Chapter 10

Therefore it was once more just a little irritating that Mr. Strong, instead of telling her what type he did admire, should merely laugh and say, “Well—not Mrs. Tasker.” If Amory had a criticism at all to make of Mr. Strong it was this habit of his of negatives, that sometimes almost justified the nickname Mr. Brimby had given him, of “Stone Wall Strong.” So she dropped one hand from her chin, allowing it to hang loose over her knee while the other forearm still kept its swan’s-neck curve, and said abruptly,“Well—about the Indian Number. Let’s get on.”

“Ah, yes,” said Mr. Strong. “Let’s get on.”

“What had we decided?”

“Only Prang’s article so far.”

“But you say you have your doubts about it?”

Mr. Strong hesitated. “Only about its selling-power,” he said with a little shrug. “We must sell the paper, you see. It’s not paying its way yet.”

“Well, I’m sure that’s not Mr. Prang’s fault,” Amory retorted. “He’s practically made the export circulation.”

“You mean the Bombay circulation? Yes, I suppose he has. I don’t deny it.”

“You can’t deny it. Since Prang began to write for us we’ve done awfully well in Bombay.”

To that too, Mr. Strong assented. Then Amory, after a moment’s pause, spoke quietly. She did not like to think of her editor as jealous of his own contributors.

“I know you don’t like Mr. Prang,” she said, looking fixedly at the asbestos log.

“I!” began Stone Wall Strong. “Why, you know I think he’s a first rate fellow, ifonly——”

This time, however, Amory really did intend to get it out of him. For once she would have one of those hung-up sentences completed.

“If only what?” she said, looking up at him.

“Oh, I don’t know—as you said a moment ago, there’s no ‘why’ about thesethings——”

“But I did give you my impression. You don’t give me yours.”

“You did, I admit. Yes, I admit you did.... What is it you want to know, then?”

“Only why you seem so doubtful about Mr. Prang.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Strong....

Those who knew Edgar Strong the best said that he was a man who, other things being equal, would rather go straight than not. Even when the other things were not quite equal, he still had a mild preference for straightness. But if other people positively insisted that he should deviate from straightness, very well; that was their lookout. He had been a good many things in his time—solicitor’s clerk, free-lance journalist, book-pedlar, election-agent’s minion, Vanner, poetic vagabond, and always an unerring “spotter” of the literary son of the farming squire the moment he appeared in sight; and the “Novum” was the softest job he had found yet. If the price of his keeping it was that he should look its owner’s wife long and earnestly in the eyes, as if in his own there lay immeasurable things, not for him to give but for her to take if she list, so be it; he would sleep none the less well in his rent-free bedroom behind the “Novum’s” offices afterwards. His experience of far less comfortable sleeping-quarters had persuaded him that in this imperfect world a man is entitled to exactly what he can get.

His eyes, nevertheless, did not seek Amory’s. Instead, roving round the room to see if nothing less would serve (leaving him still with the fathomless look in reserve for emergencies), they fell on the Benares tray and the casts. And as they remained there he suddenly frowned. Amory’s own eyes followed his;and suddenly she felt again that little creeping thrill. A faint colour and warmth, new and pleasurable, came into her cheeks.

Then with a little rush, her discovery came upon her....

Shehadgot something from Mr. Strong at last!

Her head drooped a little away from him, and the hand that had hung laxly over her knee dropped gently to the rug. It was a delicious moment. So all these weeks and weeks Mr. Stronghadcared that that foot, that arm, had been exposed to the gaze of anybody who might have entered the house! He had not said so; he did not say so now; but that was it! More, he had cared so much that it had quite distorted his judgment of Mr. Prang. And all at once Amory remembered something else—a glance Edgar Strong had given her, neither more nor less eloquent than the look he was bending on the casts now, one afternoon when she had lain in the hammock in the garden and Mr. Prang, bending over her, had ventured to examine a locket about her throat....

Sothatwas at the bottom of his reserve!Thatwas the meaning of his “buts”!...

Amory did not move. She wished it might last for hours. Mr. Strong had taken a step towards the casts, but, changing his mind, had turned away again; and she was astonished to find how full of meaning dozens of his past gestures became now that she had the key to them. And she knew that the castswerebeautiful. Brucciani would have bought them like a shot. And she seemed to see Mr. Strong’s look, piteous and frowningboth at once, if she should sell them to Brucciani, and Brucciani should publish them to hang in a hundred studios....

The silence between them continued.

But speak she must, and it would be better to do so before he did; and by and bye she lifted her head again. But she did not look directly at him.

“It was very foolish,” she murmured with beautiful directness and simplicity.

Mr. Strong said nothing.

“But for weeks I’ve been intending to move them.”

Mr. Strong shrugged his shoulders. It was as if he said, “Well better late than never ... but you see,now.”

“Yes,” breathed Amory, softly, but aloud.

The next moment Mr. Strong was himself again. He returned to his station by the asbestos log.

“Well, there’s Prang’s article,” he said in his business voice. “Am I to have it set up?”

“Perhaps we’d better see what Cosimo says first,” Amory replied.

She did not know which was the greater delicacy in Mr. Strong—the exquisite tact of the glance he had given at the casts, or the quiet strength with which he took up the burden of editing the “Novum” again.

A whiteOctober mist lay over the Heath, and the smell of burning leaves came in at the pond-room window of Dorothy Tasker’s flat. But the smell was lost on Dorothy. All her intelligence was for the moment concentrated in one faculty, the faculty of hearing. She was sure Jackie had swallowed a safety-pin, and she was anxiously listening for the click with which it might come unstuck.

“Shall I send for the doctor, m’m?” said Ruth, who stood holding the doorknob in her aproned hand. She had been called away from her “brights,” and there was a mournful relish of Jackie’s plight on her face.

“No,” said Dorothy.... “Oh, Iknowthere were twelve of them, and now there are only eleven!...Haveyou put one of these things into your mouth, Jackie?”

“He put it up his nose, mumsie, like he did some boot-buttons once,” said Noel cheerfully.

“But he couldn’t do that....Haveyou swallowed it, Jackie?”

“Mmm,” said Jackie resolutely, as who should say that that which his hand (or in this case his mouth) found to do he did with all his might.

“Oh dear!” sighed Dorothy, leaning back in her chair....

She supposed it was the still white weather that weighed on her spirits; she hoped so, for if it was not that it was something worse. Even dreary weather was better than bankruptcy. She had sent her pass-book to the bank to be balanced; until it should come back she refused to look at the pile of tradesmen’s books that stood on her writing-desk; and borrowing from her aunt was not borrowing at all, but simply begging, since Aunt Grace regarded the return of such loans as the last of affronts.

