Sophy Gerard sat in the little back room of Louise's house, which the latter called her den, but which she seldom entered. The little actress was looking very trim and neat in a simple blue-serge costume which fitted her to perfection, her hair very primly arranged and tied up with a bow. She had a pen in her mouth, there was a sheaf of bills before her, and an open housekeeping-book lay on her knee. She had been busy for the last half-hour making calculations, the result of which had brought a frown to her face.
"There is no doubt about it," she decided. "Louise is extravagant!"
The door opened, and Louise herself, in a gray morning gown of some soft material, with a bunch of deep-red roses at her waist, looked into the room.
"Why, little girl," she exclaimed, "how long have you been here?"
"All the morning," Sophy replied. "I took the dogs out, and then I started on your housekeeping-book and the bills. Your checks will have to be larger than ever this month, Louise, and I don't see how you can possibly draw them unless you go and see your bankers first."
Louise threw herself into an easy chair.
"Dear me!" she sighed. "I thought I had been so careful!"
"How can you talk about being careful?" Sophyprotested, tapping the little pile of bills with her forefinger. "You seem to have had enough asparagus and strawberries every day for at least half a dozen people. As for the butcher, I am going this afternoon to tell him exactly what I think of him. And there are several matters here," she went on, "concerning which you must really talk to the cook yourself. For instance—"
"Oh, please don't!" Louise broke in. "I know I am extravagant. I suppose I always shall be; but if there is one thing in the world I will not do, it is talk to the cook! She might insist upon going, and I have never known any one who made such entrées. Remember, child, it will be full salary in a fortnight's time."
"You will have to go and see your bankers, anyhow," Sophy declared. "It's no use my writing out these checks for you. Unless you have paid in some money I don't know anything about, you seem to be overdrawn already."
"I will see to that," Louise promised. "The bank manager is such a charming person. Besides, what are banks for but to oblige their clients? How pale you look, little girl! Were you not late last night?"
Sophy swung round in her place.
"I am all right. I spent the evening in my rooms and went to bed at eleven o'clock. Who's lunching with you? I see the table is laid for two."
Louise glanced at the clock upon the mantelpiece.
"Mr. Strangewey," she replied. "I suppose he will be here in a minute or two."
Sophy dropped the housekeeping-book and jumped up.
"I'd better go, then."
"Of course not," Louise answered. "You must stay to lunch. Ring the bell and tell them to lay a place foryou. Afterward, if you like, you may come in here and finish brooding over these wretched bills while Mr. Strangewey talks to me."
Sophy came suddenly across the room and sank on the floor at Louise's feet.
"What are you going to do about Mr. Strangewey, Louise?" she asked wistfully.
"What am I going to do about him?"
"He is in love with you," Sophy continued. "I am sure—I am almost sure of it."
Louise's laugh was unconvincing.
"I do not think," she said, "that he quite knows what it means to be in love."
Sophy suddenly clasped her friend's knees.
"Dear," she whispered, "perhaps I am a little fool, but tell me, please!"
Louise, for a moment, was startled. Then she leaned forward and kissed the eager, upturned face.
"You foolish child!" she exclaimed. "I believe that you have been worrying. Why do you think so much about other people?"
"Please tell me," Sophy begged. "I want to understand how things really are between you and John Strangewey. Are you in love with him?"
Louise's eyes were soft and dreamy.
"I wish I knew," she answered. "If I am, then there are things in life more wonderful than I have ever dreamed of. He doesn't live in our world—and our world, as you know, has its grip. He knows nothing about my art, and you can guess what life would be to me without that. What future could there be for him and for me together? I cannot remake myself."
There was something in Sophy's face which was almost like wonder.
"So this is the meaning of the change in you, Louise! I knew that something had happened. You have seemed so different for the last few months."
Louise nodded.
"London has never been the same place to me since I first met him in Cumberland," she admitted. "Sometimes I think I am—to use your own words—in love with John. Sometimes I feel it is just a queer, indistinct, but passionate appreciation of the abstract beauty of the life he seems to stand for."
"Is he really so good, I wonder?" Sophy asked pensively.
"I do not know," Louise sighed. "I only know that when I first talked to him, he seemed different from any man I have ever spoken with in my life. I suppose there are few temptations up there, and they keep nearer to the big things. Sometimes I wonder, Sophy, if it was not very wrong of me to draw him away from it all!"
"Rubbish!" Sophy declared. "If he is good, he can prove it and know it here. He will come to know the truth about himself. Besides, it isn't everything to possess the standard virtues. Louise, he will be here in a minute. You want to be left alone with him. What are you going to say when he asks you what you know he will ask you?"
Louise looked down at her.
"Dear," she said, "I wish I could tell you. I do not know. That is the strange, troublesome part of it—I do not know!"
"Will you promise me something?" Sophy begged. "Promise me that if I stay in here quietly until after he has gone, you will come and tell me!"
Louise leaned a little downward as if to look into herfriend's face. Sophy suddenly dropped her eyes, and the color rose to the roots of her hair. There was a knock at the door, and the parlor maid entered.
"Mr. Strangewey, madam," she announced.
"There can be no possible doubt," Louise remarked, as she unfolded her napkin, "as to our first subject of conversation. Both Sophy and I are simply dying of curiosity to know about the prince's supper party."
"It was very cheerful and very gay," John said. "Every one seemed to enjoy it very much."
"Oh, la, la!" Sophy exclaimed. "Is that all you have to tell us? I shall begin to think that you were up to mischief there."
"I believe," Louise declared, "that every one of the guests is sworn to secrecy as to what really goes on."
"I can assure you that I wasn't," John told them.
"The papers hint at all sorts of things," Sophy continued. "Every one who writes for the penny illustrated papers parades his whole stock of classical knowledge when he attempts to describe them. We read of the feasts of Lucullus and Bacchanalian orgies. They say that at supper-time you lie about on sofas and feast for four hours at a stretch."
"The reports seem exaggerated," John laughed. "We went in to supper at half past twelve and we came out just before two. We sat on chairs, and the conversation was quite decorous."
"This is most disappointing!" Louise murmured. "I cannot think why the prince never invites us."
"The ladies of his family were not present," John remarked stiffly.
There was a moment's silence. Louise had looked down at her plate, and Sophy glanced out of the window.
"Is it true that Calavera was there?" the latter asked presently.
"Yes, she was there," John replied. "She danced after supper."
"Oh, you lucky man!" Louise sighed. "She only dances once or twice a year off the stage. Is she really so wonderful close to?"
