A dingy young painter, meagerly hirsute, and a pallid young woman of anarchical politics assembled the crew one evening and, taking hands, announced the fact of their temporary marriage. The temporary bridegroom made a speech which was enthusiastically acclaimed. Their association was connected (so Camilla understood) with some sublime quality inherent in the intersecting planes. In these various pairings gleamed none of the old Latin Quarter joyousness. Their immorality was most austere.
To Camilla, it was all new and startling—a phantasmagorical world. Free love the merest commonplace. And, after a short while, into this poisonous atmosphere wherein she dwelt there came two influences. One was the vigilancy of the Women's Social and Political Union; the other, Harry Shileto, a young architect, a healthy man in the midst of an unhealthy tribe.
First, young Shileto. It is not that he differed much from the rest of the crew in crazy theory. He maintained, like everyone else, that Raphael and Brunelleschi had retarded the progress of the world for a thousand years; he despised Debussy for a half-hearted anarchist; he lamented the failure of the architectural iconoclasts of the late 'Nineties; his professed contempt for all human activities outside the pale of the slum was colossal; on the slum marriage-theory he was sound, nay, enthusiastic. But he was physically clean, physically good-looking, a man. And as Camilla, too, practised cleanliness of person, they were drawn together.
And, at the same time, the cold, relentless hand of the great feminist organization got her in its grip. Blindly acting under orders, she interrupted meetings, broke windows, went to prison, shrieked at street-corners the independence of her sex. And then she came down on the bed-rock of a sex by no means so independent—on the contrary, imperiously, tyrannically dependent on hers. The theories of the slum, uncompromisingly suffragist, were all very well; they might be practised with impunity by the anemic and slatternly; but when Harry Shileto entered into the quasi-marriage bond with Camilla, the instinct of the honest Briton clamored for the comforts of a home. As all the time that she could spare from the neglect of her studies at the hospital was devoted to feminist rioting, and a mere rag of a thing came back at night to the uncared-for flat, the young man rebelled.
"You can't love and look after me and fool about in prison at the same time. The two things don't hold together."
And Camilla, her nerves a jangle,
"I am neither your odalisk nor your housekeeper; so your remark does not apply."
Oh, the squalid squabbles! And then, at last,
"Camilla"—he gave her a letter to read—"I'm fed up with all this rot."
She glanced over the letter.
"Are you going to accept this post in Canada?" she asked sourly.
"Not if you promise to chuck the militant business and also these epicene freaks in Chelsea. I should like you to carry on at the hospital until you're qualified."
"You seem to forget," she said, "that I'm like a soldier under orders. If necessary, I must sacrifice my medical career. I also think your remarks about The Brotherhood simply beastly. I'll do no such thing."
Eventually it came to this:
"I don't care whether women get the vote or not. I think our Chelsea friends are the most pestilential set of rotters on the face of the earth. I've got my way to make in the world. Help me to do it. Let us get married in decent fashion and go out together."
"I being just the appanage of the rising young architect? Thank you for the insult."
And so the argument went on until he delivered his ultimatum:
"If I don't get a sensible message by twelve o'clock to-morrow at the club, I'll never see or hear of you as long as I live."
He went out of the flat. She sent no message. He did not return. After a while, a lawyer came and equitably adjusted joint financial responsibilities. And that was the end of the romance—if romance it could be termed. From that day to this, Harry Shileto had vanished from her ken.
His exit had been the end of the romance; but it had marked the beginning of tragedy. A man can love and, however justifiably, ride away—gloriously free. But the woman, for all her clamoring insistence, has to pay the debt from which man is physically exempt. Harry Shileto had already arrived in Canada when Camilla discovered the dismaying fact of her sex's disability. But her pride kept her silent, and of the child born in secret and dead within a fortnight, Harry Shileto never heard. Then, after a few months of dejection and loss of bearings and lassitude, the war thundered on the world. Her friend, John Donovan, the surgeon, was going out to France. She went to him and said: "I've wasted my time. It will take years for me to qualify. Let me go out and nurse." So, through his influence, she had stepped into the midst of the suffering of the war, and there she still remained and found great happiness in great work.
At length she drew her hands from her brow and went and poured out some water, for her throat was parched. On catching sight of herself in the mirror, she paused. She was pale and worn, and there were hollows beneath her eyes, catching shadows, but the war had not altogether marred her face. She took off her uniform-cap and revealed dark hair, full and glossy. She half wondered why the passage of a hundred years had not turned it white. Then she sat again on the bed and gripped her hands together.
"My God, what am I going to do?"
Had she loved him? She did not know. Her association with him could not have been entirely the callous execution of a social theory. There must have been irradiating gleams. Or had she wilfully excluded them from her soul? Once she had needed him and cried for him; but that was in an hour of weakness which she had conquered. And now, how could she face him? Still less, live in that terrible intimacy of patient and nurse? Oh, the miserable shame of it! All her womanhood shivered. Yet she must go through the ordeal. His bandaged eyes promised a short time of probation.
In the morning, after a restless night, she pulled herself together. After all, what need for such a commotion? If the three and a half years of war had not taught her dignity and self-reliance, she had learned but little.
There were four beds in the ward. Two on the right were occupied by officers, one with an arm-wound, another with a hole through his body. The third on the left by a pathetic-looking boy with a shattered knee, which, as the night Sister told her, gave him unceasing pain. The fourth by Major Shileto. To him she went first and whispered:
"I'm the day Sister. What kind of a night have you had?"
"Splendid!" His lips curled in a pleasant smile. "Just one long, beautiful blank."
"And the head?"
"Jammy. That's what it feels like. How it looks, I don't know."
"We'll see later when I do the dressings."
She went off to the boy. He also was a Canadian officer, and his name was Robin McKay. She lingered awhile in talk.
"Strikes me my military career is over, and I'll just have to hump round real estate in Winnipeg on a wooden leg."
"They aren't going to cut your leg off, you silly boy!" she laughed. "And what do you mean by 'humping round real estate?'"
"I'm a land surveyor. That's to say, my father is. See here: When are they going to send me back? I'm afraid of this country."
"Why?"
"It's so lonesome. I don't know a soul."
"We'll fix that up all right for you," she said cheerily. "Don't worry."
The morning routine of the hospital began. In its appointed course came the time for dressings. Camilla, her nerves under control, went to Shileto.
"I've got to worry you, but I'll try to hurt as little as I can."
"Go ahead. Never mind me."