And (she sighed again) she had beensowell-off at the time of her marriage! Why, she had had well over a thousand a year from Hallowell and Smith’s alone!... But Stan had had a few debts which had had to be settled, and Stan’s knowledge of the style in which things ought to be done had been rather a drawback on that trip they had taken to the Riviera, for his ideas of hotels had been a little splendacious, and of dinners to “a few friends” rather daring; and, with one thing and another, the problem of how to satisfy champagne tastes on a beer income had never been really satisfactorily solved by Stan, poor old boy. And he never, never grumbled at home, not even when the cold beef came on three evenings together, which was harder on him than it was on most people. He did what he could to earn, too. It wasn’t his fault that the standard of efficiency in the Army was so impracticably high, nor that he had been packed off to try his luck in Canada with the disadvantage of being a remittance-man, northat, at the age of twenty-seven, when his father had died, he had had to turn to and compete for this job or that with a horde of capable youngsters years his juniors and with fewer hampering decencies. It was his father’s fault and Aunt Susan’s really, for having sent him to Marlborough and Sandhurst without being able to set him properly on his feet afterwards. Such victims of circumstances, on a rather different level, made husbands who stopped at home and cleaned the knives and took the babies out in the perambulator. In Stan’s case the natural result had been to make a young man fit only to join as a ranker or to stand with his back to a mirror in a suspect card-room.

“Shall I take him away, m’m?” Mrs. Mossop asked—(“And prepare his winding-sheet,” her tone seemed to add).

“Yes, do,” Dorothy replied, with a glance at Ruth’s blackened hands. “And please make yourself fit to be seen, Ruth. You know you oughtn’t to be doing all that on the very day I let Norah out.”

She knew that her rebuke had set Ruth up in the melancholy enjoyment of resentment for half a week, but she was past caring. Ruth rose an inch in height at being chidden for the faithful performance of her most disagreeable duties; she turned; and as she bore the Bits away the mighty roar into which Jackie broke diminished in volume down the passage.

Dorothy sighed, that all her troubles should thus crowd on her at once. Her eyes fell again on the tradesmen’s books. It hardly seemed worth while to pay them, since they would only come in again nextweek, as clamorous and urgent as ever. They were thrust through the letterbox like letters; Dorothy knew very well the thud with which they fell on the floor; but she could never help running out into the hall when they came. She had tried the plan of dispensing with books altogether and paying for everything in cash as she got it, but that had merely meant, not one large worry a week, but harassing little ones all the week through.

Oh, why had she squandered, or allowed Stan to squander, those good round sovereigns of Hallowell andSmith’s!——

Still—there is measure in everything—she had not sent her pass-book to the bank in order to learn whether she had a balance. That would have been too awful. It was the amount of her margin that she wanted, and feared, to know. For presently there would be the doctor to pay, and so many guineas a week at the Nursing Home, and the flat going on just the same, and poor old Stan pathetically hoping that a casual dinner-table puff in a Marlborough voice would result in fat new ledger-accounts for Fortune and Brooks’ and magnificent commissions for himself. If only she could get just a little ahead of her points! But the money went out just slightly quicker than it came in. Stan carved it as it were in twopences off the cold beef, the Bits swallowed it in pennorths with their breadcrumbs and gravy, and directly the strain eased for a little, down swooped the rent and set everything back again exactly where it had been three months before.

And the Income Tax people had actually sent Stana paper, wanting to know all about his income from lands, hereditaments, etc., and warning him that his wife’s income must be accounted as part of his own!

But it must not be supposed that Dorothy had allowed things to come to this pass without having had an idea. She had an idea, and one that she thought a very good one. Nevertheless, an idea is one thing, and the execution thereof at the proper time quite another. For example, the proper moment for the execution of this idea of Dorothy’s was certainly now, or at any rate at the Christmas Quarter (supposing she herself was up and about again by that time and had found a satisfactory subtenant for the flat). But the person against whom her idea was designed—who, by the way, happened to be her unsuspecting and much-loved aunt, Lady Tasker—was a very present difficulty. Dorothy knew for a fact that what would be admirably convenient for herself at Christmas could not possibly be convenient to her aunt until, at the very earliest, next summer. That was the crab—the intervening period of nine months. She knew of no mandragora that would put herself, Stan and her Bits of Impudence gently to sleep, to wake up again to easier times.

Oh, why had she spent those beautiful thick sovereigns of Hallowell and Smith’s sorecklessly!—

The mist lay flat over the pond outside, making in one corner of it a horrible scum, from which the swans, seeking their food, lifted blackened necks. There was never a ripple on the pond-room walls to-day. Slowly Dorothy rose. Moping was useless; she must do something.She crossed to her writing-desk and took from one of its drawers a fat file, concertina-ed like her own accordion-pleated skirts; and she sat down and opened it fan-wise on her knee. It was full of newspaper-cuttings, draft “ideas” for advertisements, and similar dreary things. She sighed again as her listless fingers began to draw them out. She had not thought at one time that she would ever come to this. By a remarkable piece of luck and light-heartedness and ingenuity she had started at Hallowell and Smith’s at the top of the tree; the brains of underlings had been good enough to cudgel for such scrap-stuff as filled her concertina-file; but that was all changed now. Light come, light go; and since the lapse of her contracts she had been glad not only to devise these ignoble lures for the public, but to draw them also. They formed the pennies-three-farthings that came in while Stan carved the twopences from the joint. She had thought the good times were going to last for ever. They hadn’t. She now looked enviously up to those who had been her own subordinates.

With no heart in her task at all, Dorothy set about the drafting of an advertisement.

She was just beginning to forget about swallowed safety-pins, and poor luckless Stan, and guineas for her Nursing Home, and the prospect of presently having seven mouths, big and little, to feed—she was even beginning to cease to hear the clamour of the Bits in the room along the passage—when there came a ring at the bell. Her fair head did not move, but her blue eyes stole abstractedly sideways as Ruth passed the pond-roomdoor. Then a man’s voice sounded, and Dorothy dropped her pen....

“Mrs. Tasker,” she had heard, with the “a” cut very short and two “s’s” in her name....

The next moment Ruth had opened the pond-room door, and, in tones that plainly said “You needn’t think that I’ve forgotten about just now, because I haven’t,” announced: “Mr. Miller.”

Now it was curious that Dorothy had just been thinking about Mr. Miller. Mr. Miller was Hallowells’ Publicity Manager, and the time had been when Dorothy had had Mr. Miller completely in her pocket. She had obtained that comfortable contract of hers from Mr. Miller, and if during the latter part of its continuance she had taken her duties somewhat lightly and her pleasures with enormous gusto, she was not sure that Mr. Miller had not done something of the same kind. But the firm, which could excuse itself from a renewal of her own contract, for some reason or other could not get rid of Mr. Miller; and now here was Mr. Miller unexpectedly in Dorothy’s flat—seeking her, which is far better for you than when you have to do the seeking. He stood there with his grey Trilby in his hand and his tailor-made deltoids almost filling the aperture of the doorway.

