i

It was a suddenly cold evening towards the end of September. The streets were very dark, because the sky was filled with heavy clouds; and from time to time, carried by an assertive wind, there were little gusts of fine rain. Everybody who walked along the London pavements shivered slightly, for the summer had disappeared in a few hours and had been buried in this abrupt darkness; and the wind seemed to come flying from all corners of the earth with a venom that was entirely unexpected. The street-lamps were sharp brightnesses in the black night, wickedly revealing the naked rain-swept paving-stones. It was an evening to make one think with joy of succulent crumpets and rampant fires and warm slippers and noggins of whisky; but it was not an evening for cats or timid people. The cats were racing about the houses, drunken with primeval savagery; the timid people were shuddering and looking in distress over feebly hoisted shoulders, dreadfully prepared for disaster of any kind, afraid of sounds and shadows and their own forgotten sins. Sensitive folk cast thoughts at the sea, and pitied those sailors whose work kept them stationary upon the decks of reeling vessels already weather-beset. The more energetic breathed deep if they were out-of-doors, or more comfortably stretched towards their fires if they were within. Poor people huddled into old overcoats or sat on their nipped fingers in close unheated rooms. The parsimonious who by settled ritual forswore fires until the first of October watched the calendars and found an odd delight in obedience to rule. The wind shook the window-panes; soot fell down all the chimneys; trees continuously rustled as if they were trying to keep warm by constant friction and movement.

In the main streets the chain of assembled traffic went restlessly on, with crowded omnibuses and tramcars, with hurrying cabs, and belated carts and drays, as though the day would never cease. The footways were thick with those who walked, bent this way and that to meet and baffle the sweeping breezes. The noises mingled together in one absorbing sound, heard at a distance of many miles, a far undersong to the vehement voice of the country. Apart from the main streets, so crowded and busy, London was peculiarly quiet. If a door banged it was like a gun; and such a rumble provoked only a sudden start, and no constriction of the cardiac muscles, for Londoners were no longer accustomed to the sound of guns breaking night silences with their drum-like rollings. Passengers in every direction instinctively hurried, making for shelter from the rainy draughts and the promise of storm. It was a subtly dismal evening, chilled and, obscure. It was the real beginning, however premature, of a long hard winter. Those who had joys were sobered: those who had griefs were suddenly over-powered by them, depressed and made miserable by the consciousness of unending sorrow. Nobody could remain unaffected by so startling a change in the atmosphere. All craved light and warmth and society. In a few hours the aspect of life had altered and winter forebodings were upon the land.

ii

Out in South Hampstead the big old houses stood black in the common murk. Few of the windows were lighted. The only illumination came from the street lamps, which seemed crushed by the overmastering clouds, and from occasional passing cabs, whirring swiftly out of the main roads and losing themselves once again within an instant's space. The wide roads were clear, the noises subdued: one would have thought it midnight and the shuttered city at rest. But within these comfortable houses the scene was changed. Fires brightly burned and gas or electric light gave an enviable brightness even to rooms the furniture of which was stale with irremediable ugliness. Warmth and comfort was in every house. It was a whole district of warmth and comfort. And in one house especially there was a gently pervasive heat, a subdued brightness, a curiously wanton elegance, in strong contrast with the outside chill. It was a long two-storeyed house lying back from the broad road. One reached it by means of a wide gravel sweep, and the solid old door supported a heavy knocker of iron. The house stood quite alone, as silent as its fellows; but its furnishing, although sparse in the modern manner, was dazzling. It was like the house of a suddenly transported Pasha, and colours dashed themselves upon the eye with a lustre that commanded surrender. To meet such colours without a trembling of the eyelids would have been impossible to normal men. They were rich to a point of extravagance. They all sang together like the morning stars, clashing and commingling like the notes of barbaric music. They made a very beautiful scene, intoxicating and superb. And cunningly, as though some arch genie had brought the furnishings hither, they merged into voluptuous comfort. One sat in chairs that rose caressingly about one like the waters of a river. The lights were so shaded that nothing harsh or strident offended the eye. The taste of the whole, although extraordinarily courageous, was unquestionable. The owner of this house, whatever one might think of his paintings, was obviously a connoisseur. He knew. He was upon the point of entertaining friends in his studio. His hospitality richly ignored and dominated the weather. He defied the outer world, as though he had been a magician. It was his nature to ignore every discomfort as he ignored his correspondence; and this house, the home of a sybarite, was the symbol of his arrogant disregard.

