V

"'It was most beautifully cool and fresh, and we had the mess tonga and drove to the bungalow. The flowering shrubs here would delight Auntie Grace. I've fallen in love with a bush of hibiscus in the compound, but find it won't live in water, but droops directly one picks it. The trees are mostly the palmy kind, and so green, and the ranges of hills behind are exactly like the Red Sea ranges. The outside of our bungalow is covered with purple convolvulus, and the verandah goes practically all round it. Jim's room is just like him—heads he's shot, study, dressing-room, and workshop, all in one, and it's quite the fullest room in the house. Beyond that there's my room, looking out over the Sinai Range——'

"Then there are the drawing and dining-rooms——"

"'The curtains are a pale terra-cotta pink over the door and dark green in the bay-windows, with whitenet in front. The drawing-room is all green. The durrie (that's the carpet) is green, with a darker border, and the sofa and chairs and mantelpiece-cover and the screen behind the sofa all green. There's another bay-window, with far curtains of green and the near ones chintz, an awfully pretty cream spotted net with a green hem let in. That makes three lots, two in the window itself and a third on a pole where the arch comes into the room. Then over the three doors there are chintz curtains, cream, with a big pattern of pink and green and blue, just like Harrods' catalogue——'

"Can't youseeit all!—H'm, h'm!... Then on the Sunday morning they got the mess tonga and went out to Dhoda, with butterfly-nets, and Jim went fishing—h'm, h'm—and she says—

"'It's just like the Old Testament; I shouldn't have been in the least surprised to meet Abraham and Jacob. It's the flatness of it, and the flocks and herds. There are women with pitchers on their heads, and a man was making scores of bricks with mud and straw—exactly like the pictures of the Children of Israel in "Line upon Line." And about a hundred horses and mules and donkeys and carts all stopped at midday, because it was so hot, and it was just what I'd always imagined Jacob doing. But inside cantonments it isn't a bit Biblical, but rather too civilized, etc.'

("Isn't Katie patient, listening to all this, auntie!")

"'But you can't go far afield at Kohat. At Murree you could always get a three or four mile walk round Pindi Point, but here it's just to the Club and back. We go to the Central Godown and the Fancy Godown to shop. The Central is groceries, and the Fancy tooth-powder, Scrubb's Ammonia, etc. On Saturday they were afraid Captain Horrocks had smallpox, and so we all got vaccinated, but now that we've all taken beautifully it seems it isn't smallpox after all, and we've all got swelled arms, but Captain Horrocks is off the sick-list to-morrow. Colonel Wade is smaller than ever. Mrs. Wade is coming out by the "Rewa." Mrs. Beecher came to tea on Sunday——'

("Is thatourMrs. Beecher, when Uncle Dick was at Chatham, auntie?")—

"'—and I forgot to say that Dot's parrots stood the journey awfully well, but they've got at the loquat trees and destroyed all the young shoots. Jim saw us safely in and is now off on his Indus trip. The 56th are going in March, and the 53rd come instead. I'm sure the new baby's a little darling; what are you going to call him?——'

"And so on. Idothink she writes such good letters. Now let's have yours, Aunt Grace (and that reallywillbe the end, Katie)."

And Lady Tasker's letters also were "put in."

It was a Sunday afternoon, at Cromwell Gardens. Stan was away with his film company for the week-end, and Dorothy had got Katie to stay with herduring his absence and had proposed a call on Lady Tasker. They had brought the third Bit with them, and he now slept in one of the cots upstairs. Lady Tasker sat with her crochet at the great first-floor window that looked over its balcony out along the Brompton Road. On the left stretched the long and grey and red and niched and statued façade of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the failing of the western flush was leaving the sky chill and sharp as steel and the wide traffic-polished road almost of the same colour. Inside the lofty room was the still glow of a perfect "toasting fire," and Lady Tasker had just asked Katie to be so good as to put more coal on before it sank too low.

Katie Deedes had made no scruple whatever about changing her coat in more senses of the words than one. She had bought a navy-blue costume and a new toque (with a wing in it), and since then had got into the way of expressing her doubts whether Britomart Belchamber's hockey legs and Dawn of Freedom eye were in the truest sense feminine. Nay, that is altogether to understate the change in Katie. She had now no doubt about these things whatever. As Saul became Paul, so Katie now not only reviled that which she had cast off, but was even prepared, like the Apostle at Antioch, to withstand the older Peters of Imperialism to their faces, did she detect the least sign of temporizing in them. And this treason had involved the final giving-way of every one of her old associates. She was all for guns and grim measures; and while she looked fondly on Boy Scouts in the streets, and talked about"the thin end of the wedge of Conscription," she scowled on the dusky-skinned sojourners within London's gates, and advocated wholesale deportations.

And in all this Katie Deedes was only returning to her own fold, though her people were not soldiers, but lawyers. For the matter of that, her father's cousin was a very august personage indeed, for whose comfort, when he travelled, highly-placed railway officials made themselves personally responsible, and whose solemn progress to Assize was snapshotted for the illustrated papers and thrown on five hundred cinema screens. In the past Katie had been privileged to call this kingpost of the Law "Uncle Joe."...

And then Mr. Strong had got hold of her....

And after Mr. Strong, Mr. Wilkinson....

And according to Mr. Wilkinson, the most ferocious of the hanging-judges had been a beaming humanitarian by comparison with Sir Joseph. Mr. Wilkinson had the whole of Sir Joseph's career at his fingers' ends: the So-and-So judgment—this or that flagrant summing up—the other deliberate and wicked misdirection to the jury. Sir Joseph's heart was black, his law bunkum, and he had only got where he was by self-advertisement and picking the brains of men a hundred times fitter for heaven than himself....

Therefore Katie, hearing this horrible tale, had quailed, and had straightway given away this devil who was the sinister glory of her house. She had agreed that he was a man whom anybody mightrighteously have shot on sight, and had gathered her Greenaway garments about her whenever she had passed within a mile of Sir Joseph's door....

But now he was "Uncle Joe" again, and—well, it must have been rather funny. For Katie's impressionable conscience had given her no rest day or night until she had sought Uncle Joe out and had made a clean breast of it all before him. Katie had fancied she had seen something like a twinkle in those sinful old eyes, but (this was when she mentioned the name of the "Novum") the twinkle had vanished again. Oh, yes, Sir Joseph had heard of the "Novum." Didn't a Mr. Prang write for it?...

And thereupon Katie had given Mr. Prang away too....

But in the end Sir Joseph had forgiven her, and had told her that she had better not be either a revolutionary, nor yet the kind of Conservative that is only a revolutionary turned inside-out, but just a good little girl, and had asked her how she was getting on, and why she hadn't been to see her Aunt Anne, and whether she would like some tickets for a Needlework Exhibition; and now she was just beginning to forget that he had ever been anything but "Uncle Joe," who had given her toys at Christmas, and Sunday tickets for the Zoo whenever she had wanted to go there on that particularly crowded day.