“There, now, if I wasn’t right!” said Mr. Miller with great satisfaction, advancing with one hand outstretched. “I fixed it all up with myself coming along that you’d be around the house. I’ve had no luck all the week, and I said to myself as I got out of the el’vator at Belsize Park, ‘It’s doo to change.’ Andhere I find you, right on the spot. I hope this is not an introosion. How are you? And how’s Mr. Stan?”

He shook hands heartily with Dorothy, and looked round for a place in which to put his hat and stick.

“Why, now, this is comfortable,” he went on, drawing up the chair to which Dorothy pointed. “I like your English fires. They may not have all the advantages of steam-heat, but they got a look about ’em—the Home-Idee. And you’re looking just about right in health, Mrs. Tasker, if I may say so. You English women have our N’York ladies whipped when it comes to complexion, you have for sure. And how’s thefamily——?”

But here Mr. Miller suddenly stopped and looked at Dorothy again. If the look that came into his eyes had come into those of a young unmarried woman, Dorothy would have fled there and then. He dropped his head for a moment as people do who enter a church; then he raised it again.

“If you’ll pardon an old married man and the father of three little goils,” Mr. Miller said, his eyes reverently lifted and his voice suddenly altered, “—but am I right in supposing that ... another little gift from the storks, as my dear old Mamie—that was my dear old negro nurse—used to say?” Then, without waiting for the unrequired answer, he straightened his back and squared his deltoids in a way that would have made any of Holbein’s portraits of Henry the Eighth look like that of a slender young man. His voice dropped three whole tones, and again he showed Dorothy the little bald spot on the crown of his head.

“I’m glad. I say I’m glad. I’m vurry glad. I rejoice. And I should like to shake Mr. Stan by the hand. I should like to shake you by the hand too, Mrs. Tasker.” Then, when he had done so: “It’s the Mother-Idee. The same, old-fashioned Idee, like our own mothers. It makes one feel good. Reverent. I got no use for a young man but what he shows lats of reverence for his mother. The old Anglo-Saxon-Idee—reverence for motherhood.... And when, if an old married man may ask thequestion——?”

Dorothy laughed and blushed and told him. Mr. Miller, dropping his voice yet another tone, told her in return that he knew of no holier place on oith than the chamber in which the Anglo-Saxon-Idee of veneration for motherhood was renewed and sustained. And then, after he had said once more that he rejoiced, there fell a silence.

Dorothy liked Mr. Miller. Once you got over his remarkable aptitude for sincerities he had an excellent heart. Nevertheless she could not imagine why he had come. She shuddered as he seemed for a moment to be once more on the point of removing his shoes at the door of the Mosque of Motherhood, but apparently he thought better of it. Squaring his shoulders again, and no doubt greatly fortified by his late exercise, he said, “Well, I always feel more of a man after I felt the throb of a fellow-creature’s heart. That’s so. And now you’ll be wondering what’s brought me up here? Well, the fact is, Mrs. Tasker, I’m wurried. I got wurries. You can see the wurry-map on my face. Hallowells’ is wurrying me. I ain’t going to tell youHallowells’ ain’t what it was in its pammy days; it may be, or it may not; mebbe you’ve heard the talk that’s going around?”

“No,” said Dorothy.

“Is that so? Well, there is talk going around. There’s a whole push of people, knocking us all the time. They ain’t of much account themselves, but they knock us. It’s a power the inferior mind has. And I say I’m wurried about it.”

Dorothy, in spite of her “No,” had heard of the “knocking” of Hallowell and Smiths’, and her heart gave an excited little jump at the thought that flashed across her mind. Did Hallowells’ want her back? The firm had been launched upon London with every resource of publicity; Dorothy herself had been the author of its crowning device; and whereas the motto of older firms had been “Courtesy Costs Nothing,” Hallowells’ had vastly improved upon this. Courtesy had, as a matter of fact, cost them a good deal; but the rewards of the investment had been magnificent. Mr. Miller had known that if you say to people often enough “See how courteous I am,” you are to all intents and purposes courteous. But what Mr. Miller had not known had been the precise point at which it is necessary to begin to build up a strained reputation again. Commercial credit too, like those joints Stan carved, comes in in twopence-halfpennies but goes out in threepences.... And so the “knocking” had begun. Rumours had got about that Hallowells’ was a shop where you were asked, after a few unsuitable articles had been shown to you, whether you didn’t intend tobuy anything, and where you might wait for ten minutes at a counter while two assistants settled a private difference behind it. Did Mr. Miller want her help in restoring the firm’s fair name? Did he intend to offer her another contract? Were there to be more of Hallowells’ plump, ringing sovereigns—that she would know better how to take care of this time? It was with difficulty that she kept her composure as Mr. Miller continued:

“There’s no denying but what inferior minds have that power,” he went sorrowfully on. “They can’t build up an enterprise, but they can knock, and they been good and busy. You haven’t heard of it? Well, that’s good as far as it goes, but they been at it for all that. Now I don’t want to knock back at your country, Mrs. Tasker, but it seems to me that’s the English character. You’re hostile to the noo. The noo gives you cold feet. You got a terrific capacity for stopping put. Your King Richard Core de Lion did things in a certain way, and it ain’t struck you yet that he’s been stiff and straight quite a while. And so when you see something with snap and life to it you start knocking.” Mr. Miller spoke almost bitterly. “But I ain’t holding you personally responsible, Mrs. Tasker. I reckon you’re a wonderful woman. Yours is a reel old family, and if anybody’s the right to knock it’s you; butyouappreciate the noo.Youlook at it in the light of history.Yougot the sense of world-progress.You’rea sort of Lady Core de Lion to-day. I haven’t forgotten the Big Idee you started us off with. And so I come to you, and tell you, straight and fair, we want you.”

Dorothy was tingling with excitement; but she took up a piece of sewing—the same piece on which she had bent her modest gaze when she had machinated against her aunt on the afternoon on which Lady Tasker had come on, weary and thirsty, from the Witan. It was a piece she kept for such occasions as these. She stitched demurely, and Mr. Miller went onagain:—

“We want you. We want those bright feminine brains of yours, Mrs. Tasker. And your ladies’ intooition. We’re stuck. We want another Idee like the last. And so we come to the department where we got satisfaction before.”

Dorothy spoke slowly. She was glad the pond-room was beautifully furnished—glad, too, that the hours Ruth spent over her “brights” were not spent in vain. The porcelain gleamed in her cabinets and the silver twinkled on her tables. At any rate she did not look poor.

“This is rather a surprise,” she said. “I hardly know what to say. I hadn’t thought of taking on another contract.”

But here Mr. Miller was prompt enough.

“Well, I don’t know that we were thinking of a noo contract exactly. You’re a lady with a good many responsibilities now, and ain’t got too much time for contracts, I guess. No, it ain’t a contract. It’s an Idee we want.”

