initial commit of ebook 16703HEADmain

7 files changed, 22506 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/16703-8.txt b/16703-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b8b5ee6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16703-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11245 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Comedy of Masks, by Ernest Dowson and
+Arthur Moore
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: A Comedy of Masks
+       A Novel
+
+
+Author: Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 16, 2005  [eBook #16703]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A COMEDY OF MASKS***
+
+
+Digitized by Robert Bamford. Further proofreading and formatting by Andrew
+Sly. 
+
+
+
+A COMEDY OF MASKS
+
+A Novel
+
+by
+
+ERNEST DOWSON and ARTHUR MOORE
+
+1893
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+In that intricate and obscure locality, which stretches between the
+Tower and Poplar, a tarry region, scarcely suspected by the majority
+of Londoners, to whom the "Port of London" is an expression purely
+geographical, there is, or was not many years ago, to be found a
+certain dry dock called Blackpool, but better known from time
+immemorial to skippers and longshoremen, and all who go down to the
+sea in ships, as "Rainham's Dock."
+
+Many years ago, in the days of the first Rainham and of wooden
+ships, it had been no doubt a flourishing ship-yard; and, indeed,
+models of wooden leviathans of the period, which had been turned
+out, not a few, in those palmy days, were still dusty ornaments of
+its somewhat antique office. But as time went on, and the age of
+iron intervened, and the advance on the Clyde and the Tyne had made
+Thames ship-building a thing of the past, Blackpool Dock had ceased
+to be of commercial importance. No more ships were built there, and
+fewer ships put in to be overhauled and painted; while even these
+were for the most part of a class viewed at Lloyd's with scant
+favour, which seemed, like the yard itself, to have fallen somewhat
+behind the day. The original Rainham had not bequeathed his energy
+along with his hoards to his descendants; and, indeed, the last of
+these, Philip Rainham, a man of weak health, original Rainham had
+not bequeathed his energy along with his hoards to his descendants;
+and, indeed, the last of these, Philip Rainham, a man of weak
+health, whose tastes, although these were veiled in obscurity, were
+supposed to trench little upon shipping, let the business jog along
+so much after its own fashion, that the popular view hinted at its
+imminent dissolution. A dignified, scarcely prosperous quiet seemed
+the normal air of Blackpool Dock, so that even when it was busiest
+--and work still came in, almost by tradition, with a certain
+steadiness--when the hammers of the riveters and the shipwrights
+awoke the echoes from sunrise to sunset, with a ferocious regularity
+which the present proprietor could almost deplore, there was still a
+suggestion of mildewed antiquity about it all that was, at least to
+the nostrils of the outsider, not unpleasing. And when the ships
+were painted, and had departed, it resumed very easily its more
+regular aspect of picturesque dilapidation. For in spite of its
+sordid surroundings and its occasional lapses into bustle, Blackpool
+Dock, as Rainham would sometimes remind himself, when its commercial
+motive was pressed upon him too forcibly, was deeply permeated by
+the spirit of the picturesque.
+
+Certainly Mr. Richard Lightmark, a young artist, in whose work some
+excellent judges were beginning already to discern, if not the hand
+of the master, at least a touch remarkably happy, was inclined to
+plume himself on having discovered, in his search after originality,
+the artistic points of a dockyard.
+
+It was on his first visit to Rainham, whom he had met abroad some
+years before, and with whom he had contracted an alliance that
+promised to be permanent, that Lightmark had decided his study
+should certainly be the river. Rainham had a set of rooms in the
+house of his foreman, an eighteenth-century house, full of carved
+oak mantels and curious alcoves, a ramshackle structure within the
+dock-gates, with a quaint balcony staircase, like the approach to a
+Swiss chalet, leading down into the yard. In London these apartments
+were his sole domicile; though, to his friends, none of whom lived
+nearer to him than Bloomsbury, this seemed a piece of conduct too
+flagrantly eccentric--on a parity with his explanation of it,
+alleging necessity of living on the spot: an explanation somewhat
+droll, in the face of his constant lengthy absence, during the whole
+of the winter, when he handed the reins of government to his
+manager, and took care of a diseased lung in a warmer climate. To
+Lightmark, however, dining with his friend for the first time on
+chops burnt barbarously and an inferior pudding, residence even in a
+less salubrious quarter than Blackpool would have been amply
+justified, in view of the many charming effects--for the most part
+coldly sad and white--which the river offered, towards evening, from
+the window of his friend's dining-room.
+
+After his first visit, he availed himself eagerly of Rainham's
+invitation to make his property the point of view from which he
+could most conveniently transfer to canvas his impressions; and he
+worked hard for months, with an industry that came upon his friend
+as a surprise, at the uneven outlines of the Thames warehouses, and
+the sharp-pointed masts that rose so trenchantly above them. He had
+generated an habit of coming and going, as he pleased, without
+consideration of his host's absences; and latterly, in the early
+spring--whose caprices in England Rainham was never in a hurry to
+encounter--the easel and painting tools of the assiduous artist had
+become an almost constant feature of the landscape.
+
+Now, towards the close of an exceptionally brilliant day in the
+finish of May, he was putting the last touches to a picture which
+had occupied him for some months, and which he hoped to have
+completed for Rainham's return. As he stood on the wharf, which ran
+down to the river-side, leaning back against a crane of ancient
+pattern, and viewing his easel from a few yards' distance
+critically, he could not contemplate the result without a certain
+complacency.
+
+"It's deuced good, after all," he said to himself, with his head
+poised a little on one side. "Yes, old Rainham will like this. And,
+by Jove! what matters a good deal more, the hangers will like it,
+and if it's sold--and, confound it! it must be sold--it will be a
+case of three figures."
+
+He had one hand in his pocket, and instinctively--it may have been
+the result of his meditation--he fell to jingling some coins in it.
+They were not very many, but just then, though he was a young
+gentleman keenly alive to the advantages of a full purse, their
+paucity hardly troubled him. He felt, for the nonce, assured of his
+facility, and doubtless had a vista of unlimited commissions and the
+world at his feet, for he drew himself up to his full height of six
+feet and looked out beyond the easel with a smile that had no longer
+its origin in the fruition of the artist. Indeed, as he stood there,
+in his light, lax dress and the fulness of his youth, he had (his
+art apart) excuse for self-complacency. He was very pleasant to look
+upon, with an air of having always been popular with his fellows,
+and the favourite of women; this, too, was borne out by his history.
+Not a beautiful man, by any means, but the best type of English
+comeliness: ruddy-coloured, straight, and healthy; muscular, but
+without a suggestion of brutality. His yellow moustache, a shade
+lighter than his hair--which, although he wore it cropped, showed a
+tendency to be curling--concealed a mouth that was his only
+questionable feature. It was not the sensitive mouth of the through
+and through artist, and the lines of it were vacillating. The lips,
+had they not been hidden, would have surprised by their fulness,
+contradicting, in some part, the curious coldness of his light blue
+eyes. All said, however, he remained a singularly handsome fellow;
+and the slight consciousness which he occasionally betrayed, that
+his personality was pleasing, hardly detracted from it; it was,
+after all, a harmless vanity that his friends could afford to
+overlook. Just then his thoughts, which had wandered many leagues
+from the warehouses of Blackpool, were brought up sharply by the
+noise of an approaching footstep. He started slightly, but a moment
+later greeted the new-comer with a pleasant smile of recognition. It
+was Rainham's foreman and general manager, with whom the artist, as
+with most persons with whom he was often in contact, was on
+excellent, and even familiar, terms.
+
+"Look here, Bullen," he said, twisting the easel round a little,
+"the picture is practically finished. A few more strokes--I shall do
+them at home--and it is ready for the Academy. How do you like it?"
+
+Mr. Bullen bent down his burly form and honoured the little canvas
+with a respectful scrutiny.
+
+"That is Trinidad Wharf, sir, I suppose?" he suggested, pointing
+with a huge forefinger at the background a little uncertainly.
+
+"That is Trinidad Wharf, Bullen, certainly! And those masts are
+from the ships in the Commercial Docks. But the river, the
+atmosphere--that's the point--how do they strike you?"
+
+"Well, it's beautiful, sir," remarked Bullen cordially; "painted
+like the life, you may say. But isn't it just a little smudgy, sir?"
+
+"That's the beauty of it, Bullen. It's impressionism, you
+Philistine!--a sort of modified impressionism, you know, to suit the
+hangers. 'Gad, Bullen, you ought to be a hanger yourself! Bullen,
+my dear man, if it wasn't that you _do_ know how to paint a ship's
+side, I would even go so far as to say that you have all the
+qualifications of an Academician."
+
+"Ah, if it comes to that, Mr. Lightmark, I dare say I could put them
+up to some dodges. I am a judge of 'composition.'"
+
+"Composition? The devil you are! Ah, you mean that infernal compound
+which they cover ships' bottoms with? What an atrocious pun!" The
+man looked puzzled. "Bullen, R.A., great at composition; it sounds
+well," continued Lightmark gaily, just touching in the brown sail of
+a barge.
+
+"I've a nephew in the Royal Artillery, sir," said Mr. Bullen; "but I
+fear he is a bad lot."
+
+"Oh, they all are!" said Lightmark, "an abandoned crew."
+
+His eyes wandered off to the bridge over which the road ran,
+dividing the dry dock from the outer basin and wharf on which they
+stood. A bevy of factory girls in extensive hats stuck with
+brilliant Whitechapel feathers were passing; one of them, who was
+pretty, caught Lightmark's eyes and flung him a saucy compliment,
+which he returned with light badinage in kind that made the foreman
+grin.
+
+"They know a fine man when they see one, as well as my lady," he
+said. Then he added, as if by an afterthought, lowering his voice a
+little: "By the way, Mr. Lightmark, there was a young lady--a young
+person here yesterday--making inquiries."
+
+Lightmark bent down, frowning a little at a fly which had entangled
+itself on his palette.
+
+"Yes?" he remarked tentatively, when the offender had been removed.
+
+"It was a young lady come after someone, who, she said, had been
+here lately: a Mr. Dighton or Crichton was the name, I think. It was
+the dockman she asked."
+
+"Nobody comes here of that name that I know of," said Lightmark.
+
+"Not to my knowledge," said Bullen.
+
+"Curious!" remarked Lightmark gravely.
+
+"Very, sir!" said Bullen, with equal gravity.
+
+Lightmark looked up abruptly: the two men's eyes met, and they both
+laughed, the artist a little nervously.
+
+"What did you tell her, Bullen?"
+
+"No such person known here, sir. I sent her away as wise as she
+came. I hold with minding my own business, and asking no questions."
+
+"An excellent maxim, Bullen!" said Lightmark, preparing to pack up
+his easel. "I have long believed you to be a man of discretion.
+Well, I must even be moving."
+
+"You know the governor is back, sir?"
+
+Lightmark dropped the paint-brush he was cleaning, with a movement
+of genuine surprise.
+
+"I never knew it," he said; "I will run up and have a yarn with him.
+I thought he wasn't expected till to-morrow at the earliest?"
+
+"Nor he was, Mr. Lightmark. But he travelled right through from
+Italy, and got to London late last night. He slept at the Great
+Eastern, and I went up to him in the City this morning. He hasn't
+been here more than half an hour."
+
+"Nobody told me," said Lightmark. "Gad! I am glad. I will take him
+up the picture. Will you carry the other traps into the house,
+Bullen?"
+
+He packed them up, and then stood a trifle irresolutely, his hand
+feeling over the coins in his pocket. Presently he produced two of
+them, a sovereign and a shilling.
+
+"By the way, Bullen!" he said, "there is a little function common in
+your trade, the gift of a new hat. It costs a guinea, I am told;
+though judging from the general appearance of longshoremen, the
+result seems a little inadequate. Bullen, we are pretty old friends
+now, and I expect I shall not be down here so often just at present.
+Allow me--to give you a new hat."
+
+The foreman's huge fist closed on the artist's slender one.
+
+"Thank you, sir! You are such a facetious gentleman. You may depend
+upon me."
+
+"I do," said Lightmark, with a sudden lapse into seriousness, and
+frowning a little.
+
+If something had cast a shadow over the artist for the moment he
+must have had a faculty of quick recovery, for there was certainly
+no shade of constraint upon his handsome face when a minute later he
+made his way up the balcony steps and into the office labelled
+"Private," and, depositing his canvas upon the floor, treated his
+friend to a prolonged handshaking.
+
+"My dear Dick!" said Rainham, "this is a pleasant surprise. I had
+not the remotest notion you were here."
+
+"I thought you were at Bordighera, till Bullen told me of your
+arrival ten minutes ago," said Lightmark, with a frank laugh. "And
+how well----"
+
+Rainham held up his hand--a very white, nervous hand with one ring
+of quaint pattern on the forefinger--deprecatingly.
+
+"My dear fellow, I know exactly what you are going to say. Don't be
+conventional--don't say it. I have a fraudulent countenance if I do
+look well; and I don't, and I am not. I am as bad as I ever was."
+
+"Well, come now, Rainham, at any rate you are no worse."
+
+"Oh, I am no worse!" admitted the dry dock proprietor. "But, then, I
+could not afford to be much worse. However, my health is a subject
+which palls on me after a time. Tell me about yourself."
+
+He looked up with a smile, in which an onlooker might have detected
+a spark of malice, as though Rainham were aware that his suggested
+topic was not without attraction to his friend. He was a slight man
+of middle height, and of no apparent distinction, and his face with
+all its petulant lines of lassitude and ill-health--the wear and
+tear of forty years having done with him the work of fifty--struck
+one who saw Philip Rainham for the first time by nothing so much as
+by his ugliness. And yet few persons who knew him would have
+hesitated to allow to his nervous, suffering visage a certain
+indefinable charm. The large head set on a figure markedly
+ungraceful, on which the clothes seldom fitted, was shapely and
+refined, although the features were indefensible, even grotesque.
+And his mouth, with its constrained thin lips and the acrid lines
+about it, was unmistakably a strong one. His deep-set eyes,
+moreover, of a dark gray colour, gleamed from under his thick
+eyebrows with a pleasant directness; while his smile, which some
+people called cynical, as his habit of speech most certainly was,
+was found by others extraordinarily sympathetic.
+
+"Yes, tell me about yourself, Dick," he said again.
+
+"I have done a picture, if that is what you mean, besides some
+portraits; I have worked down here like a galley slave for the last
+three months."
+
+"And is the queer little _estaminet_ in Soho still in evidence? Do the
+men of to-morrow still meet there nightly and weigh the claims of
+the men of to-day?"
+
+Lightmark smiled a trifle absently; his eyes had wandered off to his
+picture in the corner.
+
+"Oh, I believe so!" he said at last; "I dine there occasionally when
+I have time. But I have been going out a good deal lately, and I
+hardly ever do have time.... May I smoke, by the way?"
+
+Rainham nodded gently, and the artist pulled out his case and
+started a fragrant cigarette.
+
+"You see, Rainham," he continued, sending a blue ring sailing across
+the room, "I am not so young as I was last year, and I have seen a
+good deal more of the world."
+
+"I see, Dick," said Rainham. "Well, go on!"
+
+"I mean," he explained, "that those men who meet at Brodonowski's
+are very good fellows, and deuced clever, and all that; but I doubt
+if they are the sort of men it is well to get too much mixed up
+with. They are rather _outré_, you know; though, of course, they are
+awfully good fellows in their way."
+
+"Precisely!" said Rainham, "you are becoming a very Solomon, Dick!"
+
+He sat playing idly with the ring on his forefinger, watching the
+artist's smoke with the same curiously obscure smile. It had the
+effect on Lightmark now, as Rainham's smile did on many people,
+however innocent it might be of satiric intention, of infusing his
+next remarks with the accent of apology.
+
+"You see, Rainham, one has to think of what will help one on, as
+well as what one likes. There is a man I have come to know lately--a
+very good man too, a barrister--who is always dinning that into me.
+He has introduced me to some very useful people, and is always
+urging me not to commit myself. And Brodonowski's is rather
+committal, you know. However, we must dine there together again one
+day, soon, and then you will understand it."
+
+"Oh, I understand it, Dick!" said Rainham. "But let me see the
+picture while the light lasts."
+
+"Oh, yes!" cried Lightmark eagerly. "We must not forget the
+picture." He hoisted it up to a suitable light, and Rainham stood by
+the bow-window, from which one almost obtained the point of view
+which the artist had chosen, regarding it in a critical silence.
+
+"What do you call it?" he asked at last.
+
+"'The Gray River,'" said Lightmark; then a little impatiently: "But
+how do you find it? Are you waiting for a tripod?"
+
+"I don't think I shall tell you. By falling into personal criticism,
+unless one is either dishonest or trivial, one runs the risk of
+losing a friend."
+
+"Oh, nonsense, man! It's not such a daub as that. I will risk your
+candour."
+
+Rainham shrugged his shoulder.
+
+"If you will have it, Dick--only, don't think that I am to be coaxed
+into compliments."
+
+"_Is_ it bad?" asked Lightmark sceptically.
+
+"On the contrary, it is surprisingly good. It's clever and pretty;
+sure to be hung, sure to sell. Only you have come down a peg. The
+sentiment about that river is very pretty, and that mist is
+eminently pictorial; but it's not the river you would have painted
+last year; and that mist--I have seen it in a good many pictures
+now--is a mist that one can't quite believe in. It's the art that
+pays, but it's not the art you talked at Brodonowski's last summer,
+that is all."
+
+Lightmark tugged at his moustache a little ruefully. Rainham had an
+idea that his ups and downs were tremendous. His mind was a
+mountainous country, and if he had elations, he had also depressions
+as acute. Yet his elasticity was enormous, and he could throw off
+troublesome intruders, in the shape of memories or regrets, with the
+ease of a slow-worm casting its skin. And so now his confidence was
+only shaken for a moment, and he was able to reply gaily to
+Rainham's last thrust:
+
+"My dear fellow, I expect I talked a good deal of trash last year,
+after all"--a statement which the other did not find it worth while
+to deny.
+
+They had resumed their places at the table, and Lightmark, with a
+half-sheet of note-paper before him, was dashing off profiles. They
+were all the same--the head of a girl: a childish face with a
+straight, small nose, and rough hair gathered up high above her head
+in a plain knot. Rainham, leaning over, watched him with an amused
+smile.
+
+"The current infatuation, Dick, or the last but one?"
+
+"No," he said; "only a girl I know. Awfully pretty, isn't she?"
+
+Rainham, who was a little short-sighted, took up the paper
+carelessly. He dropped it after a minute with a slight start.
+
+"I think I know her," he said. "You have a knack of catching faces.
+Is it Miss Sylvester?"
+
+"Yes; it is Eve Sylvester," said Lightmark. "Do you know them? I see
+a good deal of them now."
+
+"I have known them a good many years," said Rainham.
+
+"They have never spoken of you to me," said Lightmark.
+
+"No? I dare say not. Why should they?" He was silent for a moment,
+looking thoughtfully at his ring. Then he said abruptly: "I think I
+know now who your friend the barrister is, Dick. I recognise the
+style. It is Charles Sylvester, is it not?"
+
+"You are a wizard," answered the other, laughing. "Yes, it is." Then
+he asked: "Don't you think she is awfully pretty?"
+
+"Miss Sylvester?... Very likely; she was a very pretty child. You
+know, she had not come out last year. Are you going?"
+
+Lightmark had pulled out his watch absently, and he leapt up as he
+discovered the lateness of the hour.
+
+"Heavens, yes! I am dining out, and I shall barely have time to
+dress. I will fetch my traps to-morrow; then we might dine together
+afterwards."
+
+"As you like," said the elder man. "I have no engagements yet."
+
+Lightmark left him with a genial nod, and a moment later Rainham saw
+him through the window passing with long impetuous strides across
+the bridge. Then he returned to his desk, and wrote a letter or two
+until the light failed, when he pushed his chair back, and sat, pen
+in hand, looking meditatively, vaguely, at the antiquated maps upon
+the walls.
+
+Presently his eye fell on Lightmark's derelict paper, with its
+scribble of a girl's head. He considered it thoughtfully for some
+time, starting a little, and covering it with his blotting-paper,
+when Mrs. Bullen, his housekeeper, entered with a cup of tea--a
+freak of his nerves which made him smile when she had gone.
+
+Even then he left his tea for a long time, cooling and untasted,
+while he sat lethargically lolling back, and regarding from time to
+time the pencilled profile with his sad eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The period of Lightmark's boyhood had not been an altogether happy
+one. His earliest recollections carried him back to a time when he
+lived a wandering, desolate life with his father and mother, in an
+endless series of Continental hotels and _pensions_. He was prepared
+to assert, with confidence, that his mother had been a very
+beautiful person, who carried an air of the most abundant affection
+for him on the numerous occasions when she received her friends. Of
+his father, who had, as far as possible, ignored his existence, he
+remembered very little.
+
+During these years there had been frequent difficulties, the nature
+of which he had since learned entirely to comprehend; controversies
+with white-waistcoated proprietors of hotels and voluble
+tradespeople, generally followed by a severance of hastily-cemented
+friendships, and a departure of apparently unpremeditated
+abruptness.
+
+When his mother died, he was sent to a fairly good school in
+England, where his father occasionally visited him, and where he had
+been terribly bullied at first, and had afterwards learned to bully
+in turn. He spent his holidays in London, at the house of his
+grandmother--an excellent old lady, who petted and scolded him
+almost simultaneously, who talked mysteriously about his "poor dear
+father," and took care that he went to church regularly, and had
+dancing-lessons three times a week.
+
+His father's death, which occurred at Monaco somewhat unexpectedly,
+and on the subject of which his grandmother maintained a certain
+reserve, affected the boy but little; in fact, the first real grief
+which he could remember to have experienced was when the old lady
+herself died--he was then nineteen years old--leaving him her
+blessing and a sum of Consols sufficient to produce an income of
+about £250 a year.