A probationer stood by, serving the laden wheel-table. At first, the symmetrically bandaged head seemed that of a thousand cases with which she had dealt. But when the crisp brown hair came to view, her hand trembled ever so little. She avoided touching it as far as was possible, for she remembered its feel. Dead, forgotten words rose lambent in her memory: "It crackles like a cat's back. Let me see if there are sparks."
But in the midst of a great shaven patch there was a horrible scalp-wound which claimed her deftest skill. And she worked with steady fingers and uncovered the maimed brows and eyelids and cheekbones. How the sight had been preserved was a miracle. She cleansed the wounds with antiseptics and freed the eyelashes. She bent over him with deliberate intent.
"You can open your eyes for a second or two. You can see all right?"
"Rather. I can see your belt."
"Hold on, then."
With her swift craft, she blindfolded him anew, completed the bandaging, laid him back on his pillow, and went off with the probationer, wheeling the table to the other cases.
Later in the day, she was doing him some trivial service.
"What's the good of lying in bed all day?" he asked. "I want to get up and walk about."
"You've got a bit of a temperature."
"How much?"
"Ninety-nine point eight."
"Call that a temperature? I've gone about with a hundred and three."
"When was that?"
"When I first went out to Canada. I'm English, you know—only left the Old Country in Nineteen thirteen. But, when the war broke out, I joined up with the first batch of Canadians—lucky to start with a commission. Lord, it was hell's delight!"
"So I've been given to understand," said Camilla. "But what about your temperature of a hundred and three?"
"I was a young fool," said he, "and I didn't care what happened to me."
"Why?" she asked.
For a while he did not answer. He bit his lower lip, showing just a fine line of white teeth. Memory again clutched her. She was also struck by his unconscious realization of the aging quality of the war in that he spoke of his Nineteen-thirteen self as "a young fool." So far as that went, they thought in common.
Presently he said,
"Your voice reminds me of some one I used to know."
"Where?"
"Oh, here, in London."
She lied instinctively, with a laugh.
"It couldn't have been me. I've only just come to London—and I've never met Major Shileto before in my life."
"Of course not," he asserted readily. "But I had no idea two human voices could be so nearly identical."
"Still," she remarked, "you haven't told me of the temperature of a hundred and three."
"Oh, it is no story. Your voice brought it all back. You've heard of a man's own angry pride being cap and bells for a fool? Well"—he laughed apologetically—"it's idiotic. There's no point in it. I just went about for a week in a Canadian winter with that temperature—that's all."
"Because you couldn't bear to lie alone and think?"
"That's about it."
"Sister!" cried the boy, Robin McKay, from the next bed.
She obeyed the summons. What was the matter?
"Everything seems to have got mixed up, and my knee's hurting like fury."
She attended to his crumpled bedclothes, cracked a little joke which made him laugh. Then the two other men claimed her notice. She carried on her work outwardly calm, smiling, self-reliant, the perfectly trained woman of the war. But her heart was beating in an unaccustomed way.
Her ministrations over, she left the ward for duty elsewhere.
At tea-time she returned, and aided the blindfolded man to get through the meal. The dread of the morning had given place to mingled mind-racking wonder and timidity. He had gone off, on the hot speed of their last quarrel, out of her life. Save for a short, anguished period, during which she had lost self-control, she had never reproached him. She had asserted her freedom. He had asserted his. Nay; more—he had held the door open for a way out from an impossible situation, and she had slammed the door in his face. Self-centered in those days, centered since the beginning of the war in human suffering, she had thought little of the man's feelings. He had gone away and forgotten, or done his best to forget, an ugly memory. Her last night's review of ghosts had proved the non-existence of any illusions among them. But now, now that the chances of war had brought them again together, the sound of her voice had conjured up in him, too, the ghosts of the past. She had been responsible for his going-about with a temperature of a hundred and three, and for his not caring what happened to him. He had lifted the corner of a curtain, revealing the possibility of undreamed-of happenings.
"You were quoting Tennyson just now," she remarked.
"Was I?"
"Your cap-and-bells speech."
"Oh, yes. What about it?"
"I was only wondering."
"Like a woman, you resent a half-confidence."
She drew in a sharp little breath. The words, the tone, stabbed her. She might have been talking to him in one of their pleasanter hours in the Chelsea flat. In spite of her burning curiosity, she said, "I'm not a woman; I'm a nurse."
"Since when?"
"As far as you people are concerned, since September, '14, when I went out to France. I've been through everything—from the firing-line field-ambulances, casualty clearing-stations, base hospitals—and now I'm here having a rest-cure. Hundreds and hundreds of men have told me their troubles—so I've got to regard myself as a sort of mother confessor."
He smiled.
"Then, like a mother confessor, you resent a half-confidence?"
She put a cigarette between his lips and lit it for him.
"It all depends," she said lightly, "whether you want absolution or not. I suppose it's the same old story." She held her voice in command. "Every man thinks it's original. What kind of a woman was she?"
He parried the thrust.
"Isn't that rather too direct a question, even for a mother confessor?"
"You'll be spilling ash all over the bed. Here's an ash-tray." She guided his hand. "Then you don't want absolution?"
"Oh, yes, I do! But, you see, I'm not yetin articulo mortis, so I'll put off my confession."
"Anyhow, you loved the woman you treated badly?" The question was as casual as she could make it, while she settled the tea-things on the tray.
"It was a girl, not a woman."
"What has become of her?"
"That's what I should like to know."
"But you loved her?"
"Of course I did! I'm not a blackguard. Of course I loved her." Her pulses quickened. "But much water has run under London Bridge since then."
"And much blood has flowed in France."
"Everything—lives, habits, modes of thought have been revolutionized. Yes"—he reflected for a moment—"it's odd how you have brought back old days. I fell in with a pestilential, so-called artistic crowd—I am an architect by profession—you know, men with long greasy hair and dirty finger nails and anarchical views. There was one chap especially, who I thought was decadent to the bone. Aloysius Eglington, he called himself." The man sprang vivid to her memory; he had once tried to make love to her. "Well, I came across him the other day with a couple of wound-stripes and the military-cross ribbon. For a man like that, what an upheaval!" He laughed again. "I suppose I've been a bit upheaved myself."
"I'm beginning to piece together your story of the temperature," she said pleasantly. "I suppose the girl was one of the young females of this anarchical crowd?"
Obviously the phrase jarred.
"I could never regard her in that light," he said coldly.