Far more quickly than Dorothy’s hopes had risen they dropped again at this. “An Idee:” naturally!... Everybody wanted that. She had not had to hawk an idea like the last—so simple, so shapely, so beauty-bright.And she had learned that it is not the ideas, but what follows them, that pays—the flat and uninspired routine that forms the everyday work of a lucrative contract. It is the irony of this gipsy life of living by your wits. You do a stately thing and starve; you follow it up—or somebody else does—with faint and empty echoes of that thing, and you are overfed. An Idea—but not a contract; a picking of her brains, but no permanent help against that tide of tradesmen’s books that flowed in at the front door.... And Dorothy knew already that for another reason Mr. Miller had sought her out in vain. Ideas arenotrepeated. They visit us, but we cannot fetch them. And as for echoes of that former inspiration of hers, no doubt Mr. Miller had thought of all those for himself and had rejected them.

“I see,” she said slowly....

“Well,” said Mr. Miller, his worry-map really piteous, “I wish you could tell me where we’ve gone wrong. It must be something in the British character we ain’t appreciated, but what, well, that gets me. We been Imperialistic. There ain’t been one of our Monthly House Dinners but what we’ve had all the Loyal Toasts, one after the other. There ain’t been a Royal Wedding but what we’ve had a special window-display, and christenings the same, and what else you like. We ain’t got gay with the Union Jack nor Rotten Row nor the House of Lords. We’ve reminded folk it was your own King George who said ‘Wake up,England——!’”

But at this point Mr. Miller’s doleful recital wascut short by a second ring at the bell. Again Ruth’s step was heard in the passage outside, and again Ruth, loftily sulky but omitting no point of her duty, stood with the door-knob in her hand.

“Mrs. Pratt,” she announced; and Amory entered.

Seeing Mr. Miller, however, she backed again. Mr. Miller had risen and bowed as if he was giving some invisible person a “back” for leapfrog.

“Oh, I do so beg your pardon!” said Amory hurriedly. “I didn’t know you’d anybody here. But—if I could speak to you for just a moment, Dorothy—it won’t take aminute——”

“Please excuse me,” said Dorothy to Mr. Miller; and she went out.

She was back again in less than three minutes. Her face had an unusual pinkness, but her voice was calm. She did not sit down again. Neither did she extend her hand to Mr. Miller in a too abrupt good-bye. Nevertheless, that worried man bowed again, and looked round for his hat and stick.

“I shall have to think over what you’ve been saying,” Dorothy said. “I’ve no proposal to make off-hand, you see—and I’m rather afraid that just at present I shan’t be able to come and seeyou——”

There were signs in Mr. Miller’s bearing of another access of reverence.

“So I’ll write. Or better still, if it’s not too much trouble for you to come and see me again——? Perhaps I’d better write first.—But you’ll have tea, won’t you?”

Mr. Miller put up a refusing hand.—“No, I thank you.—So you’ll do your possible, Mrs. Tasker? That’s vurry good of you. I’m wurried, and I rely on your sharp feminine brains. As for the honorarium, we shan’t quarrel about that. I wish I could have shaken hands with Mr. Stan. There ain’t a happier and prouder moment in a man’s lifethan——”

“Good-bye.”

And the father of the three little goils of his own took his leave.

No sooner had he gone than Dorothy’s brows contracted. She took three strides across the room and rang for Ruth. Never before had she realized the inferiority, as a means of expressing temper, of an electric bell to a hand-rung one or to one of which a yard or two of wire can be ripped from the wall. Only by mere continuance of pressure till Ruth came did she obtain even a little relief. To the high resolve on Ruth’s face she paid no attention whatever.

“A parcel will be coming from Mrs. Pratt,” she said. “Please see that it goes back at once.”

Ruth’s head was heroically high. The late Mr. Mossop had had his faults, but he had not kept his finger on electric-bell buttons till she came.

“No doubt there’s them as would give better satisfaction, m’m,” she said warningly.

But Dorothy rushed on her fate.—“There seems very little satisfaction anywhere to-day,” she answered.

“Then I should wish to give the usual notice,” said Ruth.

“Very well,” said the reckless mistress.... “Ruth!” (Ruth returned). “You forgot what I said about always shutting the door quietly.”

This time the door closed so quietly behind Ruth that Dorothy heard her outburst into tears on the other side of it.

Second-hand woollies for her Bits!... Of course Amory Pratt had made the proposal with almost effusive considerateness. No doubt the twins, Corin and Bonniebell,hadoutgrown them. Dorothy did not suppose for a moment that they werenotthe best of their kind that money could buy; the Pratts seemed to roll in money. And beyond all dispute the wintermightcome any morning now, and the garmentswouldjust fit Jackie. But—her own Bits! ... she had had her back to the bedroom window when the offer had been made; she knew that her sudden flush had not showed; and her voice had not changed as she had deliberately told her lie—that she had bought the children’s winter outfits only the day before....

“I’m sure you won’t have any difficulty in giving them away,” she had concluded as she had passed to the bedroom door.

“Far less difficulty than you’ll find here,” she might have added, but had forborne....

Other children’s woollies for her little Jackie!——

What gave sting to the cut was that Jackie sorely needed them; but then it was not like Amory Pratt, Dorothy thought bitterly, to make a graceful gift of an unrequired thing. She must blunder into people’s necessities. A gift of a useless Teddy Bear or of atoy that would be broken in a week Dorothy might not have refused; but mere need!—“Oh!” Dorothy exclaimed, twisting in her chair with anger....

What a day! What a life! And what a little thing thus to epitomize the whole hopeless standstill of their circumstances!

And because it was a little thing, it had a power over Dorothy that twenty greater things would not have had. She was about to call the precious and disparaged Jackie when she thought better of it. Instead, she dropped her face into her hands and melted utterly. What Ruth did in the kitchen she did in the pond-room; and Jackie, who caught the contagion, filled the passage between with an inconsolable howling.

It was into this house of lamentation that Stan entered at half-past four.

“Steady, there!” he called to his younger son; and Jackie’s bellow ceased instantaneously.

“Ruth’s c’ying, so I c’ied too,” he confided solemnly to his father; and the two entered the pond-room together, there to find Dorothy also in tears.

“Hallo, what’s this?” said Stan. “Jackie, run and tell Ruth to hurry up with tea.... Head up, Dot—let’s have a look atyou——”

Perhaps he meant that Dot should have a look at him, for his face shone with an—alas!—not unwonted excitement. Dorothy had seen that shining before. It usually meant that he had been let in on the ground floor of the International Syndicate for the manufacture of pig-spears, or had secured an option on the world’s supply of wooden pips for blackberry jam, oran agency for a synthesized champagne. And she never dashed the perennial hopefulness of it. The poor old boy would have been heartbroken had he been allowed to suppose that he was not, in intent at any rate, supporting his wife and children.