+
+The boy's inclinations leaned in the direction of Oxford, and in
+this he was supported by his only-surviving relative, his uncle,
+Colonel Lightmark, a loud-voiced cavalry officer, who had been the
+terror of Richard's juvenile existence, and who, as executor of the
+old lady's will, was fully aware of the position in which her death
+had left him, and her desire that he should go into the Church.
+
+At one of the less fashionable colleges, which he selected because
+he was enamoured of its picturesque inner quadrangle, and of the
+quaint Dutch glass in the chapel windows, Lightmark was popular with
+his peers, and, for his first term, in tolerably good odour with the
+dons, who decided, on his coming up to matriculate, that he ought to
+read for honours. And he did read for honours, after a fashion, for
+nearly a scholastic year, after which an unfortunate excursion to
+Abingdon, and a boisterous re-entry into the University precincts,
+at the latter part of which the junior proctor and his satellites
+were painfully conspicuous, ended in his being "sent down" for a
+term. Whereupon he decided to travel, a decision prompted as much by
+a not unnatural desire to avoid avuncular criticism as by a
+constitutional yearning for the sunny South. Besides, one could live
+for next to nothing abroad.
+
+During the next few years his proceedings were wrapped in a veil of
+mystery which he never entirely threw aside. Rainham, it is true,
+saw him occasionally at this time, for, indeed, it was soon after
+his first arrival in Paris that Lightmark made his friend's
+acquaintance, sealed by their subsequent journey together to Rome.
+But Rainham was discreet. Lightmark before long informed his uncle,
+with whom he at first communicated through the post on the subject
+of dividends, that he was studying Art, to which his uncle had
+replied:
+
+"Don't be a d----d fool. Come back and take your degree."
+
+This letter Dick had light-heartedly ignored, and he received his
+next cheque from his uncle's solicitors, together with a polite
+request that he would keep them informed as to his wanderings, and
+an intimation that his uncle found it more convenient to make them
+the channel of correspondence for the future.
+
+At Paris it was generally conceded that, for an Englishman, the
+delicacy of Lightmark's touch, and the daring of his conception and
+execution, were really marvellous; and if only he could draw! But he
+was too impatient for the end to spend the necessary time in
+perfecting the means.
+
+At Rome he tried his hand at sculpture, and made a few sketches
+which his attractive personality rather than their intrinsic merit
+enabled him to sell. The _camaraderie_ of the Café Grecco welcomed him
+with open arms; and he was to be encountered, in the season, at the
+most fashionable studio tea-parties and diplomatic dances. Before
+long his talent in the direction of seizing likenesses secured him a
+well-paid post as caricaturist-in-chief on the staff of a Republican
+journal of more wit than discretion; and it was in this capacity
+that he gained his literary experience. On the eve of the
+suppression of this enterprising organ the Minister of Police
+thought it a favourable opportunity to express to Lightmark
+privately his opinion that he was not likely to find the atmosphere
+of Rome particularly salubrious during the next few months.
+Whereupon our friend had shrugged his shoulders, and after
+ironically thanking the official for his disinterested advice, he
+had given a farewell banquet of great splendour at the Grecco,
+packed up palettes and paint-boxes, and started for London, where
+his friends persuaded him that his talent would be recognised. And
+at London he had arrived, travelling by ruinously easy stages, and
+breaking the journey at Florence, where he sketched and smoked pipes
+innumerable on the Lung Arno; at Venice, where he affected
+cigarettes, and indulged in a desperate flirtation with a pretty
+black-eyed marchesa; at Monaco, where he gambled; and at Paris,
+where he spent his winnings, and foregathered with his friends of
+the Quartier Latin.
+
+His empty pockets suggested the immediate necessity for work in a
+manner more emphatic than agreeable. His uncle, upon whom he called
+at his club, invited him to dinner, lectured him with considerable
+eloquence, and practically declined to have any more to do with the
+young reprobate, which shook Lightmark's faith in the teaching of
+parables.
+
+However, he set to work in the two little rooms beneath the tiles
+which he rented in Bloomsbury, and which served him as bedroom and
+studio; and for a few weeks he finished sketches by day, and wrote
+sonnets for magazines, and frivolous articles for dailies, by night.
+And, strange to say, though there were times when success seemed
+very hard to grasp, and when he was obliged to forestall
+quarter-day, and even to borrow money from Rainham--when that bird
+of passage was within reach--he sold sketches from time to time; he
+obtained commissions for portraits; and the editors occasionally
+read and retained his contributions.
+
+In course of time he moved further west, to the then unfashionable
+neighbourhood of Holland Park, and devoted his energies to the
+production of a work which should make an impression at the Academy.
+It was his first large picture in oils, an anonymous portrait,
+treated with all the audacity and _chic_ of the modern French school,
+of a fair-haired girl in a quaint fancy dress, standing under the
+soft light of Japanese lanterns, in a conservatory, with a
+background of masses of flowers.
+
+And when it was finished, Rainham and the small coterie of artists
+who were intimate with Lightmark were generously enthusiastic in
+their expressions of approval.
+
+"But I don't know about the Academy, old man," said one of these
+critics dubiously, after the first spontaneous outburst of
+discussion. "Of course it's good enough, but it's not exactly their
+style, you know. The old duffers on the Hanging Committee wouldn't
+understand it----"
+
+And though Lightmark maintained his intention in the face of this
+criticism, the picture was never submitted to the hangers. Rainham
+brought a wealthy American ship-owner to see it, and when the
+committee sat in judgment, the work was already on the high seas on
+its way to New York.
+
+After all, Lightmark owed his nascent reputation to work of a less
+important nature--a few landscapes which appeared on the walls of
+Bond Street galleries, and were transferred in course of time to
+fashionable drawing-rooms; a few portraits, which the uninitiated
+thought admirable because they were so "like." Moreover, he could
+flatter discreetly, and he took care not to bore his sitter; two
+admirable qualities in a portrait-painter who desires to succeed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+It was to one of his sitters that Lightmark owed his introduction to
+the Sylvesters. Charles Sylvester had been told that Lightmark was a
+man who would certainly achieve greatness, and he felt that here was
+an opportunity to add all hitherto missing leaf to his laurels, by
+constituting himself a patron of art, a position not often attained
+by young barristers even when, as in Sylvester's case, they have
+already designs upon a snug constituency.
+
+Sylvester began by giving his _protégé_ a commission to paint his
+mother's portrait, and before this work was finished a very
+appreciable degree of intimacy had sprung up between the Sylvester
+family and the young painter, who found no difficulty in gratifying
+a woman-of-the-world's passion for small-talk and fashionable
+intelligence--judiciously culled from the columns of the daily
+newspapers with the art of a practised wielder of the scissors and
+paste-brush.
+
+With Miss Sylvester he had a less easy task. She was a girl who had
+from a very early age been accustomed to have her impressions
+moulded by her self-assertive elder brother; and he, at any rate at
+first, had been careful to show that he regarded Lightmark as an
+object of his patronage rather than as a friend who could meet him
+on his own exalted level. He had been known, in his earlier years,
+to speak somewhat contemptuously of "artists"; and, indeed, his want
+of sympathy with Bohemians in general had given Eve occasion for
+much wondering mental comment, when her brother first spoke of
+introducing the portrait-painter to the family circle.
+
+However, brotherly rule over a girl's opinions is apt to be
+disestablished when she draws near the autumn of her teens; and
+after her emancipation from the schoolroom and short frocks, Miss
+Eve began to think it was time that she should be allowed to
+entertain and express views of her own. And after her first ball, an
+occasion on which her programme had speedily been besieged, and the
+_débutante_ marked as dangerous by the observant mothers of
+marriageable sons and daughters--after this important function,
+even Charles had begun to regard his pretty sister with a certain
+amount of deference. He certainly had reason to congratulate himself
+on having so attractive a young person to pour out his coffee and
+compose his "buttonholes" before he started for chambers in the
+morning. Eve was at an age when the wild-rose tints of a complexion
+fostered by judicious walks and schoolroom teas had not yet yielded
+to the baneful influence of late dinners and the other orgies which
+society conducts in an unduly-heated atmosphere. Her figure was
+still almost childishly slim, but graceful, and straight enough to
+defy criticism in the ball-room or the saddle. Her eyes were gray,
+with a curious, starry expression in their depths, which always
+suggested that the smile which was so often on her lips was quite
+ready to exaggerate the dimples in her cheeks. Her hair was
+refractory, from her own point of view; but Lightmark found the
+tangled brown masses, which she wore gathered into a loose knot high
+at the back of her shapely head, entirely charming, and suggestive,
+in a way, of one of Lancret's wood nymphs.
+
+She could never bring herself to believe that her nose was pretty,
+although in the seclusion of her chamber she had frankly criticised
+her reflected image; and perhaps it _was_ a trifle too small for most
+critics. Still, her admirers declared that, especially in profile,
+it was delightfully piquant, and vastly preferable to the
+uninteresting aquilines which adorned the countenances of her mother
+and brother. A provoking, childish, charming face, when all was
+said; it was not wonderful that Lightmark would fain put it upon
+canvas. And, indeed, so far as the young girl herself was concerned,
+he had already a conditional promise. She had no objection whatever
+to make, provided that Charles was first consulted; only she had no
+dress that would meet the occasion. And when Lightmark protested
+that the airy white garment, with here and there a suggestion of
+cream-coloured lace and sulphur ribbons, which she was wearing, was
+entirely right, she scouted the idea with scorn.
+
+"This old frock, Mr. Lightmark," she exclaimed, with a pretty
+display of disdain for his taste, "why, I've worn the old thing for
+months! No; if Charles says I may have my portrait painted, I shall
+go straight off to Madame Sophie, and then you may paint me and send
+me to the Academy or Grosvenor in all my glory."
+
+Lightmark had found it quite useless to protest, well as he knew
+that the ordinary French milliner can be warranted to succeed in
+producing a garment almost as unpaintable as a masculine black
+frock-coat.
+
+On the afternoon of the day after Rainham's return to the dock,
+Lightmark was caressing his fair moustache upon the doorstep of the
+Sylvesters' house, No. 137, Park Street, West, a mansion of
+unpretending size, glorious in its summer coat of white paint,
+relieved only by the turquoise-blue tiles which surrounded the
+window-boxes, and the darker blue of the railings and front-door. He
+was calling ostensibly for the purpose of inquiring how Charles
+Sylvester liked the frame which he had selected for the
+recently-finished portrait; really in order to induce her brother to
+allow Eve to sit to him. Sounds as of discussion floated down the
+wide staircase; and when the servant opened the drawing-room door
+preparatory to announcing him, Lightmark heard--and it startled
+him--a well-remembered voice upraised in playful protest.
+
+"No, 'pon my word, Mrs. Sylvester, my young scamp of a nephew hasn't
+done you justice, 'pon my soul he hasn't."
+
+At first he felt almost inclined to turn tail; though he had long
+been aware that the Sylvesters were cognisant of his relationship to
+the somewhat notorious old Colonel, and that they knew him, as
+everyone did, he had never contemplated the possibility of meeting
+his uncle there.
+
+And when he had shaken hands in a bewildered manner with Mrs.
+Sylvester and Eve, he perceived that his uncle was greeting him with
+an almost paternal cordiality.
+
+"Why, Dick, my boy, 'pon my soul I haven't seen you for an age! You
+mustn't neglect your gouty old uncle, you know, Dick; when are you
+going to paint his portrait, in review order, eh? Not until you've
+painted Miss Eve here, I'll be bound."
+
+The prodigal nephew needed all his by no means deficient stock of
+nerve to enable him to present an unmoved countenance to this
+unexpected attack of geniality. This, he thought, as he returned the
+other's greeting with as great a semblance of ease as he could
+muster--this was the uncle who had declined to recognise him when
+they met a few months ago, in the broadest daylight, in Pall Mall!
+
+Presently, while he was trying to recover his equanimity by devoting
+himself to the cult of Eve, he heard the colonel whisper in a
+confidential undertone to their hostess:
+
+"Devilish clever fellow, my nephew, y'know, though perhaps I
+oughtn't to say so. Those newspaper beggars think very highly of
+him--the critics, y'know, and all that; why, 'pon my soul, I was
+reading something about him only this morning at the club in the
+what's-his-name--the __Outcry__. Said he ought to be in the Academy."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Sylvester sympathetically, "you are quite right to
+be proud of him, Colonel Lightmark. Charles thinks he is very
+clever, and he is _so_ pleased with my portrait. We want him to paint
+Eve, you know, only---- Oh, do let me give you another cup of tea,
+Mr. Lightmark! Two lumps of sugar, I think?"
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Sylvester. Do you know, I have discovered that we
+have a mutual friend--that is to say, I found out not long ago,
+quite by accident, that my very good friend, Philip Rainham, has the
+pleasure of your acquaintance."
+
+"Oh, really!" said Eve delightedly; "do you know Philip--Mr.
+Rainham? And have you seen him lately? We haven't heard anything of
+him for weeks and weeks--not since Christmas, have we, mamma?"
+
+"Ah!" answered Lightmark, smiling, and letting his eyes wander over
+the white expanse of the Colonel's waistcoat. "I don't wonder at
+that. You see, he has been nursing himself on the Riviera all the
+winter, lucky dog! He only came back last night. I saw him at his
+dock, you know, down the river--such a jolly old place. I have been
+sketching there, on and off, nearly all the spring. He lets me make
+myself quite at home."
+
+"Take care, Dick, my boy," said the Colonel sententiously, fixing
+his black-rimmed eyeglass under the bushy white brow that shaded his
+right eye; "don't you let him entice you into that business. Don't
+pay nowadays! All the shipping goes up North, y'know. The poor old
+Thames is only used for regattas now, and penny steamers."
+
+"How very nice for the Thames!" cried Eve. "Why, there's nothing I
+like more than regattas! I do so hope we shall go to Henley this
+year; but houseboats are so expensive, and it's no fun unless you
+have a houseboat. We had a punt last year, a sort of thing like a
+long butler's tray, and Charles got into fearful difficulties. You
+know, it looks so easy to push a punt along with a pole, but the
+pole has a wicked way of sticking in the mud at critical
+moments--when they are clearing the course, for instance. Oh, it was
+dreadful! Everybody was looking at us, and I felt like one of those
+horrid people who always get in the way at the Oxford and Cambridge
+boat-race!"
+
+"Or the Derby dog, by Jove!" suggested the Colonel.
+
+"I can sympathize with you fully, Miss Sylvester," said his nephew.
+"I shouldn't like to say how many times in the course of my first
+summer term at Oxford I found myself sprawling ignominiously in the
+Cherwell, instead of posing in a picturesque attitude in the stern
+of my punt. And one looked such a fool going up to college in wet
+things. But there aren't many regattas going on in the regions below
+London Bridge nowadays. It's not much like Henley or Marlow, though
+it's pretty enough in its way at times. You ought to get Rainham to
+invite you to the dock; you would create an impression on the
+natives, and of course he would be delighted. He's got a most
+amiable housekeeper, though I don't think she has heard of thin
+bread-and-butter; and I have discovered that his foreman is a judge
+of art--a regular Ruskin."
+
+"And how is poor Philip, Mr. Lightmark?" asked Mrs. Sylvester
+tentatively. "You must bring him here very soon, and make him give
+an account of himself."
+
+"Oh," said Lightmark vaguely, "he's looking pretty fit, though he
+doesn't like to be told so. I really believe he would be unhappy if
+he were in robust health. He finds his damaged lung such a good
+pretext for neglecting the dock; and if it got quite well, half the
+occupation of his life would be gone."
+
+Mrs. Sylvester and Eve both protested laughingly against this
+somewhat heartless view of the case; and after declining an offer of
+the back seats of the carriage, which was already waiting at the
+door to take Mrs. Sylvester and her daughter for their anteprandial
+drive in the Park, and expressing their regret that they had not
+seen Charles, uncle and nephew took their leave together.
+
+"Dick, my boy," said the colonel, when they were safely in the
+street, "you must come and dine with me. Not tonight; I am going to
+take Lady Dulminster to the French play. Let me have your address,
+or come and look me up at the club. I'm dev'lish glad you're getting
+on so well, my boy, though you were a fool not to stay up at Oxford
+and take your degree. After all, though, perhaps you aren't quite
+the cut for the Church or a fellowship, and--and the Sylvesters are
+dev'lish good people to know, Dick. Ta, ta! Don't forget to come and
+see me."
+
+So saying, Dick's versatile uncle waved his cheroot by way of adieu,
+and clambered laboriously into a hansom.
+
+"By Jove!" said the younger man blankly, "what a ridiculous old
+humbug it is! And how he used to frighten me in the old days with
+his confounded cavalry bluster! I rather think I _will_ look him up:
+and I'll dine with him three times a week if he likes. Meanwhile,
+it's time for me to go and meet old Rainham, and take him round to
+Brodonowski's. What a ripping sunset!"
+
+And he strolled light-heartedly through Grosvenor Square, the smoke
+of his cigarette fading away behind him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+When Rainham pushed back the door of the dim little restaurant in
+Turk Street, Soho, he stood a moment, blinking his eyes a little in
+the sudden change from the bright summer sunshine, before he assured
+himself that his friend had not yet arrived. Half a dozen men were
+sitting about smoking or discussing various drinks. The faces of
+several were familiar to him, but there were none of them whom he
+knew; so he took his seat at a table near the door and ordered a
+vermouth to occupy him until Lightmark, whose unpunctuality was
+notorious, should put in an appearance. In the interim his eyes
+strayed round the establishment, taking stock of the walls with
+their rough decorations, and the _clientèle_, and noting, not without
+a certain pleasure, that during the six months in which he had been
+absent neither had suffered much alteration.
+
+Indeed, to Philip Rainham, who had doubtless in his blood the taint
+of Bohemia, Brodonowski's and the enthusiasm of its guests had a
+very definite charm. They were almost all of them artists; they were
+all of them young and ardent; and they had a habit of propounding
+their views, which were always of the most advanced nature, with a
+vehemence which to Rainham represented all the disinterestedness of
+youth. Very often they were exceedingly well worth knowing, though
+in the majority of cases the world had not found it out. He knew
+very few of them personally; he had been taken there first by
+Lightmark, when the latter was fresh from Paris, and had been
+himself more in touch with them. But he had often sat smoking
+silently a little outside the main group, listening, with a
+deferential air that sat upon his age somewhat oddly, to their
+audacious propaganda.
+
+In his mind he would sometimes contrast the coterie with certain
+artistic houses, more socially important, which he had from
+time to time frequented: where earnest-eyed women in graceful
+garments--which certainly afforded a rest to the eye--dispensed tea
+from a _samovar_, and discoursed discreetly of the current Academy and
+the most recent symptomatic novel.
+
+The delight of a visible, orderly culture permeating their manners
+and their conversation was a real one, and yet, Rainham reflected,
+it left one at the last a trifle weary, a little cold. It seemed to
+him that this restaurant, with its perennial smell of garlic, its
+discoloured knife-handles, its frequentation of picturesque poverty,
+possessed actually an horizon that was somewhat less limited.
+
+Indeed, the dingy room, its assemblage apart, had many traces of an
+artistic patronage. The rough walls were adorned, in imitation of
+the familiar Roman haunt, of which this was, so to speak, a colony,
+with a host of fantastic sketches: rapid silhouettes in charcoal,
+drawn for illustration or refutation in the heat of some strenuous
+argument; caricatures in the same medium, some of them trenchantly
+like, of the customers as well as of certain artistic celebrities,
+whose laurels Brodonowski's had not approved, varied here and there
+by an epigram or a doggerel couplet, damning the Philistine.
+
+Rainham smiled as he recognised occasionally the grotesque travesty
+of a familiar face. Presently his eyes were arrested by a drawing
+which was new to him, a face of striking ugliness, offering
+advantages to the caricaturist of which, doubtless, he had not
+omitted to avail himself. It imposed itself on Rainham, for the
+savage strength which it displayed, and for an element in its
+hideousness which suggested beauty. He was still absorbed in the
+study of this face when Lightmark entered and took his place
+opposite him with a brief apology for his tardiness. He was dressed
+well, with a white orchid in his button-hole, and looked prosperous
+and rosy. Some light badinage on this score from his various
+acquaintances in the restaurant he parried with a good-humoured
+nonchalance; then he betook himself to consideration of the _menu_.
+
+"I have been calling on your friends, the Sylvesters," he explained
+after a while, "and I could not get away before. My uncle was there,
+by the way. You have heard me speak of him?"
+
+"Your uncle, who holds such a lax view of the avuncular offices?"
+
+Lightmark smiled a little self-congratulatory smile.
+
+"Ah, that's changed. The old boy was deuced friendly--gave me his
+whole hand instead of two fingers, and asked me to dine with him. I
+think," he went on after a moment, "the Sylvesters have been putting
+in a good word for me. Or perhaps it was Mrs. Sylvester's portrait
+which did the job."
+
+"Ah," said Rainham, "you have painted her, have you?"
+
+Their fish occupied them in silence. Lightmark, a trifle flushed
+from his rapid walk, smiled from time to time absently, as though
+his thoughts were pleasant ones. The older man thought he had seldom
+seen him looking more boyishly handsome. Presently his eyes again
+caught the head which had so struck his fancy.
+
+"Is that yours, Dick?" he asked.
+
+Lightmark followed the direction of his eyes to the opposite wall.
+
+"I believe it is," he remarked, with a shade of deprecation in his
+manner. "It is Oswyn. Don't you know him?"
+
+"I don't know him," said the other, sipping his thin Médoc. "But I
+think I should like to. What is he?"