"The war has got hold of her, too, I suppose."
"No doubt. She was a medical student. May I have another cigarette?"
His tone signified the end of the topic. She smiled, for her putting-down was a triumph.
The probationer came up and took away the tea-tray. Camilla left her patient and went to the other beds.
That night again, she sat alone in her little white room and thought and thought. She had started the day with half-formed plans of flight before her identity could be discovered. She was there voluntarily, purely as an act of grace. She could walk out, without reproach, at a moment's notice. But now—had not the situation changed? To her, as to a stranger, he had confessed his love. She had not dared probe deeper—but might not a deeper probing have brought to light something abiding and beautiful? In the war, she had accomplished her womanhood. Proudly and rightly she recognized her development. He, too, had accomplished his manhood. And his dear face would be maimed and scarred for the rest of his life. Then, with the suddenness of a tropical storm, a wave of intolerable emotion surged through her. She uttered a little cry and broke into a passion of tears. And so her love was reborn.
Professional to the tips of her cool fingers, she dressed his wounds the next morning. But she did not lure him back across the years. The present held its own happiness, tremulous in its delicacy. It was he who questioned. Whereabouts in France had she been? She replied with scraps of anecdote. There was little of war's horror and peril through which she had not passed. She explained her present position in the hospital.
"By George, you're splendid!" he cried. "I wish I could have a look at you."
"You've lost your chance for to-day," she answered gaily. For she had completed the bandaging.
After dinner, she went out and walked the streets in a day-dream, a soft light in her eyes. The moment of recognition—and it was bound soon to come—could not fail in its touch of sanctification, its touch of beauty. He and she had passed through fires of hell and had emerged purified and tempered. They were clear-eyed, clear-souled. The greatest gift of God, miraculously regiven, they could not again despise. On that dreary afternoon, Oxford Street hummed with joy.
Only a freak of chance had hitherto preserved her anonymity. A reference by matron or probationer to Sister Warrington would betray her instantly. Should she await or anticipate betrayal?
In a fluttering tumult of indecision, she returned to the hospital. The visiting-hour had begun. When she had taken off her outdoor things, she looked into the ward. Around the two beds on the right, little groups of friends were stationed. The boy, Robin McKay, in the bed nearest the door on the left, caught sight of her and summoned her.
"Sister, come and pretend to be a visitor. There's not a soul in this country who could possibly come to see me. You don't know what it is to be homesick."
She sat by his side.
"All right. Imagine I'm an elderly maiden aunt from the country."
"You?" he cried, with overseas frankness. "You're only a kid yourself."
Major Shileto overheard and laughed. She blushed and half rose.
"That's not the way to treat visitors, Mr. McKay."
The boy stretched out his hand.
"I'm awfully sorry if I was rude. Don't go."
She yielded.
"All the same," she said, "you'll have to get used to a bit of loneliness. It can't be helped. Besides, you're not the only tiger that hasn't got a Christian. There's Major Shileto. And you can read and he can't."
The voice came from the next bed.
"Don't worry about me. Talk to the boy. I'll have some one to see me to-morrow. He won't, poor old chap!"
"Have a game of chess?" said the boy.
"With pleasure."
She fetched the board and chessmen from the long table running down the center of the ward, and they set out the pieces.
"I reckon to be rather good," said he. "Perhaps I might give you something."
"I'm rather good myself," she replied. "I was taught by—" She stopped short, on the brink of pronouncing the name of the young Polish master who lived (in a very material sense) on the fringe of the Chelsea crew. "We'll start even, at any rate."
They began. She realized that the boy had not boasted, and soon she became absorbed in the game. So intent was she on the problem presented by a brilliant and unexpected move on his part that she did not notice the opening of the door and the swift passage of a fur-coated figure behind her chair. It was a cry that startled her. A cry of surprise and joy, a cry of the heart.
"Marjorie!"
She looked up and saw the fur-coated figure—that of a girl with fair hair—on her knees by the bedside, and Harry Shileto's arms were round her and his lips to hers. She stared, frozen. She heard:
"I didn't expect you till to-morrow."
"I just had time to catch the train at Inverness. I've not brought an ounce of luggage. Oh, my poor, poor, old Harry!"
It was horrible.
The boy said:
"Never mind, Sister; he's got his Christian all right. Let's get on with the game."
Mechanically obeying a professional instinct, she looked at the swimming chess-board and made a move haphazard.
"I say—that won't do!" cried the boy. "It's mate for me in two moves. Buck up!"
With a great effort, she caught the vanishing tail of her previous calculation and made a move which happened to be correct.
"That's better," he said. "I hoped you wouldn't spot it. But I couldn't let you play the ass with your knight and spoil the game. Now, this demands deep consideration."
He lingered a while over his move. She looked across. The pair at the next bed were talking in whispers. The girl was now sitting on the chair by the bedside, and her back hid the face of the man, though her head was near his.
"There!" cried the boy triumphantly.
"I beg your pardon; I didn't see it."
"Oh, I say!" His finger indicated the move.
With half her brain at work, she moved a pawn a cautious step. The boy's whole heart was in his offensive. He swooped a bishop triumphantly athwart the board.
"There's only one thing can save you for mate in five moves. I know it isn't the proper thing to be chatting over chess, but I like it. I'm chatty by nature."
"Only one course open to save me from destruction?" she murmured.
"Just one."
And she heard, from the next bed:
"Are you sure, darling, you're only saying it to break the shock gently? Are you sure your eyes are all right?"
"Perfectly certain."
"I wish I could have real proof."
Camilla stared at the blankness of her vanished dream.
"Come along, Sister; put your back into it," chuckled Robin McKay.
She held her brows tight with her hands and strove to concentrate her tortured mind on the board. Her heart was in agony of desolation. The soft murmurings she could not but overhear pierced her brain. The poignant shame of her disillusionment burned her from head to foot. Again she heard the girl's pleading voice:
"Only for a minute. It couldn't hurt."
The boy said:
"Buck up. Just one tiny brain-wave."
At the end of her tether, she cried: "The only way out! I give it up!" and swept the pieces over the board.
She rose, stood transfixed with horror and sense of outrage. Harry Shileto, propped on pillows, was unwinding the bandages from his mangled head. Devils within her clamored for hysterical outcry. But something physical happened and checked the breath that was about to utter his Christian name. The boy had gripped her arm with all his young strength in passionate remonstrance.
"Oh, dear old thing—do play the game!"
"I'm sorry," she said, and he released her.