“What is it, old girl?” he said. “Just feeling low, eh? Never mind. I’ve some news for you.”

Dorothy summoned what interest she could.—“Not an agency or anything?” she asked, wiping her eyes.

“Better than that.”

“Well, some agencies are very good.”

“Not as good as this!”

“Put your arm round me. I’ve been feelingsowretched!”

“Come and sit here. There. Wretched, eh? Well, would three hundred a year cheer you up any?”

It would have, very considerably; but Stan’s schemes were seldom estimated to produce a sum less than that.

“Eh?” Stan continued. “Paid weekly or monthly, whichever I like, and a month’s screw to be going on with?”

Suddenly Dorothy straightened herself in his arms. She knew that Stan was trying to rouse her, but he needn’t use a joke with quite so sharp a barb. She sank back again.

“Don’t, dear,” she begged. “I know it’s stupid of me, but I’m so dull to-day. You go out somewhere this evening, and I’ll go to bed early and sleep it off. I shall be all right again in the morning.”

But from the pocket into which she herself had put four half-crowns that very morning—all she couldspare—Stan drew out a large handful of silver, with numerous pieces of gold sticking up among it. A glance told her that Stan was not likely to have backed a winner at any such price as that. Other people did, but not Stan. She had turned a little pale.

“Tell me, quick, Stan!” she gasped.

“You laughed rather at the Fortune & Brooks idea, didn’t you?”

“Oh, don’t joke, darling!——”

“Eh?... I say, you’re upset. Anything been happening to-day? Look here, let me get you a drink or something!”

“Do you mean—you’ve got a job, Stan?”

“Rather!—I say, do let me get you a drink——”

“I shall faint if you don’t tell me——”

She probably would....

Stan had got a job. What was it, this job that had enabled Stan to come home, before he had lifted a finger to earn it, with masses of silver in his pocket, and the clean quids sticking up out of the lump like almonds out of a trifle?

—He would have to lift more than a finger before that money was earned. He would have to hang on wires by his toes, and to swim streams, and to be knocked down by runaway horses, and to dash into burning houses, and to fling himself on desperate men, and to ascend into the air in water-planes and to descend in submarines into the deep. Hydrants would be turned on him, and sacks of flour poured on him, and hogsheads of whitewash and bags of soot. Not for his brains, but for his good looksand steady nerves and his hard physical condition had he been the chosen one among many. For Stan had joined a Film Producing Company, less as an actor than as an acrobat. Go and see him this evening. He is as well worth your hour as many a knighted actor. And the scene from “Quentin Durward,” in which Bonthron is strung up with the rope round his neck, is not fake. They actually did string Stan up, in the studio near Barnet that had been a Drill Hall, and came precious near to hanging him into the bargain.

But he passed lightly over these and other perils as he poured it all out to Dorothy at tea. Pounds, not perils, were the theme of his song.

“I didn’t say anything about it for fear it didn’t come off,” he said, “but I’ve been expecting it for weeks.” He swallowed tea and cake at a rate that must have put his internal economy to as severe a strain as “Mazeppa” (Historical Film Series, No. XII) afterwards did his bones and muscles. “I start on Monday, so breakfast at eight, sharp, Dot. ‘Lola Montez.’ They’ve got a ripping little girl as Lola; took her out to tea and shopping the other day; I’ll bring her round.” (“No you don’t—not with me sitting here like a Jumping Bean,” quoth Dorothy). “Oh, that’s all right—she’s getting married herself next month—furnishing her flat now—I helped her to choose her electric-light fittings—you’d like her....Ain’tit stunning,Dot!——”

It was stunning. Part of the stunningness of it was that Dorothy, with an abrupt “Excuse me a moment,” was enabled to cross to her desk and to dash off a noteto Harrods. Second-hand woollies for her Bits! Oh no, not if she knew it!... “Yes, go on, dear,” she resumed, returning to the tea-table again. “No, I don’t wish it was something else. If we’re poor we’re poor, and the Services are out of the question, and it’s just as good as lots of other jobs.—And oh, that reminds me: I had Mr. Miller in this afternoon!”...

“And oh!” said Stan ten minutes later; “I forgot, too! I met a chap, too—forgotten all about it. That fellow I gave a dressing-down about India to up at the Pratts’ there. He stopped me in the street, and what do you think? It was all I could do not to laugh. He asked me whether I could put him on to a job! Me, who haven’t started myself yet!... I said I could put him on to a drink if that would do—I had to stand somebody a drink, just to wet my luck, and I didn’t see another soul—and I fetched it all out of my pocket in a pub inSt.Martin’s Lane—,” he fetched it all out of his pocket again now, “—fetched it out as if it was nothing—you should have seen him look at it!—Strong his name is—didn’t catch it that day he was burbling suchstuff——”

Dorothy’s eyes shone. Dear old Stan! That too pleased her. No doubt the Pratts would be told that Stan was going about so heavily laden with money that he had to divide the weight in order not to walklop-sided——

Worn woollies for His Impudence’s Bits!——

Rather not! There would be a parcel round from Harrods’ to-morrow!

Amorywould have been far less observant than she was had it not occurred to her, as she left Dorothy’s flat that day, that she had been hustled out almost unceremoniously. She hoped—she sincerely hoped—that she did not see the reason. To herself, as to any other person not absolutely case-hardened by prejudice, the thing that presented itself to her mind would not have been a reason at all; but these conventional people were so extraordinary, and in nothing more extraordinary than in their regulations for receiving callers of the opposite sex. That was what she meant by the vulgarizing of words and the leaping to ready-made conclusions. A conventional person coming upon herself and Mr. Strong closeted together would have his stereotyped explanation; but that was no reason why anybody clearer-eyed and more open-minded and generous-hearted should fall into the same degrading supposition. It would be ridiculous to suppose that there was “anything” between Dorothy and Mr. Miller. Amory knew that in the past Dorothy had had genuine business with Mr. Miller. And so now had she herself with Mr. Strong. And as for Stan’s going about in open daylight with a “dark Spanish type”—a type traditionally wickeder than any other—Amorythought nothing of that either. Stan had as much right to go about with his Spanish female as Cosimo had to take Britomart Belchamber to a New Greek Society matinée or to one of Walter’s Lectures. Amory would never have dreamed of putting a false interpretation on these things.

