XVIII

LLANBERIS

LLANBERIS, prim and small, and very, very Welsh, lies in the shadow of great Snowdon, and all about it the lesser and more gracious mountains—the mountains of green and purple and brown—stand with their heads against the sky, bathing their feet in great lakes of smooth, brown water. The inn has a beautiful and terraced garden; the stream from the waterfall under Snowdon runs tumbling and gurgling down its rocky bed. "The peace that is upon the lonely hills" may be yours at the cost of a little breathless, happy climbing; the deeper peace of valleys and lake may be yours for no more trouble than it takes to walk a couple of hundred yards from the door of your inn. That the hotel was full did not seem to matter—the other guests were off early, in breaks and wagonettes, spending the long days in excursions from which they returned late and hilarious, breaking the soft night quiet with loudlaughter and snatches of the kind of songs that nowadays delight the great heart of the people. Trippers from Manchester and Liverpool came for the day, but never strayed far from the inn, or, if they did, went up Snowdon by the tiny railway. Everywhere, save on the way that led to Snowdon, you were sure of quiet or peace, of a world where two could be alone together.

Here the two tried to take up again the life of ordered ease that had been theirs at Caernarvon, the little life they had prized and cherished till the governor of Caernarvon prison had thrown a stone into their magic pool, shattering all its mirrored beauty. They spent long mornings on the hillside, cushioned by the heather; long evenings by the lakeside, always careful to choose their resting-place so that they need not see the scars where the waste slate is tipped into the lake, slowly overlaying the green and graceful margin with which Nature, if you let her alone, frames all water mirrors. And once they went as far as the mysterious Round Tower, which stands alone, with no entrance but the doorway high above your head.

"What a place to keep your enemy in," he said, "or your friend! Suppose the tower had been my stronghold, in the old days. I could have brought my princess here, and snapped my fingers at herrelations drawn round the tower in a ring, shaking their fists at me from their coal-black steeds, and vowing vengeance when the tower should yield—which, of course, it never would."

"Your princess would have starved," she said, "and you with her."

"Not at all," he assured her; "you underrate the resources of round towers. To say nothing of the goats and sheep which we should drive in and lower to the basement when our scout brought news that your kinsmen were sending out the fiery cross or the blood eagle, or whatever it was that they did send out; and there's an inexhaustible well inside the tower, and of course we should have sacks of meal and casks of mead."

"But the enemy—her relations, I mean—would have all the sheep on the mountains and all the flour in the mills. You'd have to give in, in the end."

"You forget the underground passage. When we were tired of mocking your uncles and cousins through the arrow-slits of our tower we'd quietly creep away to our great castle—it's at Caernarvon, you know—and call together all my uncles and cousins and sally out and have a great battle, and the sound of our blows on their helmets would be heard on the far side of Anglesea, and down to the very southernmost marches of Merioneth."

"But suppose her relations won the battle and shut you up in a dungeon and put her into a convent?"

"Oh, they wouldn't. All our armor would be so perfectly tempered that nobody would be hurt. It would be like a tournament, and at the end, just as your senior uncle and I had unhorsed each other and were about to perish, mutually cloven to the chine, you would rush between us—in white, with your hair flowing like a thunder-cloud behind you—and say to each of us, 'Spare him for my sake.' And of course we should. And then there would be a banquet in the great hall at Caernarvon and clean rushes on the floor, and you and I and all our relations sitting in state on the dais, and you'd be wearing your gown of cloth of gold and your cloak of vair, and all your jewels—and I should have my furred gown and my great ring, and we should drink out of the big silver drinking-bowl—mead and strong ale—and feast our guests and their men-at-arms and all our own people on roast boars' heads and barons of beef, and all live happily ever afterward."

"I don't think she'd wear her ermine mantle. Wouldn't she wear the one of woven red, with your coat of arms embroidered on it, and the gold beads you brought her from the East when you went to the wars there?"

"Perhaps you would," he conceded. "I believe I could climb up to that doorway. I should like to—just to be sure there's really a well inside."

"No, don't," said she, "because you might find out that there wasn't; or that this isn't really the tower that has the underground passage leading to Caernarvon, and then we should know that we're not really remembering that other life when you carried her off, but only making it up."

"Of course we remember it. Do you remember whether you were angry with me for carrying you off."