Dorothy had had something of this in her mind when she had brought Katie to Cromwell Gardens that Sunday afternoon. From Katie's new attitude to her own Ludlow project was not so far as itseemed. If she could lead the zealous 'vert to such promising general topics as Boy Scouts, Compulsory Service, and the preparation of boys for the Army (topics that Katie constantly brought forward by denunciation of their opposites), her scheme would certainly not suffer, and might even be advanced.

And, as it happened, no sooner had Dorothy tucked her last letter back into its envelope than Katie broke out—earnestly, proselytizingly, and very prettily on the stump.

"There you are!" she exclaimed. "That's allexactlywhat I mean! Why, any one of those letters ought to be enough to convince anybody! Here are all these stupid people at home, ready to believe everything a native tells them, going on as they do, and hardly one of them's ever set foot out of England in his life! Of course the Indians know exactly whattheywant, but don't you see, Dorothy—," very patiently she explained it for fear Dorothy should not see, "—don't you see that it's all so much a matter of course to Mollie and those that they can actually write whole letters about window-curtains! Ilovethat about the window-curtains! It's all such an old story tothem! Theyknow, you see, and haven't got to be talking about it all the time in order to persuade themselves! There itis!—But these other people don't know anything at all. They don't even see what a perfect answer window-curtains are to them! They go on and on and on—youdosee what I mean, Dorothy?——"

"Yes, dear," said Dorothy, mildly thinking of the great number of people there were in the worldwho would take no end of trouble to explain things to her. "Go on."

And Katie continued to urge upon her friend the argument that those know most about a country who know most about it.

Katie had got to the stage of being almost sure that she remembered Mollie's coming into the studio in Cheyne Walk one day, when Lady Tasker, who had not spoken, suddenly looked up from her crochet and said, "Look, Dorothy—that's the girl I was speaking about—coming along past the Museum there."

Dorothy rose and walked to the window.— "Where?" she said.

"Passing the policeman now."

Dorothy gave a sudden exclamation.—"Why," she exclaimed, "—come here, Katie, quick—it's Amory Towers!—It is Amory, isn't it?"

Katie had run to the window, too. The two women stood watching the figure in the mushroom-white hat and the glaucous blue velvet that idled forlornly along the pavement.

"Do you mean Mrs. Pratt?" said Lady Tasker, putting up her glass again. "Are you quite sure?"

Once before in her life, in the days before her marriage, Amory Towers had done the same thing that she was doing now. Then, seeking something, perhaps a refuge from herself, she had walked the streets until she was ready to drop with fatigue, watching faces passing, passing, for ever passing, and slowly gathering from them a hypnotic stupor.Sometimes, for hour after hour, she had seen nothing but eyes—eyes various in shape and colour as the pebbles on a beach, sometimes looking into hers, sometimes looking past her, sometimes tipped with arrow-heads of white as they turned, sometimes only to be seen under their lids as a finger-nail is seen within the finger of a glove. And at other times, weary of her fellow-beings and ceasing to look any more at them, she had seen nothing but doors and windows, or fan-lights, or the numbers of houses, or window-boxes, or the patterns of railings, or the serried shapes of chimneys against the sky. She had been looking, and yet not looking, for Cosimo Pratt then; she was looking, and yet not looking, for Edgar Strong now. Had she met him she had nothing new to say to him; she only knew that he had taken weak possession of her mind. She was looking for him in South Kensington because he had once told her, when asked suddenly, that he lived in Sydney Street, S.W., and frequently walked to the Indian section of the Imperial Institute in order to penetrate into the real soul of a people through its art; and she was not looking for him, because one day she had remembered that he had said before that he lived in South Kentish Town—which was rather like South Kensington, but not the same—and something deep down within her told her that the other was a lie.

But yet her feet dragged her to the quarter, as to other quarters, and she talked to herself as she walked. She told herself that her husband did not understand her, and that it would be romantic andsilencing did she take a lover to her arms; and she could have wept that, of all the flagrant splendours of which she dreamed, London's grey should remain her only share. And she knew that the attendants at the Imperial Institute had begun to look at her. Once she had spoken to one of them, but when she had thought of asking him whether he knew a Mr. Strong who came there to study Indian Art, her heart had suddenly failed her, and the question had stayed unspoken. Nevertheless she had feared that the man had guessed her thought, and must be taking stock of her face against some contingency (to visualize which passed the heavy time on) that had a Divorce Court in it, and hotel porters and chambermaids who gave evidence, and the Channel boat, and two forsaken children, and grimy raptures in the Latin Quarter, and its hectic cafés at night....

And so she walked, feeling herself special and strange and frightened and half-resolved; and thrice in as many weeks Lady Tasker, sitting with her crochet at her window, had seen her pass, but had not been able to believe that this was the woman, with a husband and children, on whom she had once called at that house with the secretive privet hedge away in Hampstead.

"ItisAmory!" Dorothy exclaimed. "Is she coming here?"

Lady Tasker spoke reflectively.—"I don't know. I don't think so. But—will you fetch her in? I should like to see her."

"If you like, auntie," said Dorothy, though a little reluctantly.

But Lady Tasker seemed to change her mind. She laid down her crochet and rose.

"No, never mind," she said. "I'll fetch her myself."

And the old lady of seventy passed slowly out of the room, and Katie and Dorothy moved away from the window.

Lady Tasker was back again in five minutes, but no Amory came with her. She walked back to her chair, moved it, and took up her work again.—"Switch the table light on," she said.

"Was it Amory?" Dorothy ventured to ask after a silence.

"Yes," Lady Tasker replied.

"And wouldn't she come in?"

"She said she was hurrying back home."

That raised a question so plain that Dorothy thought it tactful to make rather a fuss about finding some album or other that should convince Katie that she really had met the Mollie who had written the letter about the window-curtains. Lady Tasker's needle was dancing rather more quickly than usual. Dorothy found her album, switched on another light, and told Katie to make room for her on her chair.

Amory, dawdling like that, and then, when spoken to, to have the face to say that she was hurrying back home!——

It was some minutes later that Lady Tasker said off-handedly, "Has she any children besides those twins?"

"Amory?" Dorothy replied, looking up from the album. "No."

"How old is she?" Lady Tasker asked.

"Thirty-two, isn't she, Katie?"

"About that."

"Is she very—athletic?" Lady Tasker next wanted to know.

"Not at all, I should say."

"I mean she doesn't go in for marathon races or Channel swimming or anything of that kind?"

"Amory? No," said Dorothy, puzzled.

"And you're sure of her age?" the old lady persisted.

"Well—she may only be thirty-one."

"I don't mean is she younger. Is sheolderthan that?"

"No—I know by my own age."

"H'm!" said Lady Tasker; and again her needle danced....

Dorothy was explaining to Katie that Mollie was fair, about her own colour, but of course the hair never came out right in a photograph, when Lady Tasker suddenly began a further series of questions.