So she passed swiftly round the boy's bed to that of the foolish patient and arrested his hand.
"Major Shileto, what on earth are you doing?"
The girl, who was very pretty, turned on her an alarmed and tearful face.
"It was my fault, Sister. Oh, can I believe him?"
"You can believe me, at any rate," she replied with asperity, swiftly readjusting the bandage. "Major Shileto's sight is unaffected. But if I had not been here and he had succeeded in taking off his dressings, God knows what would have happened. Major Shileto, I put you on your honor not to do such a silly thing again."
"All right, Sister," he said, with a little shame-faced twitch of the lips. "Parole d'officier."
The girl rose and drew her a step aside.
"Do forgive me, Sister. We have only been married five months—when he was last home on leave—and, you understand, don't you, what it would have meant to me if——"
"Of course I do. Anyhow, you can be perfectly reassured. But I must warn you," she whispered, and looked through narrowed eyelids into the girl's eyes; "he may be dreadfully disfigured."
The girl shrank terrified, but she cried,
"I hope I shall love him all the more for it!"
"I hope so, too," replied Camilla soberly. "I'll say good-by," she added, in a louder tone, holding out her hand.
"I'll see you again to-morrow?" the girl asked politely.
"I'm afraid not."
"What's that?" cried Shileto.
"I told you I was only here as a bird of passage. My time's up to-day. Good-by."
"I'm awfully sorry. Good-by."
They shook hands. Camilla went to Robin McKay and bent over him.
"You're quite right, my dear boy. One ought to play the game to the bitter end. It's the thing most worth doing in life. God bless you!"
The boy stared wonderingly at her as she disappeared.
"I'm glad she's not going to be here any more," said the girl.
Her husband's lips smiled.
"Why?"
"She's a most heartless, overbearing woman."
"Oh, they all seem like that when they're upset," he laughed. "And I was really playing the most outrageous fool."
She put her head close to him and whispered,
"Don't you guess why I was so madly anxious to know that you could see?"
She told him. And, from that moment, the possessor of the remembered voice faded from his memory.
Camilla went to the matron.
"I'm sorry, but I've bitten off more than I can chew. If I go on an hour longer, I'll break down. I'm due in France in a fortnight, and I must have my rest."
"I can only thank you for your self-sacrificing help," said the matron.
But, four days later, ten days before her leave had expired, Camilla appeared at the casualty clearing-station in France of which she was a Sister-in-charge.
"What the devil are you here for?" asked the amazed commanding medical officer.
"England's too full of ghosts. They scared me back to realities."
The M.O. laughed to hide his inability to understand.
"Well, if you like 'em, it's all the same to me. I'm delighted to have you. But give me the good old ghosts of blighty all the time!"
The piercing of the line at Cambrai was a surprise no less to the Germans than to the British. The great tent of the casualty clearing-station was crammed with wounded. Doctors and nurses, with tense, burning eyes and bodies aching from strain, worked and worked, and thought nothing of that which might be passing outside. No one knew that the German wave had passed over. And the German wave itself, at that part of the line, was but a set of straggling and mystified groups.
Camilla Warrington, head of the heroic host of women working in the dimly lit reek of blood and agony, had not slept for two nights and two days. The last convoy of wounded had poured in a couple of hours before. She stood by the surgeon, aiding him, the perfect machine. At last, in the terrible rota, they came to a man swathed round the middle in the rough bandages of the field dressing-station. He was unconscious. They unwound him, and revealed a sight of unimaginable horror.
"He's no good, poor chap!" said the surgeon.
"Can't you try?" she asked, and put repressing hands on the wounded man.
"Not the slightest good," said the medical officer.
No one in the great tent of agony knew that they were isolated from the British army. From the outside, it looked solitary, lighted, and secure. Two German soldiers, casual stragglers, looked in at the door of the great tent. In the kindly German way, they each threw in a bomb, and ran off laughing. Seven men were killed outright and many rewounded. And Camilla Warrington was killed.[1]
[1] The bloody and hideous incident related here is not an invention. It is true. It happened when and where I have indicated.—W.J.L.
The guards, in their memorable sweep, cleared the ground. The casualty clearing-station again came into British hands.
There is a grave in that region whose head-board states that it is consecrated "to the Heroic Memory of Camilla Warrington, one of the Great Women of the War."
And Marjorie Shileto, to her husband healed and sound, searching like a foolish woman deep into his past history:
"It's awfully decent of you, darling, to hide nothing from me and to tell me about that girl in Chelsea. But what was she like?"
"My sweetheart," said he, like a foolish man, "she wasn't worth your little finger."
That there was once a real Prince Rabomirski is beyond question. That he was Ottilie's father may be taken for granted. But that the Princess Rabomirski had a right to bear the title many folks were scandalously prepared to deny. It is true that when the news of the Prince's death reached Monte Carlo, the Princess, who was there at the time, showed various persons on whose indiscretion she could rely a holograph letter of condolence from the Tsar, and later unfolded to the amiable muddle-headed the intricacies of a lawsuit which she was instituting for the recovery of the estates in Poland; but her detractors roundly declared the holograph letter to be a forgery and the lawsuit a fiction of her crafty brain. Princess however she continued to style herself in Cosmopolis, and Princess she was styled by all and sundry. And little Ottilie Rabomirski was called the Princess Ottilie.
Among the people who joined heart and soul with the detractors was young Vince Somerset. If there was one person whom he despised and hated more than Count Bernheim (of the Holy Roman Empire) it was the Princess Rabomirski. In his eyes she was everything that a princess, a lady, a woman, and a mother should not be. She dressed ten years younger than was seemly, she spoke English like a barmaid and French like a cocotte, she gambled her way through Europe from year's end to year's end, and after neglecting Ottilie for twenty years, she was about to marry her to Bernheim. The last was the unforgivable offence.
The young man walked up and down the Casino Terrace of Illerville-sur-Mer, and poured into a friend's ear his flaming indignation. He was nine and twenty, and though he pursued the unpoetical avocation of sub-editing the foreign telegrams on a London daily newspaper, retained some of the vehemence of undergraduate days when he had chosen the career (now abandoned) of poet, artist, dramatist, and irreconcilable politician.