+
+"He will be here soon, no doubt, and then you will see for yourself.
+He is Oswyn! I knew him in Paris better than I do now. He was in
+B----'s studio; and B---- swore that he had a magnificent genius. He
+painted a monstrous picture which the Salon wouldn't hang; but B----
+bought it, and hung it in his studio, where it frightened his models
+into fits. Last year he came to London, where he makes enough, when
+he is sober, by painting pot-boilers for the dealers, to keep him in
+absinthe and tobacco, which are apparently his sole sustenance. In
+the meanwhile he is painting a masterpiece; at least, so he will
+tell you. He is a virulent fanatic, whose art is the most monstrous
+thing imaginable. He is--but talk of the devil----"
+
+He broke off and nodded to a little, lean man of ambiguous age, in a
+strained coat, who entered at this moment with a rapid lurching
+gait. He sat down immediately opposite them, under Lightmark's
+presentment, with which Rainham curiously compared him. And it
+struck him that there was something in that oddly repulsive figure
+which Lightmark's superficial crayon had missed. The long, haggard
+face was there, with its ill-kempt hair and beard; and the lips,
+which, when they parted in a smile that was too full of irony,
+revealed the man's uneven, discoloured teeth. Rainham lost sight of
+his uncouthness in a sense of his extreme power. His eyes, which
+were restless and extraordinarily brilliant, met Rainham's
+presently; and the latter was conscious of a certain fascination in
+their sustained gaze. In spite of the air of savagery which pervaded
+the man, it was a movement of sympathy which, on the whole, he
+experienced towards him. And it seemed as if this sentiment were
+reciprocal, for when the German youth, who was the cupbearer of the
+establishment, had taken Oswyn's order, and had brought him absinthe
+in a long glass, he motioned it abruptly to the opposite table. Then
+he crossed over and accosted Lightmark, whom he had not hitherto
+appeared to recognise, with a word of greeting. Lightmark murmured
+his name and Rainham's, and the strange, little man nodded to him
+not unamiably.
+
+"I must smoke, if you don't mind," he said, after a moment.
+
+They nodded assent, and he produced tobacco in a screw of newspaper
+from the pocket of his coat, and began rapidly to make cigarettes.
+Rainham watched the dexterous movements of his long nervous
+hands--the colour of old ivory--and found them noticeable.
+
+"You are not an artist, I think," he suggested after a moment,
+fixing his curiously intent eyes on Rainham.
+
+"No," admitted the other, smiling, "I am afraid I am not. I am only
+here on sufferance. I am a mender of ships."
+
+"He is a connoisseur," put in Lightmark gaily. "It's an accident
+that he happens to be connected with shipping--a fortunate one,
+though, for he owns a most picturesque old shanty in the far East.
+But actually he does not know a rudder post from a jib-boom."
+
+"I suppose you have been painting it?" said Oswyn shortly.
+
+Lightmark nodded.
+
+"I have been painting the river from his wharf. The picture is just
+finished, and on the whole I am pleased with it. You should come in
+and give it a look, Oswyn, some time. You haven't seen my new
+studio."
+
+"I never go west of Regent Street," said Oswyn brusquely.
+
+Lightmark laughed a little nervously.
+
+"Oswyn doesn't believe in me, you know, Philip," he explained
+lightly. "It is a humiliating thing to have to say, but I may as
+well say it, to save him the trouble. He is so infernally frank
+about it, you know. He thinks that I am a humbug, that I don't take
+my art seriously, and because, when I have painted my picture, I
+begin to think about the pieces of silver, he is not quite sure that
+I may not be a descendant of Judas. And then, worst of all, I have
+committed the unpardonable sin: I have been hung at Burlington
+House. Isn't that about it, Oswyn?"
+
+The elder man laughed his low, mirthless laugh.
+
+"We understand each other, Dick; but you don't quite do yourself
+justice--or me. I have an immense respect for your talent. I feel
+sure you will achieve greatness--in Burlington House."
+
+"Well, it's a respectable institution," said the young man soberly.
+
+Oswyn finished his drink at a long, thirsty gulp, watching the young
+man askance with his impressive eyes. Rainham noticed for the first
+time that he had a curious trick of smiling with his lips only--or
+was it of sneering?--while the upper part of his face and his heavy
+brows frowned.
+
+"By the way, Lightmark," he observed presently, "I have to
+congratulate you on your renown. There is quite a long panegyric on
+your picture in the _Outcry_ this week. Do you know who wrote it?"
+
+"Damn it, man!" broke out Lightmark, with a vehemence which, to
+Rainham, seemed uncalled for, "how should I know? I haven't seen the
+rag for an age."
+
+There was an angry light in his eyes, but it faded immediately.
+
+Oswyn continued apologetically:
+
+"I beg your pardon. It must be very annoying to you to be puffed
+indiscreetly. But I fancied, you know----"
+
+Lightmark, flushing a little, interrupted him, laying his hand with
+a quick gesture, that might have contained an appeal in it, on the
+painter's frayed coat-sleeve.
+
+"Your glass is empty, and we are about ready for our coffee. What
+will you take?"
+
+Oswyn repeated his order, smiling still a little remotely, as he let
+the water trickle down from a scientific height to his glass,
+whipping the crystal green of its contents into a nebulous yellow.
+Rainham, who had listened to the little passage of arms in silence,
+felt troubled, uneasy. The air seemed thunderous, and was heavy with
+unspoken words. There appeared to be an under-current of
+understanding between the two painters which was the reverse of
+sympathetic, and made conversation difficult and volcanic. It caused
+him to remind himself, a trifle sadly, how little, after all, one
+knew of even one's nearest friend--and Lightmark, perhaps, occupied
+to him that relation--how much of the country of his mind remains
+perpetually undiscovered; and it made him wonder, as he had
+sometimes wondered before, whether the very open and sunny nature of
+the young painter, which was so large a part of his charm, had not
+its concealed shadows--how far, briefly, Lightmark's very frankness
+might not be a refinement of secretiveness?
+
+If, however, a word here and there, a trait surprised, indefinable,
+led him on occasion to doubt of his dominant impression of
+Lightmark's character, these doubts were never of long duration; and
+he would dismiss them, barely entertained, even as a sort of
+disloyalty, to the limbo of stillborn fancies. And so now, with his
+accustomed generosity, he speedily flung himself into the breach,
+and did his best to drive the conversation into impersonal and
+presumably safer channels. He touched on the prospects of the
+Academy, of academic art, and art in general, and by-and-by, as
+Oswyn rose to the discussion, he became himself interested, and was
+actuated less by a wish to make conversation than to draw his new
+friend out. And as the artist leant forward, grew excited, with his
+white, lean face working into strange contortions--as he shot out
+his savage paradoxes, expounding the gospel of the new art a trifle
+thickly now, and rolling and as rapidly smoking perpetual
+cigarettes, he found him again strangely attractive.
+
+He had flashes of insight, it seemed to Rainham; there was something
+in his caustic criticism which led him to believe that he could at
+another time have justified himself, defended reasonably and sanely
+a position that was at least tenable.
+
+But the tide of his spleen invariably overtook him, and he abandoned
+exegesis for tirade. The _bourgeois_, limited scope of the art in
+vogue--this was the burden of his reiterated rabid attacks; art
+watered down to suit the public's insipid palate, and he quoted
+Chamfort furiously: "Combien de sots faut-il pour faire un
+public?"--the art of simpering prettiness, without root or fruit in
+life, the art of absolute convention. He ran over a list of
+successful names with an ever-growing rancour--artistic hacks, the
+crew of them, the journalists of painting--with a side glance at
+Lightmark, who sat pulling his flaxen moustache, looking stiff and
+nervous--he would hang the lot of them to-morrow if he had his way,
+for corrupters of taste, or, better still, condemn them to perpetual
+incarceration in the company of their own daubs. These people, in
+fine, the mutual admiration society of incompetents--where was their
+justification, where would they be in a decade or so? The hangers-on
+of the fashionable world, caring for their art as a means of
+success, of acquiring guineas or a baronetcy or a couple of
+initials, who dropped the little technique they possessed as soon as
+they had a competency, and foisted their pictures most on people
+when they had forgotten how to paint. _Pompiers_, _fumistes_, makers of
+respectable _pommade_--as the painter's potations increased, his
+English became less fluent, and he was driven back constantly to the
+dialect of the Paris _ateliers_, which was more familiar to him than
+his mother tongue. Ah! how he hated these people and their
+thread-paper morality, and their sordid conception of art--a
+prettiness that would sell!
+
+Rainham had heard it all before; it was full of spleen and rancour,
+unnecessarily violent, and, conceivably, unjust. But what he could
+not help recognising, in spite of his repulsion, was a certain
+nobility and singleness in the man, ruin as he was. Virtue came out
+of him; he had the saving quality of genius, and it was a veritable
+burning passion of perfection, which masqueraded in his spleen. His
+conception of art for the sake of art only might be erroneous, but
+it was at least exalted; and the instinct which drove him always for
+his material directly to life, rejecting nothing as common or
+unclean--in the violence of his revolt, perhaps dwelling too
+uniformly on what was fundamentally ugly--might be disputable, but
+was obviously sincere. The last notion which Rainham took away with
+him, when they parted late in the evening (Oswyn having suddenly
+lapsed from the eloquence to the incoherency of drunkenness), was a
+wish to see more of him. He had given him his card, and he waited
+until he had seen him place it--after observing it for some moments
+attentively with lack-lustre eyes--in the security of his waistcoat.
+And as the two friends walked towards Charing Cross, Rainham
+observed that he hoped he would call.
+
+"He is a disreputable fellow," said Lightmark a little sullenly,
+"and an unprofitable acquaintance. You will find it less difficult
+to persuade him to make you a visit than to finish it." At which
+Rainham had merely shrugged his shoulders, finding his friend,
+perhaps for the first time, a little _banal_.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+A day or two later, as Rainham sat in his river-bound office
+struggling, by way of luncheon, with the most primitive of chops,
+his eyes, wandering away from a somewhat mechanic scrutiny of the
+_Shipping Gazette_, fell upon the shifting calendar on the
+mantelpiece.
+
+The dial noted Thursday; and he reminded himself that on that day
+his friend, Lady Garnett, had a perennial habit of being at home to
+her intimates, on the list of whom Rainham could acknowledge,
+without undue vanity, his name occurred high. There was a touch of
+self-reproach in his added reminder that a week had elapsed since
+his return, and he had not already hastened to clasp the excellent
+old lady's hand. It was an unprecedented postponement and an
+infringement of a time-honoured habit; and Rainham had for his habit
+all the respect of a man who is always indolent and often ill;
+though it must be admitted that to his clerks, who viewed the trait
+complacently, and to the importunate Bullen, who resented it, he
+seemed to be only regular in his irregularity. He decided that at
+least this occasion should not be allowed to slip; a free afternoon
+would benefit him. He was always rather lavish of those licenses;
+and it seemed to him that the tintinnabulation of teacups in Lady
+Garnett's primrose and gray drawing-room would be a bearable change
+from the din of a hundred hammers, which had pelted him through the
+open windows all the morning. They were patching a little wooden
+barque with copper, and he paused a moment in the yard, leaning on
+his slim umbrella to admire the brilliant yellow of the renewed
+sheets, standing out in vivid blots against the tarnished verdigris
+of the old. To pass from Blackpool to the West, however, is a tardy
+process; and when Rainham reached the spruce, little house in one of
+the most select of the discreet and uniform streets which adjoin
+Portman Square, he found the clatter of teacups for the most part
+over. There were, in fact, only two persons in the long room, which,
+with its open Erard, and its innumerable _bibelots_, and its plenitude
+of quaint, impossible chairs, seemed quite cosily exiguous. An old
+lady with a beautiful, refined face and a wealth of white hair,
+which was still charming to look at, sat in an attitude full of
+comfortable indolence, with a small pug in her lap, who bounced at
+Rainham with a bark of friendly recognition. A young lady, at the
+other side of the room (she was at least young by courtesy), who was
+pouring out tea, stopped short in this operation to greet the new
+visitor with a little soft exclamation, in which pleasure and
+surprise mingled equally. The old lady also looked up smiling. She
+seemed both good-natured and distinguished, and she had the air--a
+sort of tired complacency--of a person who has been saying witty
+things for a whole afternoon, and is at last in the enjoyment of a
+well-deserved rest. She extended both hands to Rainham, who held
+them for a minute in his own, silently smiling down at her, before
+he released them to greet her companion.
+
+She was a tall, pale girl in a black dress, whom at first sight the
+impartial observer might easily declare to be neither pretty nor
+young. As a matter of fact, she was younger than she seemed, for she
+was barely five-and-twenty, although her face and manner belonged
+to a type which, even in girlhood, already forestalls some of the
+gravity and reserve that arrive with years. As for her beauty, there
+were those who disputed it altogether; and yet even when one had
+gone so far as to declare that Mary Masters was plain, one had, in
+justice, to add that she possessed none the less a distinct and
+delicate charm of her own. It was a daisy-like charm differing in
+kind from the charm of Eve Sylvester, which was that of a violet or
+a child, perpetually perfuming the air. It could be traced at
+last--for she had not a good feature--to the possession of a pair
+of very soft, and shy, brown eyes, and of a voice, simply agreeable
+in conversation, which burgeoned out in song into the richest
+contralto imaginable, causing her to be known widely in society as
+"the Miss Masters who sings." Indeed, she had a wonderful musical
+talent, which she had cultivated largely. Her playing had even
+approved itself to the difficult Rubinstein; and, although she had a
+certain reputation for cleverness, the loss to society when she left
+the music-stool to mingle in it was generally felt not to be met by
+a corresponding gain; and, indeed, as a rule, people did not
+consider her separately. The generality were inclined simply to
+accept her, in relation to her aunt, Lady Garnett, with whom she had
+lived since she was a girl of sixteen, as any other of that witty
+old woman's impedimenta--her pug Mefistofèle, or her matchless
+enamels, or her Watteau fans. As she came towards him now with a cup
+in her hand, her pale face a little flushed, her dark hair braided
+very plainly and neatly above her high forehead, Rainham could not
+help thinking that she would make an adorable old maid.
+
+"You look well, Mary," he remarked, holding her at arms' length
+critically, with the freedom of an old friend. "You look insultingly
+well--I hope you don't mean it."
+
+"I am afraid I do," laughed the girl. "I wish I could say as much
+for you."
+
+Rainham shook his head with burlesque solemnity, and sank down with
+his fragile cup into the most comfortable of the Louis Quinze chairs
+which he could select.
+
+"It's delightful to be back again," he remarked, letting his eyes
+wander round the familiar walls. "I know your things by heart, Lady
+Garnett; there's not one of them I could spare. Thanks, Mary, no
+sugar; cream, if you please. After all, I don't know anyone who has
+such charming rooms. Let me see if there is anything new. Yes, those
+enamels; introduce me, Mary, please. Yes, they are very nice. By
+the way, I picked up some old point for you at Genoa, only I have
+not unpacked it yet. But the Gustave Moreau, where is that? Ah,
+I see you have shifted it over the piano. Yes, it is exactly
+the same; you are all precisely the same; it's delightful, such
+constancy--delightful! I take it as a personal compliment. But where
+are all the delightful people?"
+
+Lady Garnett smiled placidly.
+
+"The delightful people have gone. To tell you the truth, I am just a
+little glad, especially as you have dropped in from the clouds, or
+the Riviera di Ponente--which is it, Philip?"
+
+"To be frank with you, from neither. I have it on my conscience to
+tell you that I have been back some days. I wanted to come here
+before."
+
+"Ah well, so long as you have come now!" said the old lady.
+
+"Your knock was mystifying, Philip," put in the girl presently; "we
+expected nobody else but the Sylvesters, and when we heard your
+solitary step our hearts sank. We thought that Charles Sylvester had
+taken it into his head to come by himself."
+
+"He is a terrible young man," said Lady Garnett; "he is almost as
+limited as his mamma, and he takes himself more seriously. When he
+is with his sister one can tolerate him, but alone----"
+
+She held up her thin wrinkled hands with a little gesture of
+elision, at which her expressive shoulders assisted. She was of
+French extraction, the last survivor of an illustrious family; and
+reconciled as she had become to England--for years she had hardly
+left London--a slight and very pretty accent, and this trick of her
+shoulders, remained to remind people that her point of view was
+still essentially foreign. Rainham, who had from his boyhood found
+England somewhat a prison-house, adored her for this trait. The
+quaint old woman, indeed, with her smooth, well-bred voice, her
+elaborate complexion, her little, dignified incongruities, had
+always been the greatest solace to him. She had the charm of all
+rococo things; she represented so much that had passed away,
+exhaling a sort of elegant wickedness to find a parallel to which
+one had to seek back to the days of the Regency. Of course, in
+society, she passed for being very devout; and, indeed, her little
+pieties, her unfailing attendance at Mass on days of Obligation, at
+the chapel of the French Embassy hard by, struck Rainham as most
+edifying. Really he perceived that her devout attitude was purely
+traditional, a form of good manners. She remained the same wicked,
+charming old Sadducee as before: her morocco-bound _paroissien_ might
+appear on festivals and occasions; she still slept as often as not
+of nights with "Candide" under her pillow.
+
+The knowledge of a certain sentiment which they shared towards the
+limitations of London (they were both persons strikingly without
+prejudice) lent a certain piquancy to their old-established
+relations, an allusive flavour to their conversation--it was always
+highly seasoned with badinage--that puzzled many of their common
+acquaintance enormously.
+
+Mary Masters, as a shy and serious maiden, fresh from a country
+parsonage, remembered well the astonishment, mingled with something
+not unlike awe, with which she had first heard them talk. Philip
+Rainham had been calling, as it might be now, when she arrived, and
+Lady Garnett had promptly introduced him to her as her godson,
+because, as she remarked lightly, if he is not, he ought to have
+been. To which Philip had replied, in a like humour, that it was all
+the same: if they hadn't that relation, at any rate their behaviour
+implied it.
+
+It was a novelty in her small and serious experience to find herself
+in conjunction with such frivolity; she was almost inclined to be
+shocked. Nevertheless, in the ten years during which she had made
+her home in Parton Street, Mary Masters had surmounted her awe, if
+her astonishment still occasionally obtained. Neither her aunt nor
+Rainham had altered, nor had they grown perceptibly older.
+
+Watching the latter to-day as he sat lolling back lazily, balancing
+his teacup, she was curiously reminded of her first impression of
+him; taking stock of her humorously, silently, in almost the same
+attitude, with the same sad eyes. And since Mary, too, had remained
+virtually unchanged, it is to the credit of the head of a
+particularly serious little daughter of the Puritans that she had
+ended by appreciating them both. In fact, she had discovered that
+neither of them was so frivolous as it appeared, or, at least, that
+there were visitors in Parton Street who seemed less frivolous,
+and whose frivolity shocked her more. Her shy brown eyes were
+penetrative, and often saw more than one would have imagined, and
+at last they believed that they had seen through the philosophic
+indifference of Lady Garnett's shrug, the gentle irony of Rainham's
+perpetual smile, the various masks of tragic comedians on a stage
+where there is no prompter, where the footlights are most pitiless,
+and where the gallery is only too lavish of its cat-calls at the
+smallest slip. Beneath it all she saw two people who understood each
+other as well as any two persons in the world. Did they understand
+each other so well that they could afford to trifle? She had an idea
+that their silences were eloquent, and that they might well be
+lavish of the crudity of speech. Oh, they pretended very well! The
+young girl found something admirable in the hard, polished surface
+which her aunt presented to the world: her rouge and her diamonds,
+her little bird-like air of living only in the present, of being
+intensely interested, of having no regrets--a manner to which
+Rainham responded so fluently with an assumption that she was
+right, that things were an excellent joke. After all, perhaps they
+pretended too much; at least, she found herself often, when they
+were present, falling away into reveries full of conjecture, from
+which, as happened now, she only awoke with a slight blush to find
+herself directly addressed.
+
+"Wake up, Mary! we are talking of the Sylvesters. I was telling
+Philip that his little friend Eve has become entirely charming."
+
+"Yes," said Mary slowly; "she is charming, certainly. Haven't you
+seen her, Philip? You used to be constantly there."
+
+Rainham assumed the air of reflection.
+
+"Really, I believe I used, when Eve was in short frocks, and Charles
+conspicuously absent. Like Lady Garnett, I find the barrister
+exhausting. He is very unlike his father."
+
+"We are going to Switzerland with them this summer, you know,
+Philip? Will you join us?"
+
+"Ah!" he put his cup down, not responding for a moment. "It would be
+delightful, but I am afraid impossible. You see, there's the dock;
+I have been away from it six months, and I shall have to repeat the
+process when the fogs begin. No, Lady Garnett, I won't be tempted."
+
+She began to press him, and they fenced rapidly for some minutes,
+laughing. Rainham had just been induced to promise that he would at
+least consider the proposition, when the footman announced Mr. and
+Miss Sylvester. They came in a moment later; and while the
+barrister, a tall well-dressed man, with the shaven upper lip and
+neat whisker of his class, and a back which seemed to bend with
+difficulty, explained to Lady Garnett that his mother was suffering
+too much from neuralgia to come with them, Rainham resumed his
+acquaintance with the young girl. He had seen little of her during
+the past two years, and in the last of them, in which she had
+changed most, he had not seen her at all. It was with a slight
+shock, then, that he realized how completely she had grown up. He
+remembered her in so many phases of childhood and little girlhood,
+ranging up from a time when her speech was incoherent, and she had
+sat on his knee and played with his watch, to the more recent
+occasions when he had met her riding in the Park with her brother;
+and she had waved her little whip to him, looking particularly slim
+and pretty in the very trying costume which fashion prescribes for
+little girls who ride.
