The words in which Ora declared her intention of recalling Jack Fenning to her side and of taking up again the burden of married life sounded like the statement of a firm, unalterable, and independent resolution; after them it seemed as though Ashley had only to bow his head and go his ways; his task would be, if not easy, yet plain and simple. But with the brave sound came the appealing glance; the words were uttered more like a prayer than a decree. She had thrown herself on his mercy in the inn parlour on the Sunday; she appeared to throw herself on his mercy again now, and in reality to await his determination rather than announce her own. But she was eager to win from him the verdict that she suggested; she was not hoping for a refusal while she satisfied appearances by asking. The appeal was full of fear and doubt, but it was genuine and sincere. Her eyes followed him as he walked to the window and as he came back and stood again before her; she watched the struggle in him with anxiety. Once she smiled faintly as though to show her understanding and her sympathy with what was passing in his mind. "I feel all that too," she seemed to say.
"Have you quite made up your mind?" he asked her at last. "You've realised what it means? I don't know him, of course, and you do. Well, can you do it?"
"I must do it. I ought to do it," she said pathetically. "You know I ought to do it."
He shrugged his shoulders; probably she was right there, unless Jack Fenning were a much worse calamity than he had any good reason for supposing; certainly everybody would hold her right, everybody who had not queer theories, at least.
"You must help me," she said. He was silent. She rose and came to stand by him, speaking to him in a low whisper. "Yes, you must help me, you must make me able to do it. I can do it if you help me, Ashley. It is right, you know."
A hint of amusement shewed itself in his face.
"Perhaps, but I shouldn't have thought I could help you much," he said. "Unless you mean by going away and staying away?"
"Oh, no, no," she cried in terror. "You mustn't go away, you mustn't leave me alone, I should die if you did that now. It's a thing for both of us to do; we must help one another. We shall make one another stronger. Don't you see what I mean? You won't go?"
He had not fathomed her mood yet, but only one answer to her prayer was possible.
"I won't go as long as you want me," he said.
"You promise? You promise me that?" she insisted.
"Yes, I promise," he assured her with another smile.
"And you'll make it easy for me?" She, in her turn, smiled a moment. "I mean you won't make it too difficult? I must be good, you must let me be good. Some people say you're happy when you're good. I wonder! I shall be very miserable, I know."
The tears were standing in her eyes; she looked indeed very miserable; he kissed her.
"Yes," she murmured, as though he had told her in words that he pitied her very much; she preserved that childlike sort of attitude towards caresses; to Ashley itseemed to make kissing her almost meritorious. She saw no inconsistency between accepting his kisses and holding to her heroic resolution; it seemed almost as though she must be kissed to enable her to hold to her resolution; it was the sympathy, or even the commendation, without which her virtue could not stand.
"I can do it," she said plaintively. Then she drew herself up a little. "Yes, I can," she repeated proudly, "I'm sure I can. We can do what we ought, if we try. Oh, but how I shall hate it! If only it had come a little sooner—before—before our Sunday! It wouldn't have been so bad, then."
"No, it wouldn't," he said.
"Poor Ashley!" she said, pressing his hand. "Will it be very hard for you?"
He answered with the shamefaced brevity and reserve with which men, trained as he had been, confess to emotion.
"I shan't like it, naturally."
"But you must be strong too," she urged. "We must make each other strong." She returned with evident comfort to this idea of their helping one another; they were to fight as allies, in a joint battle, not each to support a solitary unaided struggle. To most people it would have seemed that they would make one another weak. Ora was sure of the contrary; they would make one another strong, support one another against temptation, and applaud one another's successes. She could be good, could be even heroic, could perform miracles of duty and resignation, if she had the help of Ashley's sympathy and the comfort of his presence. And he would feel the same, she thought; she could soften the trial to which she was obliged to subject him; she could console him; her tender grief and her love,ardent while renouncing, would inspire him to the task of duty. She grew eager as this idea took shape in her mind; she pressed it on him, anxious to make him see it in the aspect in which she saw it, to understand the truth and to appreciate the beauty that lay in it. She was sure it was true. It surprised her to find this beauty also in it. But if they separated now, cut themselves adrift from one another, and went off their different ways, all that drew her in the picture would be destroyed, and she would be left without the balm of its melancholy sweetness. She tried by every means in her power to enlist him on her side and make him look at the question as she looked at it.
Always obedient to her pleading orders, never able openly to reject what she prayed him to accept, Ashley feigned to fall in with an idea which his clearsightedness shewed very much in its real colours and traced to its true origin. It had begun in the instinctive desire not to lose him yet, to put off the day of sacrifice, to reconcile, so far as might be possible, two inconsistent courses, to pay duty its lawful tribute and yet keep a secret dole for the rebel emotion which she loved. Up to this point she was on ground common enough, and did only what many men and women seek and strive to do. Her individual nature shewed itself in the next step, when the idea that she had made began to attract her, to grow beautiful, to shape itself into a picture of renunciatory passion, moving and appealing in her eyes. But there must be other eyes; he too must see; by interchange of glances they must share and heighten their appreciation of what they were engaged on. Her morality, her effort to be, as she put it, good, must not only be liberally touched by emotion; it must be supported and stimulated by sympathetic applause. Reluctantly and almost with a senseof ungenerousness, as though he were criticising her ill-naturedly, he found himself applying to her the terms of her own art, beginning to see her in effective scenes, to detect an element of the theatrical in her mood. This notion came to him without bringing with it any repugnance and without making him impute to her any insincerity. She was sincere enough, indeed absolutely engrossed in her emotion and in the picture her emotion made. But the sincerity was more of emotion than of purpose, and the emotion demanded applause for the splendid feat of self-abnegation which it was to enable her and him to achieve. He was quite incapable of casting this glamour round his own share in the matter, but he strove to feel and perceive it in hers as she pleaded softly with him that he should not leave her to struggle in grim solitude. And he was glad of any excuse for not leaving her.
"I can't think yet of what it will be like when he's come," she said. "I mustn't think of that, or—or I couldn't go on. I must just do it now; that's what we've got to do, isn't it? We must get it done, Ashley, and leave all the rest. We must just do what's right without looking beyond it."
"There's no particular good in looking forward," he admitted ruefully. "You're quite clear about it?"
"Oh, yes, aren't you? I'm sure you are." She looked at him apprehensively. "You mustn't turn against me. I can be strong with you to help me; I couldn't be strong against you." Her voice fell even lower. "Not for an hour," she ended in a whisper.
Again she threw herself on his mercy; again he could not fail her or be deaf to her prayer.
"If you think it right, I can say nothing against it," he said.
"No. You wouldn't be happy if you did; I mean if you did persuade me to anything else. I know there aren't many men like you, capable of doing what you're going to do for me. But you can do it."