"Look at them!" he cried, indicating a couple seated at a distant table beneath the awning of the café. "Did you ever see anything so horrible in your life? The maiden and the Minotaur. When I heard of the engagement to-day I wouldn't believe it until she herself told me. She doesn't know the man's abomination. He's a by-word of reproach through Europe. His name stinks like his infernal body. The live air reeks with the scent he pours upon himself. There can be no turpitude under the sun in which the wretch doesn't wallow. Do you know that he killed his first wife? Oh, I don't mean that he cut her throat. That's far too primitive for such a complex hound. There are other ways of murdering a woman, my dear Ross. You kick her body and break her heart and defile her soul. That's what he did. And he has done it to other women."
"But, my dear man," remarked Ross, elderly and cynical, "he is colossally rich."
"Rich! Do you know where he made his money? In the cesspool of European finance. He's a Jew by race, a German by parentage, an Italian by upbringing and a Greek by profession. He has bucket-shops and low-down money-lenders' cribs and rotten companies all over the Continent. Do you remember Sequasto and Co.? That was Bernheim. England's too hot to hold him. Look at him now he has taken off his hat. Do you know why he wears his greasy hair plastered over half his damned forehead? It's to hide the mark of the Beast. He's Antichrist! And when I think of that Jezebel from the Mile End Road putting Ottilie into his arms, it makes me see red. By heavens, it's touch and go that I don't slay the pair of them."
"Very likely they're not as bad as they're painted," said his friend.
"She couldn't be," Somerset retorted grimly.
Ross laughed, looked at his watch, and announced that it was time forapéritifs. The young man assented moodily, and they crossed the Terrace to the café tables beneath the awning. It was the dying afternoon of a sultry August day, and most of Illerville had deserted tennis courts,tir aux pigeonsand other distractions to listen lazily to the band in the Casino shade. The place was crowded; not a table vacant. When the waiter at last brought one from the interior of the café, he dumped it down beside the table occupied by the unspeakable Bernheim and the little Princess Ottilie. Somerset raised his hat as he took his seat. Bernheim responded with elaborate politeness, and Princess Ottilie greeted him with a faint smile. The engaged pair spoke very little to each other. Bernheim lounged back in his chair smoking a cigar and looked out to sea with a bored expression. When the girl made a casual remark he nodded rudely without turning his head. Somerset felt an irresistible desire to kick him. His external appearance was of the type that irritated the young Englishman. He was too handsome in a hard, swaggering black-mustachioed way; he exaggerated to offence the English style of easy dress; he wore a too devil-may-care Panama, a too obtrusive coloured shirt and club tie; he wore no waistcoat, and the hem of his new flannel trousers, turned up six inches, disclosed a stretch of tan-coloured silk socks clocked with gold matching elegant tan shoes. He went about with a broken-spirited poodle. He was inordinately scented. Somerset glowered at him, and let his drink remain untasted.
Presently Bernheim summoned the waiter, paid him for the tea the girl had been drinking and pushed back his chair.
"This hole is getting on my nerves," he said in French to his companion. "I am going into thecercleto play écarté. Will you go to your mother whom I see over there, or will you stay here?"
"I'll stay here," said the little Princess Ottilie.
Bernheim nodded and swaggered off. Somerset bent forward.
"I must see you alone to-night—quite alone. I must have you all to myself. How can you manage it?"
Ottilie looked at him anxiously. She was fair and innocent, of a prettiness more English than foreign, and the scare in her blue eyes made them all the more appealing to the young man.
"What is the good? You can't help me. Don't you see that it is all arranged?"
"I'll undertake to disarrange it at a moment's notice," said Somerset.
"Hush!" she whispered, glancing round; "somebody will hear. Everything is gossiped about in this place."
"Well, will you meet me?" the young man persisted.
"If I can," she sighed. "If they are both playing baccarat I may slip out for a little."
"As at Spa."
She smiled and a slight flush came into her cheek.
"Yes, as at Spa. Wait for me on theplageat the bottom of the Casino steps. Now I must go to my mother. She would not like to see me talking to you."
"The Princess hates me like poison. Do you know why?"
"No, and you are not going to tell me," she said demurely. "Au revoir."
When she had passed out of earshot, Ross touched the young man's arm.
"I'm afraid, my dear Somerset, you are playing a particularly silly fool's game."
"Have you never played it?"
"Heaven forbid!"
"It would be a precious sight better for you if you had," growled Somerset.
"I'll take another quinquina," said Ross.
"Did you see the way in which the brute treated her?" Somerset exclaimed angrily. "If it's like that before marriage, what will it be after?"
"Plenty of money, separate establishments, perfect independence and happiness for each."
Somerset rose from the table.
"There are times, my good Ross," said he, "when I absolutely hate you."
Somerset had first met the Princess Rabomirski and her daughter three years before, at Spa. They were staying at the same hotel, a very modest one which, to Somerset's mind, ill-accorded with the Princess's pretensions. Bernheim was also in attendance, but he disposed his valet, his motor-car, and himself in the luxurious Hôtel d'Orange, as befitted a man of his quality; also he was in attendance not on Ottilie, but on the Princess, who at that time was three years younger and a trifle less painted. Now, at Illerville-sur-Mer the trio were stopping at the Hotel Splendide, a sumptuous hostelry where season prices were far above Somerset's moderate means. He contented himself with the little hotel next door, and hated the Hotel Splendide and all that it contained, save Ottilie, with all his heart. But at Spa, the Princess was evidently in low water from which she did not seem to be rescued by her varying luck at the tables. Ottilie was then a child of seventeen, and Somerset was less attracted by her delicate beauty than by her extraordinary loneliness. Day after day, night after night he would come upon her sitting solitary on one of the settees in the gaming-rooms, like a forgotten fan or flower, or wandering wistfully from table to table, idly watching the revolving wheels. Sometimes she would pause behind her mother's or Bernheim's chair to watch their game; but the Princess called her a littleporte-malheurand would drive her away. In the mornings, or on other rare occasions, when the elder inseparables were not playing roulette, Ottilie hovered round them at a distance, as disregarded as a shadow that followed them in space of less dimensions, as it were, wherever they went. In the Casino rooms, if men spoke to her, she replied in shy monosyllables and shrank away. Somerset who had made regular acquaintance with the Princess at the hotel and taken a chivalrous pity on the girl's loneliness, she admitted first to a timid friendship, and then to a childlike intimacy. Her face would brighten and her heart beat a little faster when she saw his young, well-knit figure appear in the distance; for she knew he would come straight to her and take her from the hot room, heavy with perfumes and tobacco, on to the cool balcony, and talk of all manner of pleasant things. And Somerset found in this neglected, little sham Princess what his youth was pleased to designate a flower-like soul. Those were idyllic hours. The Princess, glad to get the embarrassing child out of the way, took no notice of the intimacy. Somerset fell in love.