"She is, in her way, very wonderful," John agreed.
"Confess that you admired her," Louise persisted.
"I thought her dancing extraordinary," he confessed, "and, to be truthful, I did admire her. All the same, hers is a hateful gift."
Louise looked at him curiously for a moment. His face showed few signs of the struggle through which he had passed, but the grim setting of his lips reminded her a little of his brother. He had lost, too, something of the boyishness, the simple light-heartedness of the day before. Instinctively she felt that the battle had begun. She asked him no more about the supper party, and Sophy, quick to follow her lead, also dropped the subject.
Luncheon was not a lengthy meal, and immediately its service was concluded, Sophy rose to her feet with a sigh.
"I must go and finish my work," she declared. "Let me have the den to myself for at least an hour, please, Louise. It will take me longer than that to muddle through your books."
Louise nodded and rose to her feet.
"We will leave you entirely undisturbed," she promised. "I hope, when you have finished, you willhave something more agreeable to say than you had before lunch. Shall we have our coffee up-stairs?" she suggested, turning to John.
"I should like to very much," he replied. "I want to talk to you alone."
She led the way up-stairs into the cool, white drawing-room, with its flower-perfumed atmosphere and its delicate, shadowy air of repose. She curled herself up in a corner of the divan and gave him his coffee. Then she leaned back and looked at him.
"So you have really come to London, Mr. Countryman!"
"I have followed you," he answered. "I think you knew that I would. I tried not to," he went on, after a moment's pause. "I fought against it as hard as I could; but in the end I had to give in."
"That was very sensible of you," she declared knocking the ash from her cigarette. "There is no use wearing oneself out fighting a hopeless battle. You know now that there are things in life which are not to be found in your passionless corner among the hills. You have realized that you owe a duty to yourself."
"That was not what brought me," he answered bluntly. "I came for you."
Louise's capacity for fencing seemed suddenly enfeebled. A frontal attack of such directness was irresistible.
"For me!" she repeated weakly.
"Of course," he replied. "None of your arguments would have brought me here. If I have desired to understand this world at all, it is because it is your world. It is you I want—don't you understand that? I thought you would know it from the first moment you saw me!"
He was suddenly on his feet, leaning over her, a changed man, masterful, passionate. She opened her lips, but said nothing. She felt herself lifted up, clasped for a moment in his arms. Unresisting, she felt the fire of his kisses. The world seemed to have stopped. Then she tried to push him away, weakly, and against her own will. At her first movement he laid her tenderly back in her place.
"I am sorry!" he said. "And yet I am not," he added, drawing his chair close up to her side. "I am glad! You knew that I loved you, Louise. You knew that it was for you I had come."
She was beginning to collect herself. Her brain was at work again; but she was conscious of a new confusion in her senses, a new element in her life. She was no longer sure of herself.
"Listen," she begged earnestly. "Be reasonable! How could I marry you? Do you think that I could live with you up there in the hills?"
"We will live," he promised, "anywhere you choose in the world."
"Ah, no!" she continued, patting his hand. "You know what your life is, the things you want in life. You don't know mine yet. There is my work. You cannot think how wonderful it is to me. You don't know the things that fill my brain from day to day, the thoughts that direct my life. I cannot marry you just because—because—"
"Because what?" he interrupted eagerly.
"Because you make me feel—something I don't understand, because you come and you turn the world, for a few minutes, topsyturvy. But that is all foolishness, isn't it? Life isn't built up of emotions. What I want you to understand, and what you, please, must understand,is that at present our lives are so far, so very far, apart. I do not feel I could be happy leading yours, and you do not understand mine."
"I have come to find out about yours," John explained. "That is why I am here. Perhaps I ought to have waited a little time before I spoke to you as I did just now. Come, you can forget what I have said and done; but to me it will be an everlasting joy. I shall treasure the memory of it. It will help me—I can't tell you quite in what way it will help me. But for the rest, I will serve my apprenticeship. I will try to get into sympathy with the things that please you. It will not take me long. As soon as you feel that we are drawing closer together, I will ask you again what I have asked you this afternoon. In the meantime, I may be your friend, may I not? You will let me see a great deal of you? You will help me just a little?"
Louise leaned back in her chair. She had been carried off her feet, brought face to face with emotions which she dared not analyze. Perhaps, after all her self-dissection, there were still secret chambers. She thought almost with fear of what they might contain. Her sense of superiority was vanishing. She was, after all, like other women.
"Yes," she promised, "I will help. We will leave it at that. Some day you shall talk to me again, if you like. In the meantime, remember we are both free. You have not known many women, and you may change your mind when you have been longer in London. Perhaps it will be better for you if you do!"
"That is quite impossible," John said firmly. "You see," he went on, looking at her with shining eyes, "I know now what I half believed from the first moment that I saw you. I love you!"
Springing restlessly to her feet, she walked across the room and back again. Action of some sort seemed imperative. A curious hypnotic feeling seemed to be dulling all her powers of resistance. She looked into her life and she was terrified. Everything had grown insignificant. It couldn't really be possible that with her brains, her experience, this man who had dwelt all his life in the simple ways had yet the power to show her the path toward the greater things!
Through the complex web of emotions which made up her temperament there suddenly sprang a primitive instinct, the primitive instinct of all women, rebelling against the first touch of a master's hand. Was she to find herself wrong and this man right? Was she to submit, to accept from his hand the best gifts of life—she who had looked for them in such very high, such very inaccessible places?
She felt like a child again. She trembled a little as she sat down by his side. It was not in this fashion that she had intended to hear what he had to say.
"I don't know what is the matter with me to-day," she murmured distractedly. "I think I must send you away. You disturb my thoughts. I can't see life clearly. Don't hope for too much from me," she begged. "But don't go away," she added, with a sudden irresistible impulse of anxiety. "Oh, I wish—I wish you understood me and everything about me, without my having to say a word!"
"I feel what you are," he answered, "and that is sufficient."
Once more she rose to her feet and walked across to the window. An automobile had stopped in the street below. She looked down upon it with a sudden frozen feeling of apprehension.
John moved to her side, and for him, too, the joy of those few moments was clouded. A little shiver of presentiment took its place. He recognized the footman whom he saw standing upon the pavement.
"It is the Prince of Seyre," Louise faltered.
"Must you see him?" John muttered.
"Yes!"
"Send him away," John begged. "We haven't finished yet. I won't say anything more to upset you. What I want now is some practical guidance."