He perceived the glamour encircling him now as well as her; quarrelling with his own words, still he said to himself that his part also was to be an effective one; she was liberal to him and shewed no desire to occupy all the stage; her eyes would be as much for him as for herself.
"And because you're strong, I can be strong," she went on. "We shall both be glad afterwards, shan't we?"
"Let's rest in the consciousness of virtue, and never mind the gladness," he suggested.
Ora discarded the gladness almost eagerly.
"Yes," she said. "Because we shall both be terribly unhappy. We've got to face that. We aren't doing it blindly. We know what it means."
He doubted greatly whether she knew what it meant; she could not realise its meaning so long as she refused to look forward or to consider the actual state of things when Jack Fenning had arrived, so long as she preferred to concentrate all her gaze on the drama of renunciation which was to precede and bring about his coming. But in all this there was only an added pathos to him, a stronger appeal to his compassion, and an insuperable difficulty in the way of even trying to make her understand; such an attempt seemed brutal in his eyes. He could comfort her now; he could not tell her that when the moving scene ended with the entrance of Jack Fenning he would be able to comfort her no more.
The same mood which prevented her from looking forward made her reluctant to talk of her husband as he actually was. Under pressure of Ashley's questions shetold him that she had begun by loving Jack and had gone on liking him for some little while; but that he bore poverty badly and yet was indolent; that he often neglected her and sometimes had been unkind; that he was very extravagant, got into terrible money difficulties, and had been known to turn to the bottle for relief from his self-created troubles. But she became very distressed with the subject and obviously preferred to leave Jack Fenning vague, to keep him to the part of a husband in the abstract. This was all the drama needed—a husband accepted in duty but no longer loved or desired; the personal characteristics or peculiarities of the particular husband were unessential and unimportant. Ashley was surprised to find how little he had learnt about Mr. Fenning. But he was learning more about Mr. Fenning's wife.
"It's not what he is," urged Ora, "it's what we've got to do."
By now Ashley felt irrevocably coupled with her in a common task; and to him at least the precise character of the husband was not important. They were to act on the high plane of duty; Jack's past misdeeds or present defects were to be of no moment except in so far as they might intensify the struggle and enhance the beauty of renunciation. Ashley was so far infected with her spirit that he was glad to be left with a number of impressions of Jack Fenning all vaguely unfavourable.
"Nothing will ever alter or spoil the memory of our Sunday," she said. "It'll be there always, the one sweet and perfect thing in life. I think we shall find it even more perfect because of what we're going to do. I shall think about it every day as long as I live. I think it helps to have been happy just once, don't you? It'll never be as if we hadn't known we loved one another."
With the dismissal of the topic of Jack Fenning's character and the acceptance of the position that they were not to look forward beyond the act of renunciation, Ora had grown composed, cheerful, and at moments almost gay. Already she seemed to have triumphed in her struggle, or their struggle as she always called it; already she was minded to exchange congratulations with her ally. Her mere presence was such a charm to him as to win him to happiness, even while they were agreeing that happiness was impossible; the sense of loss, of deprivation, and of emptiness was postponed and could not assert itself while she moved before his eyes in the variety of her beauty and grace. Though he could accord but a very half-hearted adhesion to the scheme she had planned, again he welcomed it, because for the time at least it left her to him; nor could he be altogether sorrowful when she made her great and confessed love for him the basis on which the whole plan rested, the postulate that gave to the drama all its point and to the sacrifice all its merit. If she were triumphing in renunciation, he triumphed in a victory no less great, and hardly less sweet because the fruits of it were denied to him, because it was to rank as a memory, and not to become a perpetual joy. At least she loved him, trusted him, depended on him; he was to her more than any man; he was her choice. He would not have changed parts with Jack Fenning although he had to go out of her life and Jack was coming into it again. Surely to be desired is more than to possess?
"I suppose people suspect about us," she said. "I'm sure Irene does, and I think Miss Muddock does. But we've nothing to be ashamed of; we can't help loving one another and we're going to do right." She paused a moment, and then, looking at him with a timid smile,added, "How awfully surprised everybody will be when they hear that Jack's coming back! I think a lot of them hardly believed in him."
No doubt she divined accurately the nature of a considerable body of opinion.
"I daresay not," said Ashley. "You'll tell people what's going to happen?"
"Just my friends. It would look so odd if he came without any warning."
It could not be denied that she was interested in thinking of the effect which her news would create. She saw herself telling it to people.
"Of course I shall announce it as if it was the most ordinary thing," she went on. "You must do the same; say I told you about it. They'll be rather puzzled, won't they?"
"Oh, my dear!" said he, half laughing, half groaning, as he took her hand for a moment and pressed it lightly. "Yes, I daresay they'll be puzzled," he added with a rueful smile.
"We mustn't shew we notice anything of that sort," pursued Ora. "Nobody must see what it is we're really doing. They won't know anything about it." Her eyes fixed themselves on his. "I daresay they'll suspect," she ended. "We can't help that, can we?"
"We must keep our own counsel."
"Yes. If they like to talk, they must, that's all."
She had more to say of this secret of theirs, talked about, guessed at, canvassed, but not fully understood and never betrayed; it was to be something exclusively their own, hidden and sacred, a memory for ever between them, a puzzle to all the rest of the world.
"I daresay they'll guess that we care for one another," she said, "but they'll never know the whole truth. Iexpect they wouldn't believe in it if they did. They wouldn't think we could do what we're going to."
Not till he prepared to go did her sorrow and desolation again become acutely felt. She held his arms and prayed him not to leave her.
"You must rest a little while and eat something before you go to the theatre," he reminded her.
"No, no, don't leave me. Stay with me, do stay with me. Why can't I always have you with me? Why shouldn't I? How cruel it is!" She was almost sobbing. "Ashley, don't go," she whispered.
"Well, I won't go," he said. "I'll stay and dine with you and take you to the theatre."
"And fetch me home afterwards?"
"No, I don't think I'll do that as well."
"Why not?" she asked resentfully. Ashley shook his head. After a long look at him Ora sighed deeply. "I suppose you'd better not," she admitted. "But you'll stay now, won't you?" She ran across to the bell and rang it; her tone was gay as she told Janet that Mr. Mead would dine with her; between being left now and being left two hours hence a gulf of difference yawned.
"I'm afraid there's not much dinner, ma'am," said Janet in a discouraging, perhaps a disapproving, way.
"Oh, you won't mind that, will you?" she cried to Ashley, and when Janet went out she sighed, "It's so nice to have you." His smile had mockery in it as well as love. "It's for such a little while too," she went on. "Presently I shan't have you at all."
The little meal that they took together—Ashley ignoring an engagement to dine with friends, Ora seeming unmindful of things much harder to forget—was not a sorrowful feast. The shadow of the great renunciationdid not eclipse Ora's gaiety, but tempered it with a soft tenderness. None of her many phases had charmed her friend more; never had she seemed stronger in her claim on his service, more irresistible in the weakness with which she rested her life on his. His taste, his theoretical taste, had not been for women of this type, but rather, as he used to put it, for a woman with a backbone, a woman like Alice Muddock; theoretical preferences exist to be overthrown.