Nevertheless, her visithadbeen cut singularly short, and Dorothy plainlyhadwanted to be rid of her. Because hearts are kind eyes need not necessarily be blind. Amory could not conceal from herself that in magnanimously passing these things over as nothing, she was, after all, making Dorothy a present of a higher standard than she had any right to. Judged by her own standards (which was all the judgment she could strictly have claimed), there was—Amory would not say a fishiness about the thing—in fact she would not say anything about it at all. The less said the better. Pushed to its logically absurd conclusion, Dorothy’s standard meant that whenever people of both sexes met they should not be fewer than three in number. In Amory’s saner view, on the other hand, two, or else a crowd, was far more interesting. Nobody except misanthropists talked about the repulsion of sex. Very well: if it was an attraction, itwasan attraction. And if it was an attraction to Amory, it was an attraction to Dorothy also; if to Cosimo, then to Stan as well. The only difference was that she and Cosimo openly admitted it and acted upon it, while Stan and Dorothy did not admit it, but probably acted furtively on it just the same.

It was very well worth the trouble of the call to haveher ideas on the subject so satisfactorily cleared up.

At the end of the path between the ponds she hesitated for a moment, uncertain whether to keep to the road or to strike across the sodden Heath. She decided for the Heath. Mr. Strong had said that he might possibly come in that afternoon to discuss the Indian policy, and she did not want to keep him waiting.

Then once more she remembered her unceremonious dismissal, and reflected that after all that had left her with time on her hands. She would take a turn. It would only bore her to wait in The Witan alone, or, which was almost the same thing, with Cosimo. The Witan was rather jolly when there were crowds and crowds of people there; otherwise it was dull.

She turned away to the right, passed the cricket-pitch, found the cycle track, and wandered down towards the Highgate ponds.

She had reached the model-yacht pond, and was wondering whether she should extend her walk still further, when she saw ahead of her, sitting on a bench beneath an ivied stump, two figures deep in conversation. She recognized them at a glance. They were the figures of Cosimo and Britomart Belchamber. Britomart was looking absently away over the pond; Cosimo was whispering in her ear. Another second or two and Amory would have walked past them within a yard.

Now Amory and Cosimo had married on certain express understandings, of which a wise and far-sighted anticipation of the various courses that might be taken in the event of their not getting on very well togetherhad formed the base. Therefore the little warm flurry she felt suddenly at her heart could not possibly have been a feeling of liberation. How could it, when there was nothing to be liberated from? Just as much liberty as either might wish had been involved in the contract itself, and a formal announcement of intention on either part was to be considered a valid release.

And so, in spite of that curious warm tingle, Amory was not one atom more free, nor one atom less free, to develop (did she wish it) a relationship with anybody else—Edgar Strong or anybody—than she had been before. She saw this perfectly clearly. She had talked it all over with Cosimo scores of times. Why, then, did she tingle? Was it that they had not talked it over enough?

No. It was because of a certain furtiveness on Cosimo’s part. Evidently he wished to “take action” (if she might use the expression without being guilty of a vulgarized meaning)withouthaving made his formal announcement. That she had come upon them so far from The Witan was evidence of this. They had deliberately chosen a part of the Heath they had thought it unlikely Amory would visit. They could have done—whatever they were doing—under her eyes had they wished, but they had stolen off together instead. It was a breach of the understanding.

Before they had seen her, she left the path, struck across the grass behind them, and turned her face homewards. She was far, far too proud to look back. Certainly it was his duty to have let her know. Never mind. Since he hadn’t....

Yet the tingling persisted, coming and going in quite pleasurable little shocks. Then all at once she found herself wondering how far Cosimo and Britomart had gone, or would go. Not that it was any business of hers. She was not her husband’s keeper. It would be futile to try to keep somebody who evidently didn’t want to be kept. It would also take away the curious subtle pleasure of that thrill.

She was not conscious that she quickened the steps that took her to the studio, where by this time Edgar Strong probably awaited her.

Most decidedly Cosimo ought to have given herwarning——

As for Britomart Belchamber—sly creature—no doubt she had persuaded him to slink away likethat——

Well, there would be time enough to deal with her by andbye——

Amory reached The Witan again.

As she entered the hall a maid was coming out of the dining-room. Amory called her.

“Has Mr. Strong been in?”

“He’s in the studio, m’m,” the maid replied.

“Are the children with Miss Belchamber?”

“No, m’m. They’re with nurse, m’m.”

“Is Miss Belchamber in her room?”

“No, m’m. She’s gone out.”

“How long ago?”

“About an hour, m’m.”

“Is Mr. Pratt in?”

“I think so, m’m. I’ll go and inquire.”

“Never mind. I’m going upstairs.”

Ah! Then they had gone out separately, by pre-arrangement! More slyness! And this was Cosimo’s “pretence” at being Miss Belchamber’s devoted admirer! Of course, if there had been any pretence at all about it, it would have had to be that he was not her admirer. Very well; they would see about that, too,later!——

She went quickly to her own room, changed her blouse for a tea-gown, and then, with that tingling at her heart suddenly warm and crisp again, descended to the studio.

It was high time (she told herself) that the “Novum’s” Indian policy was definitely settled. Mr. Strong also said so, the moment he had shaken hands with her and said “Good afternoon.” But Mr. Strong spoke bustlingly, as if the more haste he made the more quickly the job would be over.

“Now these are the lines we have to choose from,” he said....

And he enumerated a variety of articles they had in hand, including Mr. Prang’s.

“Then there’s this,” he said....

He told Amory about a crisis in the Bombay cotton trade, and of a scare in the papers that very morning about heavy withdrawals of native capital from the North Western Banks....

“But I think the best thing of all would be for me to write an article myself,” he said, “and to back itup with a number of Notes. What I really want cleared up is our precise objective. I want to know what that’s to be.”

“We’ll have tea in first, and then we shall be undisturbed,” said Amory.

“Better wait for Cosimo, hadn’t we?”

“He’s out,” said Amory, passing to the bell.

She sat down on the corner of the sofa, and watched the maid bring in tea. Mr. Strong, who had placed himself on the footstool and was making soughing noises by expelling the air from his locked hands, appeared to be brooding over his forthcoming number. But that quick little tingle of half an hour before had had a curious after-effect on Amory. How it had come about she did not know, but the fact remained that she was not, now, so very sure that even the “Novum” was quite as great a thing as she had supposed it to be. Or rather, if the “Novum” itself was no less great, she had, quite newly, if dimly, foreseen herself in a more majestic rôle than that of a mere technicaldirectrice.

Politics? Yes, it undoubtedly was the Great Game. Strong men fancied themselves somewhat at it, and conceited themselves, after the fashion of men, that it was they who wrought this marvel or that. But was it? Had there not been women so much stronger than they that, doing apparently nothing, their nothings had been more potent than all the rest? She began to give her fancy play. For example, there was that about a face launching a thousand ships. That was an old story, of course; if a face could launch a thousandships so many centuries ago, there was practically no limit to its powers with the British Navy at its present magnificent pitch of numerical efficiency. But that by the way. It was the idea that had seized Amory. Say a face—Helen’s, she thought it was—had launched a thousand, or even five hundred ships; where was the point? Why, surely that that old Greek Lord High Admiral, whoever he was—(Amory must look him up; chapter and verse would be so very silencing if she ever had occasion to put all this into words)—surely he had thought, as all men thought, that he was obeying no behest but his own. The chances were that he had hardly wasted a thought on Helen’s face as a factor in the launching....