"I cannot send him away!"
John glanced toward her and hated himself for his fierce jealousy. She was looking very white and very pathetic. The light had gone from her eyes. He felt suddenly dominant, and, with that feeling, there came all the generosity of the conqueror.
"Good-by!" he said. "Perhaps I can see you some time to-morrow."
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers, one by one. Then he left the room. She listened to his footsteps descending the stairs, firm, resolute, deliberate. They paused, there was a sound of voices—the prince and he were exchanging greetings; then she heard other footsteps ascending, lighter, smoother, yet just as deliberate.
Her face grew paler as she listened. There was something which sounded to her almost like the beating of fate in the slow, inevitable approach of this unseen visitor.
Henri Graillot had made himself thoroughly comfortable. He was ensconced in the largest of John's easy chairs, his pipe in his mouth, a recently refilled teacup—Graillot was English in nothing except his predilection for tea—on the small table by his side. Through a little cloud of tobacco-smoke he was studying his host.
"So you call yourself a Londoner now, my young friend, I suppose," he remarked, taking pensive note of John's fashionable clothes. "It is a transformation, beyond a doubt! Is it, I wonder, upon the surface only, or have you indeed become heart and soul a son of this corrupt city?"
"Whatever I may have become," John grumbled, "it's meant three months of the hardest work I've ever done!"
Graillot held out his pipe in front of him and blew away a dense cloud of smoke.
"Explain yourself," he insisted.
John stood on the hearth-rug, with his hands in his pockets. His morning clothes were exceedingly well-cut, his tie and collar unexceptionable, his hair closely cropped according to the fashion of the moment. He had an extremely civilized air.
"Look here, Graillot," he said, "I'll tell you what I've done, although I don't suppose you would understand what it means to me. I've visited practically every theater in London."
"Alone?"
"Sometimes with Miss Maurel, sometimes with her little friend, Sophy Gerard, and sometimes alone," John replied. "I have bought a Baedeker, taken a taxicab by the day, and done all the sights. I've spent weeks in the National Gallery, picture-gazing, and I've done all those more modern shows up round Bond Street. I have bought a racing-car and learned to drive it. I have been to dinner parties that have bored me stiff. I have been introduced to crowds of people whom I never wish to see again, and made one or two friends," he added, smiling at his guest, "for whom I hope I am properly grateful."
"The prince has been showing you round a bit, hasn't he?" Graillot grunted.
"The prince has been extraordinarily kind to me," John admitted slowly, "for what reason I don't know. He has introduced me to a great many pleasant and interesting people, and a great many whom I suppose a young man in my position should be glad to know. He has shown me one side of London life pretty thoroughly."
"And what about it all?" Graillot demanded. "You find yourself something more of a citizen of the world, eh?"
"Not a bit," John answered simply. "The more I see of the life up here, the smaller it seems to me. I mean, of course, the ordinary life of pleasure, the life to be lived by a young man like myself, who hasn't any profession or work upon which he can concentrate his thoughts."
"Then why do you stay?"
John made no immediate reply. Instead, he walked to the window of his sitting room and stood looking outacross the Thames with a discontented frown upon his face. Between him and the Frenchman a curious friendship had sprung up during the last few months.
"Tell me, then," Graillot continued, taking a bite from his piece of cake and shaking the crumbs from his waistcoat, "what do you find in London to compensate you for the things you miss? You are cooped up here in this little flat—you, who are used to large rooms and open spaces; you have given up your exercise, your sports—for what?"
"I get some exercise," John protested. "I play rackets at Ranelagh most mornings, and I bought a couple of hacks and ride occasionally in the park before you're out of bed."
"That's all right for exercise," Graillot observed. "What about amusements?"
"Well, I've joined a couple of clubs. One's rather a swagger sort of place—the prince got me in there; and then I belong to the Lambs, where you yourself go sometimes. I generally look in at one or the other of them during the evening."
"You see much of Miss Maurel?"
John shook his head gloomily.
"Not as much as I should like," he confessed. "She seems to think and dream of nothing but this play of yours. I am hoping that when it is once produced she will be more free."
"I gather," Graillot concluded, "that, to put it concisely and truthfully, you are the most bored man in London. There is something behind all this effort of yours, my friend, to fit yourself, the round human being, into the square place. Speak the truth, now! Treat me as a father confessor."
John swung round upon his heel. In the clear lightit was obvious that he was a little thinner in the face and that some of the tan had gone from his complexion.
"I am staying up here, and going on with it," he announced doggedly, "because of a woman."
Graillot stopped eating, placed the remains of his cake in the saucer of his teacup, and laid it down. Then he leaned back in his chair and balanced his finger-tips one against the other.
"A woman!" he murmured. "How you astonish me!"
"Why?"
"Candor is so good," Graillot continued, "so stimulating to the moral system. It is absolute candor which has made friends of two people so far apart in most ways as you and myself. You surprise me simply because of your reputation."
"What about my reputation?"
Graillot smiled benignly.
"In France," he observed, "you would probably be offered your choice of lunatic asylums. Here your weakness seems to have made you rather the vogue."
"What weakness?"
"It is to a certain extent hearsay, I must admit," Graillot proceeded; "but the report about you is that, although you have had some of the most beautiful women in London almost offer themselves to you, you still remain without a mistress."
"What in the world do you mean?" John demanded.
"I mean," Graillot explained frankly, "that for a young man of your age, your wealth, and your appearance to remain free from any feminine entanglement is a thing unheard of in my country, and, I should imagine, rare in yours. It is not so that young men were made when I was young!"
"I don't happen to want a mistress," John remarked, lighting a cigarette. "I want a wife."
"But meanwhile—"
"You can call me a fool, if you like," John interrupted. "I may be one, I suppose, from your point of view. All I know is that I want to be able to offer the woman whom I marry, and who I hope will be the mother of my children, precisely what she offers me. I want a fair bargain, from her point of view as well as mine."
Graillot, who had been refilling his pipe, stopped and glowered at his host.
"What exactly do you mean?" he asked.
"Surely my meaning is plain enough," John replied. "We all have our peculiar tastes and our eccentricities. One of mine has to do with the other sex. I cannot make an amusement of them. It is against all my prejudices."
Graillot carefully completed the refilling of his pipe and lit it satisfactorily. Then he turned once more to John.
"Let us not be mistaken," he said. "You are a purist!"