It lasted out a three-years' separation, during which he did not hear from her. He had written to several addresses, but a cold Post Office returned his letters undelivered, and his only consolation was to piece together from various sources the unedifying histories of the Princess Rabomirski and the Count Bernheim of the Holy Roman Empire. He came to Illerville-sur-Mer for an August holiday. The first thing he did when shown into his hotel bedroom was to gaze out of window at the beach and the sea. The first person his eyes rested upon was the little Princess Ottilie issuing, alone as usual, from the doors of the next hotel.
He had been at Illerville a fortnight—a fortnight of painful joy. Things had changed. Their interviews had been mostly stolen, for the Princess Rabomirski had rudely declined to renew the acquaintance and had forbidden Ottilie to speak to him. The girl, though apparently as much neglected as ever, was guarded against him with peculiar ingenuity. Somerset, aware that Ottilie, now grown from a child into an exquisitely beautiful and marriageable young woman, was destined by a hardened sinner like the Princess for a wealthier husband than a poor newspaper man with no particular prospects, could not, however, quite understand the reasons for the virulent hatred of which he was the object. He overheard the Princess one day cursing her daughter in execrable German for having acknowledged his bow a short time before. Their only undisturbed time together was in the sea during the bathing hour. The Princess, hating the pebbly beach which cut to pieces her high-heeled shoes, never watched the bathers; and Bernheim did not bathe (Somerset, prejudiced, declared that he did not even wash) but remained in his bedroom till the hour ofdéjeuner. Ottilie, attended only by her maid, came down to the water's edge, threw off herpeignoir, and, plunging into the water, found Somerset waiting.
Now Somerset was a strong swimmer. Moderately proficient at all games as a boy and an undergraduate, he had found that swimming was the only sport in which he excelled, and he had cultivated and maintained the art. Oddly enough, the little Princess Ottilie, in spite of her apparent fragility, was also an excellent and fearless swimmer. She had another queer delight for a creature so daintily feminine, thesalle d'armes, so that the muscles of her young limbs were firm and well ordered. But the sea was her passion. If an additional bond between Somerset and herself were needed it would have been this. Yet, though it is a pleasant thing to swim far away into the loneliness of the sea with the object of one's affections, the conditions do not encourage sustained conversation on subjects of vital interest. On the day when Somerset learned that his little princess was engaged to Bernheim he burned to tell her more than could be spluttered out in ten fathoms of water. So he urged her to an assignation.
At half-past ten she joined him at the bottom of the Casino steps. The shingly beach was deserted, but on the terrace above the throng was great, owing to the breathless heat of the night.
"Thank Heaven you have come," said he. "Do you know how I have longed for you?"
She glanced up wistfully into his face. In her simple cream dress and burnt straw hat adorned with white roses around the brim, she looked very fair and childlike.
"You mustn't say such things," she whispered. "They are wrong now. I am engaged to be married."
"I won't hear of it," said Somerset. "It is a horrible nightmare—your engagement. Don't you know that I love you? I loved you the first minute I set my eyes on you at Spa."
Princess Ottilie sighed, and they walked along the boards behind the bathing-machines, and down the rattling beach to the shelter of a fishing boat, where they sat down, screened from the world with the murmuring sea in front of them. Somerset talked of his love and the hatefulness of Bernheim. The little Princess sighed again.
"I have worse news still," she said. "It will pain you. We are going to Paris to-morrow, and then on to Aix-les-Bains. They have just decided. They say the baccarat here is silly, and they might as well play for bon-bons. So we must say good-bye to-night—and it will be good-bye for always."
"I will come to Aix-les-Bains," said Somerset.
"No—no," she answered quickly. "It would only bring trouble on me and do no good. We must part to-night. Don't you think it hurts me?"
"But you must love me," said Somerset.
"I do," she said simply, "and that is why it hurts. Now I must be going back."
"Ottilie," said Somerset, grasping her hands: "Need you ever go back?"
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Come away from this hateful place with me—now, this minute. You need never see Bernheim again as long as you live. Listen. My friend Ross has a motor-car. I can manage it—so there will be only us two. Run into your hotel for a thick cloak, and meet me as quickly as you can behind the tennis-courts. If we go full speed we'll catch the night-boat at Dieppe. It will be a wild race for our life happiness. Come."
In his excitement he rose and pulled her to her feet. They faced each other for a few glorious moments, panting for breath, and then Princess Ottilie broke down and cried bitterly.
"I can't dear, I can't. I must marry Bernheim. It is to save my mother from something dreadful. I don't know what it is—but she went on her knees to me, and I promised."
"If there's a woman in Europe capable of getting out of her difficulties unaided it is the Princess Rabomirski," said Somerset. "I am not going to let you be sold. You are mine, Ottilie, and by Heaven, I'm going to have you. Come."
He urged, he pleaded, he put his strong arms around her as if he would carry her away bodily. He did everything that a frantic young man could do. But the more the little Princess wept, the more inflexible she became. Somerset had not realized before this steel in her nature. Raging and vehemently urging he accompanied her back to the Casino steps.
"Would you like to say good-bye to me to-morrow morning, instead of to-night?" she asked, holding out her hand.
"I am never going to say good-bye," cried Somerset.
"I shall slip out to-morrow morning for a last swim—at six o'clock," she said, unheeding his exclamation. "Our train goes at ten." Then she came very close to him.
"Vince dear, if you love me, don't make me more unhappy than I am."
It was an appeal to his chivalry. He kissed her hand, and said:
"At six o'clock."
But Somerset had no intention of bidding her a final farewell in the morning. If he followed her the world over he would snatch her out of the arms of the accursed Bernheim and marry her by main force. As for the foreign telegrams ofThe Daily Post, he cared not how they would be sub-edited. He went to bed with lofty disregard of Fleet Street and bread and butter. As for the shame from which Ottilie's marriage would save her sainted mother, he did not believe a word of it. She was selling Ottilie to Bernheim for cash down. He stayed awake most of the night plotting schemes for the rescue of his Princess. It would be an excellent plan to insult Bernheim and slay him outright in a duel. Its disadvantages lay in his own imperfections as a duellist, and for the first time he cursed the benign laws of his country. At length he fell asleep; woke up to find it daylight, and leaped to his feet in a horrible scare. But a sight of his watch reassured him. It was only five o'clock. At half-past he put on a set of bathing things and sat down by the window to watch the hall door of the Hotel Splendide. At six, out came the familiar figure of the little Princess, draped in her whitepeignoir. She glanced up at Somerset's window. He waved his hand, and in a minute or two they were standing side by side at the water's edge. It was far away from the regular bathing-place marked by the bathing cabins, and further still from the fishing end of the beach where alone at that early hour were signs of life visible. The town behind them slept in warmth and light. The sea stretched out blue before them unrippled in the still air. A little bank of purple cloud on the horizon presaged a burning day.