"If she hadn't wanted to be carried off," she said, demurely, "she wouldn't have been. Or if she hadn't been able to help herself she'd have found a little knife, like the brown bride, or else something to put in your mead-cup, so that the first draught you had from her hand would have been the last. She wasn't the sort of woman to be taken against her will. Come away before you spoil the story with any more questions. I liked it best when we took the tale for granted—"

It was high up among the heather, with Charles safely tethered and the steep hillside dotted with hundreds and hundreds of sheep, that the talk grew earnest and dwelt not on dreams of old days, but the desire of new ones.

"Do you remember," he said, "what you toldme when we were going to Warwick?" He spoke as though this had been a long time ago, as, indeed, by any count but time it was. "You remember about the scattered farms, and the way the little houses call to you to come home."

"Yes," she said.

"All that you said about the life—it was like my other self speaking."

"You mean that when I spoke, your inside self said, 'Yes, yes; that's what I mean'?"

"I mean more than that. My inside self said, 'Yes, yes, that's what I always meant. That's what I meant and what I wanted before ever I met you.' Then meeting you obscured everything else, but when you spoke I saw that what I had always wanted rhymed with what you had always wanted. But I want to be quite sure. May I ask questions?"

"Yes."

"Suppose we had been really married—would you have been contented to spend your working life on a farm, to live just that life that you spoke of that day going to Warwick?"

She did not speak for a moment, and for a moment he wished that he had not questioned. And when she did speak it was not to give him an answer.

"I didn't believe it was possible," she said. "Ithought people couldn't make farming succeed, nowadays, and I don't think I could bear to spend my working life, as you call it, on a thing that is foredoomed to failure."

"Nor could I; and I don't mean to, either. My farm will succeed. If it costs me every penny I have it shall succeed. I shall go a new way to work. You know I've really got quite a lot of money, and I have a plan."

"Tell me about it."

"It's quite simple, and absolutely opposed to all the accursed teachings of political economy. Of course I shall get the best machinery and the best seeds and the best implements. But I shall also get the best labor."

"Doesn't every one try to do that?"

"Oh yes, every farmer tries to get the best labor he can, at current rates. I sha'n't bother about the current rates. I shall get the best men that are to be got and I shall pay them wages that will make them glad to come to me rather than to any one else. If I find a man's good I shall give him a share in the profits of the farm; if I find he isn't any good I shall sack him."

"I wonder," she said, "whether you'd have the heart to sack any one?"

"I might hesitate to sack a mere fool," he admitted. "I might be tempted to keep him on andfind some work for him that even a fool could do. But I'd chuck a slacker at a week's notice and never turn a hair. You'll see; I shall have failures, many of them, but the whole thing won't be a failure. Before I've done I shall have the best carters, the best dairy-women, the best bailiff, and the best plowman and the most successful farm in the country. You don't know how men can work who are working for themselves and not just for a master."

"You mean to make it a sort of communal farm?"

"Never," he said. "That's the last thing I mean it to be. But it will be a profit-sharing farm, and I shall run it. It's my own idea, the darling of my soul, and I won't trust its life to any other man. I'm almost afraid to trust it to you, for fear you should not be kind to it. But if what you said on the way to Warwick meant something that lasts in you—not just the beautiful thoughts of the moment—tell me, if we were really married could you endure a life like that?"

"I should know nothing about it; I should be of no use. And we're not married—"

"You could learn; we could both learn. Let's pretend for a moment that we're really going to spend our lives together, anyhow. Let's leaveMrs. Basingstoke out of it. Would Miss Basingstoke have been able to endure such a life?"

"Miss Basingstoke would have loved it," she said. "Miss Basingstoke would have done her best to learn, and—she isn't really stupid, you know—I think Miss Basingstoke would have succeeded."

"It would need patience," he said, "patience and bravery and loving-kindness and gentleness and firmness and unselfishness."

"And curiosity," she said. "That quality, at least, Miss Basingstoke has. She would have wanted to know all about everything, and that's one way of learning. She wants, now, to know ever so much more. Tell her everything that you've thought of about it, everything you've decided or not decided."

"You'll be kind to my darling dream, then," he said. "Well, here goes."

And with that he told her, and she listened and questioned, and he answered again till the shadows had grown heavy in the valley and they were very late indeed for dinner.

You cannot be long in Llanberis without wanting to "see over" a slate-quarry. It was on their fifth day that the desire came to these two. The mention of Colonel Bertram's name gained for them a personally conducted tour through therows of little slate-roofed sheds where skilled workmen strip and chip and shape the flakes of quarried slate till they are the size and form needed for roofing cottages and schools and Nonconformist chapels. Having seen how the slate is treated in the sheds, they were taken into the quarry itself to see how the slate is got.