"You can call me what you like," John retorted. "I do not believe in one law for the woman and another for the man. If a man wants a woman, and we all do more or less, it seems to me that he ought to wait until he finds one whom he is content to make the mother of his children."
Graillot nodded ponderously.
"Something like this I suspected," he admitted. "I felt that there was something extraordinary and unusual about you. If I dared, my young friend, I would write a play about you; but then no one would believeit. Now tell me something. I have heard your principles. We are face to face—men, brothers, and friends. Do you live up to them?"
"I have always done so," John declared.
Graillot was silent for several moments. Then he opened his lips to speak and abruptly closed them. His face suddenly underwent an extraordinary change. A few seconds ago his attitude had been that of a professor examining some favorite object of study; now a more personal note had humanized his expression. Whatever thought or reflection it was that had come into his mind, it had plainly startled him.
"Who is the woman?" he asked breathlessly.
"There is no secret about it, so far as I am concerned," John answered. "It is Louise Maurel. I thought you must have guessed."
The two men looked at each other in silence for some moments. Out on the river a little tug was hooting vigorously. The roar of the Strand came faintly into the room. Upon the mantelpiece a very ornate French clock was ticking lightly. All these sounds seemed suddenly accentuated. They beat time to a silence almost tragical in its intensity.
Graillot took out his handkerchief and dabbed his forehead. He had written many plays, and the dramatic instinct was strongly developed in him.
"Louise!" he muttered under his breath.
"She is very different, I know," John went on, after a moment's hesitation. "She is very clever and a great artist, and she lives in an atmosphere of which, a few months ago, I knew nothing. I have come up here to try to understand, to try to get a little nearer to her."
There was another silence, this time almost anawkward one. Then Graillot rose suddenly to his feet.
"I will respect your confidence," he promised, holding out his hand. "Have no fear of that. I am due now at the theater. Your tea is excellent, and such little cakes I never tasted before."
"You will wish me good luck?"
"No!"
"Why not?" John demanded, a little startled.
"Because," Graillot pronounced, "from what I have seen and know of you both, there are no two people in this world less suitable for each other."
"Look here," John expostulated, "I don't want you to go away thinking so. You don't understand what this means to me."
"Perhaps not, my friend," Graillot replied, "but remember that it is at least my trade to understand men and women. I have known Louise Maurel since she was a child."
"Then it is I whom you don't understand."
"That may be so," Graillot confessed. "One makes mistakes. Let us leave it at that. You are a young man of undeveloped temperament. You may be capable of much which at present I do not find in you."
"Tell me the one quality in which you consider me most lacking," John begged. "You think that I am narrow, too old-fashioned in my views? Perhaps I am, but, on the other hand, I am very anxious to learn and absorb all that is best in this wider life. You can't really call me prejudiced. I hated the stage before I came to London, but during the last few months no one has been a more assiduous theatergoer. I understand better than I did, and my views are immensely modified. I admit that Louise is a great artist, I admit that shehas wonderful talents. I am even willing, if she wished it, to allow her to remain for a time upon the stage. What could I say more? I want you on my side, Graillot."
"And I," Graillot replied, as he shook his friend's hand and hurried off, "want only to be on the side that will mean happiness for you both."
He left the room a little abruptly. John walked back to the window, oppressed with a sense of something almost ominous in the Frenchman's manner, something which he could not fathom, against which he struggled in vain. Side by side with it, there surged into his memory the disquietude which his present relations with Louise had developed. She was always charming when she had any time to spare—sometimes almost affectionate. On the other hand, he was profoundly conscious of her desire to keep him at arm's length for the present.
He had accepted her decision without a murmur. He made but few efforts to see her alone, and when they met he made no special claim upon her notice. He was serving his apprenticeship doggedly and faithfully. Yet there were times like the present when he found his task both hateful and difficult.
He walked aimlessly backward and forward, chafing against the restraint of the narrow walls and the low ceiling. A sudden desire had seized him to fly back to the hills, wreathed in mist though they might be; to struggle on his way through the blinding rain, to drink down long gulps of his own purer, less civilized atmosphere.
The telephone-bell rang. He placed the receiver to his ear almost mechanically.
"Who is it?" he asked.
"Lady Hilda Mulloch is asking for you, sir," the hall-porter announced.
Lady Hilda peered around John's room through her lorgnette, and did not hesitate to express her dissatisfaction.
"My dear man," she exclaimed, "what makes you live in a hotel? Why don't you take rooms of your own and furnish them? Surroundings like these are destructive to one's individuality."
"Well, you see," John explained, as he drew an easy chair up to the fire for his guest, "my stay in London is only a temporary one, and it hasn't seemed worth while to settle anywhere."
She stretched out her graceful body in front of the fire and raised her veil. She was very smartly dressed, as usual. Her white-topped boots and white silk stockings, which she seemed to have no objection to displaying, were of the latest vogue. The chinchilla around her neck and in her little toque was most becoming. She seemed to bring with her an atmosphere indefinable, in its way, but distinctly attractive. Brisk in her speech, a little commanding in her manner, she was still essentially feminine.
John, at her direct invitation, had called upon her once or twice since their meeting at the opera, and he had found her, from the first, more attractive than any other society woman of his acquaintance. None the less, he was a little taken aback at her present visit.
"Exactly why are you here, anyhow?" she demanded. "I feel sure that Eugène told me the reason which had brought you from your wilds, but I have forgotten it."
"For one thing," John replied, "I have come becauseI don't want to appear prejudiced, and the fact that I had never spent a month in London, or even a week, seemed a little narrow-minded."
"What's the real attraction?" Lady Hilda asked. "It is a woman, isn't it?"
"I am very fond of a woman who is in London," John admitted. "Perhaps it is true that I am here on her account."
Lady Hilda withdrew from her muff a gold cigarette-case and a little box of matches.
"Order some mixed vermuth with lemon for me, please," she begged. "I have been shopping, and I hate tea. I don't know why I came to see you. I suddenly thought of it when I was in Bond Street."
"It was very kind of you," John said. "If I had known that you cared about seeing me, I would have come to you with pleasure."
"What does it matter?" she answered. "You are thinking, perhaps, that I risk my reputation in coming to a young man's rooms? Those things do not count for me. Ever since I was a child I have done exactly as I liked, and people have shrugged their shoulders and said, 'Ah, well, it is only Lady Hilda!' I have been six months away from civilization, big-game shooting, and haven't seen a white woman. It didn't matter, because it was I. I traveled around the world with a most delightful man who was writing a book, but it didn't affect my reputation in the slightest. I am quite convinced that if I chose to take you off to Monte Carlo with me next week and spend a month with you there, I should get my pass to the royal enclosure at Ascot when I returned, and my invitation to the next court ball, even in this era of starch. You see, they would say, 'It is only Lady Hilda!'"