+
+They had always been very good friends; she had been a most engaging
+little companion, and really, he reflected, he had been extremely
+fond of her. It gave him a distinct pain to reflect that their
+relation had, in the nature of things, come to an end. Gradually, as
+they talked, the young girl growing out of the first restraint of
+her shyness, and falling back into something of her old manner, the
+first painful impression of her entire strangeness left Rainham. In
+spite of her mature, little society air, her engaging attempts at
+worldliness, she was, after all, not so grown-up as she seemed. The
+child gleamed out here and there quite daintily, and as he indulged
+in reminiscence, and reminded her of some of their more remote
+adventures, her merriment found utterance very childishly.
+
+"Our most tragical encounter, though, was with the monkey. Have you
+forgotten that? It was on one of your birthdays--you had a good many
+of them in Florence--I forget which it was. You must have been about
+ten. I had taken you to the Zoological Gardens, such as they were."
+
+Her laughter rippled out softly again.
+
+"I remember," she nodded, "it was dreadful."
+
+"Yes," he said; "we were at the monkey-cage; you had grown tired of
+feeding the ostrich with _centesimi_."
+
+"Oh, Philip!" she interrupted him; "I never, _never_ would have done
+such a thing. It was you who used to give the poor bird _centesimi_.
+I only used to watch."
+
+"Ah, you connived at it, anyhow," he went on. "Well, we were feeding
+the monkeys, this time with melon-seeds, when we somehow aroused the
+ire of a particularly ugly brute, who must have been distantly
+connected with a bull. Anyhow, he made a grab at the scarlet _berret_
+you were wearing, just missed your hair, and demolished the cap."
+
+"I remember," she laughed. "You tied your handkerchief round my
+head, like an old peasant woman, and took me back in a carriage. And
+mamma was dreadfully angry about the cap, because she had bought it
+at Biarritz, and couldn't replace it in Italy. She thought you ought
+to have taken steps to get it back."
+
+"Dear me!" said Rainham solemnly, "why didn't I think of it before?
+I wonder if it's too late to do anything now."
+
+The girl's laughter broke out again, this time attracting the
+attention of her brother, who was discussing the projected travels,
+with the aid of Bradshaw, at Mary Masters' side. He glanced at them
+askance, pulling at his collar in his stiff, nervous fashion a
+little uneasily.
+
+"What a long time ago all that seems, Philip!" she remarked after a
+while.
+
+He was silent for a moment examining his finger-nails intently.
+
+"Yes," he said rather sadly; "I suppose it does. I dare say you
+wouldn't care much for the Zoo now?"
+
+"Oh, I shouldn't mind," she said gaily, "if you will take me."
+
+But a move had been made opposite, and Charles Sylvester, coming up
+to them, overheard this last remark.
+
+"I think we must be off," he said, consulting his watch. "Where is
+Rainham going to take you?"
+
+"To Florence," she said, smiling, "to the Zoo."
+
+"Ah, a good idea," he murmured. "Well, good-bye, Lady Garnett;
+good-day, Rainham. I am sorry to see you don't seem to have
+benefited much by your winter abroad. I almost wonder you came back
+so soon. Was not it rather unwise? This treacherous climate, you
+know."
+
+"Yes," said Rainham; "I, too, think you are right. I think I had
+much better have stayed--very much better."
+
+"Ah, well," he said, "you must take care of yourself, and give us a
+look in if you have time."
+
+Eve looked up at him, flushing a little, as though she found her
+brother's formal politeness lacking in hospitality. She was struck
+then, as she had not been yet during her visit, by a curious
+lassitude in her old friend's face. It affected her with an
+unconscious pity, causing her to second her brother's somewhat
+chilly invitation more cordially.
+
+The humour which had shone in Rainham's eyes while they had been
+talking seemed to have gone out suddenly, like a lamp, leaving them
+blank and tired. It shocked her to realize how old and ill he had
+become.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Indolence and ill-health, in the opinion of many the salient points
+in Philip Rainham's character, had left him at forty with little of
+the social habit. The circle of his intimates had sensibly narrowed,
+and for the rest he was becoming more and more conscious that people
+whom one does not know exceedingly well are not worth knowing at
+all. The process of dining out two or three times a week in the
+company of two or three persons whose claims on his attention were
+of the slenderest he found a process attended with less and less
+pleasure the older he grew. There were few houses now which he
+frequented, and this year, when he had made an effort to devote a
+couple of evenings to the renewal of some acquaintance of the
+winter, and had discovered, as he had discovered anew each season,
+that the effort gave him no appreciable compensations for the
+disagreeables it involved, he made fresh resolutions of abstinence,
+and on the whole he kept them amazingly well.
+
+For the most part, when he was not routed out by Lightmark (and
+since the young artist was in train to become a social acquisition
+this happened less frequently than of old), it was at Blackpool that
+he spent his evenings. He had, it is true, a standing invitation to
+dinner at Lady Garnett's when that old lady found herself at home;
+but Portman Square was remote, and evening dress, to a man with one
+lung in a climate which had so fickle a trick of registering itself
+either at the extreme top or bottom of the thermometer, presented
+various discomforts. His den behind the office--a little
+sitting-room with a bay-window facing Blackpool Reach, a room
+filled with books that had no relation to shipping, and hung round
+with etchings and pictures in those curiously-low tones for which he
+had so unreasonable an affection--was what he cherished most in
+London. He read little now, but the mere presence of the books he
+loved best in rough, uneven cases, painted black, lining the walls,
+caressed him. As with persons one has loved and grown used to
+loving, it was not always needful that they should speak to him; it
+was sufficient, simply, that they should be there. Neither did he
+write on these long, interminable evenings, which were prolonged
+sometimes far into the night. He had ended by being able to smile
+at his literary ambitions of twenty, cultivating his indolence as
+something choice and original, finding his destiny appropriate.
+
+He spent the time in interminable reveries, sitting with a volume
+before him, as often as not unopened, smoking incessantly, and
+looking out of the window. The habit amused himself at times; it was
+so eminently symbolic of his destiny. Life, after all, had been to
+him nothing so much as that--a long looking out of window, the
+impartial spectatorship of a crowd of persons and passions from
+which he had come at last to seem strangely detached, almost as
+much as from this chameleon river, which he had observed with such
+satisfaction in all its manifold gradations of character and colour;
+its curious cold grayness in the beginning of an autumnal dawn; the
+illusion of warmth and depth which it sustained at noon, bringing
+up its burden of leviathans on the top of the flood; its sheen on
+moonless nights, when only little punctures, green and red and
+orange, and its audible stillness, reminded him that down in the
+obscurity the great polluted stream stole on wearily, monotonously,
+everlastingly to the sea. It was changeful and changeless. He
+thought he knew its effects by heart, but it had always new ones in
+reserve to surprise and delight him. He declared it at last to be
+inexhaustible. It was like a diamond on sunny days, flashing out
+light in every little ripple; in the late, sunless afternoon the
+light lay deeply within it, and it seemed jealous of giving back the
+least particle. He compared it then to an opal or a sapphire, which
+shine with the same parsimonious radiance.
+
+One night, while he sat smoking in his wonted meditative fashion,
+he had a visitor--the painter Oswyn. He had almost forgotten his
+invitation, but he reminded himself of his first impression, and
+greeted him with a cordiality which the other seemed to find
+surprising. He took him into his sanctuary and found him whisky and
+a pipe; then he set himself to make the painter talk, a task which
+he found by no means arduous.
+
+Oswyn was sober, and Rainham was surprised after a while at his
+sanity. He decided that, though one might differ from him, dissent
+from his premises or his conclusions, he was still a man to be taken
+seriously. His fluency was as remarkable as ever, and at first as
+spleenful; by-and-by his outrageous mood gave way, and, in response
+to some of Rainham's adroit thrusts, he condescended to stand on his
+defence. He could give a reasonable account of himself; was prepared
+clearly, and succinctly, and seriously with his justification.
+Rainham was impressed anew by his singleness, the purity of his
+artistic passion. His life might be disgraceful, indescribable: his
+art lay apart from it; and when he took up a brush an enthusiasm,
+a devotion to art, almost religious, steadied his hand.
+
+"You may think me a charlatan," he said, with the same savage
+earnestness, "but I can tell you I am not. I may fail or I may
+succeed, as the world counts those things. It is all the same: I
+believe in myself. It is sufficient to me if I approve myself, and
+the world may go to damnation! What I care for is my idea!... yes,
+my idea, that's it! They can howl at me," he went on; "but they can
+never say of any stroke of my brush that I put it there for them. I
+could have painted pictures like Lightmark if I had cared, you know,
+but I did not care!"
+
+"And yet he has great facility," said Rainham tentatively.
+
+"He has more," said Oswyn bitterly, "or, at least, he had--genius.
+And he has deliberately chosen to go the wrong way, to be
+conventional. He can't plead 'invincible ignorance' like the others;
+he ought to know better. Well, he has his reward; but I can't
+forgive him."
+
+Rainham shrugged his shoulders with something between a sigh and a
+laugh.
+
+"Poor boy! he is young, you know. Perhaps he will live to see the
+errors of his ways."
+
+"When he's an Academician, I suppose?" suggested the other
+ironically. "Do they ever see the errors of their ways? If they do
+they don't show it. No; he will marry a rich wife, and make speeches
+at banquets, and paint portraits of celebrities, for the rest of his
+days. And in fifty years' time people will say, 'Lightmark, R.A.?
+Who the devil was he?'"
+
+By this time the young moon had risen, and its cold light shimmered
+on the misty river. Rainham refilled his pipe, and opened the window
+still more widely.
+
+"By Jove, what a night!" he said. "What a night for a painter! I am
+sure you are longing to be out in it. I'm afraid there's nothing to
+show you in the dock at present; you must come down again when
+there's a ship coming in at night. I feel quite reconciled to the
+dock on those occasions. Shall we go for a stroll in the
+moonlight--and seek impressions?"
+
+Oswyn's restless humour welcomed the suggestion, and he was already
+waiting, his soft felt hat in one ungloved hand, and a heavy,
+quaintly carved stick in the other.
+
+They stood for some minutes on the little, square, pulpit-like
+landing, at the top of the creaking wooden staircase, which led down
+the side of the building from office to yard, listening to the faint
+drip of the water through the sluice-gates; the wail of a child
+outside the walls, and the pacing step of the woman who hushed it;
+the distant intermittent roar of the song which reached them through
+the often opened doors of a public-house. Presently the
+night-watchman lumbered out of his sentry-box by the gates, his dim
+lantern sounding pools of mysterious darkness, which were untouched
+by the solitary gas-lamp in the street outside, and which the faint
+moonlight only seemed to intensify.
+
+Oswyn drew in a long breath of the cool, caressing air, momentarily
+straightening his bent figure. Then he gave a short laugh, which
+startled Rainham from the familiar state of half-smiling reverie to
+which he was always so ready to recur.
+
+"The last time I saw the river like this," he said--"the last time
+I was down here at night, that is--was when I went with a Malay
+model of mine to his favourite opium den."
+
+"You have not repeated the experiment?" asked Rainham absently.
+
+"No; not yet, at any rate. It made my hand shake so damnably for a
+week afterwards that I couldn't paint. Besides, I doubt if I could
+find the place again. I couldn't get the Malay to come away at all;
+he is probably there still."
+
+"Beg your pardon, sir," said the night-watchman hoarsely, when they
+reached the bottom of the difficult staircase, "there's been a young
+woman here asking for a gentleman of the name of Crichton. I told
+her there weren't no one of that name here, and Mr. Bullen, sir, he
+saw her, and sent her away. I thought I had better mention it to
+you, sir."
+
+"Crichton? Crichton?" repeated Rainham indifferently. "I don't know
+anyone of that name. Some mistake, I suppose, or---- Well, sailors
+will be sailors! Thank you, Andrewes, that will do. Good-night--or,
+rather, we shall be back in half an hour or so." He turned to Oswyn,
+who had been hanging back to avoid any appearance of interest in the
+conversation, for corroboration. "You will come back, of course?"
+
+"Rather late, isn't it? I think I had better catch some train before
+midnight, if there is one."
+
+"Oh, there are plenty of trains," said Rainham vaguely. "We can
+settle that matter later. I can give you a bed here, you know, or a
+berth, at any rate."
+
+As they stepped through the narrow opening in the gate, a dark form
+sprang forward out of the shadow, and then stopped timidly.
+
+"Oh, Cyril!" cried a woman's plaintive voice. "Cyril! I knew you
+were here, and they wouldn't let me---- Ah, my God! it isn't Cyril
+after all...!"
+
+The voice--and it struck Rainham that it was not the voice of a
+woman of the sort one would expect to encounter in the streets at
+that hour--died away in a broken sob, and the girl fell back a step,
+almost dropping the child she carried in her arms.
+
+Her evident despair appealed to Rainham's somewhat inconveniently
+assertive sensibility.
+
+He hesitated for a moment, glancing from the girl to Oswyn, and
+noting that the face, too, had a certain beauty which was not of the
+order affected by the women of Blackpool.
+
+"Don't go," he said to Oswyn, who had withdrawn a few paces. "I
+won't keep you a moment!"
+
+The baby in the woman's arms set up a feeble wail, and it was borne
+in upon Rainham's mind that the unhappy creature with the white face
+and pleading dark eyes had been waiting long.
+
+"Didn't my foreman tell you that the--that the gentleman you asked
+for is not here?" he inquired gently. "No one here has ever heard of
+Mr. Crichton. I'm afraid you have made a mistake.... Hadn't you
+better go home? I'm sure it would be best for your child."
+
+"Home?" echoed the girl bitterly. Then, changing her tone, "But I
+saw him here with my own eyes!" she pleaded. "I saw him at the
+window there not a week ago quite plain, and then they told me he
+wasn't here! I'm sure he would see me if he only knew--if he only
+knew!"
+
+"He may have been here," suggested Rainham doubtfully. "There are a
+great many people here from day to day, and we don't always know
+their names. But I assure you he isn't here now."
+
+The girl--for in spite of her pale misery she did not look
+more--drew her dark shawl more closely round herself and the child
+with a little, despairing shudder, glancing over her shoulder.
+Rainham let his eyes rest on the frail figure pityingly, and a
+thought of the river behind her struck him with a sudden chill.
+
+He put his hand, almost surreptitiously, into his pocket.
+
+"Where do you live?" he asked. "Near here?" The girl mentioned a
+street which he sometimes passed through when economy of time
+induced him to make an otherwise undesirable short-cut to the
+railway station. "Well," he said presently, "I can't keep my friend
+here waiting, you know. Come and see me to-morrow morning about
+midday, and I will see if I can help you. Only you must promise me
+to go straight home now! And"--here he dropped a coin quickly into
+her hand--"buy something for your child; you both look as if you
+wanted it."
+
+The girl looked at him dumbly for a moment.
+
+"I will come, sir, and--and thank you!" she said, with a quaver in
+her voice. And then, in obedience to Rainham's playfully threatening
+gesture, she turned away.
+
+Rainham gazed after her until she had turned the corner.
+
+"I'm sorry to have treated you to this--scene," he said
+apologetically, as he joined Oswyn, who was gazing over the narrow
+bridge. "I felt bound to do something for the girl, after she had
+been wasting all that time outside my gates. Did you notice what a
+pretty, refined face she had? I wonder who the man can be--Crichton,
+Cecil Crichton, wasn't it?... I never heard the name before. It
+doesn't sound like a sailor's name."
+
+"Cecil Crichton?" echoed the other. "No ... and yet it sounds
+familiar. Perhaps I am thinking of the Admirable, though he wasn't
+Cecil, as far as I remember. The old story, I suppose. Cecil
+Crichton--ah, Cyril Crichton?" he repeated. Then, dismissing the
+subject somewhat brutally, "Ah, well, it's no business of mine! Will
+you give me a light? Thanks!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+At three o'clock Lightmark dismissed his model--an Italian, with a
+wonderfully fine torso and admirable capabilities for picturesque
+pose, whom he had easily persuaded to abandon his ice-cream barrow
+to sit for him two or three times a week, acting the part of studio
+servant in the intervals.
+
+"That will do, Cesare," he said, "_aspetto persone_; besides, you're
+shivering: I shall have you catching cold next, and I can't paint
+while you're sneezing. Yes, you're quite right, _è un freddo
+terribile_, considering that it's July. Off with you now, and come
+again at the same time on Friday. _Si conservi_--that's to say, don't
+get drunk in the interval; it makes you look such a brute that I
+can't paint you."
+
+While the model transformed himself from a scantily-attired Roman
+gladiator into an Italian of the ordinary Saffron Hill description,
+Lightmark hastily washed his brushes, turned down his shirt sleeves,
+and donned the becoming velvet painting-jacket, which Mrs. Dollond
+had so much admired.
+
+"I hope they won't notice Cesare's pipe," he said anxiously. "Even
+though he doesn't smoke here, it always seems to hang about. Perhaps
+I had better open the window and burn a pastille. And now, are we
+prepared to receive Philistia? Yes, I don't think the place looks
+bad, and--but perhaps Mrs. Sylvester mightn't like the gladiator. He
+certainly is deucedly anatomical at present. I'll go and leave him
+in Copal's studio, and then I can borrow his tea-things at the same
+time."
+
+The studio was a lofty room on the ground-floor with an
+elaborately-devised skylight, and a large window facing north,
+through which a distant glimpse of Holland Park could be obtained.
+Lightmark had covered the floor with pale Indian matting, with a bit
+of strong colour, here and there, in the shape of a modern Turkish
+rug. For furniture, he had picked up some old chairs and a large
+straight-backed settee with grotesquely-carved legs, which, with the
+aid of a judicious arrangement of drapery, looked eminently
+attractive, and conveyed an impression of comfort which closer
+acquaintance did not altogether belie. Then there was the platform,
+covered with dark cloth, on which his models posed; the rickety
+table with many drawers, in which he kept brushes and colours; a lay
+figure, disguised as a Venetian flower-girl, which had collapsed
+tipsily into a corner; two or three easels; and a tall, stamped
+leather screen, which was useful for backgrounds. A few sketches,
+mostly unframed, stood in a row on the narrow shelf which ran along
+the pale-green distempered walls; and more were stacked in the
+corners--some in portfolios, and some with their dusty backs exposed
+to view. The palette which he had been using lay, like a great
+fantastic leaf, upon the table, amid a chaos of broken crayons,
+dingy stumps, photographs of sitters, pellets of bread, disreputable
+colour-tubes, and small bottles of linseed-oil, varnish, and
+turpentine. A sketch for Mrs. Sylvester's portrait, in crayons, was
+propped against the foot of an easel (Lightmark hoped that her son
+might buy it for his chambers); the canvas which he had prepared
+against the much-delayed sitting due from Miss Sylvester exposed its
+blank surface on another. A tall Japanese jar full of purple and
+yellow irises, a tribute to his expected guests, stood on the dusty
+black stove.
+
+He had barely had time to arrange the borrowed tea-things, and to
+set a kettle on a little spirit-lamp behind the screen, when Mrs.
+Dollond and her husband were announced. He threw his black sombrero
+somewhat theatrically into a corner, and advanced with effusion to
+meet them. Mrs. Dollond had taken a decided interest in the young
+painter ever since the delightfully uncandid reflection of her by no
+means youthful beauty, which he had exhibited at the Grosvenor, had
+provoked so much comment among her friends.
+
+She was a plump, little, fair-haired woman, with blue eyes, a very
+pink and white complexion, small hands, and a passion for dress with
+which people who had known her before her marriage, as a slim maiden
+devoted to sage-green draperies and square-toed shoes, declined to
+credit her, until they were told that she had, to put it plainly,
+grown fat--a development which compelled her to give up æstheticism
+and employ a _modiste_.
+
+Her husband, who followed her into the room, carrying her
+impedimenta, wore the bored expression of the R.A. who is expected
+to admire the work of an outsider. He was the abject slave of his
+good-natured wife--she _was_ good-natured, in spite of her love of
+scandal--and his only fault from her point of view, and his greatest
+one in the eyes of people in general, lay in an unfortunate habit of
+thinking aloud, a dangerous characteristic, which persons who are
+apt to find themselves in the position of critic should at any cost
+eradicate. Luckily, his benevolence was such that these outspoken
+comments were never really virulent, and not often offensive.
+
+Mrs. Dollond seated herself smilingly on the least rickety chair,
+disposed of her veil with one neatly-gloved hand, and prepared a
+tortoiseshell eyeglass for action with the other.
+
+"What a charming portrait!" she said, pointing with her plump
+index-finger to the sketch of Mrs. Sylvester. "Do I know the lady, I
+wonder? Oh! I do believe it's that Mrs. Sylvester."
+
+"Yes," said Lightmark. "If you remember, you introduced me to her at
+the Academy soirée last year. I expect her here this afternoon, with
+her daughter. I am going to paint Miss Sylvester's portrait."
+
+"Ah," said Mrs. Dollond mischievously, "and that accounts for the
+pastille. You never made such preparations when _I_ sat to you. I
+suppose you thought that a painter's wife could not possibly object
+to tobacco."
+
+"And she certainly doesn't, judging by her consumption of
+cigarettes!" interposed her husband.
+
+"Hugh, I'm ashamed of you. You know I'm a martyr to asthma--and
+cigarettes aren't tobacco. But how old is Miss Sylvester? Is she
+pretty?"
+
+"Don't ask me to describe her, Mrs. Dollond. Wait till you see
+her--she's coming, you know. What do you think of that river-scape,
+most reverend signor? It's one of the little things I've been doing
+down at Rainham's Dock--down at Blackpool."
+
+The Academician tried to appear interested as he assumed the
+conventional bird-like pose of the picture-gazer, and surveyed the
+sketch.