The unpretentious "jobbed" victoria was waiting at the door, and at last Ora made up her mind to start. It was but a little after seven, the streets were still light and full. The beginning of the renunciation might have seemed a strange one to the passer-by who recognised the occupants of the victoria. Many looked at Ora, thinking they had seen her before; some certainly knew her, some also knew Ashley. In reply to a not very serious expostulation from her companion Ora declared that it did not matter if people gossipped a little, because her announcement would put an end to it all directly; meanwhile shouldn't they enjoy themselves while they could? "If you hadn't taken me to the theatre to-night, I could never have got there," she declared with conviction. Ashley knew quite well that this was not literal truth and that she would have gone anyhow; whatever had happened to her, her instinct would have taken her; but the untruth had a truth in it and she thought it all true. It was an instance of the way in which she had put herself in his hands, had told him what she wanted him to do with her, and was now leaving him to do it. He had, in a slang phrase which came into his mind, "to see her through;" he had to ensure that the great renunciation should be properly carried out. It was consoling, although no doubt somewhatwhimsical, that the renunciation should seem to excuse what but for it would have been condemned as an imprudence, and, while dooming them to ultimate separation, should excuse or justify them in being as much together as they could in the present. It was "only for a little while;" the coming of Jack Fenning would end their pleasant hours and silence those who cavilled at them. The consciousness of their approaching virtue bred in Ora, and even in Ashley to some degree, both a sense of security and a tendency to recklessness; it seemed as though they had had no reason to fear either themselves or other people.
"You might come and fetch me afterwards," she said coaxingly.
But here he stood firm and repeated his refusal. She seemed surprised and a little hurt. But at the moment Babba Flint lifted his hat and bowed from the pavement with muchempressement.
"The story of our drive will be half over London by midnight," said Ashley.
"It doesn't matter now," she assured him, lightly touching his hand.
"Shall you write soon?" he asked.
"Yes, to-morrow," she said. An idea seemed to strike her. "Hadn't I better telegraph?" she asked.
"Wouldn't that look unnecessarily eager?" he suggested. The notion of a telegram stirred a jealousy, not of any real fact, but of the impression that it might convey to Mr. Fenning. He did not wish Jack Fenning to suppose that his home-coming was joyously awaited. Ora had been caught with the attraction of a telegram; it would emphasise the renunciation; but she understood the objection.
"No," she said, "I'd better write. Because I shallhave to explain the reasons for what I'm doing and tell him how—how we're to be to one another." She glanced at Ashley. He was looking straight in front of him. "I'll shew you the letter," she said in a low voice.
"I don't want to see the letter; I won't see it," he returned.
"Oh, it is hard for both of us!" she sighed. "But you know, dear, you know so well what you are to me; nobody ever has been or ever will be what you are. Won't you see the letter?"
"No, I won't see the letter."
Ora was disappointed; she would have liked sympathy and appreciation for the letter. Since these were not to be had, she determined to send quite a short business-like letter.
"No," she said. "I won't enter on any sort of discussion. I shall just tell him that I don't feel justified in refusing him leave to come. That'll be best; afterwards we must be guided by circumstances."
The "we" amused Ashley, for undoubtedly it served to couple Ora and himself, not Ora and her husband; from time to time he awoke for a moment to the queer humour of the situation.
"We must see how he behaves himself," he said,—smiling.
"Yes," she assented gravely, but a moment later, seeing his amusement, she broke into a responsive laugh, "I know why you're smiling," she said with a little nod, "but it is like that, isn't it?"
Perhaps for the time it was, but it was very clear to him that it could not go on being. Professing to think of nothing but the renunciation, she had begun to construct an entirely impossible fabric of life on the basis of it. In this fabric Ashley played a large part; but nofabric could stand in which both he and Jack Fenning played large parts; and Jack's part was necessarily large in any fabric built with the renunciation for its cornerstone. Else where was the renunciation, where its virtue and its beauty?
To see the impossibility of a situation and its necessary tendency to run into animpasseis logically the forerunner to taking some step to end it. Since, however, logic is but one of several equal combatants in human hearts, men often do not act in accordance with its rules. They wait to have the situation ended for them from without; a sort of fatalism gains sway over them and is intensified by every growth of the difficulty in which they find themselves. Unconvinced by Ora's scheme and not thoroughly in harmony with her mood, Ashley acted as though the one satisfied and the other entirely dominated him. When they parted at the theatre door there were two understandings arrived at between them, both suggested by her, both accepted obediently by him. One was that he should not fail to come and see her next day, and the day after, and the day following on that; to this he pledged himself under sanction of his promise to be her ally in the struggle and not to forsake her. The other arrangement was that the letter of recall should be written and despatched to Jack Fenning within twenty-four hours. Ora reluctantly agreed that Ashley should not have any hand in its composition or even see it before it was sent, but she was sure that she not only must but also ought to render to him a very clear and full account of all that it did and did not contain.
"Because," she said, as she gave him her hand in unwilling farewell, "we're going to fight this battle together, aren't we?" He nodded. "I couldn't fightit without you, indeed I couldn't," were the last words she spoke to him; they came with all the added force of the last imploring look from her eyes and the last pleading smile on her lips.
Then the theatre swallowed her up, and he was left to walk home, to remember his neglected engagement, to telegraph excuses in regard to it, then speedily again to forget it, and to spend an evening in which despair, wonder, tenderness, and amusement each had their turn with him. He had not lost her yet, but he must lose her; this idea of hers was absurd, ludicrous, impossible, yet it was also sweet, persuasive, above all expressive of her in her mingled power and weakness. It was herself; and from it, therefore, he could no more escape than he could from her.
Irene Kilnorton was in a state of pardonable irritation; just now she often inclined to irritation, but the immediate cause of this fit and its sufficient excuse lay in Babba Flint's behaviour. If only he could have believed it, he always annoyed her; but it was outrageous beyond the common to come on her "At Home" day, and openly scout her most interesting, most exciting, most comforting piece of news. He stuck his glass in his eye, stared through it an instant, and dropped it with an air of contemptuous incredulity.
"She told me herself," said Irene angrily. "I suppose that's pretty good authority."
"The very worst," retorted Babba calmly. "She's just the person who has an interest in spreading the idea. Mind you, I don't say he doesn't exist; I reserve judgment as to that because I'm aware that he used to. But I do say he won't turn up, and I'm willing to take any reasonable bet on the subject. In fact the whole thing is as plain as a pikestaff."
"What whole thing?" She spoke low, she did not want the rest to hear.
Babba spread his hands in a deprecating toleration for his hostess' density.
