when he had first met her, as if all the world were wailing "Aura! Aura!"

How long he knelt there he scarcely knew; a faint sense of sound in the house roused him to the remembrance that something must be done.

He must call for help. But if he did that, every one must know that she was here with him alone. The world would judge, and what would that judgment reck of her spotlessness or his forbearance? No! that must not be, if he could compass otherwise.

His mind, almost unhinged by the terrible shock, chased possibility through a thousand impossibilities, the least grotesque of these being a grave of his own digging amongst the hyacinths; his subsequent flight being easy, since he had made all arrangements for a sudden disappearance.

Was that a noise below--a faint creak on the stairs? The possibility troubled him. He crossed to the door, and opened it to find himself confronted by Ted Cruttenden, his face distorted by passion.

"You scoundrel!" he cried. "You--you infernal scoundrel--where is Aura--my wife?"

His very vehemence, his very lack of self restraint, brought back Ned Blackborough's wandering wits. He closed the door behind him, and stood with his back to it.

"She is--not there," he said slowly. "Ted! listen for one moment. I brought her here----"

"Do you think I don't know that, you damned villain," burst out Ted--"when I came home this morning and found you had taken her--there was some cock-and-bull story the servants had about not sitting up for her, and a latch-key and all that rot--do you think I was fool enough not to understand--I've never really trusted you. And now--and now--let me pass in, I say, or there'll be murder done."

"Listen one moment----" the voice was inexorable. "You never trusted me. I know that. Have you not trusted her? Are you fool enough to have lived day and night with her, to have lain with your head upon her breast--and not known--No! it is impossible. You know what she is--you must--you do know it----"

Even to Ted Cruttenden's mad jealousy, memory could bring no fuel to feed the flame; his very anger sank for the moment to self-pity.

"I come home," he muttered, "I find her gone. I follow. I have walked over the hill to----"

"To--spy upon us----" interrupted Ned sternly, "go on."

"To spy upon you if you will," cried Ted, his passion rising again--"and I find you here, in her room----"

Ned opened the door behind him quietly. "Because she is dead," he said, and leaning against the lintel, his head upon his arm, waited.

"Dead!"

The whisper reached him from within full almost of fear; and there was a long empty silence.

"You will not say I killed her, I suppose," said Ned bitterly at last. "It was an accident. We were going back--back to you----" The very wonder of that fact stayed speech; but he knew he must go on. "I am quite ready to let you shoot me, by and by, but at present--I--I want you to think of her--of yourself. I don't count. I need count any more. But we must be quick about it. As I stand before--before Something that is mightier than I, I swear to you that I have done you no harm. We won't go into the other question as to what harm you have done me. And for her--you know. But--but even if we had, what use is there now, in making a fuss in letting the world know that you have found her there--with me. Not a soul knows I am here. You can take my place, as you have taken it before. I can go, as I have gone before."

From within, where Ted Cruttenden stood beside the bed, vaguely remorseful at his own lack of anything save anger, horror, regret, no answer came.

"Ted," went on Lord Blackborough, "you must decide. I can go the way you came, and you can call for help. It must be done at once. I'll tell you how it happened so that you may know. We got here about noon. We didn't go into the house. We were--we were in the woods and on the hills----" his voice failed a little, then grew monotonous. "She said it was time to go, and I--I was a fool! I said so too. Just at the corner by the school, a child, a little child, ran in front of the car. She--she called out--and rose. There was a root--oh! Curse the damned thing--it struck her as I swerved. It has left a little blue mark--you can see it on her temple if you look. She never spoke. I brought her back. She was dead."

"You say you didn't kill her," burst out Ted, his voice now full of crude anger, grief, hate, "but you did. You brought her here."

"Is there any use in recriminations," asked Ned wearily, "you have to decide. And, after all, she--she was no wife for you--you are young yet----" Ted listening, cursed him for repeating the inward thought that had forced itself into his mind. "You have all the world before you--and----" for an instant the voice hesitated as if ashamed, uncertain, then went on. "I had made out a deed of gift to you of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It is about all I have left, and the works and all that must go to the heir, you know. You see I meant to disappear, and I meant to take your wife,--so this was just payment. It can be just payment still. I shall not trouble you again. But--but you must decide at once."

He stood waiting for a moment or two, his head resting as before upon his upraised arm upon the lintel; then he heard a step, and lifted his eyes to check what he knew all too well would come from Ted's lips. Did he not know it? Was it not the answer of the world where everything even honour had its price? And was it not far better, far wiser? Was it not what he himself desired?

"You will find the motor by the bridge," he said quietly. "You had better call some one from the village first, and then the doctor. The children will give evidence, some of them were quite big, and no one at New Park knows anything. Good-bye? I shan't see you again."

When Ted had gone, he closed the door, went downstairs, gathered up the tell-tale flowers and fruits which he had brought, climbed to the window-sill and removed the iris, so, putting them all into a basket, went back to the woods.

Before the car returned with its first consignment of help, the misty-blue wreaths of the hyacinths, darkening with the dusk, had hidden him.