+
+"Very pretty--very pretty! I should hardly have thought it was the
+Thames, though. It isn't muddy enough. In fact, the whole scheme of
+colour is much too clean for London. Quite absurd! Not a bit like
+it! Eh, my dear, what was I saying? Oh yes, I like the effect of the
+sunlight on that brown sail immensely. It's really very clever, very
+clever."
+
+Mrs. Dollond, who never knew what her husband would say next,
+welcomed the influx of a small throng of visitors with a sigh of
+relief.
+
+The Sylvesters and Philip Rainham, arriving at the same time, found
+the little studio almost crowded. Besides the Dollonds there were
+two or three of the Turk Street fraternity; a young sculptor, newly
+arrived from Rome, with his wife; Dionysus F. Quain, an American
+interested in petroleum, who had patronized Lightmark also at Rome;
+and Copal, whose studio was in the same building, and who was
+manifestly anxious about his Chelsea teacups.
+
+Mrs. Sylvester greeted her _protégé_ with a flattering degree of
+warmth which was entirely absent from the stare and conventional
+smile with which she honoured Mrs. Dollond, and the somewhat
+impertinent air of patronage which she wore when one or two of the
+young artists were introduced to her. If they did not mind, Mrs.
+Dollond was inclined to be resentful, for the moment, at least; and,
+as a preliminary attack, she maliciously encouraged Eve, who,
+ensconced in a corner, blissfully unconscious of the maternal
+anxiety which the other matron had detected, was eagerly turning
+over the contents of a portfolio which she had unearthed from its
+lurking-place behind her chair.
+
+Rainham was looking over her shoulder, admiring the charming poise
+of the girl's head, and the contours of her wrists and hands, as she
+submitted the drawings to his inspection. Charles Sylvester
+stationed himself close by, and devoted himself to buttonholing the
+American senator, to the obvious discomfort of his victim, whose
+knowledge of Pennsylvanian oil-wells was infinitely greater than his
+acquaintance with the rudiments of summary jurisdiction, as
+practised in his native State, and who, after hazarding a remark to
+the effect that Judge Lynch had long since retired from the Bench,
+had, as he would have put it, "pretty considerably petered out."
+
+"I hope my daughter isn't indiscreet?" Mrs. Sylvester had hazarded,
+after catching Lightmark's eye on its return journey from a glance
+in the direction of the little group in the corner; and the young
+man had reassured her hastily, before misgivings had time to assail
+him, and when they did, he hoped for the best. For a painter's
+portfolio is, after all, hardly less confidential than a diary, and
+may be on occasion almost as compromising, in spite of the fact that
+the records it contains are written in cipher.
+
+The sunlight, mellowed to a dull straw colour by its passage through
+London air, slanted in at the window, falling first on Charles
+Sylvester's handsome face, with its eminently professional, severely
+cut features, and the careful limitation of whisker, which seemed so
+completely in harmony with his shaven upper lip and the
+unsympathetic scrutiny of his double eyeglass; then, losing some of
+its brightness among the little ripples of brown hair which a
+gracious Providence had forbidden her hat to conceal, fell like a
+halo upon the pale green wall behind Eve's head.
+
+The young artists--the "boys," as they would have called
+themselves--were circulating busily with teacups and _petits fours_,
+and the chatter of voices bore testimony to the preponderance of the
+Bohemian element. It is only the dwellers on the confines who lose
+their voices in the Temple of Art--a goddess who, to judge by her
+votaries, is not wont to take pleasure in silence.
+
+"Oh," said Eve, in reply to one of Rainham's remarks, "is that
+Bordighera? What lovely blue water! and what perfectly delicious
+little fishing-boats! I should like to go there. Charles is going to
+take us to Lucerne in a week or two, you know, when the Long
+Vacation begins. But I suppose we shall hardly get to Italy."
+
+"Yes, that's Bordighera"--with a sigh--"my happy hunting-ground. And
+the water is much bluer really--only don't tell Dick I said so. Yes,
+you ought to go there. If you stayed late enough you would have me
+dropping in on you one fine day, as soon as the fogs begin here.
+Happy thought! Why shouldn't we all winter out there?"
+
+"That would be nice," said Eve, rather doubtfully; "but, you know,
+there's Charles--he would have to come back for the Law Courts in
+the autumn, and he would be so lonely all by himself. And--and
+there's my portrait. Mr. Lightmark wants to get that ready for next
+year's Academy; and I can't sit to him very often, as it is, because
+of _chaperons_, you know."
+
+Meanwhile Lightmark was telling Mrs. Dollond, in a confidential
+undertone, some story of a fair American sitter, who, on his
+expressing himself dissatisfied with his efforts worthily to
+transfer her complexion to canvas, had at once offered to send her
+maid round to his studio with an assortment of her favourite _poudre
+de rose_. Dollond listened with an amused smile to a recital of the
+sculptor's impressions of the Salon, which he had taken on his way
+from Rome. Copal was making desperate efforts to count his precious
+teacups, a task which their scattered positions rendered
+distressingly difficult. Charles Sylvester was somewhat listlessly
+cross-examining a P.R.A. in embryo as to the exact meaning of
+"breadth" in a painting; and Mr. Quain had been making his way as
+unostentatiously as the creakiness of his boots would permit towards
+the door. Eve had despatched one of "the boys" in search of a
+portfolio to replace the one which she had exhausted, and another
+had been entrusted with the safe bestowal of her empty teacup. The
+new portfolio, when it arrived, proved to be filled, not as the
+others, with landscapes and waterscapes, but with studies from
+life--Capri fisher girls, groups of market people, Venetian boatmen,
+and hasty sketches for portraits.
+
+Eve paused rather longer than usual over one of these, the picture
+of a pretty fair-haired girl, dressed as Pierrette, the general lack
+of detail and absence of background only making the vigorously
+outlined face more distinct.
+
+"What a pretty girl, Philip!" said the young critic presently; "and
+how curiously she's dressed! What is she intended to represent? Is
+it a fancy dress?... Mr. Rainham, if you don't attend, I won't show
+you any more pictures."
+
+"Tyrant," said Rainham absently, as he carried his eyes from the
+contemplative stare with which they had been regarding the vagaries
+of a butterfly on the skylight. "What have you found now?--Kitty, by
+Jove!"
+
+He had no sooner uttered these last three words, in a very different
+tone to that of his previous idle remarks, than he cursed his
+indiscretion. It was a piece of _gaucherie_ which he would find it
+hard to forgive in himself, and Lightmark might well resent it.
+
+"Kitty?" asked Eve, with some surprise, "who is Kitty? Mr.
+Lightmark, please tell us who this charming young lady, whom Mr.
+Rainham calls Kitty, is, since he won't."
+
+"Kitty?" repeated Lightmark, with only a momentary hesitation, which
+the suddenness of the query might well account for; "I'm afraid I
+don't quite remember. There are so many Kitties, you know. All
+models are either Kitty or Polly. But if Rainham says it's Kitty,
+depend upon it he's right. He's got a wonderful memory for faces,
+especially pretty ones.--Yes," he added mischievously, "you ask
+Rainham."
+
+Mrs. Sylvester looked uneasy, and, to her subsequent disgust, began
+to press "dear Mrs. Dollond" to come and see her.
+
+Charles, who had looked up sharply at the first mention of the name,
+which had so disturbed the usually imperturbable Rainham, fixed his
+interrogative glasses first on the latter and then on Lightmark, and
+finally let them rest, with an expression of inquiring censure, on
+Rainham, whose confusion savoured to his mind so unmistakably of
+guilt that "Gentlemen of the jury" rose almost automatically to his
+lips. Nor did Rainham's attempt to smooth matters assist him.
+
+"I must have seen the girl at the studio," he said, "when Lightmark
+was painting her. It's certainly a striking likeness, and that's
+what astonished me, you know. Almost like seeing a ghost. Ah, that
+little fellow used to sit for Lightmark in Rome--little sunburnt
+ruffian. We picked him up on the Ghetto, almost starving, and he got
+quite an artistic connection before we left. He was positively
+growing too fat; prosperity spoiled him as a model."
+
+"Really?" said Eve listlessly. "I don't think I want to look at any
+more drawings; one can have too much of a good thing, and it must be
+time for us to go. We're dining out, and Charles doesn't like
+dressing in a hurry. Yes, mamma is buttoning her gloves. Good-bye,
+Mr. Rainham. Shall we see you again before we go to Switzerland? Ah,
+well, let's hope so. Au revoir, Mr. Lightmark. If you really think
+it's worth while for me to give you a solitary sitting next
+week----"
+
+"If you would be so good. You see, I should have some ideas to go on
+with. Don't I deserve some reward, too, for allowing Rainham to
+monopolize you all the afternoon? And if you don't give me a sitting
+now, I'm afraid you will forget all about it when you come back to
+town; whereas, if we make a beginning, you will have to see it
+through--you will be compromised."
+
+"What a stupid expression!" thought Mrs. Sylvester as the carriage
+rolled along the Kensington highroad.
+
+Charles was unusually silent during the drive. The subject which
+occupied his thoughts was not one which he would have dreamed of
+ventilating even with his mother, and Eve's presence seemed to
+render the faintest allusion to it impracticable.
+
+He had no great affection or even regard for Philip Rainham, whom he
+contemplated with that undefined disdain which a younger man so
+often feels for one who is too old to be on his own level, and too
+young to inspire reverence. The half-pitying regard which Mrs.
+Sylvester bestowed on the man who had been to her husband as a very
+dear younger brother had never furthered Rainham's advancement in
+her son's favour; and the manner in which Eve had centred her
+childish affections in Philip, who had made her his especial
+favourite, was even more prejudicial to his interests in that
+quarter. Hitherto, indeed, Sylvester's vague dislike had been so
+undemonstrative and immaterial that he would hardly have owned to it
+as such, and far less would he have acknowledged that he was,
+however unconsciously, feeling for a peg on which to hang it, for
+ground to support it; and yet from the first moment when the man's
+startled voice drew the questioning eyes upon his embarrassment, the
+judicial mind had been able to plume itself upon the penetration
+which had enabled it to detect something of doubtful odour about him
+from the first. "Kitty!" That word might explain so much--Rainham's
+long sojourns away from his business, for example.
+
+Charles looked at Eve and frowned. Decidedly, thought the young
+moralist, the old intimacy must be discouraged. Nor did the fact
+that Rainham had been the source of his first brief, as well as of
+subsequent others, though it was not forgotten, suggest the
+advisability of a compromise; he even began to take a certain pride
+in the determination with which he was bringing himself to
+contemplate the sacrifice of so useful a friendship.
+
+When they reached home there was barely time to dress for dinner,
+and Charles had no opportunity for a _tête-à-tête_ discussion of the
+situation with his mother that evening. And as he breakfasted early
+next day and dined at the club, he had ample time in which to
+determine that, for the present, he would avoid anything in the
+shape of a family conference, and would content himself with keeping
+his eye on the _mauvais sujet_.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+As soon as Lightmark and Rainham were left alone in the twilight of
+the studio, the former flung himself into a chair with a sigh of
+relief, and devoted himself to rolling and lighting a cigarette.
+Rainham picked up his hat, consulted his watch, with a preoccupation
+of mind which prevented him from noticing what the time was,
+and, refusing the proffered tobacco-pouch and the suggested
+whisky-and-soda, seemed about to go. Then he stopped, with his back
+turned towards his host and a pretence of examining a sketch.
+
+"I'm sorry I made such an ass of myself about that study--that girl,
+you know," he said presently. "The fact is, I saw her the other day,
+and the coincidence was rather startling."
+
+Lightmark blew a light cloud of smoke from his lips before he spoke.
+
+"Oh, it doesn't matter in the least, old man. You didn't implicate
+me, as it happened, though I'm afraid you got yourself into rather
+hot water. A poor devil of a painter must have models, and it's
+recognised, but men of business----! It's quite another thing.
+There's no possible connection between girls and dry docks." Then he
+added lightly, "Where are you going to dine to-night? Let's go to
+one of our Leicester Square haunts, or shall we get into a hansom
+and drive to Richmond? I've sold old Quain a picture, and I feel
+extravagantly inclined. What do you say? Under which _chef_? Speak, or
+let's toss up."
+
+Rainham appeared to consider for a moment; then he sat down again.
+
+"About that girl," he said; "I suppose you _do_ remember something
+about her? She must have been very pretty when you painted her,
+though she's nothing wonderful now, poor thing! I don't want to pump
+you, Dick, but she seems to have been pretty badly treated, and I
+want to see if I can't help her."
+
+"Help her!" with a shrug. "For goodness' sake tell me: is it Don
+Quixote or Don Lothario that you are playing?"
+
+"I should have thought you need hardly have asked," answered the
+other a little sadly. "I found the wretched creature waiting, with
+an equally wretched baby, both apparently not far from starvation,
+outside the dock the other night; and--well, I thought she might be
+waiting for you."
+
+Lightmark threw the stump of his cigarette into a corner viciously,
+with a dangerous glance at the other.
+
+"Why the devil should she have been waiting for me? Did she say she
+was waiting for me? How should a model know that I had been painting
+there? But I don't want to quarrel with you, and, after all you've
+done for me, I suppose you've a certain right to put yourself _in
+loco parentis_, and all that sort of thing. Tell me all you have
+found out about the girl--all she has told you, that is to say, and
+then I'll see what I can do."
+
+This masterly suggestion seemed to Rainham both plausible and
+practical, and he proceeded to unfold the whole story of his first
+meeting with Kitty. When he reached the part of his narrative which
+brought out the girl's explanation that she was seeking to speak
+with a Mr. Crichton, Lightmark looked at him again covertly, with
+the same threatening light in his glance. Then, apparently
+reassured, he resigned himself again to listen, with a cigarette
+unlighted between his fingers.
+
+"You say Oswyn heard the whole story?" he asked, when Rainham had
+finished. "Did the girl seem to know him? Or did _he_ seem to have
+heard of this Crichton before?"
+
+"No," said Rainham reflectively; "the girl didn't know Oswyn,
+though, on the other hand, he seemed certain that he had seen her
+face somewhere--probably in that study of yours, by the way; and he
+appeared to think that I ought to have heard of Crichton--Cyril
+Crichton. He told me that the man wrote clever, scurrilous articles
+on art and the drama for the _Outcry_. But I don't read English papers
+much. You see, our difficulty is that Cyril Crichton is obviously a
+nom de plume, and no one--not even the people at the _Outcry_
+office--know, or will say, who the man is; Kitty has tried. I
+suppose the editor knows all right, but he is discreet."
+
+"Ah!" cried Lightmark. "Now I remember something about her. Have you
+got your hat? Let's get into a hansom and go and dine--I'm
+positively starving. I'll stand you a dinner at the Cavour--standing
+you a dinner will be such a new sensation; and new sensations are
+the only things worth living for. I will tell you about Kitty in the
+cab. What a beneficent old beggar you are!"
+
+As they drove rapidly eastward along the High Street of Old
+Kensington, where the pale orange of the lamplight was just
+beginning to tell in the dusk, Lightmark explained how, some two
+years ago or more, he had been talking to a stranger in a railway
+carriage, and lamenting the difficulty of finding really pretty
+girls who would act as models; how the stranger had told him that he
+knew of such a one--a dressmaker's apprentice, or something of that
+sort, who found the work and hours too hard; and how, finally, Kitty
+had called at his studio--the old one in Bloomsbury--and had sat to
+him, perhaps half a dozen times, before vanishing from his
+knowledge. This account had been freely interspersed with
+exclamations on the beauty of the evening light in the Park, and the
+subtle charm of the hour after sunset, more exquisite in the clear
+atmosphere of Paris, but still sufficiently lovely even in London,
+and acknowledged by both of them to be one of the few compensations
+accorded to the dwellers in the much-abused Metropolis.
+
+"I'm sorry," said Rainham penitently; "I had a stupid sort of idea
+that you were mixed up in the business somehow. I thought so even
+before I saw the sketch, because I couldn't understand whom else she
+could have been looking for at the dock. It's very mysterious."
+
+"I shouldn't bother about the girl if I were you," replied the other
+light-heartedly. "Even if I had been mixed up with her, as you
+gracefully express it, _you_ wouldn't have anything to do with it. I
+believe you think I've been playing the devil with her now, you old
+moralist! Hear me swear, by yon pale---- Dash it! there isn't a
+moon--well, by the cresset on the top of the Empire, that the young
+person in question has been my model for a brief space, and nothing
+more. Only my model in the strictest sense of the word. No, I'll pay
+the cab for once in a way."
+
+When they had dined, sitting at their favourite table, which, from
+its position at the end, commanded a view of the bright exotic room,
+with its cosmopolitan contents, their wants cared for by the
+head-waiter, who adored Lightmark for his knowledge of his
+mother-tongue, recognising and being recognised by the forgotten of
+their acquaintance, who were also dining there, Lightmark proposed
+an adjournment to the little theatre in Dean Street hard by, where
+"Niniche" was being played for the last time by a clever company
+from across the Channel.
+
+"We must go to the theatre," he said, "unless you prefer a hall; I
+confess I'm sick of them. I haven't satisfied my ideas of
+extravagance nearly yet. We will go and sit in the stalls at the
+Royalty and see Jane May and the others; it will remind us of old
+days."
+
+"But, my dear fellow," expostulated the other, "it's so late, and
+we're in morning dress. Let's go to-morrow night instead."
+
+"Ah no! to-morrow I sha'n't be in the right mood. Never put off till
+to-morrow, you know. Our not being in evening dress won't matter a
+bit, they'll only think we're critics; and 'Niniche' doesn't begin
+till nine."
+
+On their speedy arrival at the modest portals of the little theatre,
+Lightmark instructed his companion, with an air of mystery, to wait,
+and presently emerged, smiling, from a triumphant encounter with the
+gentleman presiding at the box-office.
+
+"They had no stalls left," he whispered; "but they're going to put
+us in two chairs at the side."
+
+The house, with the exception of the more popular places, was
+crowded; and the boisterous absurdity of the farce was at its
+height. Rainham at first felt quite disconcerted by the proximity of
+the ludicrous figure in bathing dress who was leaning over the
+footlights, and declaiming his woes with a directness of appeal to
+the audience which alone would have marked the nationality of the
+robust actor, who was creating so much mirth out of the extremely
+hackneyed situation. He had got into the wrong bathing-machine
+(Lightmark seemed to find it intensely amusing) and the trousers of
+the rightful occupant only came down to his knees. Rainham at first
+was disconcerted, and then he began to feel bored. He fell into a
+semi-comatose state of contemplation, from which he was only aroused
+by the cadence on his ear of one of the most charming voices he had
+ever heard. So he characterized it, to Lightmark's amusement, when
+they were discussing their cigarettes and the _jeune première_ in the
+interval between the acts.
+
+"Oh for an epithet to describe her!" said Lightmark, catching his
+friend's enthusiasm. "She isn't exactly pretty--yes, she _is_ pretty,
+but she isn't beautiful! She's got any amount of what dramatic
+critics call _chic_. Don't shudder--I hate the word quite as much as
+you do, but it was inevitable. The only thing I feel sure about is
+that she's _espiègle_, and altogether delightful. And how funny that
+man is, or would be, if the authors had only given him a better
+chance! The fun of the piece is like those trousers--it only comes
+down to his knees."
+
+"What I admire most is her voice," said the other inconsequently.
+"How is it that French actresses have such beautiful voices? Freedom
+from fogs can't be the only cause. And it's got all that delicious
+plaintiveness----"
+
+"Yes," interposed Lightmark, "it's the voice of a true Parisian
+_femme de siècle, fin de siècle_. There's the bell, let's go and hear
+some more of it."
+
+After the second act Lightmark, in whom the influence of the evening
+was beginning to manifest itself in the shape of a geniality which
+was absent in a great degree from his more serious hours, and which
+had undoubtedly won him more friends than the other slightly
+pugnacious phase of his temperament, decided that Niniche was really
+very like Miss Sylvester, only less beautiful, and asserted that he
+was confident that she was younger than the newspapers made out.
+
+Later, before the two friends parted on the steps of the modest
+club, which included both in its list of town members, Lightmark
+assumed an air of mystery, sighed once or twice, and looked at his
+friend with an expression in which forgiveness, reproach, and the
+lateness of the hour were strangely commingled.
+
+"Old boy," he said, bending his eyebrows with an effort towards
+gravity, "I'm really rather cut up about that business--you thinking
+I was playing the gay deceiver, and all that sort of thing, you
+know. It was unworthy of you, Philip--it was, really. Dash it! I've
+been in love for ever so long. All the summer, seriously; I'm going
+to get married--settle down, range myself. Cut all you rips of
+bachelors.... But perhaps she won't see it. Oh, Lord!... Damn it
+all. Why don't you congratulate me, eh?"
+
+Rainham was growing more and more serious, and it was with a real
+heartache and a curious apprehension of a moral blow that he
+answered, as gaily as he could:
+
+"You're going a little too fast, Dick. If you haven't asked the
+girl, it's rather too early for congratulations, however
+irresistible your attractions may be. Who--who is it, Dick?"
+
+"Oh, come, you know well enough. Eve--I wonder if she'll let me call
+her Eve? Eve! Isn't it a pretty name?"
+
+"I wish you hadn't told me this, Dick," said the other, with more of
+the familiar weariness in his voice. "Are you sure you mean it? I
+don't believe you've thought it out. Why, what do you suppose Mrs.
+Sylvester will say, and Charles Sylvester?"