A big slate-quarry is a very impressive sight. You walk across a great amphitheater whose walls of slate rise high above you, their green-trimmed edges sharply cut against the sky. You pick your way among pools of water so smooth, so clear, that they reflect like mirrors the blue sky and the high slate walls of the quarry. One such pool—the largest—lay in the middle of the vast amphitheater, and in it the towering cliffs of slate were reflected even more clearly than in the others.

"I never saw such reflections," she was saying, as they skirted the big pond. "They're almost more real than the real thing. I am glad we came here; it's all so clear and bright and new-looking. I wonder—"

"I wouldn't walk quite so near the edge, if I was you, sir," said the foreman, who was their guide.

"Why?" Edward asked, gazing at the reflection of high cliffs in the pool at his side, "is the water deep—"

And even as he spoke his eyes were opened; but before he could obey their mandate, with a cry that went to his heart and held it she caught his arm and pulled him back. For in that instant she, too, had seen that this pool which reflected so perfectly the tall precipices of the quarry was not a pool at all, but another deep quarry within the first, and that what it held was no reflection, but a sheer and dreadful depth of precipice going down—she would not look to see how far. And he had been walking within six inches of its brink, carelessly and at ease, as one does walk by the safely shelving edge of any pond.

She did not let his arm go when she had drawn him away from that perilous edge; she held it closely pressed against her side, and when he looked at her he saw that her face was white and changed. The great precipice above them swayed a little to her eyes—she dared not look at the precipice below. She held his arm closely and more closely, folding both hands on it. The foreman was saying something. Neither of them heard what it was, only both caught the concluding words:

"Perhaps you'd like to see the place, sir."

"Thank you," said Edward, mechanically, "and then I think we must leave you. It's been most kind of you to show us all this; we've been most interested."

Her heart was beating in so wild an ecstasy of thanksgiving for an unspeakable horror escaped, his heart was beating in so passionate and proud and humble a recognition of what her touch on his arm confessed, that neither of them heard the foreman's words or guessed at the meaning of what he was calmly and coldly telling them. Only afterward the memory of his words came back, bringing with it understanding. They were led across a flat wilderness of splintered slate toward the tall cliff from which now and then came the noise like thunder which blasting-powder makes when it does its work. They two, hardly conscious of anything but that they held each other—the one who had been in danger, safe; the other passionately grateful for that other's safety; and the endangered one, passionately sensible of her passionate gratitude, heard not a word that the foreman spoke, though he spoke all the time.

"You are here; I hold you safe; but, oh, if I had lost you!" her heart was singing to a breathless, syncopated measure.

"You cared; you cared as much as this. If I had fallen over that perilous edge. . . . Oh, but you care, you care! It is as much as this to you," his heart sang, keeping time to hers.

It was a trance of mutual meeting emotion such as they had not yet known. In that one moment,when he walked the narrow edge of that precipice and when she had seen the precipice for the horror it was, she learned more than in all her life before. And he, in the moments that followed, knew, beyond possibility of mistake or misunderstanding, what it was that she had learned. If only they could have walked straight out of that quarry into the world of stream and mountain, the world where you are only two—but the foreman was there, walking and talking, and at last stopping and saying:

"This is where it happened."

And they came out of their dream to find themselves close to the slate cliff at whose base lay great blocks of slate newly fallen, and to see the flat slate flakes at their feet, brown and wet.

"Where what happened?" Edward asked, vaguely.

"What I've been telling you about," said the foreman, aggrieved. "Where one of our workmen was killed just now, blasting; that's his blood what you're standing in," said he.

Then, indeed, she clung to his arm. "Take me away," she whispered. "Oh, why does everything turn horrible like this? It's like a horrible dream. Let's get away. Give him something and let's get away."

"It's not my fault," said the foreman, in veryinjured tones. "She said she'd like to see it. I wondered, at the time, but there's no accounting for females, is there?"

They got away from the place—out of the quarry and into the road. They found the stream that flows from the waterfall under Snowdon, and the flagged path that lies beside the stream. They passed along it, she still clinging to his arm. Presently a smooth, mossy rock invited them, and before either of them knew it they were seated there, side by side, and she was weeping on his shoulder.

He did not need her whispered words that broke a long silence—"Thank God, you're safe"—to tell him what he had to think, nor what, from that hour, he had to live for.