"Dorothy——"

"Yes?"

"Did she—develop—early?"

"Who—Amory? I don't know. Did she, Katie? Of course she was quite the cleverest girl at the McGrath."

"Ah!... What did she do at the McGrath?"

"Why, painted. You're awfully mysterious, auntie! It was soon after she left the McGrath that she painted 'Barrage'—you've heard of her feminist picture that made such a stir!"

"Ah, yes. Yes. I didn't see it, but I did hearabout it. I don't know anything about art.—Had she any affair before she married young Pratt?"

"No. I'm sure of that. I knew her so well." Dorothy was quite confident on that point, and Katie agreed. Lady Tasker's questions continued.

And then, suddenly, into this apparently aimless catechism the word "doctor" came. Dorothy gave a start.

"Aunt Grace!... Do you mean Amory's ill?" she cried.

Lady Tasker did not look up from her crochet.—"Ill?" she said. "I've no reason to suppose so. I didn't say she was ill. There's no illness about it.... By the way, I don't think I've asked how Stan is."

But for the curiously persistent questions, Dorothy might have seized the opportunity to hint that Stan was made for something more nationally useful than getting himself black and blue by stopping runaway horses for the film or running the risk of double pneumonia by being fished out of the sea on a January day—which was the form his bread-winning was taking on that particular week-end. But the Ludlow design was for the moment forgotten. She would have liked to ask her aunt straight out what she really meant, but feared to be rude. So she turned to the album again, and again Katie, turning from turban to staff-cap and from staff-cap to pith helmet, urged thatthosewere the people who really knew what they were talking about—surely Dorothy sawthat!——

Then, in the middle of Dorothy's bewilderment,once more the questions.... About that painting of her friend's, Lady Tasker wanted to know: did Mrs. Pratt get any real satisfaction out of it?—Any emotional satisfaction?—Was she entirely wrapped up in it?—Or was it just a sort of hitting at the air?—Did it exhaust her to no purpose, or was it really worth something when it was done?——

"If Dorothy doesn't know, surely you do, Katie."

Katie coloured a little.—"I liked 'Barrage' awfully at the time," she confessed, "but—," and she cheered up again, "—Ihateit now."

"But did her work—what's the expression?—fill her life?"

Here Dorothy answered for Katie.—"I think she rather liked the fame part of it," she said slowly.

"Does she paint now?"

"Very little, I think, Lady Tasker."

"Has her children to look after, I suppose?"

"Well—she has both a nurse and a governess——"

"They're quite well off, aren't they? I seem to remember that Pratt came into quite a lot."

"They seem to spend a great deal."

"But that's only a small house of theirs?"

"Oh, yes, they're rather proud of that. They don't spend their money selfishly. It goes to the Cause, you see."

"What Cause?" Lady Tasker asked abruptly.

This was Katie's cue....

She ceased, and Lady Tasker muttered something. It sounded rather like "H'm! Too much money and not enough to do!" but neither of her companions was near enough to be quite sure.

And thereupon the questions stopped.

But a surmise of their drift had begun to dawn glimmeringly upon Dorothy. She ceased to hear the exposition of Imperialism's real needs into which Katie presently launched, and fell into a meditation. And of that meditation this was about the length and breadth:—

Until the law should allow a man to have more wives than one (if then), of course only one woman in the world could be perfectly happy—the woman who had Stan. That conviction came first, and last, and ran throughout her meditation. And of what Dorothy might compassionately have called secondary happinesses she had hitherto not thought very much. She had merely thanked her stars that she had not married a man like Cosimo, had once or twice rather resented Amory's well-meant but left-handed kindnesses, and that had been the extent of her concern about the Pratt household. But first Katie, and now her aunt, had set her wondering hard enough about that household now.

What, she asked herself, had the Pratts married on? What discoveries had they made in one another, what resources found within themselves? Apart from their talks and books and meetings and "interests" and that full pack of their theories, what was their marriage? Thrown alone together for an hour, did they fret? Did their yawning cease when the bell rang and a caller was admitted? Did even the same succession of callers become stale and a bore, so that strangers had to be sought to provide a stimulus? And did they call these and half ahundred other forms of mutual boredom by the rather resounding names that blabbing Katie had repeated to her—"wider interests," "the broad outlook," "the breaking down of personal insularity," and the rest?

And for once Dorothy dropped her excusatory attitude towards her friend. She dropped it so completely that by and by she found herself wondering whether Amory would have married Cosimo had he been a poor man. She was aware that, stated in that way, it sounded hideous; nor did she quite mean that perhaps Amory had married Cosimo simply and solely because he hadnotbeen poor; no doubt Amory had assumed other things to be equal that as a matter of fact had unfortunately proved to be not equal at all; but shediddoubt now whether Amory had not missed that something, that something made of so many things, that caused her own heart suddenly to gush out to the absent Stan. The thought frightened her a little. Had Amory married and had babies—all, as it were, beside the mark?...

Dorothy did not know.

But an obscurer hint still had seemed to lie behind her aunt's persistent questions. "Was Amory ill?" she herself had asked in alarm when that unexpected word "doctor" had been quietly dropped; and "Ill? I didn't say she was ill; there's no illness about it," Lady Tasker had replied. No illness about what? Apparently about something Lady Tasker saw, or thought she saw, in Amory.... An old lady whose years had earnedher the right to sit comfortably in her chair had gone so far as to descend the stairs and go out into the street to have a closer look at a young one: why? Why ask "Is she a Channel swimmer?" and "Is her painting a mere hitting of the air?" Why this insistence on some satisfaction for labour, as if without that satisfaction the labour wreaked on the labourer some sort of revenge? What sort of a revenge? And why on Amory?

Yes, Dorothy would have liked to ask her aunt a good many questions....

She did not know that Lady Tasker could not have answered them. She did not know that the whole world is waiting for precisely those replies. She did not know that the data of a great experiment have not yet begun to be gathered together. She did not know that, while she and Stan would never see the results of that experiment, little Noel and the other Bits, and Corin and Bonniebell might. She only knew that her aunt was a wise and experienced woman, with an appetite for life and all belonging to it that only grew the stronger as her remaining years drew in, and that apparently Lady Tasker found something to question, if not to fear.

"Is she a Channel swimmer? Does she get any emotional satisfaction out of what she does?"

They were oddly precise questions....

Much less odd was that homely summing-up of Lady Tasker's: "Too much money, and not enough to do."...

Dorothy had often thought that herself.