Monty Rosenberg was a sublimely and ruthlessly selfish man, who gave joy to others by accident, pursuing all the while his own luxurious aims. From the day of his birth until this lamentable evening in September he had never wished to benefit anybody but himself. He lived to and for himself, and this beautiful home had been made for his own delight; and yet the inscrutable ways of life had performed a seeming miracle, and Monty was to-night a mere voiceless child obeying the decrees of circumstance. He was preparing to entertain his guests in a mood of solemn and magistral calm. He thought nothing at all of their pleasure or their envy. He was as much above snobbery as he was below compassion. But he had created an atmosphere of gorgeous appropriateness to the marvels of the human heart, and the gloomy night furnished a contrast as violent as the most emotional person in the world could have desired. He had prepared a stir of colour which must affect all those who were to be present upon this occasion.

iii

Monty was walking about his studio in a state as nearly approaching self-satisfaction as his sleek pride would permit. He relished the studio's warmth, its beauty. He sufficiently perceived his own beauty, for although he was fat for his thirty-seven years, and although in a short time he would be subsiding into a grossly apparent middle-age, Monty carried his heaviness with an air of distinction. His manner was such that the least sycophantic accorded him the usual tokens of respect. He was well-built; his clothes were well-cut; his rather sensual face retained in its aquiline nose a delicacy and in its soft eyes a suggestion of smouldering fire which saved it from anything like dulness. He was still graceful in all his movements. His long black hair was beautifully worn; the single ring upon his little finger was small and in keeping with his fastidious hands. A slight vanity gave him unfailing carriage and address. Oxford, money, talent, all combined to make him agreeable. He had no friends. There was no essential kindness in his nature. He was an artist and a connoisseur, a viveur and a solitary, a quick and shrewd calculator who would have been a good business man if circumstances had not legitimised his air of general unconcern with petty economies. He was still a stranger, a polished and foreign stranger, to all his acquaintance; and no man knew his secrets. That he had secrets was evident. There was talk, of course, about Monty as there is about every man of personality in the world of chatter. He was too discreet in his relations with all—though never so furtive as to hint at mysterious understandings—to avoid altogether the belief that he managed his "affairs" (which were supposed to be many) with skill and gentlemanly coolness, and his manner towards women was a little assured. At least one of his prospective guests had seen him angry, when a kind of thick toughness of savagery had flung breeding to the ends of the earth. He was not a gentleman through and through; but he was a tolerable enough imitation of one—an imitation that was not all counterfeit. The tough will which lay behind his usually suave manner was what made his imperiousness weigh in the minds of social inferiors. These inferiors could not avoid reading and fearing danger to themselves behind that steady assumption of their obedience. Others also were aware of a menace, and they gave place rather uncomfortably to Monty. Some of them, bidden to his parties, came with reluctance; and revenged themselves for their fears by sarcasms uttered at a safe distance.

So upon this September evening, fastidiously aware of every detail in the studio, of every detail in the proceedings (so far as these could be planned in advance), Monty stood looking at his finger-nails or smoking an aromatic cigarette or reading carelessly from book or paper, waiting for his guests to arrive. He was ready well in advance of the appointed hour; but he was not restless or impatient, but gave the impression of being imperturbably in harmony with the quiet tickings of his handsome clock. Outside in South Hampstead the whirling wind sank, and the rain which had come earlier in gusts began to fall in a spiteful steady downpour. The clouds hung lower and more threateningly over London. Everything became sodden with shivering wet, and gulleys and drains were full of singing water. The rain hissed; running footsteps were sometimes heard; the lamps were streaming with rillets formed by helter-skelter raindrops.

iv

As the hour of eight o'clock approached, Monty drew from his pocket a hunter watch and snapped open the case, observing the motion of the seconds hand with a kind of absorbed interest. In reality his brain was slowly working and he was hardly aware of the movement under his eyes. He was recalling the preparations which he had made and calculating the numbers of his guests. Twenty people were coming—people of all sorts; but mostly people belonging to that type to which an American writer has given the name of troubadours. That is to say, few among them were what would be called men of action; for men of action, who had nothing to say for themselves or whose view of life was philistine, had no interest for Monty. Men of action were men who could dance and kill and plan utilitarian works, but who could not think of anything that required an original and creative gift. Their interests were at best mechanical; and at the worst they had no vital interests at all apart from the consumption of time. To Monty, whose consumption of time was lordly and individualistic, who could do nothing without a clear aim, such men were outside the pale. He was no sentimentalist. His mind shrank from nothing. Applied to men and women it was almost purely corrosive and therefore destructive; and his self-sufficiency was so great that no affection ever made him yield his judgment to a warmer feeling. He never acted upon impulse, never caught beauty or inspiration flying; but always deliberately and mathematically laid foundations and with skill built up his structure with an eye to the final effect. He never loved anything or anybody enough to lose his head. He could always, at any moment, draw up and dismiss an inconvenience or a line of conduct, so that nothing and nobody ever had a claim upon him that he could not repudiate. He was a wise man in a world of impulsive fools running after their own tails and dashing emotionally into hysteria.