"But, oh," she said at last, lifting her face from his coat-sleeve, "what a horrible day! We've struck a streak of horrible things. Let's go back to the south, where things aren't like this."

"We'll go to-night, if you like," he said.

"Yes," she answered, eagerly, "yes. But this isn't the end. I feel there's something more coming—I felt it at Chester. It wasn't only that thing I couldn't tell you—something's going to happen to separate us."

"Nothing can—but you," he said, hugging to his heart all that her admission implied.

"I feel that something will," she said.

And he, for all that he laughed at her fears and her predictions, with pride and joy swelling in his heart till they almost broke the resolution of quiescence, of waiting, of submitting his will to her will, yet felt in those deep caves that lie behind the heart, behind the soul, behind the mind of man, the winds of coming misfortune blow chilly.

It was no surprise to either of them to find at the hotel a telegram for Mrs. Basingstoke:

Aunt Alice much worse. Please come at once.

It was signed with the name of the aunt whose dog-cart had run over Charles, and beneath whose legs Charles had experienced his miraculous resurrection from death.

There was no reason to mistrust this telegram as they had mistrusted the advertisement. But she said to herself, "There! That's because of what I said at Warwick."

They caught the last train to London that night, and through the long, lamp-lit journey Charles no longer lay between them. The white, bullet head lay on her lap—but on her other side was Edward, and her shoulder and his touched all the way, even as, on the journey to Warwick, he had dreamed of their touching. They spoke little; it seemed as though everything had beensaid. Only when her head drooped against his shoulder and he knew that she had fallen asleep he felt no sense of daring, no doubts as to his rights or her resentments when he passed his arm around her and rested his chin on her soft hair, gazing straight before him in the flickering half-light while she slept—oh, dreams come true—upon his breast.

LONDON

IT was very late when they parted on the door-step of the house in Hyde Park Square.

"I don't know how to let you go," he said, and took both her hands, regardless of the cabman's stony attention. "I shall just go back to my rooms in Montague Street—Thirty-seven; I've written it down for you. And, look here, I won't come and see you and I won't bother you, but if you want me I'll be there. You must just do what you want to do."

What she wanted to do was to jump into the waiting taxicab and go back with him into that world of fine and delicate adventure where were blue skies, gold sun, green leaves, the mystery of mountains, the sparkle of water, and the velvet of old lawns; and, for each in the soul of the other, a whole world of unexplored wonder and delight.

What she said was: "Thank you. I will write and tell you what happens. Good-by—oh, good-by.I feel as though I ought to ask you to forgive me."

"For what?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said, "but—no—I don't know; but you do understand that I couldn't stay away when she asked for me. She's the only person in the world, except you, that I—that ever— Good-by!"

There was a moment of hesitation which, later, in the recollection of it, thrilled them both. Then the cabman had the satisfaction, such as it was, of seeing one of his fares raise to his lips the fingers of the other. Then the knocker sounded softly, the heavy door opened and received her into a warmly lamp-lit hall, closed again, and left him alone.

When he reached Montague Street rain was falling and a chill wind blew. He had not been expected and his rooms were dusty and disheveled. Intensely quiet, too; through the roar of London far below one could almost hear the silence of these deserted rooms where, day by day, while he had been out in the beautiful bright world, the dim dust had slowly settled down.

It was characteristic of him that he lit a big fire and carried his bedding out and spread it in the growing glow and warmth. "I'm not going to risk a cold in the head at this crisis of my affairs,"he told himself, "even if she doesn't care—and Heaven knows how she can! I needn't make myself a ridiculous and disgusting object in her eyes."

To the same end he set the kettle on the fire and made hot coffee for himself. When, at last, he turned into well-aired sheets he found that he could not sleep.

"Confound the coffee!" he said, and tried to attribute to that brown exotic elixir the desperate sense of futility and emptiness which possessed him. His mind assured him that there was nothing the matter with him but coffee; but his heart said: "You won't see her in the morning. You won't spend the day with her to-morrow, nor the next day, nor the next." And his heart cursed the mock marriage and all the reservations and abstentions that it demanded. "If she had been really my wife—" If she had been really his wife he would have called three times a day to know how things were with her. He would have seen her, held her hands, felt again the confiding droop of her head on his shoulder. But as it was— She had consented to the mock marriage, he knew, because she did not desire to give him any rights, not even the right to ring at her aunt's front door and ask for Mrs. Basingstoke.