"She's everywhere with Mead," he said. "Drives to the theatre with him, you know, walks with him, talks about him."
"That doesn't explain anything, even if it's true."
"Doesn't it? When you're being indiscreet, lay emphasis on your husband. That's the standing rule, Lady Kilnorton. You'll see; when she gets tired of Mead, we shall hear no more of Jack Fenning."
Irene looked at him resentfully; he was abominably confident. And after all Ora was a strange being; in spite of their friendship, still outside her comprehension and not reducible to her formulas.
"But she's full of his coming," she expostulated. "She's—well, not exactly glad, I suppose—"
"I should suppose not," smiled Babba.
"But quite excited about it. And Mr. Mead knows he's coming too."
"No doubt Mead says he knows he's coming." Babba had once served his articles to a solicitor, and reminiscences of the rules of evidence and the value of testimony hung about him.
"Well, I believe he'll come," Irene declared with external firmness and an internal faintness.
"He won't, you'll see," returned Babba placidly.
Desiring an end to this vexatious conversation, Irene cast her eyes round her guests who were engaged in drinking tea and making talk to one another. Her glance detached Bowdon from his attendance on Minna Soames and brought him to her side; Babba, however, did not move away.
"The whole thing is very likely a despairing effort of Miss Pinsent's conscience," he said. "How are you, Lord Bowdon?"
"Ah, Babba, you here? Gossipping as usual, I see."
"He says Ora's husband won't come."
"Well, he doesn't know anything about it."
"I'll take six to four," said Babba eagerly.
"I don't think I care to bet about it," said Bowdon.
"Ah, I expect not!" For Babba the only possible reason against making any bet in the world was the fear of losing it.
"Do go and talk to Minna Soames," Irene implored him. "She'll be ready enough to disbelieve anything creditable about poor Ora." Babba smiled knowingly and began to edge away. Bowdon sat down by hisfiancée. "I do believe it, you know," she said, turning to him. Babba looked back with a derisive smile.
"Why should she say it, if it's not true?" asked Irene, addressing Bowdon and pointedly ignoring Babba.
"Oh, no doubt it's true," said Bowdon. "Why shouldn't it be true?"
Babba had put forward the constant companionship of Ora and Ashley Mead at once as evidence that the report was not true and as the explanation of its being circulated; Irene was inclined to attribute to it only the first of these functions.
"She goes on very oddly, if it is," she murmured. "But then she is odd."
"It's true, depend upon it," said Bowdon.
His solid persistence both comforted and exasperated her. She desired to think the report true, but she did not wish him to accept it merely in the unquestioning loyalty to Ora Pinsent which his tone implied. A thing was not true simply because Ora chose to say it; men lose all their common-sense where a woman is concerned; so say women themselves; so said Irene Kilnorton.
"What impresses me," she went on, "is that Ashley Mead told me."
"I suppose he got his information from her."
"Of course; but he can judge." She paused and added, "It's a very good thing, if it is true."
"Is it?" asked Bowdon. The question was an almost naked dissent.
Irene looked at him severely.
"It seems to me," she observed, "that men ought to pretend to approve of respectability. One doesn't ask them to be respectable."
"The man's a scamp, according to all accounts."
"He's her husband."
"He'll make her miserable, and take her money, and so on."
"No doubt his arrival will be inconvenient in a good many ways," Irene allowed herself to remark with significant emphasis. She had, she declared, no patience with the way men looked at such things; the man was the woman's husband after all. She found growing in her a strong disposition to champion Mr. Fenning's cause through thick and thin. "We don't know his version of the case," she reminded Bowdon after a pause.
"Oh, that's true, of course," he conceded with what she felt was an empty show of fairness. In reality he had prejudged the case and condemned the absent and unheard defendant. That was because he was a man and Ora Pinsent good-looking; a habit regrettable in men generally becomes exasperating, almost insulting, in one's own lover, especially with circumstances of a peculiar nature existing in the past and still very vivid in memory.
One way in which the news affected Bowdon he had allowed Irene to perceive; he was not at his ease as to how Ora would fare, and there was a touch of jealousy in his picture of Mr. Fenning's probable conduct. Buthe was conscious also of thankfulness that he had escaped from the sort of position in which he might have been placed had he yielded to his impulse, and in which, so far as he saw, Ashley Mead was now involved. His dignity would not have suffered him to enter into any rivalry with Fenning, while to leave the field clear to Fenning would have been a sacrifice hard to make. From this evil fortune the woman by him had rescued him, or enabled him to rescue himself, and he was full of gratitude to her; while she was still resenting the jealousy which he had betrayed with regard to Ora Pinsent, he surprised her by some whispered words of more tenderness than he commonly used and by a look which sent new hope through her. Suddenly she grasped that this event might do what she had not been able to do, might reconcile him to what was, gradually wean him wholly from the thought of what might have been, and in the end render him to her entirely her own in heart and soul. She would be very grateful to Jack Fenning if he accomplished that for her; he would have remade her life.
"You're quite gallant to-day," she whispered with a blush and a glad sparkle in her eyes. "We were very nearly quarrelling just now, weren't we?" she asked with a bright smile.
"We'll never be nearer, my dear," he answered; he had the most intense desire to please her.
"And about this Fenning man! Imagine!" she whispered in scornful amusement.
Bowdon went off to the House and the other guests took their leave. When all had gone Alice Muddock arrived; the two ladies had arranged to dine and spend a quiet hour together before they went to the parties for which they were engaged. When they were leftalone Alice, with a sigh, told her friend that Queen's Gate seemed like a refuge.
"We've been so uncomfortable at home the last few days," she explained. "At least I've found it very uncomfortable. You know about Ashley and the business? Well, father's furious with him about it, so's Bob, so's my stepmother, of course. And then—" She paused as though in hesitation.
"Well, and then?" asked Irene Kilnorton.
"Bob's brought home a lot of gossip about him from the club. Has Mr. Flint been here?" Lady Kilnorton nodded tragically. "He told Bob something, and father's furious about that too. So he won't hear Ashley's name mentioned, and takes his revenge by having Bertie Jewett always in the house. And I don't think I much like Bertie Jewett, not every day anyhow."
"I've only just made his acquaintance—through your brother."
"Oh, he's just what he would be; it's not his fault, you know." She began to laugh. "He pays me marked attentions."
"The Industrious Apprentice!" said Irene with a nod. "Ashley's the idle one."
"It's all very absurd and very tiresome." She had risen and walked across the room. From the other end of it she asked abruptly, "What do they say about him and Miss Pinsent?"
"Oh, my dear, what don't they say about everybody?"
"I don't believe it. I like her; and of course I like him."
"And I expect they like one another, so it's all harmonious," said Irene; but she repented the next moment. "I don't believe anything bad. But he's very silly about her. It'll all pass." After a moment,thanks to the new hope in her, she added a courageous generalisation. "Such nonsense never lasts long," she said. Then she looked at Alice, and it struck her suddenly that Alice would have referred to the news about Jack Fenning, had she known it; it seemed odd that everybody should not have heard of a subject so rich in interest.