Eight o'clock chimed by the gentle bell of the clock which stood upon a table in the far corner of the studio. The strokes pinged and hung like scent upon the air. Monty sat unmoved, fingering his watch, slowly passing his thumb backwards and forwards across the golden case. He was lost in a reverie. His eyes were narrowed as though he were scrutinising a memory and paring it down to its essential traits. With such an expression his face lost vitality and became heavy—not ugly or sinister, but unpleasing. The coldness of his nature was revealed, with its adjunct of unplanned but deliberate cruelty. The secret of Monty's self-command and his power to deal with every event was no longer a secret, but a calculable fact. It lay plain to see in that disregard of others which marks the esprit fort, the strong man of our weak ideal. He was a secret man, captain of his own nature, and capable through insensibility to their conflicting aims of dominating the actions of others.

Eight o'clock, and silence in this gorgeous house upon the miserable September night. Monty sat in luxurious quiet, waiting for his first guests. The moments dropped quietly away as the softly-ticking clock marked their passage. At last a short peal sounded at the door-bell. Monty rose, his steps noiseless upon the heavy rugs, and moved to greet the early arrivals. He advanced into the wide and tapestried hall.

v

And then for half-an-hour came successive rings at the bell, and loud-speaking people arrived in a general flurry of raindrops and shiverings. Some of them had walked through the rain, others had come in taxicabs, one or two in their own cars. The hall, with additional mats and two or three long jars to hold umbrellas, was quickly sprinkled from the overcoats and furs of the visitors; two rooms adjoining were made into cloak-rooms; and then the studio was invaded. Here all the visitors, talking, laughing, cigarette-smoking, sat upon chairs or divans or cushions, and scattered the ash from their cigarettes in every direction, as motley and restless as the furnishings, and still by great fortune harmonious. There were women in short frocks, with bobbed hair, and women with long gowns and long hair decorated with combs, one or two in evening-dress, one in plain black; and men in all varieties of costume from dinner-jackets to tweeds. Above their heads, towards the studio's glass roof, rain-bespattered, rose tobacco-smoke; from their lips came an endless spume of words, often enough in loud voices which from the hall itself made the guests sound like a distant multitude. The studio was dwarfed by the presence of so many people and so much noise. To Edgar Mayne, who alone of all those invited stood slightly aloof, as one to whom the others were strangers, it seemed that never had he heard people with such loud voices, except at performances given by the Stage Society. He was one of the sober ones—a man of nearly forty, undistinguished in appearance and dressed in an ordinary lounge suit. His association with Monty was that of business only, and he was here experimentally, quite lost in the crowd, and so unsympathetic with it as at times to be almost hostile. So he stood away from the fire, back from the rest, and surveyed them with an unreadable air of interest. He received stares of appraisal from all; no greeting, but also no coolness, had been vouchsafed; and he knew that he could without fear of a snub have entered any one of the several deafening conversations which were in progress in his neighbourhood. He preferred to look on, for this society was to such a worker as himself something so novel as to be nearly incredible. He was half-dazed by the noise and the colour and the rising smoke. The general relation of the men and women baffled him. The women had not ceased to be women, but their professionalism and slanginess made them exceptional in his eyes. That he liked them, Edgar could not have said; but he was not yet summing-up. They were merely different from the suburban young women whom he met at tennis or in the drawing-room. For one thing, Edgar had never yet been at a mixed party where conversation was regarded as a sufficient form of entertainment. He had never met women who talked as freely as these did.

So his eyes wandered from face to face—from a man with long hair who spoke in a rather strained high voice to a sturdy young woman in a cretonne frock which appeared barely to reach her knees, who lolled back against the leg of a table and held a cigarette so dangling from her lips that its smoke straggled up into her eyes. He could hear nothing but odd words from all the conversations; but the tones, the gestures, and the glances of the talkers were all new and puzzling to such a stranger. His eyes were never at rest. Purple, gold, crimson, scarlet, green, terracotta, black; faces that were long and thin, surmounted by straight fringes of hair, or round and plump and white, with full lips and heavy eyes; a fluttering hand, a startling costume—all caught his gaze and helped to bewilder him. The types were strange, the voices and the assumptions; and Edgar was from Respectability and Commerce, and too old to be merely excited. He was critical, as well. He was especially critical of the girls, although upon the whole he preferred the girls to the men.