He fell asleep at last, and dreamed that theyhad taken an unfurnished flat in a neolithic cave and that he had killed a bear and was dragging it home to show her. The bear seemed to be not quite dead, for it was growling, and its weight on his back awoke him, to find that Charles had thought his master's shoulders a convenient site for slumber. He sleepily had it out with Charles, and when he slept again he dreamed that he and she had decided to live in a captive balloon. She was already installed, but he could find no ladder long enough to reach her. She was laughing down at him and showering pink rose-leaves on his up-turned face when he woke to find Charles conscientiously licking his ears. This time he found energy to get up and put a closed door between himself and Charles, and then he dreamed that he had arranged to meet her under the clock at Charing Cross Station, and that the Government had just decided to establish uniformity in railway stations, and had called every station Charing Cross, and had, moreover, furnished each station with six hundred and sixty-six clocks, which all ticked louder than Big Ben. He awoke, and it was morning, and there were no clocks ticking, but from beyond the door came the measured thump-thump-thump of Charles's tail on the floor of the sitting-room. So all night he had dreamed of her, yet never once seen her.

"If I believed in omens—" he said, and rang, to make known his return to the people of the house.

While his sitting-room was being put in order he went down to Covent Garden and came back with his arms full of roses and white lilies, which he set up in mugs and pots of Grès de Flandre and old brass and green Bruges ware.

"I wish you'd only 'a' told me, sir," said his landlady, kindly but aggrieved. "I wouldn't have had you come home and find the place all of a mess like this, not for a pound, I wouldn't. But you never wrote nor nothing, and the dust it do incriminate so. But if you're going out for the day I'll make it all as clean as a whistle by this evening. It's a twelve-hour job, so it is. If I'd only known you was to be expected."

"But you didn't know," said Edward, "and it's not going to be a twelve-hour job, but a two-hour job. I'll go out for two hours, and when I come back I sha'n't know the place, shall I? You'll work like a good fairy. I know you."

"Go on with you, sir," she advised. "You will have your joke."

"I was never more serious. You see, a lady might call." He voiced in words what he had not dared to voice in his heart.

"Oh, if it's a lady," said the landlady—andthrough the tired, ridged, gray, London face something pretty and immortally young stirred and sparkled—"theyoung lady, sir, if I might make so bold?"

"You've hit it, Mrs. Jilks," he said—"thelady. If she comes before I come back—but I don't think she will—beg her to wait and say I'll be back by noon. Come on, Charles."

He went and sat in Regents Park and tried to fancy himself once more in the deep peace of the Welsh Hills till Charles had a difference of opinion with a Cocker spaniel and dreams were set to flight.

He went back, hoping against hope that he might find her there. She was not there, nor did she come. Why should she? In the middle of the afternoon came a letter; it had no beginning. It said:

I had a stiff and stifling interview with my aunt—the one Charles came to life under the knees of in the cart. She was as horrid as any one could possibly be. She reproached me for marrying a pauper, and said I'd better have stuck to the piano-tuner unless you were he in disguise! I was as dumb as a mule—indeed, I almost felt my ears beginning to lie back, as mules' ears do when they've decided they aren't going to, whatever it is. Presently I got it out of her that Aunt Alice's attack is very serious. If she gets over it she's to go to Switzerland; there's an old school friend out there that she loves, and who wants frightfully to have her there.So then I shall be able to come back, and we'll go out together again and see the world. You won't worry about me, will you? Because this house is quite the lap of. And you know that I wouldn't have broken off our mock-wedding tour for anything in the world except for her—because . . . but you know all that. Give my love to Charles.

"Yours sincerely" was crossed out, and a postscript added:

I don't know how to end this letter. I won't end it. I'll just put something at the end to show that this isn't the end—of our times together, I mean.(To be continued.)

I don't know how to end this letter. I won't end it. I'll just put something at the end to show that this isn't the end—of our times together, I mean.

(To be continued.)

He thought it the prettiest, wittiest ending in the world.

His room was neat as a new pin, as Mrs. Jilks had promised. The roses and the lilies made it what Mrs. Jilks called a perfect bower. "Any one could tell," she assured him, "that it wastheyoung lady you was expecting. Why, it's like a wedding already! She's sure to come soon, sir, and I'll have the kettle on the boil and make her a nice cup of tea the minute she comes."

But she did not come, and he had the nice cup of tea alone, unless you count Charles, who ate seven large doughnuts—seven for sixpence—in seven great gulps—with no resultant modification of his natural high spirits. Another day went by,and another, and she did not come. Edward realized that she would not come, and that he had been a fool ever to half hope that she would.