The little Princess dropped herpeignoirand kicked off her straw-soled shoes, and gave her hand to her companion. He glanced at the little white feet which he was tempted to fall down and kiss, and then at the wistful face below the blue-silk foulard knotted in front over the bathing-cap. His heart leaped at her bewildering sweetness. She was the morning incarnate.
She read his eyes and flushed pink.
"Let us go in," she said.
They waded in together, hand-in-hand, until they were waist deep. Then they struck out, making for the open sea. The sting of the night had already passed from the water. To their young blood it felt warm. They swam near together, Ottilie using a steady breast stroke and Somerset a side stroke, so that he could look at her flushed and glistening face. From the blue of the sea and the blue of the sky to the light blue of the silk foulard, the blue of her eyes grew magically deep.
"There seems to be nothing but you and me in God's universe, Ottilie," said he. She smiled at him. He drew quite close to her.
"If we could only go on straight until we found an enchanted island which we could have as our kingdom."
"The sea must be our kingdom," said Ottilie.
"Or its depths. Shall we dive down and look for the 'ceiling of amber, the pavement of pearl,' and the 'red gold throne in the heart of the sea' for the two of us?"
"We should be happier than in the world," replied the little Princess.
They swam on slowly, dreamily, in silence. The mild waves lapped against their ears and their mouths. The morning sun lay at their backs, and its radiance fell athwart the bay. Through the stillness came the faint echo of a fisherman on the far beach hammering at his boat. Beyond that and the gentle swirl of the water there was no sound. After a while they altered their course so as to reach a small boat that lay at anchor for the convenience of the stronger swimmers. They clambered up and sat on the gunwale, their feet dangling in the sea.
"Is my princess tired?" he asked.
She laughed in merry scorn.
"Tired? Why, I could swim twenty times as far. Do you think I have no muscle? Feel. Don't you know I fence all the winter?"
She braced her bare arm. He felt the muscle; then, relaxing it, by drawing down her wrist, he kissed it very gently.
"Soft and strong—like yourself," said he. Ottilie said nothing, but looked at her white feet through the transparent water. She thought that in letting him kiss her arm and feeling as though he had kissed right through to her heart, she was exhibiting a pitiful lack of strength. Somerset looked at her askance, uncertain. For nothing in the world would he have offended.
"Did you mind?" he whispered.
She shook her head and continued to look at her feet. Somerset felt a great happiness pulse through him.
"If I gave you up," said he, "I should be the poorest spirited dog that ever whined."
"Hush!" she said, putting her hand in his. "Let us think only of the present happiness."
They sat silent for a moment, contemplating the little red-roofed town and Illerville-sur-Mer, which nestled in greenery beyond the white sweep of the beach, and the rococo hotels and the casino, whose cupolas flashed gaudily in the morning sun. From the north-eastern end of the bay stretched a long line of sheer white cliff as far as the eye could reach. Towards the west it was bounded by a narrow headland running far out to sea.
"It looks like a frivolous little Garden of Eden," said Somerset, "but I wish we could never set foot in it again."
"Let us dive in and forget it," said Ottilie.
She slipped into the water. Somerset stood on the gunwale and dived. When he came up and had shaken the salt water from his nostrils, he joined her in two or three strokes.
"Let us go round the point to the little beach the other side."
She hesitated. It would take a long time to swim there, rest, and swim back. Her absence might be noticed. But she felt reckless. Let her drink this hour of happiness to the full. What mattered anything that could follow? She smiled assent, and they struck out steadily for the point. It was good to have the salt smell and the taste of the brine and the pleasant smart of the eyes; and to feel their mastery of the sea. As they threw out their flashing white arms and topped each tiny wave they smiled in exultation. To them it seemed impossible that anyone could drown. For the buoyant hour they were creatures of the element. Now and then a gull circled before them, looked at them unconcerned, as if they were in some way his kindred, and swept off into the distance. A tired white butterfly settled for a moment on Ottilie's head; then light-heartedly fluttered away sea-wards to its doom. They swam on and on, and they neared the point. They slackened for a moment, and he brought his face close to hers.
"If I said 'Let us swim on for ever and ever,' would you do it?"
"Yes," she said, looking deep into his eyes.
After a while they floated restfully. The last question and answer seemed to have brought them a great peace. They were conscious of little save the mystery of the cloudless ether above their faces and the infinite sea that murmured in their ears strange harmonies of Love and Death—harmonies woven from the human yearnings of every shore and the hushed secrets of eternal time. So close were they bodily together that now and then hand touched hand and limb brushed limb. A happy stillness of the soul spread its wings over them and they felt it to be a consecration of their love. Presently his arm sought her, encircled her, brought her head on his shoulder.
"Rest a little," he whispered.
She closed her eyes, surrendered her innocent self to the flooding rapture of the moment. The horrors that awaited her passed from her brain. He had come to the lonely child like a god out of heaven. He had come to the frightened girl like a new terror. He was by her side now, the man whom of all men God had made to accomplish her womanhood and to take all of soul and body, sense and brain that she had to give. Their salt lips met in a first kiss. Words would have broken the spell of the enchantment cast over them by the infinite spaces of sea and sky. They drifted on and on, the subtle, subconscious movement of foot and hand keeping them afloat. The little Princess moved closer to him so as to feel more secure around her the circling pressure of his arm. He laughed a man's short, exultant laugh, and gripped her more tightly. Never had he felt his strength more sure. His right arm and his legs beat rhythmically and he felt the pulsation of the measured strokes of his companion's feet and the water swirled past his head, so that he knew they were making way most swiftly. Of exertion there was no sense whatever. He met her eyes fixed through half-shut lids upon his face. Her soft young body melted into his. He lost count of time and space. Now and then a little wave broke over their faces, and they laughed and cleared the brine from their mouths and drew more close together.