The waiter brought the vermuth, which his visitor sipped contentedly.
"So there is a woman, is there?" she went on, looking across the room at her companion. "Have you committed yourself already, then? Don't you remember what I told you the first night we met after the opera—that it is well to wait?"
"Yes, I remember," John admitted.
"I meant it."
He laughed good-humoredly, yet not without some trace of self-consciousness.
"The mischief was done then," he said.
"Couldn't it be undone?" she asked lazily. "Or are you one of those tedious people who are faithful forever? Fidelity," she continued, knocking the ash from her cigarette, "is really, to my mind, the most bourgeois of vices. It comes from a want of elasticity in the emotional fibres. Nothing in life has bored me so much as the faithfulness of my lovers."
"You ought to put all this into one of your books," John suggested.
"I probably shall, when I write my reminiscences," she replied. "Tell me about this woman. And don't stand about in that restless way at the other end of the room. Bring a chair close to me—there, close to my side!"
John obeyed, and his visitor contemplated him thoughtfully through a little cloud of tobacco-smoke.
"Yes," she decided, "there is no use denying it. You are hatefully good-looking, and somehow or other I think your clothes have improved you. You have a little more air than when you first came to town. Are you quite sure that you haven't made up your mind about this woman in a hurry?"
"Quite sure," John laughed. "I suppose I am rather an idiot, but I am addicted to the vice of which you were speaking."
She nodded.
"I should imagine," she said, "that you were not an adept in the art of flirtation. Is it true that the woman is Louise Maurel?"
"Quite true," John replied.
"But don't you know—"
She broke off abruptly. She saw the face of the man by her side suddenly change, and her instinct warned her of the danger into which she was rushing.
"You surprise me very much," she said. "Louise Maurel is a very wonderful woman, but she seems to spend the whole of her time with my cousin, the prince."
"They are, without doubt, very friendly," John assented. "They have a good many interests in common, and the prince is connected with the syndicate which finances the theater. I do not imagine, however, that the prince wishes to marry her, or she him."
Lady Hilda began to laugh, softly, but as if genuinely amused. John sat and watched her in ominous silence. Not the flicker of a smile parted his set lips. His visitor, however, was undisturbed. She leaned over and patted his hand.
"Simple Simon!" she murmured, leaning a little toward him. "If you go looking like that, I shall pat your cheeks, too. You are really much too nice-looking to wear such thunderclouds!"
"Perhaps if we chose some other subject of conversation—" John said stiffly.
"Oh, dear me!" she interrupted. "Very well! You really are a most trying person, you know. I put up with a great deal from you."
John was silent. Her face darkened a little, and an angry light flashed in her eyes.
"Well, I'll leave you alone, if you like," she decided, tossing her cigarette into the grate. "If my friendship isn't worth having, let it go. It hasn't often been offered in vain. There are more men in London than I could count who would go down on their knees for such a visit as I am paying you. And you—you," she added, with a little tremble of real anger in her tone, "you're too hatefully polite and priggish! Come and ring the bell for the lift. I am going!"
She slid gracefully to her feet, shook the cigarette ash from her clothes, and picked up her muff.
"You really are an egregious, thick-headed, obstinate countryman," she declared, as she moved toward the door. "You haven't either manners or sensibility. I am a perfect idiot to waste my time upon you. I wouldn't have done it," she added, as he followed her dumbly down the corridor, "if I hadn't rather liked you!"
"I am very sorry," he declared. "I don't know quite what I have done. I do appreciate your friendship. You have been very kind to me indeed."
She hesitated as his finger touched the bell of the lift, and glanced at the watch on her wrist.
"Well," she said, "if you want to be friends, I will give you one last chance. I am doing what sounds rather a ghastly thing—I am having a little week-end party down at my cottage at Bourne End. It will be rather like camping out, but some interesting people are coming. Will you motor down on Saturday evening and stay till Sunday night or Monday?"
"I shall be very pleased indeed," John replied. "It is very good of you to ask me. When I come, I'd like,if I may," he went on, "to tell you about myself, and why I am here, and about Louise."
She sighed, and watched the top of the lift as it came up. Then she dropped her veil.
"You will find me," she assured him, as she gave him the tips of her fingers, "a most sympathetic listener."
Louise and Sophy came to dine that evening with John in the grill-room at the Milan. They arrived a little late and were still in morning clothes. Louise was looking pale and tired, and her greeting was almost listless.
"We are dead beat," Sophy exclaimed. "We've been having a secret rehearsal this afternoon without Graillot, and he came in just as we were finishing. He was perfectly furious!"
"He was here to tea with me," John remarked, as he led the way to their table.
"My dear man," Louise exclaimed, "if you could have kept him half an hour longer you'd have earned our undying gratitude! You see, there are several little things on which we shall never agree, he and myself and the rest of the company; so we decided to run over certain passages in the way we intend to do them, without him. Of course, he saw through it all when he arrived, tore up his manuscript on the stage, and generally behaved like a madman."
"I am sorry," John said, as they took their seats and he handed Louise the menu of the dinner that he had ordered. "Won't the play be produced to-morrow night, then?"
"Oh, it will be produced all right," Louise told him; "but you don't know how we've all worn ourselves out, trying to make that old bear see reason. We've had togive way on one scene, as it is. What a delightful little dinner, John! You're spoiling us. You know how I love that big white asparagus. And strawberries, too! Well, I think we've earned it anyhow, Sophy!"
"You have," the latter declared. "You were the only one who could soothe Graillot at all."
"I can get my way with most people," Louise remarked languidly; "but it simply means that the more difficult they are, the more you have to spend yourself in getting it. John," she went on, after a moment's pause, "you are coming to-morrow night, I suppose?"
"Of course. Didn't I take my box two months ago?"
"And now that my part after the first act has been cut out, I am coming with him," Sophy put in. "I may, mayn't I?"
"Of course," John assented.
Louise sighed dejectedly.
"I am not at all sure that I shall like having you there," she said. "I shouldn't be at all surprised if it made me nervous."
He laughed incredulously.
"It's all very well," she went on, watching the champagne poured in to her glass, "but you won't like the play, you know."