Yet Helen’s face had been the real launching force, or rather the brain behind Helen’s face ... but Amory admitted that she was not quite sure of her ground there. Perhaps she was mixing Helen up with somebody else. At any rate, if she was wrong about Helen she was not wrong about Catherine of Russia. Nor about Cleopatra. Nor about the Pompadour. These had all had brains, far superior to the brains of their men, which they had used through the medium of their beauty. She knew this because she had been reading about them quite recently, and could put her finger on the very page; she had a wonderful memory for the places in books in which passages occurred.... So there were Catherine the Second, and Cleopatra, and the Pompadour, even if she had been wrong about Helen. That was a curious omission of Homer’s, by the way—or was it Virgil?—the omission of all referenceto the brain behind. Perhaps it had seemed so obvious that he took it for granted. But barring that, the notion of a face launching the ships was very fine. It was the Romantic Point of View. Hitherto Amory had passed over the Romantic Point of View rather lightly, but now she rather thought there was a good deal in it. At any rate that about the face of a woman being the real launching-force of a whole lot of ships—well, it was an exaggeration, of course, and in a sense only a poetic way of putting it—but it was quite a ripping idea.

So if a ship could be launched, apparently, not by a mere material knocking away of the thingummy, but by the timeless beauty of a face, an Indian policy ought not to present more difficulties. At all events it was worth trying. Perhaps “trying” was not exactly the word. These things happened or they didn’t happen. But anybody not entirely stupid would know what Amory meant.

The maid lighted the little lamp under the water-vessel that kept the muffins hot and then withdrew. Amory turned languidly to Mr. Strong.

“Would you mind pouring out the tea? I’m so lazy,” she said.

She had put her feet up on the sofa, and her hands were clasped behind her head. The attitude allowed the wide-sleeved tea-gown into which she had changed to fall away from her upper arm, showing her satiny triceps. The studio was warm; it might be well to open the window a little; and Amory, from her sofa, gave the order. It seemed to her that she had notgiven orders enough from sofas. She had been doing too much of the work herself instead of lying at her ease and stilly willing it to be done. She knew better now. It was much better to take a leaf out of the book ofles grandes maitresses. She recognized that she ought to have done that long ago.

So Mr. Strong brought her tea, and then returned to his footstool again, where he ate enormous mouthfuls of muffin, spreading anchovy-paste over them, and drank great gulps of tea. He fairly made a meal of it. But Amory ate little, and allowed her tea to get cold. The cast which Stan had coarsely called “the fore-quarter” had been hung up on the wall at the sofa’s end, and her eyes were musingly upon it. The trotter lay out of sight behind her.

“Well, about that thing of Prang’s,” said Mr. Strong when he could eat no more. “Hadn’t we better be settling about it?”

“Don’t shout across the room,” said Amory languidly, and perhaps a little pettishly. She was wondering what was the matter with her hand that Mr. Strong had not kissed it when he had said good afternoon. He had kissed it on a former occasion.

“Head bad?” said Mr. Strong.

“No, my head’s all right, but there’s no reason we should edit the ‘Novum’ from the house-tops.”

“Was I raising my voice? Sorry.”

Mr. Strong rose from his footstool and took up a station between the tea-table and the asbestos log.

Amory was getting rather tired of hearing about that thing of Prang’s. She did not see why Mr. Strongshould shuffle about it in the way he did. The article had been twice “modified,” that was to say more or less altered, and Amory could hardly be expected to go on reading it in its various forms for ever. What did Mr. Strong want? If he whittled much more at Mr. Prang’s clear statement of a point of view of which the single virtue was its admitted extremeness, he would be reducing the “Novum” to the level of mere Liberalism, and they had long ago decided that, of the Conservative who opposed and the Liberal who killed by insidious kindnesses, the former was to be preferred as a foe. Besides, there was an alluring glow about Mr. Prang’s way of writing. No doubt that was part and parcel of the glamour of the East. The Eastern style, like the Eastern blood, had more sun in it. Keats had put that awfully well, in the passage about “parched Abyssinia” and “old Tartary the Fierce,” and so had that modern man, who had spoken of Asia as lying stretched out “in indolent magnificence of bloom.” Yes, there was a funny witchery about Asia. In all sorts of ways they “went it” in Asia. Bacchus had had a spree there, and it was there—or was that Egypt?—that Cleopatra or the Queen of Sheba or somebody had smuggled her satiny self into a roll of carpets and had had herself carried as a present to King Solomon or Mark Antony or whoever it was. It seemed to be in the Asian atmosphere, and Mr. Prang’s prose style had a smack of it too. Mr. Strong—his literary style, of course, she meant—might have been all the better for a touch of that blood-warmth and thrill....

And there were ripping bits of reckless passion in Herodotus too.

But Mr. Strong continued to stand between the tea-table and the asbestos log, and to let fall irresolute sentences from time to time. Prang, he said, really was a bit stiff, and he, Mr. Strong, wasn’t sure that he altogether liked certain responsibilities. Not that he had changed his mind in the least degree. He only doubted whether in the long run it would pay the “Novum” itself to acquire a reputation for exploiting what everybody else knew as well as they did, but left severely alone. In fact, he had assumed, when he had taken the job on, that the work for which he received only an ordinary working-salary would be conditioned by what other editors did and received for doing it.... At that Amory looked up.

“Oh? But I thought that the truth, regardless of consequences, was our motto?”

“Of course—without fear or favour in a sense—but where there are extrarisks——”

What did this slow-coach of a man mean?——”What risks?” Amory asked abruptly.

“Well, say risks to Cosimo as proprietor.”

“You mean he might lose his money?” she said, with a glance round the satiny triceps and the apple-bud of an elbow.

“Well—does hewantto lose his money?—What I mean is, that we aren’t paying our way—we’ve scarcely any advertisements, yousee——”

“I think that what you mean is that we ought tobecome Liberals?” There was a little ring in Amory’s voice.

Mr. Strong made no reply.

“Or Fabians, perhaps?”

Still Mr. Strong did not answer.

“Because if youdomean that, I can only say I’m—disappointed in you!”

Now those who knew Edgar Strong the best knew how exceedingly sensitive he was to those very words—“I’m disappointed in you.” In his large and varied experience they were invariably the prelude to the sack. And he very distinctly did not want the sack—not, at any rate, until he had got something better. Perhaps he reasoned within himself that, of himself and Prang, he would be the more discreet editor, and so lifted the question a whole plane morally higher. Perhaps, if it came to the next worst, he was prepared to accept the foisting of Prang upon him and to take his chance. Anyway, his face grew very serious, and he reached for the footstool, drew it close up to Amory’s couch, and sat down on it.