+
+"You think they won't have anything to do with a poor devil of an
+artist, I suppose? Right you are, sir; but when the poor devil has a
+rich and gouty uncle, who is disposed to be friendly.... See? I
+think that alters the complexion of the case. You know, the
+Sylvesters are awfully well connected, and so on, but they haven't
+got much money. Mrs. Sylvester has a life annuity, and Charles--whom
+I always want to call 'Chawles,' because he's so pompous--has got
+his professional income. And Eve has got a little, enough to dress
+her, I should think. 'Payable quarterly on her attaining the age of
+twenty-one years, or marrying under that age, whichever shall first
+happen.' I've looked it all up at Somerset House. Last will and
+testament of Sylvester Charles Sylvester, Esq. I know they're rather
+ambitious, and wouldn't look at me if it wasn't for the Colonel. But
+the Colonel is a solid fact, and I've no doubt they think he's
+richer than he is. And I am making money, though you mightn't think
+it."
+
+"I don't believe Mrs. Sylvester has thought about it at all," said
+Rainham doubtfully. "Eve is so young, and young artists are never
+looked on as marrying men. Take my advice and think about it."
+
+"_You_ call her Eve, do you? Ah, well, I won't be jealous of you, old
+boy. You shall come to the wedding and be best man; or no, the
+Colonel will be best man, I suppose? I can imagine him returning
+thanks for the bridesmaids in the most dazzling white waistcoat that
+was ever starched. Good-night; see you again soon."
+
+"I don't know how it is," thought Rainham, as he walked up Old
+Compton Street, on his way to the attic near the British Museum
+which he rented when he was in England, for use on occasions of this
+kind. "It's very stupid of me, but I can't bear the idea of Eve
+marrying. A species of jealousy, I suppose; not ordinary jealousy,
+of course. And yet why not? I have never thought of her as anything
+but a child ... why shouldn't Lightmark marry her? Eve's young, and
+good-looking, and sure to get on; and I'm a selfish old wreck. Yes,
+he shall marry her, and I will buy his pictures." Still, he shook
+his head even as he formulated this generous solution of the
+question, and could not induce himself to regard the position with
+equanimity, though he sat up till broad daylight wrestling with it.
+"I wonder if I am in love," he said, with a bitter laugh, as he
+shook the ashes out of his last pipe.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+The upper end of the Park is never so fashionably frequented as its
+southern regions, and Rainham, whose want of purpose had led him
+past gay carpet-beds and under branching trees nearly to the Marble
+Arch, was hardly surprised to recognise among the heterogeneous
+array of promenaders, tramps, and nursemaids, whom the heat of the
+slanting sun had prompted to occupy the benches dotted at intervals
+along the Row, a face whose weary pallor caused him a pang of
+self-reproach--Kitty!
+
+For the last few days, since his encounter with her portrait at
+Lightmark's studio, he had scarcely given her troubles a thought.
+When the girl saw him, after a startled look and movement, she
+seemed to shrink still further into the folds of her rusty black
+cloak, and, to avoid meeting Rainham's eyes, bent her head over the
+child who was seated at her side. He found something irresistibly
+charming and pathetically generous in the girl's spontaneous denial
+of any claim to his notice, although, except that he had promised to
+let her know anything he might learn of the whereabouts of the
+father of her child, he would have found it hard to establish in the
+mind of an outside critic that any such claim in fact existed.
+
+"Well, my poor child," he said softly, as he dropped into one of the
+vacant seats on the same bench, "how goes it with you and the little
+one?"
+
+"Oh, sir, you shouldn't speak to me--not here. Anyone might see you.
+Pray go. I know I shall get you into trouble, and you so kind!"
+
+These words were spoken in a rapid, frightened whisper, and with an
+apprehensive glance at the intermittent stream of carriages passing
+within a few yards of them. Rainham shrugged his shoulders
+pitifully, but found it rather difficult to say anything. Certainly,
+his reputation was running a risk, and he felt that his indifference
+was somewhat exceptional.
+
+"I'm sorry to say I've got no news for you," he said presently,
+after a silent pause, during which he had observed that the
+wide-eyed child was really far prettier than many who (as he had
+been assured by the complacent matrons who exhibited them) were
+"little cherubs," and that it was as scrupulously cared for as the
+little cherubs, even in their exhibition array. "I haven't been able
+to discover anything; but you mustn't despair, we shall find him
+sooner or later."
+
+The girl glanced at him irresolutely, and then dropped her eyes
+again, leaning over the child.
+
+"It's no good, sir," she said. "I'm only sorry to have given you so
+much trouble already. He won't come back--he's tired of me. He could
+find me if he wanted to, and watching and hunting for him like this
+would only set him more and more against me."
+
+Rainham, as he listened to her, rather puzzled by her sudden change
+of attitude since their last interview, was forced to admit mentally
+that her reasoning, if it lacked spontaneity, was, at all events,
+indisputably sound; and while he found himself doubting whether the
+victim was not better versed in worldliness than he had at first
+suspected, he still felt a curious reluctance which, though he was
+half ashamed of his delicacy, prevented him from suggesting that,
+sentimental reasons apart, the betrayer still ought to be
+discovered, if only in order to force him to provide for the
+maintenance of his child. It hardly, perhaps, occurred to him that
+he, after all, would be the person who would suffer most, and he
+certainly did not for an instant credit the girl with any ulterior
+designs upon his purse.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," he said feebly. "Perhaps he does not know where
+you are. And I dare say, if he saw the child----"
+
+"The child?" echoed the woman bitterly. "That's just the worst of
+it!"
+
+Rainham sighed, forced again to acknowledge his lower standing in
+the wisdom of the world. He would have given a great deal to be able
+to get up and go.
+
+"Then you don't want me to employ a detective, or to advertise,
+or--or to make an appeal to the editor of the _Outcry_?"
+
+Mrs. Crichton seemed to welcome the opportunity afforded by this
+direct questioning.
+
+"No," she said, "I think it would be better not. I don't want to
+seem ungrateful, sir--and I'm sure I thank you very, very much for
+all you have done for me--but I think you had better take no more
+trouble about it. If I can get work I shall do all right."
+
+In spite of the girl's evident attempt to pull herself together, her
+voice was less brave than her words, and they conveyed but little
+assurance to the listener. He shrugged his shoulders somewhat
+impatiently: the interview was beginning to tell upon his nerves.
+
+"Of course, it's for you to decide, and I suppose you have thought
+it well out, and have good reason for this alteration of purpose.
+But when you talk about work----?"
+
+He finished his sentence with a note of inquiry and a half
+apologetic glance at her slight form and frail, white fingers.
+
+"I haven't always been a model," she explained with some dignity.
+"Would to God I never had! I can sew better than most, and I can
+work a type-machine. That's what I used to do before he came. But
+type-writing work isn't so easy to get as it was, and I am out of
+practice."
+
+It occurred to him for a moment to ask the girl whether she could
+remember sitting for Mr. Lightmark, but he felt that Dick might
+resent the introduction of his name; and, remembering that she had
+told him that, for a time, before her health gave way, her artist
+patrons had been numerous, he dismissed the idea as not likely to be
+profitable.
+
+As they spoke, she with her mournful eyes turned on Rainham's
+sympathetic face, he absently following the movements of the child
+as it laboriously raised a small edifice of gravel-stones on the
+seat between them, neither of them noticed the severely correct
+figure in the frock-coat and immaculate hat who passed close behind
+with observant eyeglass fixed upon the little group, and with an air
+which, after the first flush of open-mouthed surprise, was
+eloquently expressive of regretful indignation and the highest
+motives.
+
+Charles Sylvester continued his walk for a distance of about fifty
+paces, and then seated himself in a position to command a view of
+the persons in whom he was interested.
+
+"I don't like watching Rainham like this," he said to himself; "but
+it's a duty which I owe to society."
+
+That the man was Rainham was as obvious as that the woman he was
+talking to was of a far lower rank in life than his own. And then
+there was the child!
+
+"By Jove!" said Sylvester sententiously, "it's worse than I thought.
+People really ought to be warned. I suppose it's that girl he was
+talking about at the studio the other day; and he tried to shift her
+on to Lightmark. What a hypocrite the man must be!"
+
+He was not, however, for long called upon to maintain, in the
+interests of society, his position of espionage; for Rainham, warned
+of the lapse of time by the clock which adorns the Park lodge,
+presently became aware that, if he was to fulfil his intention of
+calling on Mrs. Sylvester, he had no time to spare; and when he rose
+from his seat Charles Sylvester thought it advisable to resume the
+walk which his zeal had induced him to interrupt.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+After all, he need not have hurried. Mrs. Sylvester was out, he was
+told by the butler, who proceeded to suggest, with the freedom of an
+old friend, that he should make his way upstairs and find Miss Eve.
+
+"Yes, I think I will, Phelps," he said, after a moment's hesitation,
+"if she is disengaged."
+
+"Miss Eve is in the music-room playing, I think, sir. Will you go
+up?"
+
+They found the room empty, however, though an open violin-case on
+the table and a music-stand, on which leaflets of Schubert fluttered
+fitfully in the light breeze that entered through the open window,
+testified to its recent occupation.
+
+While the butler left Rainham, with apologies, to make further
+search, the latter stood, hat in hand, making a survey of the little
+wainscoted room, which he remembered as the schoolroom. Indeed,
+though the name, in deference doubtless to Eve's mature age, had
+been altered, it still retained much of its former aspect. From the
+little feminine trifles lying about, scraps of unfinished
+crewel-work and embroidery, and the fresh flowers in the vases, he
+gathered that it was still an apartment which Eve frequented. He
+recognised her cage of love-birds hanging in the window; the cottage
+piano with its frontal of faded silk, on which he could remember her
+first painful struggles with Czerny and scales; the pictures on the
+walls, many of them coloured reproductions from the Christmas
+numbers of the illustrated papers; the ink-stained tablecloth on the
+round table in the centre. He examined the photographs on the
+mantelpiece with a smile--Charles in his wig and gown, and Mrs.
+Sylvester with her pretty, faded face, gazed at each other, with a
+curious likeness in their disparity, from a double frame in the
+centre; the spectacled profile of the eminently respectable woman
+who had superintended Miss Eve's studies held another place of
+honour; and, opposite, Rainham recognised a faded photograph of
+himself, taken six years before in Rome. He turned from these to the
+bookshelves, which seemed to be filled with relegations from the
+rest of the house--children's story-books in tarnished bright covers
+and dilapidated school-books. He took down one of these latter and
+examined it absently, with a half-sigh. He had it still in his hand
+when the young girl fluttered in, looking very cool and fresh in her
+plain, white dress with a broad sash of apple-green ribbon.
+
+"I thought you were never coming to see us again, Philip," she said
+reproachfully, as she held out her little hand to him. "What
+possessed them to bring you here? It's awfully untidy."
+
+"Phelps had an idea you were making music," he explained; "and, for
+the untidiness, I suppose he remembered that I was used to it of
+old."
+
+"Yes, it's just the same. It is an untidiness of years, and it is
+hopeless to cope with it. What _have_ you got there?"
+
+He turned the book round to acquaint himself.
+
+"Ollendorf's 'Elementary German Grammar,'" he said with a smile;
+"it's an interesting work."
+
+She made a little _moue_ expressive of disapproval.
+
+"Ah, how nice it is to have done with all that, Philip! You can't
+believe how glad I am to be 'finished'; yes, I am finished now. I
+don't even have masters, and Miss Murison has gone away to Brighton
+and opened a school for young gentlemen. Poor little wretches! how
+sorry I am for them! Do you remember Miss Murison, Philip?"
+
+She had sunk down into an arm-chair, and Rainham stood, his stooping
+shoulders propped against the mantelpiece, smiling down at her.
+
+"Yes, I remember Miss Murison; and so you are glad her reign has
+come to an end, Eve? Well, I suppose it is natural."
+
+She nodded her pretty head.
+
+"Just a little, Philip. But how tired you look! Will you have some
+tea? I suppose you have just come from Blackpool?"
+
+His face darkened suddenly, and the smile for a moment died away.
+
+"No," he said shortly, "I have been in the Park."
+
+"Well," she remarked after a moment, "you must have some tea,
+anyhow. Of course you will wait and see mamma; she has gone to the
+Dollonds' 'at home,' you know. I an all alone. If you like, we will
+have it in here, as we did in the old days--a regular schoolroom
+tea."
+
+"It will be charming," said Rainham, seating himself; "it will only
+want the Murison to complete the illusion."
+
+"Oh, it will do just as well without her," said Eve, laughing; "ring
+the bell, please."
+
+Rainham sat back watching her with far-away eyes, as she moved
+lightly about, giving her orders with a childish imperiousness, and
+setting out the little tea-table between them.
+
+"It is delightful," he said again, when they were once more alone
+and he had accepted a well-creamed cup and a waferlike _tartine_; "and
+I feel as if I had turned back several years. But how is it,
+by-the-bye, that you have not gone to the Dollonds'?"
+
+She laughed up at him merrily.
+
+"Because I have had much more important things to do. I have been
+with my dressmaker. I am going to a dance to-night, and I have had a
+great deal of bother over my new frock. But it is all right now, and
+I shall wear it to-night; and it is perfectly sweet. Oh, you have
+never seen me at a party yet, Philip."
+
+"Never? My dear child, I have danced with you at scores."
+
+"Oh yes, at children's parties; but never since I have grown
+up--'come out,' I mean. Oh, Philip, is there anything in life so
+delightful as one's first ball? I wish you would come out with us
+sometimes. I should like to dance with you again now."
+
+"Ah," he said, "my dancing days are over. I am a wallflower, Eve,
+now; and my only use at balls is to fetch and carry for the
+chaperons."
+
+"Philip!" she cried reproachfully, "what a dreadful thing to say!
+Besides, you used to dance so splendidly."
+
+"Did I?" he asked; "I expect you would be less lenient now. Yes, I
+will have another cup, please."
+
+She filled it, and he took it from her in silence, wondering how he
+could least obtrusively gain the knowledge of her mind he sought. He
+had said to himself that if he could find her alone, it would be so
+easy; just a word, an accent, would tell him how far she really
+cared. But now that she was actually with him, it had become
+strangely difficult. Very sadly he reflected that she had grown out
+of his knowledge; away from her, she rested in his memory as a child
+whom he could help. The actual presence of this young girl with the
+deep eyes, in the first flush of her womanhood, corrected him; an
+intolerable weight sealed his tongue, forbidding him to utter
+Lightmark's name, greatly as he desired. He racked himself for
+delicate circumlocutions, and it was only at last, by a gigantic
+effort, when he realized that the afternoon waned, while he wasted
+an unique occasion in humorous commonplace, that he broke almost
+brutally into Eve's disquisitions on her various festivities to ask,
+blushing like a girl, if Lightmark's picture progressed.
+
+"I have had only a few sittings," she admitted, "and I expect they
+will be the last here. Perhaps they will be continued abroad. You
+know Mr. Lightmark is going to meet us in Switzerland, perhaps."
+
+"You will like that?" suggested Rainham gravely.
+
+She looked into her cup, beating a tattoo on the carpet with her
+little foot nervously.
+
+"Yes," she said, after a minute, "I think so."
+
+There was nothing in her words, her tone, to colour this bare
+statement of a simple fact. Only a second later, as if in a sudden
+need of confidence, a resumption of her old childish habit towards
+him, she raised her eyes to his, and in their clear, gray depths,
+before they drooped again beneath the long lashes, he read her
+secret. No words could have told him more plainly that she loved
+Lightmark--that Dick had merely to speak. Their silence only lasted
+a moment; but it seemed to Rainham, who had not shifted his position
+or moved a muscle, that it stretched over an interminable space of
+time. It was curiously intangible, and yet even then he realized
+that it would remain with its least accessories in his mind one of
+those trivial, indelible photographs which last a lifetime. The
+smell of mignonette that spread in from the window-box through the
+turquoise-blue Venetian blinds; the chattering of the love-birds;
+the strains of a waltz of Waldteufel's floating up from a German
+band in the street below--they ran into a single sensation that was
+like the stab of cold steel. He sat staring blankly at the tattered
+bookshelves, playing mechanically with his teaspoon; and presently
+he became aware that the young girl was talking, was telling him the
+route they should take next week, and the name of the hotel they
+were going to at Basel.
+
+"Yes," he hazarded, and "Yes," and "Yes," his smiling lips belying
+the lassitude of his eyes. Actually, he looked out and beyond her,
+at another Eve, to whom he now paid his adieux. It was the dainty
+little figure of her childish self which he saw, with its bright,
+long hair, and its confiding eyes, and its caressing little ways, in
+the deepening shadows between the bookshelves--and for the last
+time. It vanished like a shadow, smiling mockingly, and he knew it
+would never return. In its place abode henceforth the image of this
+stately maiden, comely and desirable, with the profound eyes which
+lighted up--for Dick. An unaccountable sense of failure stole over
+Rainham--unaccountable because he could lay his finger upon no
+tangible cause of his discomfiture.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The little town was brilliant with September sunshine; the blue
+smoke spired almost unbroken into the bluer vault above, and the
+cream-coloured façades of the houses, with their faded blue shutters
+and verandas, the gay striped awnings of the little fleet of rowing
+boats, the gray of the stone parapet, and the dull green of the
+mountainous opposite shore, were mirrored steeply in the bight of
+narrowing, sunlit lake. The wide, dusty esplanade was almost empty,
+except at the corners, where voluble market women gossiped over
+their fruit-baskets, heaped with purple-brown figs, little
+mountain-born strawberries, sweet, watery grapes, green almonds, and
+stupendous pears. At rare intervals a steamboat, bright and neat as
+a new toy, trailed a long feather of smoke from the foot of the
+Rigi, shed a small and dusty crowd into the sleepy town, and then
+bustled back, shearing the silken flood and strangely distorting its
+reflections.
+
+"The worst of Lucerne," said Mrs. Sylvester--"the worst of Lucerne
+is that one can't escape from Mount Pilatus and the Lion. The
+inhabitants all think that Pilatus regulates the weather, and they
+would certainly give their Lion the preference over the Venus of
+Milo."
+
+They were all sitting on the terrace in front of the Schweitzerhof;
+Lady Garnett and Mary, Mrs. Sylvester and Eve. Lady Garnett and her
+companion were but newly arrived, and, as birds of passage,
+preferred the hotel to a _pension_. The Sylvesters had been staying in
+the quaint, rambling town for nearly a fortnight. It was their usual
+summer resort, and although the spring of each year found them
+deciding to go elsewhere for a change, in the end they nearly always
+proved faithful to the familiar lake. Their _pension_--they regarded
+it almost as a country house--was such an inducement! The Pension
+Bungay was maintained by an old servant of the family, who, when he
+began to find the duties of butler too exacting for his declining
+years, gave a warning, which applied also to one of his
+fellow-servants, the cook, to wit, a lady of Continental origin, who
+had consented to become Madame Bungay; and the pair, having souls
+above public-houses, and relying on their not inconsiderable
+connection among the servants of Mayfair, had boldly and
+successfully launched into an independent career as sole proprietors
+and managers of the Pension Bungay, Lucerne.
+
+"Yes," said Lady Garnett sympathetically; "I suppose Pilatus _is_
+rather monotonous. It's rather too near, I think. It ought to be far
+away, and covered with snow, more like the Jungfrau, which we have
+been worshipping at Interlaken, where, by the way, there are
+positively more Americans than natives."
+
+"Oh," Mrs. Sylvester chimed in, "isn't it dreadful the way they
+overrun Europe nowadays! There are two American families staying at
+our _pension_, and you see them everywhere."
+
+"I think I rather like them. They amuse me, you know, and somehow,
+though it may be disloyal for me, as a naturalized Englishwoman, to
+say so, as a rule they comport themselves much better than the
+ordinary British tourist. Of course, the country is not so
+accessible for the Americans; it's out of the reach of their cheap
+excursionists. But how opportune that curious tower is, and the
+bridge! of course, it's correct to admire them?"
+
+Mary Masters and Eve, who had been quietly discussing _chiffons_, got
+up from their chairs with a preconcerted air.
+
+"We are so tired of sitting still," said the former, balancing
+herself with an air of indecision, and giving Mrs. Sylvester time to
+note the admirable taste of her simple, maize-coloured travelling
+dress, which did not suffer from contrast with the younger girl's
+brighter and more elaborately charming toilette. "Miss Sylvester
+wants to show me the uncatchable trout in the lake, and I want to go
+and see if the salon is empty, so that I can try the piano; and we
+can't decide which to do. I suppose, Mrs. Sylvester, that the hotel
+is more within the bounds of propriety?"
+
+"Oh, well," said Eve, laughing, "I don't care; anyhow, let's go and
+find the piano. Only, there is sure to be some one there already."
+
+"By the way," said Lady Garnett, when the girls had vanished into
+the building, "of course you know that Philip Rainham's friend--the
+young man who paints and has a moustache, I mean--is here, or will
+be very shortly? He was staying at our hotel at Berne."
+
+"Mr. Lightmark, I suppose?" answered the other, without showing her
+surprise except in her eyes. "We told him that we were coming to
+Lucerne, and it was more or less arranged."
+
+"Ah, yes," interposed Lady Garnett; "am I indiscreet in suggesting
+an exceptional attraction?"
+
+Mrs. Sylvester merely looked mysterious, and Lady Garnett was
+encouraged to continue.
+
+"Your daughter is very beautiful. This Mr. Lightmark has been
+painting her portrait, _n'est ce pas_? I should think it ought to be a
+success. Am I to congratulate him?"
+
+"Oh," said Mrs. Sylvester hurriedly, "dear Lady Garnett, it hasn't
+gone so far as that."
+
+"The portrait?" murmured the other innocently. "Ah, I'm afraid you
+misunderstood me."
+
+Mrs. Sylvester cast a meaning glance in the direction of Eve, who,
+sauntering along the terrace with Mary, was now behind their seat,
+and the conversation, which promised to become interesting, dropped,
+while Mary explained that they had found the music-stool occupied by
+a lady, who was superfluously protesting her inability to sing "the
+old songs"--the person who always _did_ monopolize hotel pianos, as
+Mary laughingly asserted.