"Perhaps I sha'n't understand it altogether," John agreed. "It's very subtle, and, as you know, I don't find problem plays of that sort particularly attractive; but with you in it, you can't imagine that I sha'n't find it interesting!"
"We were talking about it, coming up in the taxi," Louise continued, "and we came to the conclusion that you'd hate it. We've had to give way to Graillot withregard to the last act. Of course, there is really nothing in it, but I don't know just what you will say."
"Well, you needn't be afraid that I shall stand up in my box and order the performance to cease," John assured them, smiling. "Besides, I am not quite such an idiot, Louise. I know very well that you may have to say and do things on the stage which in private life would offend your taste and your sense of dignity. I am quite reconciled to that. I am prepared to accept everything you do and everything that you say. There! I can't say more than that, can I?"
Louise smiled at him almost gratefully. She drew her hand over his, caressingly.
"You are a dear!" she declared. "You've really made me feel much more comfortable. Now please tell me what you have been doing all day."
"Well, Graillot came in and spent most of the afternoon," John answered. "Since then, Lady Hilda Mulloch has been here."
Louise looked up quickly.
"What, here in your rooms?"
"I didn't ask her," John said. "I have been to see her once or twice, and she has been very nice, but I never dreamed of her coming here."
"Shameless hussy!" Sophy exclaimed, as she set down her wine-glass. "Didn't you tell her that Louise and I are the only two women in London who have the entrée to your rooms?"
"I am afraid it didn't occur to me to tell her that," John confessed, smiling. "All the same, I was surprised to see her. It was just a whim, I think."
"She is a clever woman," Louise sighed. "She won't know me—I can't imagine why. She is a cousin of the prince, too, you know."
"She is very amusing," John agreed. "I have met some interesting people at her house, too. She has asked me down to Bourne End for this next week-end—the week-end you are spending with Mrs. Faraday," he continued, glancing toward Louise.
Louise nodded. She looked at John critically.
"Quite a success in town, isn't he?" she remarked to Sophy. "People tumble over one another to get invitations for her week-end parties in the season. I must say I never heard of going down to Bourne End in February, though."
"The idea seemed rather pleasant to me," John confessed. "So many of you people know nothing of the country except just in the summer!"
"If John gets talking about the country," Louise said, "we shall not be allowed our proper share in the conversation for the rest of the evening. The question is, are we to allow him to go down to Bourne End? Lady Hilda isn't exactly a Puritan where your sex is concerned, you know, John."
"She'll expect you to flirt with her," Sophy insisted.
"She won't," John replied. "I have told her that I am in love with Louise."
"Was there ever such a man in the world?" Louise exclaimed. "Tell me, what did Lady Hilda say to that?"
"Not much," he answered. "She suggested that her cousin had a prior claim on you."
Louise laid down her knife and fork. Her left hand clutched the piece of toast which was lying by her side. She began to crumble it up into small pieces.
"What did Lady Hilda say exactly?" she insisted.
"Nothing much," John replied. "She seemed surprisedwhen I mentioned your name. I asked her why, and she told me, or rather she hinted, that you and the prince are very great friends."
"Anything more?"
"Nothing at all. I pointed out that the prince is interested in theatrical affairs, and that he is the chief member of the syndicate that runs the theaters. She seemed to understand."
There was a brief silence. Louise was once more looking a little tired. She changed the subject abruptly, and only returned to it when John was driving home with her.
"Do you know," she said, after a long silence, "I am not at all sure that I want you to go to Lady Hilda's!"
"Then I won't," he promised with alacrity. "I'll do just as you say."
Louise sat quite still, thinking, looking through the rain-splashed windows of the taxicab.
"You have only to say the word," John continued. "I should be flattered to think that you cared."
"It isn't that. Lady Hilda is very clever, and she is used to having her own way. I am afraid!"
"Afraid of what?"
"Of nothing," Louise declared suddenly. "Go, by all means, John. I am simply a little idiot when I give way for a moment to such poisonous thoughts. Lady Hilda can say what she likes about anybody or anything. It really doesn't matter at all whether you go to Bourne End or not."
"I don't quite understand you," John confessed; "but if you mean that you are afraid of anything Lady Hilda might say to me about you, why, I feel inclined to laugh at you. Lady Hilda," he added, with a touchof intuition, "is far too clever a woman to make such a mistake."
"I believe you are right," Louise agreed. "I shall pin my faith to Lady Hilda's cleverness and to your—fidelity. Go and spend your week-end there, by all means. I only wish I wasn't bound to go to the Faradays', but that can't possibly be helped. Come and lunch with me on Monday," she added impulsively. "It seems a long time since we had a little talk together."
He suddenly held her to him, and she met his lips unresistingly. It was the first time he had even attempted anything of the sort for months.
"You are a dear, John," she said, a little wistfully. "I am terribly divided in my thoughts about you. Just now I feel that I have only one wish—that I could give you all that you want, all that you deserve!"
He was very loverlike. She was once more a slight, quivering thing in his arms.
"Why need we wait any longer?" he begged. "If we told everyone to-night—to-morrow—the Faradays would not expect you to keep your engagement."
She shook herself free from him, but her smile was almost a compensation. The taxicab had stopped opposite her door, and her servant came hurrying out.
"Until Monday!" she murmured.
Early on the following morning John glided out of London in his two-seated racing-car, on his way to Bourne End. The white mist that hung over the Streets and parks and obscured the sky passed away as he left the suburbs behind him. With his first glimpse of the country came a welcome change. There were little flecks of blue in the firmament above him, a distinct if somewhat watery sunshine, and a soft buoyancy in the air, almost an anticipation of spring.
John leaned back in his seat, filled with an unexpected sense of contentment. After all, this week-end visit would probably turn out to be pleasant enough, and on Monday night the play was to be produced at last. He felt that for weeks Louise had been living in an atmosphere of high tension. He himself had begun to realize the nervous excitement of a first night, when the work of many months is at last presented in its concrete form. He was content to believe that all that had depressed him in Louise's demeanor had been due to this cause—to anxiety about her success, to the artistic dissatisfaction evolved by the struggle between her desire to conform to the prejudices of the critics and her wish to present truthfully the work of the great French dramatist. Once it was all over and the verdict given, relaxation would come. He was content to wait.
He had no trouble in finding Lady Hilda's cottage in Bourne End—a long, white bungalow-looking building,surrounded by a little stream which led down to the river. A man servant took his dressing case from the back of the car and showed him the way to the garage. Lady Hilda herself came strolling up the lawn and waved her hand.