"You know about Mr. Fenning?" she asked.
"Mr—? Oh, yes! You mean Miss Pinsent's husband? I know she has a husband, of course."
Then she did not know the new development.
"I've got a bit of news for you," said Irene luxuriously. "Guess."
"I won't guess even to please you. I hate guessing."
"Well, Mr. Fenning's coming home. I'll tell you all about it."
Beyond the bare fact there was in reality very little to tell, but the fact was capable of being clothed with so much meaning, of being invested with so many attendant possibilities, of taking on such various colours, that it seemed in itself a budget of news. Alice did justice to its claims; she was undeniably interested; the two found themselves talking it over in a vein which prevented them from pretending to one another that they were not both excited about it. They felt like allies who rejoiced together at the coming of a reinforcement. Irene's satisfaction was open and declared; Alice was more reticent and inclined to thoughtfulness. But even as an abstract existence on the other side of the world Mr. Fenning had comforted her; his virtue as a balm was endlessly multiplied by the prospect of his arrival in concrete form and flesh.
"The men amuse me," said Irene loftily. "They'reall pitying Ora; they don't seem to give a thought to poor Mr. Fenning."
"Have you seen Ashley since—since the news came?"
"Yes, but only for a minute. He mentioned it as certain, but quite indifferently. Of course he'd pretend to be indifferent."
"I suppose so," said Alice. "Perhaps he is really."
"How can he be?"
"Perhaps he means to take no notice of Mr. Fenning."
"My dearest Alice!" cried Irene. "You absolutely shock me. Besides it isn't like that at all. Ora's most excited about his coming. I can't make them out, though."
They fell to debating the constant companionship; the drive to the theatre, improved by Babba Flint's tongue into an invariable habit, was a puzzle, fitting very badly with an excited interest in Mr. Fenning's return. From these unprofitable enquiries they agreed to retreat to the solid basis of hope which the reappearance of the husband gave; on that they congratulated one another.
Common danger breeds candour; common good fortune breeds candour; finally, atête-à-têtedinner breeds candour. By the time they reached the sweets Irene Kilnorton, in the course of a demonstration that Ashley must and would get over his infatuation, that such nonsense never lasted, and that Mr. Fenning's return would put a summary end to anything of the sort, had confided to her friend that just for a little while Lord Bowdon had shewn signs of an inclination to hover round the same perilous flame. She was able to reveal the secret now, because she was so full of hope that itwas all a thing of the past; she found her confidence itself strengthened by a bold assertion of it.
"Frank's got over it pretty quickly, anyhow," she ended with a secure laugh.
Alice was not so expansive, she had not victory to justify her; she said nothing in words, but when Irene accompanied her "It'll all come right, dear, you'll see," with a squeeze of the hand, she blushed and smiled, returned the squeeze, and kissed her friend on the first convenient opportunity. For all practical purposes the confession was complete, and the alliance sealed anew,—with the addition of a third, involuntary, and unconscious member in the person of Mr. Jack Fenning of Bridgeport, Connecticut.
At Alice's party Ashley Mead appeared. Lady Muddock made timid efforts to avoid him and ludicrously timid attempts to snub him. He laughed at both, and insisted on talking to her with great cordiality for ten minutes before he carried Alice off to supper. Her he treated with even more than his usual friendly intimacy; he surprised her by displaying very high spirits. All went well with him, it seemed; he had been paid fine compliments on his work as secretary to the Commission; his acceptance of the post promised to help rather than hinder him at the Bar; he had received a suggestion that he should try his hand at a couple of articles a week for an important journal.
"It's all quite wrong, of course," he said, laughing. "After refusing Buckingham Palace Road, I ought to be reduced to starvation and have to crawl back like the Prodigal Son. But the course of events is terribly unregenerate; it's always missing the moral. The world isn't very moral, left to itself."
Alice loved him in this mood of gaiety; her own seriousand sober disposition found relief in it. But she liked it more as a flower of talk than as a living rule of action.
"I'm so glad," she said, with full sincerity. "Of course I knew that your getting on was only a matter of time."
"I really believe," he said, "that I've at last just got the knife between the outside edges of the oyster shell. I hope it's a good oyster inside, though!"
"It's sure to be a good one for you," was her answer. She could not help giving him that sort of answer; if it betrayed her, she must bear the betrayal. She gave him the answer even now, when he was under the ban of heavy disapproval on account of Ora Pinsent. But she wondered to find him so gay, in a state of such contentment with the world, and of such interest in it. Bearing in mind what she now knew, she would not have marvelled to find him in deepest depression or even in a hardly controlled despair. He looked down in her face with a merry laugh and some trifling joke which was only an excuse for it; his eyes dwelt on her face, apparently in a frank enjoyment of what he found there. But what could he, who looked daily on the face of Ora Pinsent, find there? His pleasure was absurd, she told herself, but it won upon her; at least she was not boring him; for the moment anyhow he was not wishing himself somewhere else. Here was a transient triumph over the lady with whom the gossips linked his name; to Alice's modesty it was much to make forgotten in absence one in whose presence she herself must have been at once forgotten.
He began to flirt with her; he had done the same thing before, now and then, by way of a change she supposed, perhaps lest their friendship should sink too farinto the brotherly-sisterly state. She desired this state less than he, but his deviations from it brought her pleasure alloyed with pain. Indeed she could not, as she admitted, quite understand flirtation; had it been all pretence she could have judged and would have condemned, but a thing so largely made up of pretence, and yet redeemed from mere pretence by a genuineness of the moment's mood, puzzled her. Fretfully aware of a serious bent in herself, of a temper perilously near to a dull literalness, she always tried to answer in kind when he, or indeed anybody else, offered to engage in the game with her. When it was Ashley she used to abandon herself, so far as her nature allowed her, to the present pleasure, but never got rid of the twofold feeling that he did not mean what he said and that he ought to mean more than he said. That he should flirt with her now was especially strange. She did not do him the injustice of supposing that he was employing her merely in order to throw the critics of his relations with Ora off the scent. She came nearer to the truth in concluding that the flirtation, like the rest of his bearing, was merely an outcome of general good-humour. The puzzle was postponed only one stage; how could he be in good-humour, how did he contrive to rejoice in his life and exult in it? He was in love with Ora Pinsent; such a love was hopeless if not disastrous, disastrous if not hopeless; in any aspect that she could perceive it was irremediably tragic. But Ashley Mead was radiant.