He drugged the empty hours with shopping. He wandered about London buying things—the oddest things. He bought a pair of cut-crystal lusters and the skin of a leopard, apapier-mâchéfire-screen and a string of amber beads six feet long. He sent the amber to her in a sandalwood box cunningly carved and inlaid with ivory and ebony and silver. That was on the first day. Her second letter thanked him for it:

How did you know that yellow was my fortunate color? I was born under the sign of the lion, so a fortune-teller told me, so all yellow stones are lucky for me. I am so sorry that you have to be in London in the summer. Wouldn't you like to go into the country? Auntie is a little better.

So then he went out and bought the topaz brooch that he had thought of buying when he first saw it in that jolly little shop in Vigo Street. And he sent her that with the topaz necklace he had bought in Warwick.

They are beautiful [she wrote] and I love them, but you are not to be extravagant. I should like to write you a long letter, but auntie gets restless if I'm not sitting beside her. She's really getting better, but I'm afraid it will be several weeks . . . and she keeps asking me not to leave her. Iwish I could ask you to come here, to see me. There are lots of odd minutes, when she's asleep. But my other aunt would certainly be hateful to you—and I couldn't stand that.

Again and again he asked himself why he had promised, voluntarily promised, not to call at the house. What had he been thinking of? He had been thinking of her, of course; he had wanted to make things easy for her. He had at least made them very hard for himself. He missed her every hour of the day; he would not have believed that he could have missed anything so much.

The time crawled by; the hours were long and the days interminable. Even buying things—a luxury in which he allowed himself considerable latitude—could not possess the empty spaces in a life that had been filled with her presence.

And to her, moving gently in the curtained stillness of the sick-room, among the medicine-bottles and the apparatus of sickness as the rich know it, holding the thin hand that came out of a scented, soft bed to cling to hers, it seemed that either this ordered quietude was a dream, or else that nothing in the last few weeks was true, had been true, could ever be true again. The escape, the flight, the Medway days, the reckless mock marriage, the life of fine and delicate adventure, the blue sky, the green leaves, the mystery of mountains, the sparkle of water, and the velvetof old lawns, the constant and deepening comradeship of a man of whose existence a month ago she had not so much as dreamed—could these be real—all these which she had renounced to come to the sick woman who longed for her—had these really been hers—could they ever be hers again?

Suffering had broken down the consistent unselfishness of a lifetime, and the aunt clung to her as children cling, frightened in the dark. "You won't leave me," she said, over and over again. "Your husband won't mind. It won't be for long."

"Of course I'll not leave you," she said, and wondered at the thrill her aunt's words gave her and the pang she felt as she uttered her own.

Every day while the aunt slept she crept away and went out into the air—the first day into bright sunshine which was unbearable; after that into the quiet, lamp-lit dusk of the square at night. The London night was so unlike night on the Welsh Hills that it seemed a medium that could not torment her with memories. Whereas the sunshine was the same sunshine which had lain like a benediction in that far country of delight. The lilacs and snowberries in the square inclosure, which were dried and dusty by day, borrowed from the kindly twilight the air of fresh groves, andamong their somber shadows she walked as in some garden of dusky enchantments, where, alone with her dreams and her memories, she could weave, out of the past and the future, a web of glory to clothe the cold walls of the empty room which, she began to perceive, life without Edward was, and must be.

It was on the third evening, as she stood, fumbling with the key of the garden, she knew that some one stood on the pavement just behind her, and, turning sharply, was face to face with Mr. Schultz.

He raised his hat and smiled at her; held out a hand, even. She was child enough to put her two hands behind her, and woman enough to hope that he hated to see her do it. She was surprised to find herself alert and alive to the interest of the encounter; not afraid at all, only interested. Gone was the panic terror which had overwhelmed her in the Kenilworth dungeon. Anger and resentment remained, but stronger than either was curiosity, so she stood with her hands behind her, looking at him.

"Oh, very well," he said; "just as you like. I want a few words with you."

"I don't want to talk to you," she said, and locked the square gate again.

"Couldn't we walk around the garden once ortwice?" he asked. "I know you don't want to talk to me, but I want to talk to you. I'm sorry if I upset you that day in the ruins, but it's nothing to the way your dog upset me. I had to have it cauterized, besides doing completely for the only decent suit I had with me. Besides, you hit me, you know, with your parasol. Come, don't bare malice. I don't. Call it quits and open the square door."