+
+Two days later Lightmark presented himself at the Pension Bungay. He
+had come to Lucerne with the fixed purpose of definitely proposing
+marriage to Eve. He was far too worldly-wise to fail to perceive
+that, so far at least, Mrs. Sylvester had certainly taken no trouble
+to discourage his pretensions. His attentions, he argued, had been
+by no means obscure; his studio had been singularly honoured by the
+presence of Miss Sylvester and her mother, for the purposes of the
+portrait; he had even been granted a sitting at the house in Park
+Street, when a less rigid supervision had been exercised, and when,
+in the absence of the mother, he had been able to assure himself
+that the girl was far from despising his adoration. Before leaving
+town he had dined with his uncle, the Colonel, at his club, and the
+veteran had spontaneously and strenuously urged the step, and even
+thrown out promising hints as to settlements. He broke in upon the
+little circle at the hour of afternoon tea, and Eve found his gray
+travelling suit, and the bronze of his complexion, exceedingly
+becoming. He announced that he had come to stay for a week or two;
+he was going to make some sketches, and he couldn't tear himself
+away from that delightful bridge, and his lodgings!
+
+"My dear fellow," he said to Charles Sylvester, with an air of
+familiarity which gave one an insight as to the advance the artist
+had made in his relations with the family, "you must come and see my
+diggings. The most delightful old hostelry in Europe. Built straight
+up out of the lake, like the castle of Chillon. It's called the
+_Gasthof zum Pfistern_. I could fish out of my bedroom window. I
+assure you, it's charming. You must come and dine with me there. I
+hope you ladies will so far honour me?"
+
+This project, however, fell through, and by way of compensation
+Lightmark and Charles enjoyed the privilege of entertaining the
+party, including Lady Garnett and Miss Masters, at Borghoni's; after
+which the younger people chartered a boat, and floated idly about
+the star-reflecting lake, while the dowagers maintained a discreet
+surveillance from their seat on the esplanade.
+
+Of this last incident it may be said that Lightmark and Eve found it
+altogether delightful, the latter especially being struck by the
+romance of the situation; while Charles was inclined to be
+ponderously sentimental, and Miss Masters afterwards confessed to
+having felt bored.
+
+In the course of the next day Lightmark had the privilege of a
+confidential interview with the mother of his adored. Mrs. Sylvester
+had fully armed herself for the occasion, and presented an edifying
+example of matronly affection and prudence.
+
+"Of course, I was not altogether unprepared for this, Mr. Lightmark.
+In fact, I may as well own that I have talked it over with my son,
+and we agreed that the whole question resolved itself into--ah--into
+settlements. You must not think me mercenary." This was said with a
+dignified calm, which made the idea preposterous. "If you can"--here
+she seemed to refer to some mental note-book--"ah--satisfy Charles
+on that point, I am sure that it will give me great pleasure to
+regard you as a prospective son-in-law. Of course, you know, I can't
+answer for Eve, or Charles."
+
+"Ah, my dear lady," said the other, gracefully overwhelmed, "if I
+may count on your good offices I am very fortunate."
+
+That evening, as the two men sat discussing their cigars and coffee,
+Lightmark listened with wonderful patience to a disquisition on the
+subject of--he couldn't afterwards remember whether it was Strikes
+or the Sugar Bounty. He was rather afraid of the necessary interview
+with Charles. It would require some tact, and he was prepared to
+find him unpleasantly exacting as arbiter of his pecuniary status.
+
+"You ought to be in the House, by Jove! that's your line, Sylvester,
+with a clever wife, you know, to do the canvassing for you" ("and
+write your speeches," he mentally added).
+
+The other owned that he had thought of it.
+
+"But the wife," he added, with an attempt at levity, "that's the
+difficulty!"
+
+And the connection of a subsequent remark with this topic, though
+some conversation intervened, did not escape his astute companion,
+and he was careful to sing Miss Masters' praises with an absence of
+allusiveness, which showed the actor. Then he threw away the stump
+of his cigar, and mentally braced himself.
+
+"You have seen a good deal of me lately," he said. "I want to ask
+you if you have any objection to me as a possible brother-in-law; in
+fact, I want to marry your sister."
+
+"Yes?" said the other encouragingly.
+
+"I have, as you may know, spoken to Mrs. Sylvester about it, and I
+believe she will--that is to say, I think she has no personal
+objection to me."
+
+"Oh, of course, my dear fellow, my mother and I are flattered, quite
+flattered; but you will understand our anxiety that we should run no
+risk of sacrificing any of the advantages she has enjoyed hitherto.
+May I ask, er----"
+
+"What is my income from all sources?" suggested Lightmark rather
+flippantly. "Well, I have to confess that my profession, in which I
+am said to be rising, brings me in about four hundred and fifty a
+year, in addition to which I have a private income, which amounts
+to, say, three hundred; total, seven hundred and fifty." Then,
+seeing that Charles looked grave, he played his trump card: "And I
+ought to add that my uncle, the Colonel, you know, has been good
+enough to talk about making me an allowance, on my marrying with his
+approval. In fact he is, I believe, prepared to make a settlement on
+my marriage with your sister."
+
+Charles Sylvester pronounced himself provisionally satisfied, and it
+was arranged that he should communicate with Colonel Lightmark, and
+that meanwhile the engagement should not be made public.
+
+Eve was standing on the little balcony, appertaining to the
+sitting-room which had been dedicated to the ladies as a special
+mark of favour by the proprietor of the _pension_, and Lightmark
+hastened to join her there; and while Charles and his mother played
+a long game of chess, the two looked out at the line of moonlit
+Alps, and were sentimentally and absurdly happy.
+
+"Mrs. Sylvester," said Lightmark, when that lady thought it
+advisable to warn her daughter that there was a cold wind blowing
+off the lake, "we have arranged that a certain portrait shall figure
+in the Academy catalogue next spring as 'Portrait of the Artist's
+Wife.'"
+
+After which Mrs. Sylvester began to call him Richard, and Charles
+became oppressively genial: a development which led the embarrassed
+recipient of these honours to console himself by reflecting that,
+after all, he was not going to marry the entire family.
+
+"_Ma cherie_," said Lady Garnett, as the Paris train steamed out of
+Lucerne on the afternoon of the next day but one, "do you know that
+I feel a sensation of positive relief at getting away from those
+people? Eve is very _gentille_, but lovers are _so_ uninteresting, when
+they are properly engaged; and the excellent Charles! My child, I am
+afraid you have been very cruel."
+
+"Cruel, aunt?" said Mary, with a demure look of astonishment. "I
+like Eve very much, and I suppose Mr. Lightmark must be nice,
+because he's such a friend of Philip's. But I don't quite like the
+way he talks about Philip, and ... he's very clever."
+
+"Yes," said the old lady drowsily; "he's cleverer than Philip."
+
+"He may be cleverer, but----" Mary began with some warmth, and
+paused.
+
+Her companion opened her eyes widely, and darted a keen glance at
+the girl. Then, settling herself into her corner:
+
+"My dear child, to whom do you say it?"
+
+It was eminently characteristic of Lady Garnett that, even when she
+was sleepy, she understood what people were going to say long before
+the words were spoken, and, especially with her familiars, she had a
+habit of taking her anticipations as realized.
+
+Mary found something embarrassing in the humour of the old lady's
+expression, and devoted herself to gazing out of the window at the
+mountain-bound landscape, in which houses, trees, and cattle all
+seemed to be in miniature, until the sound of regular breathing
+assured her that the inquisitive eyes were closed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+During the long, hot August, which variously dispersed the rest of
+their acquaintances, the intimacy of that ill-assorted couple, the
+bird of passage Rainham, and Oswyn the artist, was able to ripen.
+They met occasionally at Brodonowski's, of which dingy restaurant
+they had now almost a monopoly; for its artistic session had been
+prorogued, and the "boys" were scattered, departing one by one, as
+their purses and inclinations prompted, to resume acquaintance with
+their favourite "bits" in Cornwall, or among the orchards and moors
+of Brittany, to study mountains in sad Merioneth, or to paint ocean
+rollers and Irish peasants in ultimate Galway. On the occasion of
+their second meeting, Rainham having (a trifle diffidently, for the
+painter was not a questionable man) evinced a curiosity as to his
+summer movements, Oswyn had scornfully repudiated such a notion.
+
+"Thank God!" he cried, "I have outworn that mania of searching for
+prettiness. London is big enough for me. My work is here, and the
+studies I want are here, and here I stay till the end of all things.
+I hate the tame country faces, the aggressive stillness and the
+silent noise, the sentiment and the sheep of it. Give me the streets
+and the yellow gas, the roar of the City, smoke, haggard faces,
+flaming omnibuses, parched London, and the river rolling oilily by
+the embankment like Styx at night when the lamps shine."
+
+He drew in a breath thirstily, as though the picture were growing on
+canvas before him.
+
+"Well, if you want river subjects you must come and find them at
+Blackpool," said Rainham; and Oswyn had replied abruptly that he
+would.
+
+And he kept his word, not once but many times, dropping down on
+Rainham suddenly, unexplainedly, after his fashion, as it were from
+the clouds, in the late afternoon, when the clerks had left. He
+would chat there for an hour or two in his spasmodic, half-sullen
+way, in which, however, an increasing cordiality mingled, making,
+before he retired once more into space, some colour notes of the
+yard or the river, or at times a rough sketch, which was never
+without its terse originality.
+
+Rainham began to look forward to these visits with a recurring
+pleasure. Oswyn's beautiful genius and Oswyn's savage humours
+fascinated him, and no less his pleasing, personal ambiguity. He
+seemed to be a person without antecedents, as he was certainly
+without present ties. Except that he painted, and so must have
+a place to paint in, he might have lodged precariously in a
+doss-house, or on door-steps, or under the Adelphi arches with those
+outcasts of civilization to whom, in personal appearance, one might
+not deny he bore a certain resemblance. To no one did he reveal his
+abiding-place, and it was the merest tradition of little authority
+that a man from Brodonowski's had once been taken to his studio. By
+no means a perspicuous man, and to be approached perhaps charily;
+yet Rainham, as his acquaintance progressed, found himself from time
+to time brought up with a certain surprise, as he discovered, under
+all his savage cynicism, his overweening devotion to a depressing
+theory, a very real vein of refinement, of delicate mundane
+sensibility, revealed perhaps in a chance phrase or diffidence, or
+more often in some curiously fine touch to canvas of his rare,
+audacious brush. The incongruities of the man, his malice, his
+coarseness, his reckless generosity, gave Rainham much food for
+thought. And, indeed, that parched empty August seemed full of
+problematical issues; and he had, on matters of more import than the
+enigmatic mind of a new friend, to be content at last to be tossed
+to and fro on the winds of vain conjecture.
+
+Lightmark and the Sylvesters occupied him much; but beyond a brief
+note from Mrs. Sylvester in Lucerne, which told him nothing that he
+would know, there came to him no news from Switzerland. In the
+matter of the girl whom he had befriended, recklessly, he told
+himself at times, difficulties multiplied. A sort of dumb devil
+seemed to have entered into her, and, with the best will in the
+world, it was a merely pecuniary assistance which he could give her,
+half angry with himself the while that his indolent good nature (it
+appeared to him little else) forbade him to cast back at her what
+seemed a curious ingratitude almost passing the proverbial feminine
+perversity, and let her go her own way as she would have it. On two
+occasions, since that chance meeting in the Park, he had called
+at the lodging in which he had helped her to install herself; and
+from the last he had come away with a distinct sense of failure.
+Something had come between them, an alien influence was in the
+air, and the mystery which surrounded the girl, he saw with
+disappointment, she would not of her own accord assist to dissipate.
+And yet there was nothing offensive in her attitude, only it had
+changed, lacked frankness.
+
+One afternoon, finding that he could leave the dock early, he made
+another effort. He stopped before one in a dingy row of small
+houses, uniformly depressing, in a street that ran into the
+Commercial Road, and rang the bell, which tinkled aggressively. A
+slatternly woman, with a bandage round her head and an air of
+drunken servility, responded to his inquiry for "Mrs. Crichton" by
+ushering him into a small back parlour, in which a pale girl in
+black sat with her head bent over a typewriter. She rose, as he came
+in, a little nervously, and stood, her thin hands clasped in front
+of her, looking up at him with expectant, terrified eyes.
+
+"I am sorry to alarm you," he said stiffly. "I came to see if I
+could do anything for you, and to tell you once more that I can do
+nothing for you unless you are open with me, unless you help me."
+
+The woman looked away to where the child sat, in a corner of the
+small room, playing with some disused cotton reels.
+
+"You are very kind, sir," she said in a low, uneasy voice; "but I
+want nothing, we want very little, the child and I; and with what
+your kindness in getting me the machine helps us to, we have
+enough."
+
+"You don't want to be reinstated, to get back your lover, to have
+your child acknowledged?"
+
+The girl flushed; her hands, which were still locked together,
+trembled a little.
+
+"I don't want for nothing, sir, except to be left alone."
+
+Then she added, looking him straight in the face now, with a certain
+rude dignity:
+
+"I wouldn't seem ungrateful, sir, for your great kindness. I think
+you are the best man I ever met. Oh, believe me, I am not
+ungrateful, sir! But it is no good, not a scrap, though once I
+thought it. We must get along as we can now, the child and I--shame
+and all."
+
+She sighed, gazed intently for a silent minute at the keys of the
+elaborate machine before her, and then continued, speaking very
+slowly, as if she were afraid of drawing too largely on her
+newly-found candour.
+
+"Why should I keep it from you? It makes me feel a liar every time I
+see you. I will be quite plain with you, sir; perhaps the truth's
+best, though it's hard enough. I've seen him; that's why I couldn't
+tell you any more. And it's all over and done, and God help us! We
+must make the best of it. You see, sir, he is married," said the
+girl, with a sharp intonation in her voice like a sob.
+
+Rainham had sunk into a chair wearily; he looked up at her now,
+drawing a long breath, which, for some reason he could not analyse,
+was replete with relief.
+
+"Married?" he ejaculated; "are you sure?"
+
+"Sure enough," said Kitty Crichton. "He told me so."
+
+"Do you care for this fellow?" he asked curiously after a while.
+
+The flush on her face had faded into two hectic spots on either
+cheek; there was a lack of all animation in her voice, whether of
+hope or indignation; she had the air of a person who gave up, who
+was terribly tired of things.
+
+"Care?" she echoed. "I don't rightly know, sir; I think it's all
+dead together--love and anger, and my good looks and all. I care for
+the child, and I don't want to harry or hunt him down for the sake
+of what has been,--that's all."
+
+He regarded her with the same disinterested pity which had seized
+him when he saw her first. There were only ruins of a beauty that
+must have once been striking. As he watched her a doubt assailed
+him, whether, after all, he had not been deceived by a bare
+resemblance; whether, in effect, she had ever been actually
+identical with that brilliant Pierrette whose likeness had so amazed
+him in Lightmark's rooms.
+
+"By the way," he asked suddenly, "you told me you have been a model:
+did--was this man a painter? Has he ever painted you?"
+
+The girl fell back a step or two irresolutely.
+
+"Ah! why do you trouble so? What does it matter?" Then she added
+faintly, but hurriedly stumbling over her words:
+
+"He wasn't a painter--only for amusement; he didn't exhibit. He was
+a newspaper writer. But he couldn't get work, and got a place in a
+foreign-going steamer, to keep accounts, I think. That was
+afterwards, and that's why I looked for him at your dock. They told
+me the ship had been there, but it wasn't true. Ah! let me be, sir,
+let me be!"
+
+She broke off hastily, clasping her hands across her breast.
+
+The story, though incoherent, was possible; Rainham could see no
+motive for her deceiving him, and yet he believed she was lying. He
+merely shrugged his shoulders, with a rising lassitude. He seemed to
+have been infected by her own dreariness, to labour under a
+disability of doing or saying any more; he, too, gave it up. He
+wanted to get away out of the dingy room; its rickety table and
+chairs, its two vulgar vases on the stained mantel, its gross
+upholstery, seemed too trenchantly sordid in the strong August sun.
+The child's golden head--she was growing intelligent now, and strong
+on her legs--was the one bright spot in the room. He stopped to pat
+it with a great pity, a sense of too much pathos in things flooding
+him, before he passed out again into the mean street.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+September set in cold, with rain and east winds, and Rainham, a
+naturally chilly mortal, as he handed his coat to Lady Garnett's
+butler, and followed him into the little library, where dinner was
+laid for three, congratulated himself that a seasonable fire
+crackled on the large hearth.
+
+"I hardly expected you back yet," he remarked, after the first
+greetings, stretching out his hands to the blaze; "and your note was
+a welcome surprise. I almost think we are the only people in town."
+
+Lady Garnett shrugged her shoulders with a gesture of rich
+tolerance, as one who acknowledged the respectability of all tastes,
+whilst preferring her own.
+
+"London has its charm, to me," she remarked. "We are glad to be
+back. I am getting too old to travel--that terrible crossing, and
+the terrible people one meets!"
+
+Rainham smiled with absent sympathy, looking into the red coals.
+
+"You must remember, I don't know where you have been. Tell me your
+adventures and your news."
+
+"I leave that to Mary, my dear," said the old lady.
+
+And at that moment the girl came in, looking stately and older than
+her age in one of the dark, high-cut dresses which she affected. She
+shook hands with Rainham, smiling; and as they went to table he
+repeated his question.
+
+"It is difficult," she said; "we seem to have been everywhere. Oh,
+we have been very restless this year, Philip. I think we were
+generally in the train. We tried Trouville----"
+
+"Detestable!" put in Lady Garnett with genial petulance; "it was too
+small. Half the world was crowded into it; and it was precisely the
+half-world----"
+
+"I can imagine it," interrupted Rainham, with his grave smile; "and
+then?"
+
+"Then we thought of Switzerland," continued the young girl. "We went
+to Geneva. We were almost dead when we arrived, because we had to go
+a very roundabout way to avoid Paris; we could not go to Paris,
+because we were afraid of seeing the Republic. It was very hot in
+Geneva. No place ever was so hot before. We lay on the sofa for
+three days, and then we were strong enough to run away."
+
+"It was purgatorial!" said the elder lady; "it was full of English
+governesses and Swiss pastors."
+
+"Then we went to look for cool places, and we had a charming week at
+Interlaken, and looked longingly at the Jungfrau, and contemplated
+the ascent."
+
+Lady Garnett laughed her quaint, little laugh.
+
+"Interlaken might have sufficed, my dear; but, unfortunately--it was
+one of Mary's ridiculous economies--we went to a _pension_; and we
+fell into the hands of an extraordinary woman with a fringe and a
+Bible, a native of North America, who endeavoured to persuade me
+that I was a Jewess."
+
+"No, no!" laughed Mary, "not quite so bad as that. It was one of the
+other tribes she would have us belong to--one of the lost tribes.
+It was not personal."
+
+"Ah, _Dieu merci_! if they are lost," ejaculated her aunt; "but you
+are wrong; it was most personal, Mary."
+
+"I will do her the justice to add that she only suggested it once,"
+continued the girl with a smile of elision. "However, we had to flee
+from her; and so we came to Lucerne."
+
+"That was worst of all," said Lady Garnett, arching her delicate
+eyebrows; "it was full of lovers."
+
+The solemn butler had placed a pair of obdurate birds before
+Rainham, which engrossed him; presently he looked up, remarking
+quietly:
+
+"Did you see the Sylvesters?"
+
+"Ah yes! we saw the Sylvesters; we walked with the Sylvesters; we
+drank tea with the Sylvesters; we made music with the Sylvesters; we
+went on the lake with the Sylvesters. That handsome artist, Mr.
+Lightmark, is it not, Mary? was there, making the running with Miss
+Eve. The marriage seems to be arranged."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders; the precise shade of meaning in the
+gesture escaped Rainham; he looked over to Mary inquiringly.
+
+"They seem very much attached to each other," she remarked.
+
+"Oh, they were imbecile!" added Lady Garnett; "try the Moselle, my
+dear, and leave that terrible sweet stuff to Mary. Yes, I was glad
+to come away from Lucerne. Everything is very bad now except my
+Constant's _vol-au-vent_, which you don't seem to have tried; but
+lovers are the worst of all. Though I like that young man,
+Lightmark; he is a type that interests me; he seems----"
+
+She looked round the room vaguely, as if the appropriate word might
+be lurking in some angle of the apartment; finally, the epithet
+proving difficult, she abandoned the search.
+
+"_Il ira loin_!" she said tersely; "he flatters me discreetly, as they
+did when I was young, before the Republic."
+
+The silent, well-trained man handed round caviare and olives; Mary
+trifled with some grapes, her brow knitted a little, thoughtfully.
+Lady Garnett poured herself a glass of maraschino. When they were
+left alone, the girl remarked abruptly:
+
+"I am not sure whether I quite like Mr. Lightmark; he does not seem
+to me sincere."
+
+Lady Garnett lifted up her hands.
+
+"Why should he be, my dear? sincerity is very trying. A decent
+hypocrisy is the secret of good society. Your good, frank people are
+very rude. If I am a wicked old woman, it is nobody's business to
+tell me so but my director's."
+
+Mary had risen, and had come over to the old lady's side.
+
+"But then, you are not a wicked old woman, my aunt," she observed
+gently.
+
+"Ah!" she threw back, "how do you judge? Do me the justice to
+believe, _chèrie_, that, if I tell you a good deal, there is a good
+deal, happily, which I don't tell you."
+
+She pushed a box of cigarettes, which the man had placed on the
+table, toward Rainham. He took one and lit it silently, absently,
+without his accustomed protests; the girl looked up smiling.