The idea which Irene Kilnorton said absolutely shocked her recurred as a possible explanation; did he mean to take no notice of Mr. Fenning? An alarmed horror filled her; her love and her moral code joined in an urgent protest. Such a thing would mean degradation for him, it might mean ruin or something like it for hiscareer; besides that, it must mean an end of him so far as she was concerned; it would set an impenetrable insurmountable barrier between them. But how did men approach a determination like that? Surely through sorrow, gloom, and despair? Ah, but there was sometimes a mad desperate gaiety that went with and covered such a resolve. She looked at him with a sudden distress that showed itself in her eyes and parted lips. The change in her caught his notice, but she was too engrossed with her fear to feel embarrassment or false shame. He broke off what he was saying to ask, "Why, what's the matter, Alice? Have you seen a ghost drinking champagne?"
"They say you're being very foolish," she answered in a low steady voice, not moving her eyes from his face. "Oh, Ashley, you're not going to—to do anything mad?"
A pause followed; presently he looked at her and said, with seeming surprise,
"Have you been thinking of that all the time?"
"No, only just now."
"Why? I mean, what made you think of it?"
"I've heard things. And you were so—I can't say what I mean! When people are very gay and in great spirits, and so on, don't the Scotch say they're fey, and that something will happen to them?"
"Most nations have said so," he answered lightly; but a slight frown came on his brow, as he added, "So I'm fey, am I?" His laugh was a little bitter.
"I've no right to speak to you."
"Every right." Whatever was in his face, there was neither offence nor resentment. "Only it's not worth your while to bother," he went on.
"You know I think it is," she answered with simple directness.
He looked at her wistfully; for a moment there came to him such a mood as had arrested Bowdon's steps and availed to turn his feet into a new path. But Ashley's temper was not the same. He did not say that because this path was the best it should be his, be the other ever so attractive; he admitted with a sigh that the other was more attractive, nay, was irresistible, and held on his way straight to it.
"You're one of the best people in the world, Alice," he said. And he added, smiling, "Don't believe all you hear. Everybody is behaving very properly."
"That's not the Kensington Palace Gardens' opinion."
"I'm afraid I'm damned for ever in Sir James' eyes. Bertie Jewett reigns in my stead."
"Yes, that's it exactly," she agreed.
He shrugged his shoulders petulantly. "So be it," said he, with contemptuous resignation. "Oh, I don't mean that I think you look at it like that," he added an instant later.
She wanted to speak to him about what Irene Kilnorton had told her; her desire was to hear from his own lips that he did not mean to take no notice of Mr. Fenning. The subject was difficult of approach, embarrassed by conventionalities and forbidden by her consciousness of a personal interest. Before she could find any way of attacking it indirectly, Ashley began to talk again fluently and merrily, and this mood lasted until she parted from him; she had no further chance of getting inside his guard, and went home, wondering still at his high spirits. On the whole she had drawn comfort from the evening. She decided to reject that far-fetched idea which called him fey because he was merry, and to repose on two solid facts: the first being that Ashley did not seem heart-broken, the second that Mr. Fenning wascoming back to his wife. Among any people whom she could measure or understand, these two facts would have been of high importance, enough in themselves to determine the issue. But she felt about Ashley something of the same ignorance which paralysed all her efforts to understand Ora Pinsent or to forecast the actions of that gifted but bewildering lady. Certainly she would have been no more in her intellectual depth had she understood that the doings which were setting Babba Flint's tongue and all the other tongues a-wagging were simply a natural outcome and almost an integral part of a great scheme of renunciation.
She could not be blamed. Ashley Mead himself was hardly less at a loss on the occasions when he allowed himself to take thought concerning the matter. But they were few; he could despair of the situation, and this he did often when he was alone; he could accept it, as he came to do when with Ora; he could abandon himself to the gaiety of the moment, as in the mood in which Alice had found him. But he could not think out the course of events. He had now only one clear purpose, to make things as easy as he could to Ora, to obey her commands, to fall in with her idea, to say nothing which would disturb the artificial tranquillity which she seemed to have achieved. The letter had started on its way to Jack Fenning, the renunciation was set on foot. The few days, the week or two, that still remained to them seemed to make little difference. To scandal he had become indifferent, the arrival was to confute it; of pain he had become reckless since it was everywhere and in every course; the opinions of his friends he gathered merely as a source of bitter amusement; the good fortune on which he had allowed himself to descant to Alice Muddock had a very ironical flavour about it,since it chose to come at the time when it could afford him no real gratification, when he was engrossed with another interest, when he had room only for one sorrow and only for one triumph.
At supper at one of his clubs that night he chanced to find Mr. Sidney Hazlewood, who was a member. Ashley sat down beside him at the table, exchanging a careless nod. Mr. Hazlewood ate his supper with steady silent persistence; Ashley made rather poor work of a kidney; he had not really wanted supper, but preferred it to going home to bed.
"You're not conversational," he observed at last to Hazlewood.
"Afraid of interrupting your reverie," Hazlewood explained with a grim smile.
"I shouldn't have sat down by you unless I'd wanted to talk. How's the piece going?"
"First-rate. Thought you'd have known; you're about pretty often."
"Yes, but I generally omit to enquire at the box office," said Ashley with an air of apology.
Mr. Hazlewood pushed back his chair and threw down his napkin. Then he lit a cigar with great care and took several whiffs. At last he spoke.
"Mind you, Mead," said he with a cautious air, "I don't say it's wrong of a man at your time of life to be a fool, and I don't say I haven't been just as great a fool myself, and I don't say that you haven't a better excuse for it than I ever had, and I don't say that half the men in town wouldn't be just as great fools as you if they had the chance."
"I'm glad you're not going to say any of those absurd things," remarked Ashley with gravity.
"But all I say is that you are a fool."
"Is that quite all?" asked Ashley.
Hazlewood's smile broadened a little.
"Not quite," said he. "I left out one word. An epithet."
Ashley surveyed him with a kindly and good-tempered smile.
"Well, old chap, I don't see how you could say anything else," he observed.
It was merely one, no doubt a typical one, of the opinions that had for the present to be disregarded. In due time the renunciation would confound them all. Of this Mr. Hazlewood and his like foresaw nothing; had it been shewn to them in a vision they would not have believed; if,per impossibile, they believed—Ashley's lips set tight and stern as imagination's ears listened to their cackling laughter. From of old virtue in man is by men praised with a sneer.