Now you may think it was quite easy for her to turn her back on Mr. Schultz and go back to her aunt's house, leaving him planted there, but it was not really easy, because she wanted something of the man, and if she turned her back with sufficient firmness it might be that she would never see him again. What she wanted was the remission of the promise she had made him, unasked and of her own initiative—the promise that she would not tell Edward of that day in the dungeon.

"I can't open the square gate for you," she said. "If you've really anything to say, you can say it here. I can spare you three minutes," she added, conclusively.

"Then let's walk around outside the railings. It's better than standing here; it won't look so odd if any one comes along who knows you," he said, and it seemed strange to her that he shouldhave so much consideration for her. She was pleased. Her soul was of the order that delights to find others better than her mind had led her to expect. There are people, as you know, to whom it is always somewhat of a disappointment to find that any one is not so black as their fancy painted him. She turned and they walked slowly along the pavement that encircles the railings of the square garden.

"Well?" she said, "you said you had something to say to me."

"Yes, lots," he told her. "I was just trying to think which to say first. You know you've upset me a good deal. Oh, I forgive you, but it ought to be mutual. Yes, I'll put that first—I want us to forgive each other—forgive and forget and not bear grudge."

"Very well," she said, coldly. "I forgive you, but—"

He interrupted her before she could make the request that was on her lips. "That'll do," he said. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to tell you how it was that I acted like a fool. I admit I acted like a fool," he added, handsomely. "I don't suppose I shall ever see you again and I don't want you to go on thinking me a perfect beast. I'd rather you didn't, though I know I was one that day, and I don't know why, but I would,even if I'm never to set eyes on you again. Well, you see, it's like this: I dare say it'll sound silly to you, but even when I was at school I always wanted to do something noble—romantic, you know—rescuing ladies in distress, like Scott's novels, and things like that. I know it's too rotten for words, nowadays, what with machinery and telegraphs and radium and things, but that's what I used to think. And when I came up with you on the Seaford Road with no hat on and your poor little satin shoes all dusty and splitting, I thought, by Jove! my boy, here's your chance! And I did behave all right that day, didn't I?"

His voice was wistful, and she said, eagerly: "You were very, very kind. No one could have been nicer and more—more—"

"Respectful, eh? Well, I meant to be. I felt respectful; I do still. And you won't mind me saying I felt like a knight and you were the lady. I don't mean that you aren't a lady now, but you see what I mean, and you can't blame me if I thought it would all end in me and you being—well—you and me living happy ever after, the same as they do in books."

Enchanted by the revelation, she said, "Indeed, I don't blame you," more earnestly than she meant to do.

"Don't be too kind to me," he said, grimly. "Iknow it doesn't mean anything, but it puts a man out. Well, thenhecame along, and you said he was your brother, and anybody could see with half an eye that he wasn't your brother; and I felt I'd been made a fool of, a complete, particular, first-class fool, and that put my back up. And I saw that things don't happen like they do in books. And I hadn't, somehow, thought you'd say anything that wasn't true."

She felt her face burn, and realized for the first time that in their brief and stormy acquaintance he had not been the only one to blame, and that, anyhow, it was she who had taken the first false step.

"I oughtn't to have told you a lie," she said, and added ingenuously, "especially after you'd been so kind; but I didn't know what to do—it seemed so difficult to explain." She could not tell him how difficult, nor why.

"Oh, that's all right," he said. "I should have said the same myself. It wasn't exactly a lie. It's a thing most people wouldn't make any bones about, only I thought you were different, that's all. And that was one of the things that made me feel it was fair to hunt you down, if I could—tit for tat, so to speak—and, besides, it was fun trying to see what Icouldfind out. Then there's another thing I must tell you, I used to think itwould be fun to be other things out of books—highwaymen and detectives and things—and I got a lead when I saw you at Cookham. After that I tracked you down like any old Sherlock Holmes, and I'm afraid at Kenilworth I behaved more like a highwayman than a respectable solicitor—for that's what I am."

"That's forgiven and forgotten," she told him.