The gate in the privet hedge of The Witan had had little rest all the afternoon. It was a Sunday, the one following that on which Lady Tasker had issued bareheaded from her door, had crossed the road, and had caused Amory to start half out of her skin by suddenly speaking to her. The Wyrons had come in the morning; they had been expressly asked to lunch; but it was known that Dickie Lemesurier was coming in afterwards to discuss an advertisement, and if Dickie came the chances were that Mr. Brimby would not be very long after her. As a matter of fact Dickie and Mr. Brimby had encountered one another outside and had arrived together at a little after three, bringing three young men, friends of Mr. Brimby's still at Oxford, with them. These young men wore Norfolk jackets, gold-pinned polo-collars, black brogues and turned-up trousers; and apparently they had hesitated to take Cosimo at his word about "spreading themselves about anywhere," for they stood shoulder to shoulder in the studio, and when one turned to look at a picture or other object on the wall, all did so. Then, not many minutes later,Mr. Wilkinson had entered, in his double-breasted blue reefer, bringing with him a stunted, bowlegged man who did not carry, but looked as if he ought to have carried, a miner's lamp; and by half-past four, of The Witan's habitués, only Mr. Prang and Edgar Strong were lacking. But Edgar was coming. It had been found impossible, or at any rate Amory had decided that it was impossible, to discuss the question of Dickie's advertisement without him. But he was very late.

When Britomart Belchamber came in simultaneously with the tea and the twins at a little before five, the studio was full. The asbestos log purred softly, and Mr. Brimby's three Oxford friends, glad perhaps of something to do, walked here and there, each of them with a plate of bread and butter in either hand, not realizing that at The Witan the beautiful Chinese rule of politeness was always observed—"When the stranger is in your melon-patch, be a little inattentive." Had Dickie Lemesurier and Laura Wyron eaten half the white and brown that was presented to them, they must have been seriously unwell. It was Cosimo, grey-collared and with a claret-coloured velvet waistcoat showing under his slackly-buttoned tweed jacket, who gave the young men the friendly hint, "Everybody helps themselves here, my dear fellows." Then the Norfolk jackets came together again, and presently their owners turned with one accord to examine the hock and the top-side that hung on the wall over the sofa.

Not so much a blending of voices as an incessantracket of emphatic and independent pronouncements filled the studio. Walter Wyron had fastened upon the man who looked as if he ought to have carried a miner's lamp, and his forefinger was wagging like a gauge-needle as he explained that one of his Lectures had been misrepresented, and that he hadnevertaken up the position that a kind of Saturnalia should be definitely state-established. He admitted, nevertheless, that the question of such an establishment ought to be considered, like any other question, on its merits, and that after that the argument should be followed whithersoever it led.—Dickie Lemesurier, excessively animated, and with the whites showing dancingly all round her pupils, was talking Césanne and Van Gogh to Laura, and declaring that something was "quite the" something or other.—Mr. Brimby's hand was fondling Bonniebell's head while he deprecated the high degree of precision of the modern rifle to Mr. Wilkinson. "If only it wasn't so ruthlessly logical!" he was sighing. "If only it was subject to the slight organic accident, to those beautiful adaptations of give-and-take that make judgment harsh, and teach us that we ought never to condemn!"—Corin, drawn by the word "gun," was demanding to be told whether that was the gun that had been taken away from him.—And Britomart Belchamber, indifferent alike to the glances of the Oxford men and their trepidation in her presence, stood like a caryatid under a wall-bracket with an ivy-green replica of Bastianini's Dante upon it.

"No, no, not for a moment, my dear sir!" Walter shouted to the man who looked like (and was) a miner. "That is to ignore the context. I admit I used the less-known Pompeian friezes as a rough illustration of what I meant—but I didnotsuggest that Waring & Gillow's should put them on the market! What I did say was that we moderns must work out our damnation on the same lines that the ancients did. Read your Nietzsche, my good fellow, and see whathesays about the practical serviceability of Excess! I contend that a kind of generaloubliance, say for three weeks in the year, to which everybody without exception would have to conform (so that we shouldn't have the superior person bringing things up against us afterwards)——"

"Ah doan't see how ye could mak' fowk——," the miner began, in an accent that for a moment seemed to blast a hole clean through the racket. But the hole closed up again.

"Ah, at present you don't," Walter cried. "The spade-work isn't done yet. We need more education. But every new and great idea——"

But here an outburst from Mr. Wilkinson to Mr. Brimby drowned Walter's voice. Mr. Wilkinson raised his clenched fist, but only for emphasis, and not in order to strike Mr. Brimby.

"Stuff and nonsense! There you go, Brimby, trimming again! We've heard all that: 'A great deal to be said on both sides,'"—(Mr. Wilkinson all but mimicked Mr. Brimby). "There isn't—not if you're going to do anything! There's only oneside. You've got to shoot or be shot. I'm a shooter. Give me five hundred real men and plenty of barricade stuff——"

"Oh, oh, oh, my dear friend!" Mr. Brimby protested. "Why, if your principles were universally applied——"

"Who said anything about applying 'em universally? Hang your universal applications! I'm talking about the Industrial Revolution. I'll tell you what's the matter with you, Brimby: you don't like the sight of blood. I'm not blaming you. Some men are like that. But it's in every page of your writing. You've got a bloodless style. I don't mind admitting that I liked some of your earlier work, while there still seemed a chance of your making up your mind some day——"

But here Mr. Wilkinson in his turn was drowned, this time by an incredulous laugh from Cosimo, who had joined Dickie and Laura.

"Van Gogh saysthat?" his voice mounted high. "Really? You're sure he wasn't joking? Ha ha ha ha!... But it's rather pathetic really. One would think Amory'd never painted 'Barrage,' nor the 'White Slave,' nor that—," he pointed to the unfinished canvas of "The Triumph of Humane Government" on the wall. "By Jove, I must make an Appendix of that!... Here—Walter!—Have you told him, Dickie?—Walter!——"

But Walter was now at deadly grips with the man who had forgotten his miner's lamp.

"I tell you I never used Saturnalia in that sense at all!——"

But the miner stood his ground.

"Happen ye didn't, but I'll ask ye one question: Have ye ever been to Blackpool of a August Bank Holiday?——"

"My good man, you talk as if I proposed to do something with the stroke of a pen, to-morrow, before the world's ready for it——"

"Have ye ever been to Blackpool of a Bank Holiday?"

"What on earth has Blackpool to do with it?——"

"Well, we'll say Owdham Wakes week at t' Isle o' Man—Douglas——"

"Pooh! You've got hold of the wrong idea altogether! Do you know what Saturnaliameans?——"

"I know there's a man on Douglas Head, at twelve o'clock i' t' day, wi' t' sun shining, going round wi' a stick an' prodding 'em up an' telling 'em to break away——"

"I shouldn't have thought anybody could have been soincrediblyslow to grasp an idea—!" cried Walter, his hands aloft.

"Have—you—ever—been—to—Blackpool—when—t' Wakes—is on?"

Then Cosimo called again—

"Walter! I say! Come here!... Dickie's just told me something that makes the 'Life and Work'rathernecessary, I think!——"

And Walter turned his back on the miner and joined his wife and Dickie and Cosimo.