There was one aspect of the renunciation on which Ora had the tact not to dwell in conversation with her faithful ally; it was, however, an added source of comfort to herself, and proved very useful at moments when her resolve needed reinforcement. As an incidental result of its main object, as a kind of byproduct of beneficence, the renunciation was to make Alice Muddock happy. Ora had always given a corner to this idea. To use the metaphor which insisted on occurring to Ashley, Alice had a part—not a big part, but a pretty part; in the last act her faithful love was to be rewarded. She would not (and could not consistently with the plan of the whole piece) look to receive a passionate attachment, but a reasonable and sober affection, such as her modest wisdom must incline her to accept, would in the end be hers; from it was to spring, not rapturous joy, but a temperate happiness, and a permanent union with Ashley Mead. Ashley was to be led to regard this as the best solution, to fall in with it at first in a kind of resignation, and later on to come to see that it had been the best thing under the circumstances of the case. Ora could bring him to perceive this (though perhaps nobody else could); to her Alice would owe the temperate happiness, and Ashley a settlement in life from all points of view most advantageous. Ora herself continued to have a good deal to do with this hypothetical wedded life; she picturedherself making appearances in it from time to time, assuaging difficulties, removing misunderstandings, perhaps renewing to Ashley her proof of its desirability, and shewing him once again that, sweet as her life with him and his with her must have proved, yet the renunciation had been and remained true wisdom, as well as the only right course. These postnuptial scenes with Ashley were very attractive to Ora in her moods of gentle melancholy. The picture of the married life in the considerable intervals during which she made no appearance in it, but was somewhere with Mr. Fenning, was left vague and undefined.
Ora caught at a visit from Lord Bowdon as the first fruit of the renunciation and a promise of all that was to follow after. He had not come near her since the day when she dismissed him with her "Don't;" within a week from the announcement of Mr. Fenning's approaching return he paid a call on her. The inference was easy, and to a large extent it was correct. Ora could not resist drawing her visitor and Irene Kilnorton into the play; quite small parts were theirs, but they furnished the stage and heightened the general impression. Their married life also was to be tinged and coloured by the past; they also were to owe something to the renunciation; it had restored to them complete tranquillity, removed from him a wayward impulse, from her a jealous pang, and set them both on the straight path of unclouded happiness. She could not say any of this to Bowdon, but she hinted it to Ashley, who laughed, and when Bowdon came she hinted to him her hopes concerning Alice Muddock. He laughed like Ashley, but with a very doubtful expression in his eyes. By now the world was talking rather loudly about Miss Pinsent and Mr. Ashley Mead. Bowdonwas inclined to think that his hostess was "humbugging" him in a somewhat transparent fashion. He did not resent it; he found, with an appreciable recrudescence of alarm, that he minded very little what she talked about so that she sat there and talked to him. His inward "Thank God, the fellow's coming!" was a triumphant vindication of part, at least, of Ora's faith in the renunciation. He pulled his moustache thoughtfully as he observed,
"I suppose a match between Miss Muddock and Ashley was always an idea. Irene says old Sir James has been set on it for years."
Sir James made a quiet and unobtrusive entry on the stage, bringing (by a legitimate stretch of fancy) his sympathetic wife with him; even Ora could not make anything of Bob for scenic purposes.
"But Ashley's not a fellow to be forced into what he doesn't care about."
"Not forced, no," murmured Ora. The method was not so crude as that.
"And we've no right to take the lady's feelings for granted."
"Oh, no," said Ora earnestly.
"There are certainly no signs of anything of the sort at present."
"At present! No!" she cried almost indignantly. Then she detected a hint of amusement in Bowdon's eye and began to laugh. In spite of all the sorrow and pain involved in the renunciation, its spice of secrecy and mystification sometimes extorted a smile from her; people were so hopelessly puzzled about it, so very far from guessing the truth, and so wide of the mark in their conjectures. Bowdon evidently shared the general bewilderment and felt a difficulty in talking to herabout Ashley Mead. She presented him with another topic.
"The news about you and Irene made me so happy," she said. "Irene's such a dear."
"You're very kind," he muttered. This topic was not much less awkward than the other, and Ora's enthusiasm had imparted to her manner the intense cordiality and sympathy which made Irene say that she conveyed the idea of expecting to be kissed; he preferred that she should not suggest that idea to him.
"It's such a lovely arrangement in every way," she pursued. "Isn't it?" Her eyes were raised to his; she had meant to be quite serious, but her look betrayed the sense of fun with which she offered her congratulations. She could not behave quite as though nothing had ever passed between them; she was willing to minimise but declined to annihilate a certain memory common to them. "I'm going to come and see you very often when you're married," she went on. Bowdon was willing enough to meet her subtly hinted mockery.
"I hope you'll be very discreet," he said with a smile.
"Oh, I'll be discreet. There isn't much to be discreet about, is there?"
"That's not my fault," he allowed himself to remark as he rose to take leave.
"Oh, you're not going yet?" she cried. "If you do I shall think it was simply a duty call. And it's so long since I've seen you." Her innate desire—it was almost an instinct—to have every man leave her with as much difficulty as possible imparted a pathetic earnestness to her tone. "Perhaps I shan't have many more chances of seeing you."
"Many—after I'm married," he reminded her, smiling.
"No, I'm serious now," she declared. "You—you know what's going to happen, Lord Bowdon?"
"Yes, I know."
"Of course when Jack comes home I shan't be so free. Besides—!" She did not end the sentence; the suppressed words would obviously have raised the question of Jack Fenning's acceptability to her friends. For his part Bowdon immediately became certain that Jack was a ruffian. He held out his hand, ostensibly in farewell; Ora took it and pressed it hard, her eyes the while demanding much sympathy. Bowdon found himself giving her intense sympathy; he had not before realised what this thing meant to her, he had been too much occupied with what it meant to him. He could not openly condole with her on her husband's return, but he came very near that point in his good-bye.
"Your friends will always want to see you, and—and be eager to do anything in the world they can for you," he said. The pressure of her hand thanked him, and then he departed. As he walked out of the hall-door, he put his hat very firmly on his head and drew a long breath. He was conscious of having escaped a danger; and he could not deny, in spite of poor Ora's hard fortune, that the return of Mr. Fenning was a good thing.
Good or bad, the coming was near now. The brief and business-like letter had reached Bridgeport, Connecticut, and had elicited a reply by cable. In eight days Mr. Fenning might be expected at Southampton. As the event approached, it seemed to become less and less real to Ashley; he found himself wondering whether a man who is to be hanged on Monday hasmore than the barest intellectual belief in the fact, whether it really sinks into his consciousness until the rope is absolutely round his neck. Accidents by sea and land suggested themselves to an irresponsible and non-indictable fancy; or Jack had merely meant to extort a gift of money; or his unstable purpose would change. The world that held himself and Ora seemed incapable of opening to receive Jack Fenning; something would happen. Nothing did happen except that the last days went on accomplishing themselves in their unmoved way, and when Ashley went to bed each night Jack Fenning was twenty-four hours nearer. Ora's conduct increased the sense of unreality. She wanted him always with her; she dissipated his scruples with radiant raillery or drowned them in threatened tears. On the other hand, she was full of Jack Fenning now; often talking about him, oftener still about how she would receive him. She sketched his career for Ashley's information; the son of a poor clergyman, he had obtained a berth in a shipowner's office at Hamburg; he had lost it and come home; he had made the acquaintance of a Jewish gentleman and been his clerk on the Stock Exchange; he had written a play and induced the Jewish gentleman to furnish money for its production; disaster followed; Jack became an auctioneer's clerk; the Jewish gentleman, with commendable forgivingness, had put him in the way of a successful gold mine (that is, a successfully floated gold mine); he had made two thousand pounds. "Then he married me," Ora interpolated into her summary narrative. The money was soon spent. Then came darker times, debts, queer expedients for avoiding, and queerer for contriving, payment, and at last a conviction that the air of America would suit him better for a time. The picture of aworthless, weak, idle, plausible rascal emerged tolerably complete from these scattered touches. One thing she added, new to her hearer and in a way unwelcome: Jack was—had been, she put it, still treating him as belonging to the past—extremely handsome. "Handsomer than you, much," she said, laughing, with her face very near his over his shoulder as he sat moodily by the window. He did not look round at her, until, by accident as it seemed and just possibly was, a curl of her dark hair touched his cheek; then he forgave her the handsomeness of Jack Fenning.