"If it wasn't for that," she whispered once, "I could go to sleep."
Soon they felt the gentle rocking of the sea increase and waves broke more often over them. Somerset was the first to note the change. Loosening his hold of Ottilie, he trod water and looked around. To his amazement they were still abreast of the point, but far out to sea. He gazed at it uncomprehendingly for an instant, and then a sudden recollection smote him like a message of death. They had caught the edge of the current against which swimmers were warned, and the current held them in its grip and was sweeping them on while they floated foolishly. A swift glance at Ottilie showed him that she too realized the peril. With the outcoming tide it was almost impossible to reach the shore.
"Are you afraid?" he asked.
She shook her head. "Not with you."
He scanned the land and the sea. On the arc of their horizon lay the black hull of a tramp steamer going eastwards. Far away to the west was a speck of white and against the pale sky a film of smoke. Landwards beyond the shimmering water stretched the sunny bay of the casino. Its gilt cupolas shot tiny flames. The green-topped point, its hither side deep in shadow, reached out helplessly for them. Somerset and Ottilie still paused, doing nothing more than keeping themselves afloat, and they felt the current drifting them ever seawards.
"It looks like death," he said gravely. "Are you afraid to die?"
Again Ottilie said, "Not with you."
He looked at the land, and he looked at the white speck and the puff of smoke. Then suddenly his heart leaped with the thrilling inspiration of a wild impossibility.
"Let us leave Illerville and France behind us. Death is as certain either way."
The little Princess looked at him wonderingly.
"Where are we going?"
"To England."
"Anywhere but Illerville," she said.
He struck out seawards, she followed. Each saw the other's face white and set. They had current and tide with them, they swam steadily, undistressed. After a silence she called to him.
"Vince, if we go to our kingdom under the sea, you will take me down in your arms?"
"In a last kiss," he said.
He had heard (as who has not) of Love being stronger than Death. Now he knew its truth. But he swore to himself a great oath that they should not die.
"I shall take my princess to a better kingdom," he said later.
Presently he heard her breathing painfully. She could not hold out much longer.
"I will carry you," he said.
An expert swimmer, she knew the way to hold his shoulders and leave his arms unimpeded. The contact of her light young form against his body thrilled him and redoubled his strength. He held his head for a second high out of the water and turned half round.
"Do you think I am going to let you die—now?"
The white speck had grown into a white hull, and Somerset was making across its track. To do so he must deflect slightly from the line of the current. His great battle began.
He swam doggedly, steadily, husbanding his strength. If the vessel justified his first flash of inspiration, and if he could reach her, he knew how he should act. As best he could, for it was no time for speech, he told Ottilie his hopes. He felt the spray from her lips upon his cheek, as she said:
"It seems sinful to wish for greater happiness than this."
After that there was utter silence between them. At first he thought exultingly of Bernheim and the Princess Rabomirski, and the rage of their wicked hearts; of the future glorified by his little Princess of the unconquerable soul: of the present's mystic consummation of their marriage. But gradually mental concepts lost sharpness of definition. Sensation began to merge itself into a half-consciousness of stroke on stroke through the illimitable waste. Despite the laughing morning sunshine, the sky became dark and lowering. The weight on his neck grew heavier. At first Ottilie had only rested her arms. Now her feet were as lead and sank behind him; her clasp tightened about his shoulders. He struggled on through a welter of sea and mist. Strange sounds sang in his ears, as if over them had been clamped great sea-shells. At each short breath his throat gulped down bitter water. A horrible pain crept across his chest. His limbs seemed paralysed and yet he remained above the surface. The benumbed brain wondered at the miracle....
The universe broke upon his vision as a blurred mass of green and white. He recognised it vaguely as his kingdom beneath the sea, and as in a dream he remembered his promise. He slipped round. His lips met Ottilie's. His arms wound round about her, and he sank, holding her tightly clasped.
Strange things happened. He was pulled hither and thither by sea monsters welcoming him to his kingdom. In a confused way he wondered that he could breathe so freely in the depths of the ocean. Unutterable happiness stole upon him. The Kingdom wasreal. His sham Princess would be queen in very truth. But where was she?
He opened his eyes and found himself lying on the deck of a ship. A couple of men were doing funny things to his arms. A rosy-faced man in white ducks and a yachting cap stood over him with a glass of brandy. When he had drunk the spirit, the rosy man laughed.
"That was a narrow shave. We got you just in time. We were nearly right on you. The young woman is doing well. My wife is looking after her."
As soon as he could collect his faculties, Somerset asked,
"Are you theMavis?"
"Yes."
"I felt sure of it. Are you Sir Henry Ransome?"
"That's my name."
"I heard you were expected at Illerville to-day," said Somerset. "That is why I made for you."
The two men who had been doing queer things with his arms wrapped him in a blanket and propped him up against the deck cabin.
"But what on earth were you two young people doing in the middle of the English Channel?" asked the owner of theMavis.
"We were eloping," said Somerset.
The other looked at him for a bewildered moment and burst into a roar of laughter. He turned to the cabin door and disappeared, to emerge a moment afterwards followed by a lady in a morning wrapper.
"What do you think, Marian? It's an elopement."
Somerset smiled at them.
"Have you ever heard of the Princess Rabomirski? You have? Well, this is her daughter. Perhaps you know of the Count Bernheim who is always about with the Princess?"
"I trod on him last winter at Monte Carlo," said Sir Henry Ransome.
"He survives," said Somerset, "and has bought the Princess Ottilie from her mother. He's not going to get her. She belongs to me. My name is Somerset, and I am foreign sub-editor of theDaily Post."
"I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Somerset," said Sir Henry with a smile. "And now what can I do for you?"
"If you can lend us some clothes and take us to any part on earth save Illerville-sur-Mer, you will earn our eternal gratitude."
Sir Henry looked doubtful. "We have made our arrangements for Illerville," said he.
His wife broke in.
"If you don't take these romantic beings straight to Southampton, I'll never set my foot upon this yacht again."
"It was you, my dear, who were crazy to come to Illerville."
"Don't you think," said Lady Ransome, "you might provide Mr. Somerset with some dry things?"
Four hours afterwards Somerset sat on deck by the side of Ottilie, who, warmly wrapped, lay on a long chair. He pointed to the far-away coastline of the Isle of Wight.
"Behold our kingdom!" said he.
The little Princess laughed.
"That is not our kingdom."
"Well, what is?"
"Just the little bit of space that contains both you and me," she said.