Anybody who wasn't anybody might have supposed the noise to be a series of wrangles, but of course it wasn't so at all really. Issues far too weighty hungin the balance. It is all very well for people whose mental range is limited bymatinéesand Brooklands and the newest car to talk in pleasant and unimpassioned voices, but what was going to happen to Art unless Cosimo hurled himself and the 'Life and Work' against this heretic Van Gogh, and what was to become of England if Walter allowed a pig-headed man who could say nothing but "Blackpool Pier, Blackpool Pier," to shout him down, and what would happen to Civilization if Mr. Wilkinson did not, figuratively speaking, take hold of the dilettante Brimby and shake him as a terrier shakes a rat? No: there would be time enough for empty politenesses when the battle was won.

In the meantime, a mere nobody might have thought they were merely excessively rude to one another.

Then began fresh combinations and permutations of the talk. Mr. Wilkinson, whose square-cut pilot jacket somehow added to the truculence of his appearance, planted himself firmly for conversation before Dickie Lemesurier; the miner, whose head at a little distance appeared bald, but on a closer view was seen to be covered with football-cropped and plush-like bristles, nudged Cosimo's hip, to attract his attention: and Walter Wyron sprang forward with a welcoming "Hallo, Raffinger!" as the door opened and two young McGrath students were added to the crowd. For a minute no one voice preponderated in the racket; it was—

"Hallo, Raff! Thought you weren't coming!"

"I want a gun!" (This from Corin.)

"My dear Corin" (this from Bonniebell), "Miss Belchamber's told you over and over again guns are anti-social——"

"Anybody smoking? Well, I know they don't mind——"

"But, Miss Lemesurier, where a speaker reaches only a hundred or two, the written word——"

"Ah, but the personal, magnetic thrill——" (This was in Dickie's rather deep voice.)

Then Walter, to somebody else, not the miner—

"I should have thoughtanybodywould have known that when I said Saturnalia I meant——"

"Where's Amory?"

"Sweet, in those little tunics!——"

"A subsidy from the State, of course——"

Then the miner, but not to Walter—

"I' t' daylight, proddin' 'em up wi' a stick—to say nowt o' Port Skillian bathin'-place of a fine Sunda'——"

"That hoary old lie, that Socialism means sharing——"

"Oh, at any artists' colourman's——"

"No; it will probably be published privately——"

"Van Gogh——"

"Oh, you'reentirelywrong!——"

And then, in the middle of a sudden and mysterious lull, the man who had come without his safety-lamp was heard addressing Cosimo again:—

"Well, what about t' new paaper? Owt settled yet?... Nay, ye needn't look; Wilkinson telled me; it's all right; nowt 'at's said 'll go beyond these fower walls. Wilkinson's gotten a rare listtogether, names an' right, I can tell ye! But t' way I look at it is this——"

Cosimo looked blank.

"But, my dear—I'm afraid I didn't catch your name——," he said.

"Crabtree—Eli Crabtree. This is t' point I want to mak', mister. Ye see, I can't put things grammar; but there's lots about 'at can; so I thowt we'd get a sec'etary, an' I'd sit an' smoke whol' my thowts come, and then I'd tell him t' tale. Ye see, ye want to go slap into t' middle o' t' lives o' t' people. Now comin' up o' t' tram-top I bethowt me of a champion series: 'Back to Back Houses I've Known.' I'll bet a crahn that wi' somb'dy to put it grammar for me——"

"My dear Crabtree, I'm afraid, don't you know, that there's been some mistake——"

And at this point, everybody becoming conscious at the same moment that they were listening, a fresh wave of sound flowed over the assembly; and presently Mr. Wilkinson was seen to take Cosimo aside and to be making the gestures of a man who is explaining some ridiculous mistake.

Then once more:—

"I beg your pardon—I thought you were Mrs. Pratt——"

"Put grammar—straight to fowk's hearts—sinks and slopstones an' all t' lot——"

"No, Balliol——"

"But listen, Pratt, the way the mistake arose——"

"Ellen Key, of course——"

"The 'Times!'—As if the 'Times' wasn'talwayswrong!——"

"There's a raucousness about her paint——"

"The Caxton Hall, at eight—do come!——"

"But we authors are so afraid of sentiment nowadays!——"

"Bombay, I think—or else Hyderabad——"

"Oh, he talks like a fool!——"

"Raff! Come here and recite 'The King is Duller'——"

"But LoveisLaw!——"

"Suspend our judgments until we've heard the other side——"

"Only water—but they couldn't break her spirit—she was out again in three days——"

And again there came an unexpected lull.

This time it was broken by, perhaps not the loudest, but certainly the most travelling voice yet—the voice of the caryatid beneath the bracket with the bust upon it. Miss Belchamber was dressed in a sleeveless surcoat chess-boarded with large black and white squares; the skirt beneath it was of dark blue linen; and there were beards of leather on her large brown brogues. One of the young Oxford men, greatly daring, had approached her and asked her a question. She turned slowly; she gave the young man the equal-soul-to-equal-soul look; and then the apparatus of perfect voice-production was set in motion. Easily and powerfully the air came from her magnificent chest, up the splendid six-inch main of her throat, rang upon the hard anterior portion of her palate, and was cut, as it were, to itsproper length and shaped into perfect enunciation by her red tongue and beautiful white teeth.

"What?" she said.

The undergraduate fell a little back.

"Only—I only asked if you'd been to many theatres lately."

"Not any."

"Oh!... I—I suppose you know everybody here?"

"Yes."

"Do point them out to me!"

"That's Walter Wyron. That's Mrs. Wyron. That's Miss Lemesurier. I don't know who the little man is. That's Mr. Wilkinson. My name's Belchamber."

"Oh—I say—I mean, thanks awfully. We've heard of them all, of course," the unhappy young man faltered.

"What?"

"All distinguished names, I mean."

"Of course."

"Rather!——"

And again everybody listened, became conscious of the fact, and broke out anew.

But where all this time was Amory?

Demonstrably, exactly where she ought to have been—in her bedroom. She was too dispirited to be accessible to the rational talk of others; she did not feel that she had energy enough to be a source of illumination herself; surely, then, merely because a lot of people, invited and uninvited, chose to come to The Witan, she need not put herself out to go andlook after them. They might call themselves her "guests" if they liked; Amory didn't care what form of words they employed; the underlying reality remained—that she was intensely bored, and too fundamentally polite to bore others by going down. Perhaps she would go down when Edgar came. She had left word that she was to be informed of his arrival. But he was very late.

Nevertheless, she knew that he would come. Lately she had grown a little more perspicacious about that. It had dawned on her that, everything else apart, she had some sort of hold on him through the "Novum," and there had been a trace of command in her summons that he was pretty sure not to disregard. No doubt he would try to get away again almost directly, but she had arranged about that. She intended to keep him to supper. Also the Wyrons. And Britomart Belchamber too would be there. And of course Cosimo.

She moved restlessly between her narrow bed and the window, now polishing her nails, now glancing at her hair in the glass. From the window she could see over the privet hedge and down the road, but there was no sign of Edgar yet. She looked at herselfagain in the glass, without favour, and then satdown on the edge of her bed again.