"Now what about my week-end on the river?" she exclaimed, as they shook hands. "Isn't it delightful? I have ordered lunch early—do you mind?—and I thought, if you felt energetic, it's not too cold for you to take me out on the river; or, if you feel lazy, I'll take you."
"I am not much of an oarsman," John told her, "but I certainly won't ask you to pull me about!"
She led him into the little dining room and answered the question in his eyes when he saw the table laid for two.
"Colonel and Mrs. Dauncey are coming down this afternoon," she said, "and my brother Fred will be here in time for dinner. I wired to Mrs. Henderson—the woman who writes novels, you know—to come down, too, if she can, but I haven't heard from her. I have been looking at the river this morning, and it's almost like glass; and I can see little specks of green in the flower-beds where my bulbs are coming up. Richards will show you your room now, if you like, and we'll have lunch in ten minutes."
John found his cottage bedroom, with its view of the river, delightful, and at luncheon Lady Hilda showed him the side of herself that he liked best. She talked of her travels, and of big-game shooting. Afterward they sauntered out to the stream, and John, selecting the more stable of the two boats moored to the little landing-stage, pulled out into the river. Lady Hilda, in a fur coat, leaned back on a pile of cushions and watchedhim, with a cigarette between her lips. He found the exercise stimulating and delightful. Some of the color which he had lost came back to his cheeks.
"Aren't you sorry," she asked him once, as they paused to look across a vista of green meadows toward a distant range of hills, "for the people who see nothing in the country except in summer? Look at those lines of bare, sad trees, the stillness of it all, and yet the softness; and think what it will soon be, think what there is underneath, ready to burst into life as the weeks go on! I always come down here early, just to watch the coming of springtime. That wood to our left, with its bare, brown undergrowth, will soon show little flushes of pinky-yellow, and then a few days more sunshine and the primroses will be there. And you see, higher up, that wood where the trees stand so far apart? A little later still, the wild hyacinths will be like a blue carpet there. In the garden we begin with little rings of white snowdrops; then the crocuses come up in lines, yellow and purple; and the daffodils; and then, on those beds behind, the hyacinths. When the wind blows from the south, the perfume of them, as you pass down the river, is simply wonderful. Be careful, if you are turning round. There's a strong current here."
John nodded. He was watching his hostess a little curiously.
"I had no idea," he said simply, "that you cared about flowers and that sort of thing."
She threw her cigarette away and looked at him for a moment without speaking.
"You see, you don't really understand me very well," she remarked.
The twilight was coming on as they turned into their own little stream, and gleams of light shot from thewindows of the few houses that were open. As they strolled up the lawn, they could see a rose-shaded lamp and a silver tea-equipage set out in Lady Hilda's sitting room.
"No one arrived yet, I see," she remarked carelessly, as they entered the cottage. "I'll play you a game of billiards as soon as we have had tea."
John, who had thoroughly enjoyed his exercise, sat in a low chair by her side, drank innumerable small cups of tea, and ate buttered toast in thin strips. When they had finished, Lady Hilda rose.
"Go and knock the balls about for a few minutes," she begged. "I am going to put on a more comfortable gown. If the Daunceys come, you can entertain them. I played a round of golf this morning before you came."
John made his way into the comfortable billiard room, at one end of which a wood fire was burning, lit a cigarette, and took out a cue. Presently Lady Hilda returned. She was wearing a rose-colored tea-gown, and once more John caught a glimpse of something in her eyes, as she looked at him, which puzzled him.
"I am a little gaudy, I am afraid," she laughed, as she took a cue from the rack, "but so comfortable! How many will you give me in a hundred?"
"I have never seen you play," John reminded her. "I am not much good myself."
They played two games, and John had hard work to escape defeat. As they were commencing the third, the butler entered the room, bearing a telegram. Lady Hilda took it from the salver, glanced at it, and threw it into the fire.
"What a nuisance!" she exclaimed. "The Daunceys can't come."
John, who was enjoying himself very much, murmured only a word or two of polite regret. He had never got over his distaste for meeting strangers.
"Can't be helped, I suppose," Lady Hilda remarked. "There is nothing from Flo Henderson yet. We'll have one more game, and then I'll ring her up."
They played another game of billiards, and sat by the fire for a little while. The silence outside, and the air of repose about the place, were delightful to John after several months of London.
"I wonder you ever leave here," he said.
She laughed softly.
"You forget that I am a lone woman. Solitude, as our dear friend wrote in her last novel, is a paradise for two, but is an irritant for one."
There was a short silence. For the first time since his arrival John's tranquillity was a little disturbed. There was something almost pathetic in the expression which had flashed for a moment over his hostess's face. Was she really lonely, he wondered? Perhaps she had some sort of unhappy love history underneath her rather hard exterior. He was disposed just then to judge the whole world charitably, and he had never believed the stories which people were so anxious to tell of her. He felt no desire to pursue the subject.
"I have never read any of Mrs. Henderson's books," he remarked.
She stretched out an arm, took a volume from the swinging table by her side, and threw it across to him.
"You can glance through that while you dress," she said.
A gong rang through the house a few moments later, and the butler brought in two cocktails on a little silver tray.
"We are having quite a solitudeà deux, aren't we?" Lady Hilda remarked, as she raised her glass. "I'll go and ring up Flo on my way up-stairs."
They parted a few minutes later, and John went up to his room. He found his clothes carefully laid out, a bright fire burning, and a bath-room leading from his bedroom. He dressed in somewhat leisurely fashion, and the dinner-gong rang as he descended the stairs. He could hear Lady Hilda's voice talking on the telephone, and made his way to her little room. She had just laid down the receiver.
"It seems," she said, "that you and I are the only people who appreciate the country at this time of the year. I have just been talking to Flo. She declares that nothing in the world would tempt her down here. She is convinced that all the trees are dropping with damp, and that the mud is inches deep. She won't believe a single word about the sunshine."
"She isn't coming, then?"
Lady Hilda shook her head.
"Fred is our last hope as a chaperon," she remarked carelessly, as she took his arm. "I expect he'll turn up later."