“I wonder,” he said slowly, looking earnestly at his folded hands, “whether you’ll put the worst interpretation on what I’m going to say.”

Amory waited. She dropped the satiny-white upper arm. Mr. Strong resumed, more slowlystill—

“It’s this. We’re risking things. Cosimo’s risking his money, but he may be risking more than that. And if he risks it, so do I.”

Into Amory’s pretty face had come the look of the woman who prefers men to take risks rather than totalk about them.—“What do you risk?” she asked in tones that once more chilled Mr. Strong.

“Well, for one thing, a prosecution. Prang’s rather a whole-hogger. It’s what I said before—we want to use him, not have him use us.”

“Oh?” said Amory with a faint smile. “And can’t you manage Mr. Prang?”

There was no doubt at all in Mr. Strong’s mind what that meant. “Because if you can’t,” it plainly meant, “I dare say we can find somebody who can.” Without any qualification whatever, she really was beginning to be a little disappointed in him. She wondered how Cleopatra or the Queen of Sheba would have felt (had such a thing been conceivable) if, when that carpet had been carried by the Nubians into her lover’s presence and unrolled, Antony or whatever his name was had blushed and turned away, too faint-hearted to take the gift the gods offered him? Risks! Weren’t—Indian policies—worth a little risk?...

Besides, no doubt Cosimo was still with Britomart Belchamber....

She put her hands behind her head again and gave a little laugh.

Well, (as Edgar Strong himself might have put it in the days when his conversation had been slangier than it was now), it was up to him to make good pretty quickly or else to say good-bye to the editorship of a rag that at least did one bit of good in the world—paid Edgar Strong six pounds a week. And if it must be done it must, that was all. Damn it!...

Perhaps the satiny upper arm decided his nextaction. Once before he had made its plaster facsimile serve his turn, and on the whole he would have preferred to be able to do so again; but even had that object not been out of reach on the wall and its original not eighteen inches away at the sofa’s end, three hundred pounds a year in jeopardy must be made surer than that. He would have given a month’s screw could Cosimo have come in at that moment. He actually did give a quick glance in the direction of the door....

But no help came.

Damn it——!

The next moment he had kissed that satiny surface, and then, gloomily, and as one who shoulders the consequences of an inevitable act, stalked away and stood in the favourite attitude of Mr. Brimby’s heroes under great stress of emotion—with his head deeply bowed and his back to Amory. There fell between them a silence so profound that either became conscious at the same moment of the soft falling of rain on the studio roof.

Then, after a full minute and a half, Mr. Strong, still without turning, walked to the table on which his hat lay. Always without looking at Amory, he moved towards the door.

“Good-bye,” he said over his shoulder.

There was the note of a knell in his tone. He meant good-bye for ever. All in a moment Amory knew that on the morrow Cosimo would receive Edgar Strong’s formal resignation from the “Novum’s” editorial chair, and that, though Edgar might retain hishold on the paper until his successor had been found, he would never come to The Witan any more. He had called Mr. Prang a whole-hogger, but in Love he himself appeared to be rather a whole-hogger. He had all but told her that to see her again would mean ... she trembled. The alternative was not to see her again. His whole action had said, more plainly than any words could say, “After that—all or nothing.”

She had not moved. She hardly knew the voice for her own in which she said, still without turning her head, “Wait—aminute——”

Mr. Strong waited. The minute for which she asked passed.

“One moment——,” murmured Amory again.

At last Mr. Strong lifted his head.—“There’s nothing to say,” he said.

“I’m thinking,” Amory replied in a low voice.

“Really nothing.”

“Give me just a minute——”

For she was thinking that it was her face, nothing else, that had launched him thus to the door. For a moment she felt compunction for its tyranny. Poor fellow, what else had he been able to do?... Yet what, between letting him go and bidding him stay, was she herself to do? At his touch her heart had swelled—been constricted—either—both; even had she not known that she was a pretty woman, now at any rate she had put it to the proof; and the chances seemed real enough that if he turned and looked at her now, he must give a cry, stride across the studio floor, and take her in his arms. Dared she provoke him?...

The moment she asked herself whether she dared she did dare. Not to have dared would to have been to be inferior to those great and splendid and reckless ones who had turned their eyes on their lovers and had whispered, “Antony—Louis—I am here!” If she courted less danger than she knew, her daring remained the same. And the room itself backed her up. So many doctrines were enunciated in that studio, the burden of one and all of which was “Why not?” The atmosphere was charged with permissions ... perhaps for him too. He was at the door now. It was only the turning of a key....

Amory’s low-thrilled voice called his name across the studio.

“Edgar——”

But he had thought no less quickly than she. He had turned. Shrewdly he guessed that she meant nothing; so much the better—damn it! There was something female about Edgar Strong; he knew more about some things than a young man ought to know; and in an instant he had found the “line” he meant to take. It was the “line” of honour rooted in dishonour—the “line” of Cosimo his friend—the “line” of black treachery to the hand that fed him with muffins and anchovy paste—or, failing these, the all-or-nothing “line.”... But on the whole he would a little rather go straight than not....

Nor did he hesitate. Amory had turned on the sofa. “Edgar!” she had called softly again. He swung round. The savagery of his reply—there seemed toAmory to be no other word to describe it—almost frightened her.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” he broke out. “Haven’t you done enough already? What do you suppose I’m made of?”

The moment he had said it he saw that he had made no mistake. It would not be necessary to go the length of turning the key. He glared at her for a moment; then he spoke again, less savagely, but no less curtly.

“You called me back to say something,” he said. “What is it?”

Instinctively Amory had covered her face with her hands. It was fearfully sweet and dangerous. Flattery could hardly have gone further than that tortured cry, “What do you think I’m made of?” Her heart was thumping—thump, thump, thump, thump. A lesser woman would have taken refuge in evasions, but not she—not she, with Cosimo carrying on with Britomart, and Dorothy Tasker no doubt whispering to her Otis or Wilbur or whatever her American’s name might be, and Stan perhaps deep in an intrigue with his Spanish female at that very moment. No, she had provoked him, and he had now every right to cry, not “Have you read ‘The Tragic Comedians’?” but “Do you know what you’re doing?”... And he was speaking again now.

“Because,” he was saying quietly, “ifthat’sit ... I must know. I must have a little time. There will be things to settle. I don’t quite know how it happened; I suddenly saw you—and did it. Anyway, it’sdone—or begun.... But I won’t stab Cosimo in the back.... It will have to be the Continent, I suppose. Paris. There’s a little hotel I know in the Boulevard Montparnasse. It’s not very luxurious, but it’s cheap and fairly clean. Seven francs a day, but it would come rather less for the two of us. And you wouldn’t have to spend much on dress in the Quartier. Or there’s Montmartre. Or some of those out-of-the-way seaside places. I should like to take you to the sea first, and then to atown——”

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