Her meeting with Lady Tasker the week before had greatly unsettled her. Very stupidly, she had quite forgotten that Lady Tasker lived in Cromwell Gardens. She would have thought nothing at all of the meeting had Lady Tasker had a hat on her head and gloves on her hands; she would have set thatdown as an ordinary street-encounter; but Dorothy's aunt had evidently seen her from some window, perhaps not for the first time, and, if not for the first, very likely for the third or fourth or fifth. In a word, Amory felt that she had been caught.

And, as she had been thinking of Edgar Strong at the moment when the old lady's voice had startled her so, it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that her start had seemed remarkable. Lady Tasker was so very sharp.

At all events, even Edgar was not going to have everything all his own way.

For she was sure now that she had the hold of the "Novum" on him, and that that hold was not altogether the single-minded devotion to his duty he had made it out to be on that day when she had last gone to the office. Not that she thought too unkindly of him on that account. The labourer, even in the field of Imperial Politics, is still worthy of his hire, and poor Edgar, like the rest of the world, had to make the best compromise he could between what he would have liked to do and what circumstances actually permitted him to do. Of course he would be anxious to keep his job. If he didn't keep it a worse man would get it, and India would be no better off, but probably worse. She sighed that all work should be subject to compromises of this kind. Edgar, in a word, was no longer a hero to her, but, by his very weakness, something a little nearer and dearer still.

But for all that she had not hesitated to use her "pull" in order to get him to The Witan that day.

She saw him as she advanced to the glass again. He was nearly a quarter of a mile down the road. She found a little secret delight in watching his approach when he was unconscious of her watching. His figure was still very small, and she indulged herself with a fancy, closing her eyes for a moment in order to do so. Suppose he had been, not approaching, but going away—then when she opened her eyes again he would look smaller still.... She opened them, and experienced a little thrill at seeing him nearer and plainer. She could distinguish the red spot of his tie. Now he turned his head to look at some people who passed. Now he stepped off the pavement to make room for somebody. Now he was on the pavement again—now hidden by a tree—now once more disclosed, and quite near——

She straightened herself, gave a last look into the glass, and descended.

She met him in the hall. They shook hands, but did not speak. There was no need for him to ask whether anybody had come; the babble of noise could be plainly heard through the closed studio door. They walked along the passage, descended the two steps into the garden, and reached the studio.

Strong opened the door, and—

"Ha, ha, ha!I shall tell them that at the Nursery!——"

"No—just living together——"

"Corin!—Corin!——"

"The eighteenth, at the Little Theatre——"

Then the voice of Mr. Crabtree vociferating to his friend Mr. Wilkinson.

"I thowt ye telled me 'at Pratt knew all about it——"

"One day in the High, just opposite Queens——"

"Not know the 'Internationale'!—Debout, les damnés de la terre——!"

Next, sonorously, Miss Belchamber.

"Yes, I dance 'Rufty Tufty' and 'Catching of Quails'——"

"But my good chap, don't you see that the Referendum——"

"Oh, throw it down anywhere—on the hearth——"

"Really, the bosh he talks——"

"The Minority Report——"

"Corin!——"

"Plato——"

"Prang——"

Then, before anybody had had time to notice the entry of Amory and Edgar Strong, an extraordinary, not to say a regrettable thing occurred.

Mr. Eli Crabtree had spent the last twenty minutes in going deliberately from one person to another, often thrusting himself unceremoniously between two people already engaged in conversation, and in subjecting them to questionings that had become less and less reticent the further he had passed round the room. And it appeared that this collier who had forgotten his Davy had yet another lamp with him—the lamp of his own narrow intelligence and inalienable, if worthless, experience. By the help of that darkness within him that he mistook for light, he had added inference to inference and conclusion toconclusion. Cosimo—Wilkinson—Walter Wyron—Brimby—the Balliol men—the young students of the McGrath—he had missed not one of them; but none knew the portent of his tour of the studio until he had reached the hearth again. Then he was seen to be standing with his hands behind him, as if calmly summing them up.

"By—Gow!" he said half to himself, his football-cropped head moving this way and that and his eyes blinking rapidly as he sought somebody to address.

Then, all in a moment, he ceased his attempt to single out one more than another, and was addressing them in the lump, for all the world as if he had been allowed the entrée of the house, not as a high and memorable privilege and in order that he might learn something he had never suspected before, but as if, finding himself there,hemight as well tellthema thing or two while he was about it. And though his astonishment at what he had seen might well have rendered him dumb, his good temper did not for an instant forsake him.

"By—Gow!" he said again. "But thisisa menagerie, an' reight!"

The instantaneous dead silence and turn of every head might have disconcerted a prophet, but they made not the slightest impression on Mr. Crabtree.

"Itisa menagerie!" he continued superbly. "Ding, if onnybody'd told me I wadn't ha' believed 'em!—Let's see how monny of ye there is——"

And calmly he began to count them.

"Fowerteen—fifteen—sixteen countin' them two 'at's just come in an' leavin' out t' barns. Sixteen ofye, grown men an' women, an' not a single one of ye knows ye're born! Nay, it's cappin'!—Him wi' his Salmagundys or whativver he calls 'em, an' niver been on Douglas Head!—T' maister here, 'at doesn't know what a back-to-back is, I'se warrant!—An' yon chap—," Mr. Crabtree's forefinger was straight as a pistol between Mr. Brimby's eyes, "—'at says there's a deeal to be said o' both sides an'll be having his pocket'ankercher out in a minute!—An' these young men thro' t' Collidge!—Nay, if it doesn't beat all! I ne'er thowt to live to see t' day!——"

And he made a T-t-t-ing with his tongue on his palate, while his sharp little eyes looked on them all with amusement and pity.

Out of the silence of consternation that had fallen on the studio Walter Wyron was the first to come. He nudged Cosimo, as if to warn him not to spoil everything, and then, with his hands deep in the pockets of his knickers and an anticipatory relish on his face, said "I say, old chap—make us a speech, won't you?"

But if Walter thought to take a rise out of Mr. Crabtree he was quite, quite mistaken. With good-natured truculence the collier turned on him also.

"A speech?" he said. "Well, I wasn't at t' back o' t' door when t' speechifyin'-powers was given out; it wadn't be t' first time I'd made a speech, nut by a mugfull. Mony's t' time they've put Eeali Crabtree o' t' table i' t' 'Arabian Horse' at Aberford an' called on him for a speech. I'd sooner mak' a speech nor have a quart o' ale teamed down my collar, an'that's all t' choice there is when t' lads begins to get lively!... I don't suppose onny o' ye's ever been i' t' 'Arabian Horse'? Ye owt to come, of a oppenin'-time of a Sunda' morning. Ye'd see a bit o' life. Happen ye might ha' to get at t' back o' t' door—if they started slinging pints about, that is—but it's all love, and ye've got to do summat wi' it when ye can't sup onny more. I should like to have him 'at talks about t' Paraphernalia there; it 'ld oppen his eyes a bit! An' him 'at wor reciting about t' King an' all—t' little bastard i' t' corner there——"

At this word, used in so familiar and cheerful a sense, Laura Wyron stiffened and turned her back; but Walter still hoped for his "rise."