Irene Kilnorton had been with her that day and had told her that, since she chose to have the man back, she must treat him properly and look as though she were glad to see him; that she must, in fact, give a fair trial to the experiment which she had decided to allow. Being thoroughly in harmony with the theory of renunciation, this advice made a great impression on Ora. She professed her joy that Jack was to arrive on a Sunday, because she would thus be free from the theatre and able to meet him at Southampton. To meet him at Southampton was an admirable way of treating him properly and of giving a fair trial to the experiment. Ashley's raised brows hinted that this excess of welcome was hardly due to the Prodigal. Ora insisted on it. He was past surprise by now, or he would have wondered when she went on:
"But of course I can't go alone; I hate travelling alone; and I don't know anything about how the boats come in or anything. You must come with me, you know."
"Oh, I'm to go with you, am I?"
"Yes; and you'll go and find him and bring him to me. Somebody'll tell you which is him."
"And then I'm to leave you with him and come back to town alone?"
Ora's smile suddenly vanished. "Don't, dear," she said, laying her hand on his arm. That was her way always when he touched on the black side of the situation. Her plans and pictures still stopped short with the arrival of the boat. "It'll be our last time quite alone and uninterrupted together," she reminded him, as though he could forget the object of the expedition and be happy in the thought that it meant two hours with her.
"I don't see why you shouldn't travel back with us," she added a moment later. "Oh, of course you will!"
He chafed at her use of the word "us," for now it meant herself and Jack, and had the true matrimonial ring, asserting for Mr. Fenning a position which the law only, and not Ashley's habit of thought, accorded him. But he would have to accustom himself to this "us" and all that it conveyed. He forced himself to smile as he observed, "Perhaps Fenning'll want to smoke!"
Ora laughed merrily and said that she hoped he would. Even to Ashley it seemed odd that the notion appeared to her rather as a happy possibility than as areductio ad absurdumof her attitude; she really thought it conceivable that Jack might go and smoke, while she and Ashley had another "last time quite alone together." But she had such an extraordinary power of commending absurdities to serious consideration that he caught himself rehearsing the best terms in which to make the suggestion to Mr. Fenning.
In those days he had it always in mind to tell her a thing on which he was resolutely determined, which even she could not make him falter about. With the entry of Jack Fenning must come his own exit. Hedid not deceive himself as to his grounds for this resolve, or deck in any gorgeous colours of high principle what was at best no more than a dictate of self-respect and more probably in the main an instinct of pride. But from the hour of the arrival of the boat he meant to be no more an intimate friend of hers. Had his business engagements allowed he would have arranged to leave London. Absence from town was impossible to him without a loss which he could not encounter, but London is a large place, where people need not be met unless they are sought. He would deliver her over to her husband and go his way. But he did not tell her; she would either be very woeful, and that calamity he could not face, or she would give a thoughtless assent and go on making her pictures just the same. The resolution abode in his own heart as the one fixed point, as the one definite end to all this strange period of provisional indiscretion and unreal imaginings. When he thought of it, he rose to the wish that Jack might be still handsome and might prove more reputable and kinder than he had been in the old days. Ora herself was beginning to have hopes of Jack, or hopes of what she might make of him by her zealous care and dutiful fidelity; Ashley encouraged these hopes and they throve under his watering. In the course of the last week there was added to the great idea of a renunciation of Ashley the hardly less seductive and fascinating project of a reformation of Jack Fenning. This conception broadened and enriched the plot of the fanciful drama, added a fine scene or two, and supplied a new motive for the heroine. In the end Ora had great hopes of Jack in the future and a very much more charitable opinion of him in the past.
She paid her promised visit to Alice Muddock on theWednesday, Jack Fenning being due on the following Sunday. In these last days Ora devoted herself entirely to people who were, in some way or other, within the four corners of the scheme of renunciation. Alice was amazed to find in her a feeling about her husband's arrival hardly distinguishable from pleasure; at least she was sure that a cable message that he was not coming would have inflicted a serious disappointment on her visitor. But at the same time this strange creature was obviously, openly—a few weeks ago Alice would not have hesitated to say shamelessly—in love with Ashley Mead. The two men's names alternated on her lips; it seemed moral polyandry or little better. Alice's formulas were indeed at fault. And through it all ran the implied assertion that Alice was interested in the affair for a stronger reason than the friendship which she was so good as to offer to Ora. Here again, according to Ora's method, Irene Kilnorton's share in the scheme was hinted at, while Alice was left to infer her own. She did so readily enough, having drawn the inference on her own account beforehand, but her wonder at finding it in Ora's mind was not diminished. To be passionately in love with a man and to give him up was conceivable; any heights of self-sacrifice were within the purview of Alice's mind. To find a luxury in giving him up was beyond her. To return to a husband from a sense of duty would have been to Alice almost a matter of course, however bad the man might be; to set to work to make out that the man was not bad clashed directly with the honest perspicacity of her intellect. And, to crown all, in the interval, as a preparation for resuming the path of duty, to set all the town talking scandal and greet the scandal with a defiance terribly near to enjoyment! Alice, utterly atfault, grew impatient; her hard-won toleration was hard tried.
"I'm sure you understand all I feel," said Ora, taking her friend's hand between hers.
"Indeed I don't," replied Alice bluntly.
"Anyhow you're sorry for me?" Ora pleaded. Here Alice could give the desired assurance. Ora was content; sympathy was what she wanted; whether it came from brain or heart was of small moment.
By a coincidence, which at first sight looked perverse, Bob brought Babba Flint into Alice's room at tea-time. Alice did not like Babba, and feared that his coming would interrupt the revelation of herself which Ora in innocent unconsciousness was employed in giving. The result proved quite different. Babba had declared to Irene Kilnorton that the coming of Mr. Fenning was a figment concocted from caprice or perhaps with an indirect motive; he advanced the same view to Ora herself with unabashed impudence, yet with a seriousness which forbade the opinion that he merely jested.