Dinner—which, as John observed when they entered the room, was laid only for two—was served at a small, round table drawn pleasantly up to the fire. John, who had never admired his hostess more, put all disquieting thoughts behind him and thoroughly enjoyed the dainty meal. The pleasant warmth of the room, the excellent champagne, and Lady Hilda's amusing conversation, unlocked his tongue. He talked much more freely than usual of his life in Cumberland, of the various half-formed plans which he had made as to the spending of his unexpected fortune, of the new pleasurehe found in motoring, of his almost pathetic efforts to understand and appreciate the town life which at heart he hated. A clever listener, like most good talkers, Lady Hilda frequently encouraged him with a sympathetic word or two.
They were sitting over their coffee and liqueurs in two great easy chairs drawn up to the fire, when John glanced at the clock with a little start.
"Why, it's nearly ten o'clock!" he exclaimed. "What on earth can have become of your brother?"
Almost as he spoke the telephone-bell rang. It stood on a little table behind him. Lady Hilda, who was leaning back in her chair in an attitude of luxurious repose, pointed lazily to it.
"Answer it for me, there's a dear man," she begged.
John took up the receiver. He recognized the voice at once—it was Lady Hilda's brother who spoke.
"I say, is Lady Hilda there?" he asked.
"Yes, where are you?" John replied. "I am John Strangewey. We have been expecting you all the evening."
"Expecting me?" was the reply. "What on earth are you talking about? And what are you doing in the wilderness?"
"I am spending the week-end with your sister," John replied. "I understood that you were coming."
The young man at the other end laughed derisively.
"Something better to do, old chap!" he said. "I am dining with Flo Henderson—just speaking from her flat. Send Hilda along, there's a good fellow."
John turned around. His eyes met Lady Hilda's, and he understood. He handed the receiver to her in silence. Of the conversation which passed he scarcely heard a word. As soon as it began, in fact, he left theroom and went across the hall to the billiard room. The lights were already lit, and cues, ready chalked, were standing by the table.
John went through a few moments of dismayed wonder. He glanced out of the window toward the garage, which was all in darkness. He heard the soft sweep of Lady Hilda's skirts across the hall, the closing of the door as she entered. Her eyes met his, as he turned around, with something of challenge in them. Her lips were curved in a faintly ironical smile.
"Well?" she exclaimed, a little defiantly. "Shall I telephone to London for a chaperon?"
"Not unless you think it necessary," John replied, suddenly feeling the fire of battle in his blood. "I can assure you that I am to be trusted. On the other hand, if you prefer it, I can motor back to town; or I can go to the inn, and come and take you on the river in the morning."
It was obvious that she was a little surprised. She came over to him, put her hands upon the billiard table, and looked up into his face.
"Don't be a goose," she begged, "and please don't imagine foolish things. I suppose my telegram to Fred must have gone wrong. Anyhow, I don't think we need anybody else. We've got along very well so far to-day, haven't we?"
"I've enjoyed every moment of it," John declared cheerfully, "and I am looking forward more than I can tell you to beating you at billiards, to sleeping once more with my windows wide open and no smuts, and to having another pull on that river in the morning. Let me give you fifteen this time. I want to play my best!"
She took up her cue with a little sigh of half-puzzled relief. They played two games, the second one atJohn's insistence. Then the butler brought in whisky and soda.
"Is there anything further to-night, madam?" he asked, after he had arranged the tray.
"Nothing," Lady Hilda answered. "You can go to bed."
They played the last game almost in silence. Then Lady Hilda replaced her cue in the rack and threw herself into one of the easy chairs.
"Bring me a whisky-and-soda," she said. "We'll have one cigarette before we go to bed."
John obeyed her, and sat by her side. She looked at him a little questioningly. His unhesitating acceptance of the situation had puzzled her. There was nothing but the slightest change in his manner to denote his realization of the fact that the house-party was a sham.
"I believe you are cross," she exclaimed suddenly.
"On the contrary," John replied, "I have had a thoroughly delightful day."
"You don't like people who tell fibs," she went on. "You know quite well, now, that my house-party was a farce. I never asked the Daunceys, I never sent a telegram to Fred. It was simply rotten luck that he rang me up. I asked you down here to spend the week-end with me—alone."
He looked her in the face, without the slightest change of expression.
"Then I think that it was exceedingly nice of you," he said, "and I appreciate the compliment. Really," he went on, with a smile, "I think we are quite safe, aren't we? You are known as a man-hater, and you are allowed special privileges because you are what you are. And I am known to be in love with another woman."
She frowned slightly.
"Does the whole world, then, know of your infatuation?" she asked.
"It may know, for all I care," John replied simply. "I am hoping that after Monday Louise will let me announce it."
There was a short silence. A portion of the log fell to the hearth, and John carefully replaced it upon the fire.
"Do you remember," she asked, dropping her voice almost to a whisper, "what I said to you the first night we met at Covent Garden, before I had any particular interest in you, before I had come to like you?"
John made no reply. Why did she again remind him of what she had said that night?
"I advised you," she went on, "not to be too rash. I think I told you that there were better things."
"There is no better thing in the world," John said simply, "than to give every feeling of which you are capable to the woman you love."
She frowned and threw her cigarette into the hearth.
"You talk," she declared, "either like George Alexander on the stage, or like a country bumpkin! Why doesn't some one teach you the manners of civilized life?"
"Lady Hilda," he replied, "I am past teaching. You see, the fact of it is that a country bumpkin is exactly what I am."
She turned her white shoulder away from him.
"You will find a candle on the hall table," she snapped.
John rose at once to his feet.
"It's your delightful country air, I suppose," hesaid. "I am sorry if I betrayed my sleepiness, however. Good night!"
Lady Hilda made no answer. John looked backward from the door. She had kicked off her slipper and was warming her foot before the fire.
"Good night!" he repeated. "I am going to wake like a giant in the morning, and pull you just as far as you like up the river!"
He closed the door, lit a candle, and made his way to his room. As soon as he was there he locked the door and flung the window wide open. Resting his elbows upon the window-sill, he looked out at the soft, misty darkness. He had the sensation of having been through some undignified fight, in which even victory savored of shame. He felt a quivering consciousness, half indignant, half irritated, of having been forced into an impossible situation.
Presently he began to undress. He moved about on tiptoe, and found himself continually listening. He heard Lady Hilda come out from the billiard room below, heard her strike a match as she lit a candle, heard her coming up the stairs. He stood quite still. Suddenly he saw the handle of his door turned softly—once, and then again. He watched it with fascinated, almost horrified eyes. The door was shaken slightly. A voice from outside called him.
"Good night!"
He made no reply. The handle ceased to rattle. He heard retreating footsteps, the opening and closing of Lady Hilda's door.