"Well, I tracked you to Warwick, and when I saw your name in the visitors' book—Mr. and Mrs. Basingstoke—"

"But it wasn't—"

"It was, I assure you. Well, when I saw that I didn't know what to think, but I saw, however it was, it was all up with me; but I didn't want to see it, so I followed you to Kenilworth, and got a chance I didn't expect to behave like a cad and an ass, and behaved like them. But I don't think you know how pretty you are—and I didn't believe you were married, and all the things I'd thought while I was driving you to Tunbridge came up into my head and turned themselves inside out, somehow, and I felt what a fool I'd been, and I lost my head. And then you told me you wouldn't tell him, for fear he should hurt me; and that's really what I came here to say. That's what I can't stick. I can take care of myself. I want you to tell him anything you like—see?Here's my card—and he can write to me, and I'll meet him anywhere he likes and let's see who's the best man. To set out to be a knight and all that, and end up with hiding behind a woman—and you to be the woman—no, I really can't stick it. So will you tell him?"

"I'll tell him everything," she said, "and he won't want to see who's the best man, and I don't want him to want it. And I don't want you to, either. You were a very kind knight-errant—but you weren't such a very good detective, or you'd have found out—"

"What?"

"I'll tell you, if you'll promise to give up wanting to find out who's the best man. Will you?"

"I'll do anything you like as long as you don't think I'm afraid of him, and don't let him think it, either. I don't think much of him, and I don't know whether you'll believe it, but it was that as much as anything set me to the detective business. I wanted to—to—I thought you wanted looking after. And then I acted like a brute—but I won't go on about that. Now tell me what it was I didn't find out?"

She pulled a little pale-silk bag from her pocket and took out a stiff folded paper and gave it to him. By the light of the next gas-lamp he unfoldedit; it was a long slip, partly printed, partly written. It was, in fact, the "marriage certificate" which had been obtained in order to quiet her family and to make possible the romance and adventure of the incredible honeymoon.

He glanced at it, folded it, and gave it back. "Thank you," he said. "I don't want to try who's the best man. He is. He's got you."

She could find nothing to say that should be at once true and kind.

"So that's all over," he said, straightening his shoulders. "There's only one thing more. You remember I went out to see about the car at Tunbridge, and I was rather a long time gone? Well, I rushed into a shop and bought this. I meant to throw it over Westminster Bridge as soon as I left you—but now, will you take it for a wedding-present? I'd like you to."

He fumbled at a spring, opened a case, and showed a half-hoop of sapphires.

"But I can't! It's too—"

"I'mawfullyrich," he said, bitterly. "I've come into my father's business at Canterbury. I don't know what to do with my money, and the thing didn't cost much, really, but it was the best I could get. You believe that, don't you? And I thought it might be the beginning of living happy ever after, and I should like you to have it, just toshow you really have forgiven me. You will, won't you?"

"I can't take the ring," she said, "but I wish I could, and I thank you very much for wishing me to have it—and for all your kindness and your kind thoughts of me."

"But you won't take the ring. He said you wouldn't."

"Who did?"

"My confessor. You see, I'm a Catholic, and I had to tell him about Kenilworth, and so I told him the whole thing. If it hadn't been for him I shouldn't have tried to tell you about it all and get you to forgive me. I'm glad I did, though."

Then she understood, and ceased to wonder how this man had got his poor, complicated, involved little history straightened out to such a convincing simplicity.

"I wish you'd have had the ring," he said again, discontentedly. "I never know what to do with my money."

"If I had a lot of money I'd go about the world trying to be a real knight-errant—just looking out for people who want things and don't ask for them—poor, proud, self-respecting people, poor schoolmasters and young men in shops who don't have good times. There was a man in a book who thought he was ill, and his doctor told him to helpone person a day with his money. He got cured in no time; and you're not ill."

"I shouldn't know how to begin," he said. "You could have shown me, but you won't. Look here, don't go yet; stay a little and tell me how to begin."

Walking around and around the railings of the garden, she developed her thesis. They had been walking together for an hour and a half before they parted on her door-step, and at parting she did give him her hand.

In the hall she stood a minute or two, thinking. Then she slipped quietly out again and took an omnibus to Museum Street, and from there walked to Montague Street. She felt that the only important thing was to see Edward, to clear away the one cloud of concealment that lay between them—no, not the only one. The other was a very little thing; he, at least, had never known that it was there.

But when she reached number 37 it showed no light at any of its windows; only the basement window and the fanlight above the door gave out a dusky radiance. It seemed impossible to ring the bell and be faced with the assurance that he was not at home. So she walked slowly away.

And behind drawn curtains in the flower-scented, flower-bright room Charles stirred restlessly, andEdward, also restless, was saying, "I could almost believe that she would come to-night, now. All the rest of the time I have known in my heart that she would not come, but now, for the first time, it seems possible."

But the hours wore on and still he and the flowers and Charles were alone together.

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