"Go on," he said; "give us some more, old chap."

The child of nature needed no urging.

"Ay, as much as ivver ye like," he said accommodatingly. "But I wish I'd browt my voice jewjewbes. Ay, I willn't be t' only one 'at isn't talking! T' rest on ye talks—ding, it's like a lamb's tail, waggin' all day and nowt done at neet—so we mud as weel all be friendly-like! Talk! Ay, let's have a talk! Here ye all are, all wi' your fine voices an' fine clothes, an' ivvery one o' ye wi' t' conveeanience i' t' house, I don't doubt, an' I'll bet a gallon there isn't one o' ye's ivver done a hands-turn i' your lives! Nay, ye're waur nor my Aunt Kate! Come down to Aberford an' I'll show ye summat! Come—it's a invitaation—I'll see it doesn't cost ye nowt! T' lads is all working, all but t' youngest, an' we're nooan wi'out! No, we're nooan wi'out at our house! I'll interdewce ye to t' missis, an' ye can help her to peel t' potates, an'ye can go down i' t' cage if ye like! Come, an' I'll kill a pig, just for love. Come of a Sunda' dinner-time, when t' beef's hot. Wilkinson knows what I mean; he knows t' life; he reckons not to when he's wi' his fine friends, but Wilkie's had to lie i' bed while his shirt was being mended afore to-day!... Nay, the hengments!" He broke into a jovial laugh. "Ye know nowt about it, an' ye nivver will! These 'ere young pistills fro' t' Collidge—what are they maalakin' at? It doesn't tak' five thousand pound a year to learn a lad not to write a mucky word on a wall!" (Here Dickie Lemesurier turned her back on the speaker).... "They want to get back to their Collidges. T' gap's ower wide. They'll get lost o' t' road. Same as him 'at wrote t' book about t' pop-shop——," again Mr. Crabtree's forefinger was levelled between Mr. Brimby's eyes. "Brimbyin' about, an' they don't know a black puddin' from a Penny Duck! Has he ivver had to creep up again t' chimley-wall to keep himself warm i' bed, or to pull t' kitchen blinds down while he washed himself of a Saturda' afternooin? But ye can all come an' see if ye like. We've had to tew for it, but we're nooan wi'out now. An' I'll show ye a bit o' sport too. We all have we'r whippets, an' we can clock t' pigeons in, an' see what sort of a bat these young maisters can mak' at knurr-an'-spell—eighteen-and-a-half score my youngest lad does! Ay, we enjoy we'rsens! An' there's quoits an' all. Eighteen yards is my distance if onnybody wants to laake for a beast's-heart supper! Come—ding it, t' lot o' ye come! We can sleep fower o' ye, wed 'uns, headsto tails, if ye don't mind all being i' t' little cham'er——"

But by this time Mr. Crabtree was having to struggle to keep his audience. Mr. Brimby too had turned away, and Mr. Wilkinson, and even Miss Belchamber had spoken several words of her own accord to the young Balliol boy. The tide of sound began to rise again, so that once more Mr. Crabtree's voice was only one among many. Then Walter started forward with an "Ah, Amory!" and "Hallo, Strong!" Mr. Raffinger of the McGrath exclaimed....

"Perseverance Row, fower doors from t' 'Arabian Horse'——," Mr. Crabtree bawled hospitably through the hubbub....

"Oh, youmustsee it—the New Greek Society, on the seventeenth——"

"But I say—whatis'Catching of Quails,' Miss Belchamber——?"

"Mr. Wilkinson brought him, I think——"

"Fellow of All Souls, wasn't he?——"

Then that genial Aberford man again:

"I tell ye t' gap's ower wide, young man—ye'll get lost o' t' road——"

"No, the children take her name——"

"Got a match, old fellow?——"

"Rot, my dear chap!——"

"But whatiscondonation if that isn't?——"

"Oh, the ordinary brainless Army type——"

"I read it in the German——"

"They gained time by paying in pennies——"

"In Père Lachaise——"

"Well, we can talk about it at suppertime——"

"But with cheaper Divorce——"

"One an' all—whenivver ye like—Eeali Crabtree, Perseverance Row, Aberford, fower doors from t' 'Arabian Horse'——"

"Nietzsche——"

"Finot——"

"Weininger——"

"Wadham——"

"Aberford——"

"Rufty Tufty——"

"I—say!——"

"Wasn'the priceless!——"

"You got his address, Cosimo? Imustcultivate him!——"

"Pure delight!——"

"You had come in, hadn't you, Amory?——"

"HeshotBrimby!——"

"To all intents and purposes—with his finger——"

"Can you do his accent, Walter?——"

"I will in a week, or perish——"

"His bath in the kitchen!——"

"T' wed 'uns can sleep i' t' little chamber——"

"No—he didn't sound the 'b' in 'chamber,' and there were at least three 'a's' in it——"

"'T' little chaaam'er'——"

"No, you haven't quite got it——"

"Give me a little time——"

The party had dwindled to six—Cosimo and Amory, the Wyrons, and Britomart Belchamber and Mr. Strong. They were still in the studio, but they were only waiting for the supper-gong to ring. Cigarette ends were thickly strewn about the asbestos log. The bandying of short ecstatic phrases hadbeen between Walter and his wife, with Cosimo a little less rapturously intervening; the subject of them was, of course, Mr. Crabtree. To his general harangue Mr. Crabtree had added, before leaving, more particular words of advice, making a second tour of the studio for the purpose; and he had distinguished Walter above all the rest by inviting him, not merely to the house four doors from the "Arabian Horse," but to spend a warm afternoon with him on Douglas Head also.

But the Wyrons had these raptures pretty much to themselves. Perhaps Cosimo was thinking of Mr. Wilkinson, of some new paper of which he had never heard, and of the assumption that he, apparently, was to find the money for it. Miss Belchamber was rarely rapturous, so that her silence was nothing out of the way. Edgar Strong could be rapturous when he chose, but he evidently didn't choose now. And Amory had far too much on her mind.

Her original idea in asking the Wyrons to stay to supper had been that they, as acknowledged experts in the subject that perplexed her, would be the proper people to keep the ring while the four persons immediately concerned talked the whole situation quietly and reasonably and thoroughly out. But she was rather inclined now to think again before submitting her case to them. It would be so much better, if the case must be submitted to anybody, that Cosimo should do it. Then she herself would be able to shape her course in the light of anything that might turn up. Nothing, she had to admit, had turned up yet, and Amory was not sure that in thatvery fact there did not lie a sufficient cause for resentment. Had Cosimo pleaded a passion for Britomart Belchamber he would have had Passion's excuse. Lacking Passion, it could only be concluded that he was bored with Amory herself.