One young man with high spirits and a quick laugh several times drew his attention. He studied him—a tall, fair type, very handsome, and with large white teeth which showed when he laughed. The young man was big and well-made. He carried himself with an ease that suggested athletics, and he had evidently a great deal of self-assurance. He was talking to a short, and rather plump, girl whose black hair, bobbed, and milk-white complexion made her one of the most attractive of them all. That he was amusing her there could be no doubt. Her eyes were raised delightedly, so that it was the young man who sometimes looked away and returned and occasionally flickered a little glance at others in the room. Edgar's consciousness registered a definite impression. He liked the fair, and rather sparkling, young man with the white teeth; but he at once made purely masculine reservations. They might only be jealousies, for we are all alert to see the limitations of others; but they were valid for Edgar. As he was engaged in judgment he discovered for the first time that the young man, through all his sportive talk, was demonstrating a similarly observant interest in himself, and no doubt docketing complementary reservations. A half-smile crept to Edgar's face. The left hand, resting in his trousers pocket, involuntarily clenched. His chin hardened. With his lids lowered he looked straight back at the boy, and the smile vanished.

vi

The studio by now was well-filled; and from Monty's engagement in the general hubbub Edgar supposed that the total number of expected guests had arrived and had taken their places in the crowd. But he was wrong, for in spite of the fact that he could no longer hear the bell he could see the door opening again to admit further newcomers. His attention was being given to those nearest, and for an instant he did not do more than glance towards the door. Most of those about him were self-absorbed, or intent upon what they were talking about, which amounted to the same thing. The smoke and the chatter, in fact, allowed Edgar no free activity of the mind. He was as one drowning. It was only a sense that his young friend of the flashing teeth had ceased talking that gave Edgar an opportunity for this instant's new interest. He looked up and towards the door. There stood within the studio an old man—a tall old man with a long white moustache and a rather bald head, erect but markedly obsequious to Monty, dressed in such a way that all must recognise him as a painter. A slight pucker showed in Edgar's forehead. The face was familiar, the bearing.... He knew the man. He was conscious of displeasure at seeing him. But he could not immediately remember what had given rise to this distaste. Then, he looked beyond the old man, and his attentiveness quickened. In the doorway stood a young girl. She was very slight, very fair, and her dress was both beautiful and striking. Her hair was worn so that a rolled curl was above each ear, and it was brushed high from her neck. Clear blue eyes, a delicate nose, an impetuous mouth, a peculiar stillness in her attitude; and Edgar could no longer record detail in his general admiration. He was filled with interest. Not even the green dress which she wore and which startled the eye could rob Edgar of the sudden impression that she was somebody alone—alone in the world, alone in herself, alone here this evening. She was the first person who had struck him in all this party as belonging to life as he imagined it to be. There was a fresh vitality about the girl that he found in none of the others. In none?

Edgar looked from the girl to Monty, who had taken her hand and was smiling. Monty, with his rather heavy, rather oriental face and figure, smooth and impossible to be hurt, a man of determination and of personality. Edgar knew very quickly what Monty's nature was. He was not unpractised in the art of understanding his fellows. The experience by which this skill had been gained had been a part of the training which had led to his business success. The contrast, then, to Edgar, between Monty and the girl who had come as his guest was as unmistakable as was the difference in their complexions. There was no likeness here. Edgar would have made no further comment; but some instinct made him look from Monty's possessive figure to another, which stood nearer. It was that of the young man whom he had noticed before. The teeth were to be seen at this moment, for the young man was standing, as fair and as full of vitality as the girl herself, with his lips parted and his eyes intent. There was no mistaking the significance of his attitude and his tense regard. Edgar looked again from the girl to Monty, as they stood together by the door; and he saw the sparkle of the girl's eyes and the quick flight of her smile. Again he looked from Monty to the young man, and so back to the girl. And as he returned to his observation of the young man Edgar saw him take a quick breath, and saw his lips meet.

It was in this single instant that the young man, urged no doubt by an impulse as incalculable as Edgar's, drew his eyes from the girl. He turned sharply and looked at Edgar. Their glances crossed. Both smiled.