And that amounted to an insult....

The booming of the gong, however, cut short her brooding. They passed to the dining-room. Britomart and Walter sat with their backs to the tall black dresser with the willow pattern stretching up almost to the ceiling; Laura and Edgar took the German chairs that had their backs to the copper-hooded fireplace; and Cosimo and Amory occupied either end of the highly-polished clothless table. This absence of cloth, by the way, gave a church-like appearance to the flames of the candles in the spidery brass sticks that had each of them a ring at the top to lift it up by; the preponderance of black oak and dull black frames on the walls further added to the effect of gloom; and the putting down of the little green pipkins of soup and the moving of the green-handled knives and round-bowled spoons made little knockings from time to time.

Again Walter and Laura, with not too much help from Cosimo, sustained the weight of the conversation; and it was not until Amory asked a question in a tone from which rapture was markedly absent that they sponged, as it were, the priceless memory of Mr. Crabtree from their minds. Amory's question had been about Walter's new Lecture, still in course of preparation, on "Post-Dated Passion"; and Walter cursorily ran over its heads for the general benefit.

"I admit I got the idea from Balzac," he said between mouthfuls (whenever they came to The Witan the Wyrons supped almost as heartily as did Edgar Strong himself). "'Comment l'amour revient aux vieillards,' you know. But of course that hasn't any earthly interest for anybody. 'Aux vieilles' it ought to be. Then—well, then you've simply got 'em."

"Why not 'vieillards?'" Amory asked, not very genially.

"I say, Cosimo, I'll have another cutlet if I may.—Why not 'vieillards?' Quite obvious. Men aren't the interest. I've tried men, and you can ask Laura how the bookings went.—But 'vieilles' and I've got 'em. Really, Amory, you're getting quite dull if you don't see that! I'll explain. You see, I've already got the younger ones, like Brit here—shove the claret along, Brit—but the others, of forty or fifty say, well, they've all had their affairs—or if they haven't better still—and it's merely a question of touching the right chord. Regrets, time they've lost, fatal words 'Too late' and so on—it's simplymadefor me! Touch the chord and they do the rest for themselves. They probably won't hear half of it for sobbing.—Of course I shall probably have to modify my style a bit—not quite so—what shall I say——"

"Jaunty," his wife suggested, "—in the best sense, I mean——"

"Hm—that's not quite the word—but never mind. It's a great field. Certainly women, not men, are the draw."

Amory made a rather petulant objection, and theargument lasted some minutes. In the end Walter triumphantly gained his first point, that women and not men were the "draw" in the box-office sense, and also his second one, namely, that not the Britomarts, but the older women, who would put their hearts into his hands and pay him for exploiting their helplessness and ache and tenderness and regret, and never suspect that they were being practised upon, were "simply made for him...."

"What do you think of my title?" he asked.

And the title was discussed.

Amory was beginning to find Walter just a little grasping. She wished that after all she had not asked the Wyrons to stay to supper. Formerly she had thought that marriage-escapade of theirs big and heroic (that too, by the way, had been in the Latin Quarter, and probably on seven francs a day); but now she was less sure about that. Quite apart from the inapplicability of the Wyrons' experience to her own case, she now wondered whether theirs had in fact been experience at all. Now that she came to think of it, they had taken no risks. Theyhadbeen married, and in the last event could always turn round on their critics and silence them with that fact....

Nor was she quite so ready now to lay even the souls of Britomart and Cosimo on the dissecting-table for the sake of seeing Walter exercise his professional skill upon them. This was not so much that she wanted to spare Cosimo and Britomart as that she did not want to give Walter a gratification. She was inclined to think that if Walter couldn't be alittle more careful about contradicting her he might find his advertisement omitted from the "Novum" one week, as Katie Deedes' had been omitted, and where would he be then? The way in which he had just said that she was "getting quite dull" had been next door to a rudeness....

But she had to admit that she felt dull. Edgar, who sat next to her, did not speak, and Cosimo, who faced her, was apparently still brooding on people who planned the spending of his money without thinking it necessary to consult him first. She was tired of the whole of the circumstances of her life. Paris on seven francs a day could hardly be much worse. Nor, if she could but shake off her lethargy, need that sum be fixed as low as seven francs. For she had lately remembered an arrangement made between herself and Cosimo before she had ever consented to become engaged to him. It was a long time since either of them had spoken of this arrangement—so long that Cosimo would have been almost within his rights had he maintained that the circumstances had so altered as to make it no longer binding; but there it was, or had been, and it had never been expressly revoked. It was the arrangement by which they had set apart a fund to insure themselves, either or both of them, against any evils that might arise from incompatibility. Amory had no idea how the matter now stood. She didn't suppose for a moment that Cosimo had actually set a sum by each week or month; but, hard and fast or loose and fluid, he must have made, or be still ready to make, some provision. It was an inherent part of thecontract that a solemn affirmation, with reason shown (spiritual, not mere legal reason) by either one or the other, should constitute a sufficient claim on this fund.

Therefore Paris need not necessarily be the worst penury.

But, for all her new inclination to leave the Wyrons out of it, she still thought it a prudent idea to carry the fight (not that there would be any fight—that was only a low way of expressing the high reasonableness that always prevailed at The Witan) to Cosimo and Britomart, rather than to have it centre about Edgar and herself. Walter's eyes were mainly on the box-office nowadays. The original virtue of that fine protest of theirs was—there was no use in denying it—gone. He spread his Lectures frankly now as a net. Well, that was only one net more among the many nets of which she was becoming conscious. Edgar too, poor boy, was compelled to regard even the "Novum" as in some manner a net. Mr. Brimby, Amory more than guessed, had nets to spread. Mr. Wilkinson, in his own way, was out for a catch; and Dickie fished at the Suffrage Shop; and Katie had fished at the Eden; and the only one who didn't fish was Mr. Prang, who wrote his articles about India for nothing, just to be practising his English.

And all these nets were spread for somebody's money—a good deal of it Cosimo's. It had been the same, though perhaps not quite so bad, at Ludlow. That experiment on the country-side had been alarmingly costly. And all this did not include thedozens and dozens of nets of narrower mesh. The "Novum" might gulp down money by the hundred, but the lesser things were hardly less formidable in the sum of them—subscriptions, contributions, gifts, loans, investments, shares in the Eden and the Book Shop, mortgages, second mortgages, subsidies, sums to "tide over," backings, guarantees, losses cut, more good money sent to bring back the bad, fresh means of spending devised by somebody or other almost every day. It had begun to weary even Amory. The people who came to The Witan became rather curiously better-dressed the longer their visiting continued; but the things they professed to hold dear appeared very little further advanced. All that first brightness and promise had gone. Amory's interest had gone. She wanted to escape from it all, and to go away with Edgar appeared once more to be the readiest way out.

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