+
+"That means that you want your _tête-à-tête_, Aunt Marcelle? I know
+the signal. Well, I will leave you. I want to try over that new
+march of Liszt's; and I expect, by the time I have grappled with it,
+you will be coming up for your coffee."
+
+"You are a good girl," answered the elder lady, stroking her hand.
+"Yes, run away and make music! When Philip and I have had enough
+scandal and frivolity, we will come and find you; and you shall play
+us a little of that strange person Wagner, who fascinates me, though
+you may not believe it."
+
+It was a habit of the house, on occasion of these triangular
+dinner-parties, that Lady Garnett should remain with Rainham in the
+interval which custom would have made him spend solitary over his
+wine. It was a habit which Mary sacredly respected, although it
+often amused her; and she knew it was one which her aunt valued.
+And, indeed, though the two made no movement, and for a while said
+nothing, there was an air of increased intimacy, if it were only in
+their silence, when the door had closed on the girl and left them
+together. Presently Lady Garnett began holding up her little glass
+of crystal maraschino that vied in the light of the candelabra with
+the diamonds on her fingers.
+
+"I had a conversation with that wearisome young man Charles
+Sylvester at Lucerne, Philip; he tried to sound me as to Mary's
+prospects and the state of her affections."
+
+Rainham looked up with quiet surprise.
+
+"Do you mean to say----?" he queried.
+
+"It is very obvious," she answered quickly; "I saw it long ago. But
+don't imagine that he got much out of me. I was as deep as a well.
+But what do you think of it?"
+
+"I hope they will be happy," he answered absently. She arched her
+expressive brows, and he coloured, recollected himself. "I beg your
+pardon," he said hastily; "I confess I was thinking of something
+else. You were talking of Mary; why should it not do? Does she care
+about him?"
+
+His companion laughed, and her laugh had more than its wonted
+suggestion of irony.
+
+"My dear Philip, for a clever man you can be singularly dense! Care
+for him! of course she does not."
+
+"She might do worse," he said; "Sylvester is not very bright, but he
+works hard, and will succeed after a fashion. His limitations
+dovetail conveniently with his capacities. What do you intend to
+do?"
+
+"Do I ever interfere in these things? My dear, you are remarkably
+dull to-night. I never make marriages, nor prevent them. With all my
+faults, match-making is not one of them. I think too ill of life to
+try and arrange it. You must admit," she added, "that, long as I
+have known you, I have never tried to marry you?"
+
+"Ah, that would have been too fatuous!" he remarked lightly.
+
+They were both silent for a while, regarding each other
+disinterestedly; they appeared to be following a train of thought
+which led no whither; presently Lady Garnett asked:
+
+"Are you going abroad this year?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "as soon as I can--about the middle of October; to
+Mentone or Bordighera, I suppose."
+
+"Do you find them interesting? Do they do you much good?"
+
+He smiled rather listlessly, ignoring her second question.
+
+"I confess," he said, "it becomes rather a bore. But, I suppose, at
+my time of life one finds nothing very interesting. The mere act of
+living becomes rather a bore after a time."
+
+"I wonder what you are thinking about, Philip?" she asked
+meditatively; "something has annoyed you to-night; I wonder if you
+are going to tell me."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Do we ever tell each other our annoyances? I think we sit and look
+at each other, and discover them. That is much more appropriate."
+
+"You take things too seriously," she went on; "my dear, they are
+really not worth it. That is my settled conviction."
+
+She sat and sipped her liqueur appreciatively, smiling
+good-humouredly, and Philip could not help regarding her with a
+certain admiration. Her small, sharp, subtile face, beneath its mask
+of smiling indifference, looked positively youthful in the judicious
+candle-light; only the little, bird-like, withered hands bore the
+stigmata of age. And he could not conceive her changing; to the
+last, those tell-tale hands apart, she would be comely and cynical,
+and would die as she had lived, secure "in the high places of
+laughter"--a laughter that, for all its geniality, struck him at
+times as richly sardonic--in the decent drapery of her fictitious
+youth; in a decorous piety, yet a little complicated, in the very
+reception of the last rites, by the amiable arching of her
+expressive eyebrows.
+
+"You are wonderful," he exclaimed, after an interval, "wonderful;
+that was what I was thinking."
+
+She smiled disinterestedly.
+
+"Because you don't understand me? My dear, nothing is so easy as
+mystification; that is why I don't return the compliment. Yourself,
+you know, are not very intelligible to-night."
+
+He looked away frowning, but without embarrassment; presently
+throwing up his hands with a little mock gesture of despair, he
+remarked:
+
+"I should be delighted to explain myself, but I can't. I am
+unintelligible to myself also; we must give it up, and go and find
+Mary."
+
+"Ah no! let us give it up, by all means; but we will not join Mary
+yet; smoke another cigarette."
+
+He took one and lit it, absently, in the blue flame of the
+spirit-lamp, and she watched him closely with her bright, curious
+eyes.
+
+"You know this Mr. Lightmark very well, don't you, Philip?"
+
+"Intimately," he answered, nodding.
+
+"You must be pleased," she said. "It is a great match for him, a
+struggling artist. Can he paint, by the way?"
+
+"He has great talent." He held his cigarette away from him,
+considered the ash critically. "Yes, he can certainly paint. I
+suppose it is a good thing--and for Eve, too. Why should it not be?"
+
+"He is a charming young man"--she spoke judicially--"charming! But
+in effect Mary was quite right; she generally is--he is not
+sincere."
+
+"I think you are wrong," said Rainham after a moment. "I should be
+sorry to believe you were not, for the little girl's sake. And I
+have known him a long time; he is a good fellow at bottom."
+
+"Ah!" cried Lady Garnett with a little, quick gesture of her right
+hand, "that is precisely what he is not. He exaggerates; he must be
+very secret; no one ever was so frank as he seems to be."
+
+"Why are you saying all this to me?" the other asked after a moment.
+"You know I should be very sorry; but what can I do? it's arranged."
+
+"I think you might have prevented it, if you had cared; but, as you
+say, it is too late now."
+
+"There was no way possible in which I could have prevented it," he
+said slowly, after an interval which seemed to strike them both as
+ponderous.
+
+"That was an admission I wanted," she flashed back. "You _would_ have
+prevented it--you would have given worlds to have prevented it."
+
+His retort came as quickly, accented by a smile:
+
+"Not a halfpenny. I make no admissions; and I have not the faintest
+idea of what you are driving at. I am a pure spectator. To quote
+yourself, I don't make marriages, nor mar them; I think too ill of
+life."
+
+"Ah no!" she said; "it is that you are too indolent; you disappoint
+me."
+
+"It is you, dear lady, who are inconsistent," he cried, laughing.
+
+"No, you disappoint me," she resumed; "seriously, my dear, I am
+dissatisfied with you. You will not assert yourself; you do nothing;
+you have done nothing. There never was a man who made less of his
+life."
+
+He protested laughingly:
+
+"I have had no time; I have been looking after my lungs."
+
+"Ah, you are incorrigible," she exclaimed, rising; "let us go and
+find Mary. I give you up; or, rather, I give myself up, as an
+adviser. For, after all, you are right--there is nothing worth doing
+in this bad world except looking after one's lung, or whatever it
+may be."
+
+"Perhaps not even that," said Philip, as he followed her from the
+room; "even that, after a time, becomes monotonous."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+It occurred to Lightmark one evening, as he groped through the gloom
+of his studio, on his way to bed, after assisting at a very charming
+social gathering at the Sylvesters', that as soon as he was married
+he would have to cut Brodonowski's. The reasons he gave himself were
+plausible enough, and, indeed, he would have found himself the only
+Benedict among this horde of wild bachelors. The informal circle was
+of such recent association that, so far, no precedent for matrimony
+had occurred, and it was more than doubtful how the experiment might
+be received. In any case, he told himself, he could not be expected
+to introduce people like Oswyn and McAllister to his wife--or,
+rather, to Mrs. Sylvester's daughter. Oswyn was plainly impossible,
+and McAllister's devotion to tobacco so inordinate that it had come
+to be a matter of common belief that he smoked short pipes in his
+sleep.
+
+Then he had dismissed the subject; the long, pleasant holiday in
+Switzerland intervened, and it was only on his return, late in the
+autumn, that the question again presented itself, as he turned from
+the threshold of the house in Park Street, where he had been dining,
+and half unconsciously took the familiar short cut towards Turk
+Street. He paused for a deliberate instant when he had hailed the
+first passing hansom, and then told the man to drive to Piccadilly
+Circus.
+
+"I _must_ go there a few times more, if only to break it off gently,"
+he reflected, "and I want to see old Rainham. It is stupid of me not
+to have written to him--yes, stupid! Wonder if he has heard? I
+mustn't give _him_ up, at any rate. We'll--we'll ask him to dinner,
+and all that sort of thing. And what the deuce am I going to send to
+the Academy? Thank goodness, I have enough Swiss sketches to work up
+for the other galleries to last me for years. But the Academy----"
+
+Then he lost himself in contemplative enjoyment of the familiar
+vista of Regent Street, the curved, dotted lines of crocus-coloured
+lamps, fading in the evening fog, the flitting, ruby-eyed cabs, and
+the calm, white arc-lights, set irregularly about the circus,
+dulling the grosser gas. He owned to himself that he had secretly
+yearned for London; that his satisfaction on leaving the vast city
+was never so great as his joy on again setting foot upon her
+pavements.
+
+The atmosphere of the long, low room, with its anomalous dark
+ceiling and grotesquely-decorated walls, was heavily laden with the
+incense of tobacco and a more subtile odour, which numbered among
+its factors whisky and absinthe. The slippered, close-cropped
+waiter, who, by popular report, could speak five languages, and
+usually employed a mixture of two or three, was still clearing away
+the débris of protracted dinners; and a few men sat about, in
+informal groups, playing dominoes, chatting, or engrossed in their
+Extra Specials. The fire shone cheerfully beneath the high mantel,
+and the pleasant lamplight lent a mellow glow, which was vaguely
+suggestive of Dutch interiors, as it flickered on the dark wooden
+floor, and glanced from the array of china on the dresser in the
+corner.
+
+When Lightmark entered, closing the door briskly on the foggy, chill
+October night, he was greeted warmly and demonstratively. The
+fraternity which made Brodonowski's its head-quarters generously
+admired his genius, and, for the most part, frankly envied his
+good-fortune. The younger men respected him as a man who had seen
+life; and the narratives with which he occasionally favoured them
+produced in such of his hearers feelings very different to those
+which older men, like Oswyn, expressed by a turn of the eyebrow or a
+shrug. They were always ready enough to welcome him, to gather round
+him, and to drink with him; and this, perhaps, expresses the limits
+of their relation.
+
+"Lightmark, by Jove!" cried one of them, waving his pipe in the air,
+as the new-comer halted in the low doorway, smiling in a rather
+bewildered manner as he unbuttoned his overcoat. "Welcome to the
+guerilla camp! And a dress suit! These walls haven't enclosed such a
+thing since you went away. This is indeed an occasion!"
+
+Lightmark passed from group to group, deftly parrying, and returning
+the chorus of friendly thrusts, and shaking hands with the
+affability which was so characteristic a feature of his attitude
+toward them. The man he looked for, the friend whom he intended to
+honour with a somewhat tardy confidence of his happiness, was not
+there. When he asked for Rainham, he was told that "the dry-docker,"
+as these flippant youngsters familiarly designated the silent man,
+whom they secretly revered, had gone for an after-dinner stroll, or
+perchance to the theatre, with Oswyn.
+
+"With Oswyn?" queried Lightmark, with the shadow of a frown.
+
+"Oh, Oswyn and he are getting very thick!" said Copal. "They are
+almost as inseparable as you two used to be. I'm afraid you will
+find yourself cut out. Three is an awkward number, you know. But
+when did you come back? When are you going to show us your sketches?
+And how long did you stay in Paris?... You _didn't_ stop in Paris?
+This won't do, you know. I say, Dupuis, here's a man who didn't stop
+in Paris! Ask him if he wants to insult you."
+
+"Ah, mon cher!" expostulated the Frenchman, looking up from his game
+of dominoes, "I would not stop in London if I could help it."
+
+"Oh, shut up, Copal!" said Lightmark good-humouredly. "I was with
+ladies--Dupuis will sympathize with me there, eh, _mon vieux_?--and
+they wanted to stay at Lucerne until the last minute. So we came
+straight through."
+
+"Then you haven't seen Sarah in 'Cleopatra,' and we were relying on
+you for an unvarnished account. Ladies, too! See here, my boy, you
+won't get any good out of touring about the Continent with ladies.
+Hang it all! I believe it'll come true, after all?"
+
+"Very likely--what?"
+
+"Oh, well, they said--I didn't believe it, but they said that you
+were going to desert the camp, and prance about with corpulent
+R.A.'s in Hanover Square."
+
+"And so would we all, if we got the chance," said McAllister
+cynically.
+
+And after the general outcry which followed this suggestion, the
+conversation drifted back to the old discussion of the autumn shows,
+the pastels at the Grosvenor, and the most recent additions to the
+National Gallery.
+
+When at last Rainham came into the room, following, with his
+habitual half-timid air, the shambling figure of the painter Oswyn,
+it struck Lightmark that he had grown older, and that he had, as it
+were, assimilated some of the intimate disreputability of the place:
+it would no longer have been possible to single him out as a foreign
+unit in the circle, or to detect in his mental attitude any of the
+curiosity of the casual seeker after new impressions, the Philistine
+in Bohemia. There was nothing but pleasure in the slight
+manifestation of surprise which preceded his frank greeting of
+Lightmark, a greeting thoroughly English in its matter-of-fact want
+of demonstrativeness, and the avoidance of anything likely to
+attract the attention of others.
+
+Oswyn seemed less at his ease; there was an extra dash of nervous
+brusqueness in the sarcastic welcome which he offered to the
+new-comer; and although there was a vacant seat in the little
+circle, of which Copal and Lightmark formed the nucleus, and to
+which Rainham had joined himself, he shuffled off to his favourite
+corner, and buried himself in "Gil Blas" and an abnormally thick
+cloud of tobacco-smoke.
+
+Rainham gazed after him for a moment or two with a puzzled
+expression.
+
+"Amiable as ever!" said Lightmark, with a laugh. "Poor old beggar!
+Have a cigarette? You ought to give up pipes. Haven't you been told
+that cigarettes are--what is it?--'the perfect type----?'"
+
+"Oh, chestnuts!" interposed Copal, "that's at least six months old.
+And it's rot, too! Do you know what McAllister calls them? Spittle
+and tissue. Brutal, but expressive. But I say, old man, won't Mrs.
+Thingumy drop on you for smoking in your dress-coat? Or--or---- No,
+break it to me gently. You don't mean to say that you possess _two_?
+I really feel proud of having my studio next door to you."
+
+"Copal is becoming quite an humorist," Lightmark suggested in an
+impartial manner. "What a wag it is! Keep it up, my boy. By the way,
+Mrs. Grumbit has been talking about your 'goings on,' as she calls
+them: she's apparently very much exercised in her mind as to the
+state of your morals. She told me she had to take you in with the
+matutinal milk three times last week. She wants me to talk to you
+like a father. It won't do, you know."
+
+"I should like to hear you, Dick," said Rainham lazily. "Fire away!
+But who is Mrs. Grumbit?"
+
+"Oh, she's our housekeeper--the lady who dusts the studio, you know,
+and gives the models tea and good advice. She's very particular as
+to the models: she won't let us paint from any who don't come up to
+her standard of propriety. And the worst of it is that the properest
+girls are always the ugliest. I don't know----"
+
+"Before you proceed with this highly original disquisition,"
+interrupted Copal, "I think you ought to be warned that we have
+recently formed a Society for the Protection of Reputations, models'
+and actresses' in particular. It was McAllister's idea. You now have
+the honour of being in the headquarters, the committee-room of the
+society, and anything like slander, or even truth, will be made an
+example of."
+
+"Don't you find it rather difficult to spread your sheltering wings
+over what doesn't exist?" hazarded Lightmark amusedly.
+
+"Ah, I knew you would say that! You see, that's just where we come
+in. We talk about their morals and reputations until they begin to
+imagine they have some, and they unconsciously get induced to live
+up to them. See? It's rather mixed, but it works beautifully. Ask
+the vice-president! Rainham holds that proud office. I may remark
+that I am treasurer, and the subscription is half a guinea, which
+goes towards the expenses of providing light refreshments for
+the,--the beneficiaries."
+
+"This is really very interesting! Rainham vice-president, too! I
+thought he looked rather--rather worn by the cares of the office.
+You must make me a member at once. But who's president?"
+
+"President? Who _is_ president, McAllister? I really forget. You see,
+whenever the president is caught speaking too candidly of any of our
+clients' characters, we pass a vote of censure, and depose him, and
+he has to stand drinks. The competition isn't so keen as it used to
+be. If you would like to stand--for the office, I mean--I dare say
+there will be an opening soon.... Well, I must be off: I'm afraid
+of Mrs. Grumbit, and--yes, by Jove!--I've forgotten my latchkey
+again! Of course you're not coming yet, Dick? Come and breakfast
+with me to-morrow. Good-night, you fellows!"
+
+"Copal has been in great form to-night," said Lightmark, after the
+door had closed on him, getting up and stretching himself. "What
+does it mean? Joy at my return? Fatted calf?"
+
+"No doubt, my boy, no doubt," growled McAllister humorously, on his
+way to the door. "But you must bear in mind, too, the circumstance
+that the laddie's just sold a picture."
+
+"Good business!" ejaculated Lightmark, as he reflected to himself
+that perhaps that despaired-of fiver would be repaid after all.
+
+About midnight most of the men left. Rainham remained, and
+Lightmark, who professed himself too lazy to move. Rainham lapsed
+into his familiar state of half-abstraction, while his friend
+cross-examined a young sculptor fresh from Rome.
+
+At the next table Oswyn was holding forth, with eager gesticulations
+and the excitement of the hour in his eyes, on the subject of a
+picture which he contemplated painting in oils for exhibition at the
+Salon next year. Rainham had heard it all before; still, he listened
+with a keen appreciation of the wonderful touch with which the
+little, dishevelled artist enlarged on the capabilities of his
+choice, the possibilities of colour and treatment. The picture was
+to be painted at the dock, and the painter had already achieved a
+daringly suggestive impression in pastels of the familiar night-scene
+which he now described: the streaming, vivid torches, their rays
+struggling and drowning in the murky water, glimmering faintly
+in the windows of the black warehouse barely suggested at the side;
+the alert, swarming sailors, busy with ropes and tackle; and in the
+middle the dark, steep leviathan, fresh from the sea-storms,
+growing, as it were, out of the impenetrable chaos of the foggy
+background, in which the river-lights gleamed like opals set in dull
+ebony.
+
+When the tide of inspiration failed the speaker, as it soon did,
+Lightmark continued to look at him askance, with an air of absent
+consideration turning to uneasiness. There was a general silence,
+broken only by the occasional striking of a match and the knocking
+of pipe against boot-heel. Soon the young sculptor discovered that
+he had missed his last train, and fled incontinently. Oswyn settled
+himself back in his chair, as one who has no regard for time, and
+rolled a cigarette, the animation with which he had spoken now only
+perceptible in the points of colour in either cheek. Rainham and
+Lightmark left him a few minutes later, the last of the revellers,
+drawing the cat with the charred end of a match on the back of an
+envelope, and too deeply engrossed to notice their departure.
+
+The fog had vanished, and the moon shone softly, through a white
+wreath of clouds, over the straggling line of house-tops. The
+narrow, squalid, little street was deserted, and the sound of wheels
+in the busier thoroughfare at the end was very intermittent.
+
+Lightmark buttoned his gloves deliberately, and drew a long breath
+of the night air before he broke the silence.
+
+"It's on occasions like this that I wish Bloomsbury and Kensington
+lay in the same direction--from here, you know; we should save a
+fortune in cab-fares.... But--but that wasn't what I wanted to say.
+Philip, my dear fellow, congratulate me."
+
+He paused for a minute looking at the other curiously, with
+something of a melodramatic pose. Rainham had his face turned rather
+away, and was gazing at the pale reflection of the moonlight in one
+of the opposite windows.
+
+"I know," he said simply. "I _do_ congratulate you--from the bottom
+of my heart. And I hope you will make her happy." Then he turned and
+looked Lightmark in the face. "I suppose you _do_ love her, Dick?"
+
+"I suppose I do. But how the deuce did you know anything about it? I
+have been blaming myself, needlessly it appears, for not letting you
+hear of it. Has it--has it been in the papers?"
+
+Rainham laughed in spite of himself.
+
+"Approaching marriage of a celebrated artist? No, Dick, I don't
+think it has. Lady Garnett told me more than a week ago."
+
+"Oh," said Dick blankly. "I--I'm much obliged to her. I thought
+perhaps it was the Colonel; I wrote to him, you know, and I thought
+he was a discreet old bird. But how did Lady Garnett know?"
+
+"She seemed to think it was no secret," said Rainham, with a
+suggestion of apology in his tone; "and, of course, she knows that I
+am----"
+
+"My best friend," interposed the other impulsively. "So you are. And
+I ought to have told you; I was a brute. And I feel like the devil
+about it.... Well, it can't be helped. Will you have this cab, or
+shall I?"
+
+Rainham drew back with a gesture of abnegation, as the driver reined
+the horse back upon its haunches with a clatter.
+
+"I'm going to walk, I think. Only up to Bloomsbury, you know.
+Good-night, Dick. I hope you'll be very happy, both of you."
+
+When the cab drove off, Rainham stood still for a minute and watched
+it out of sight. Then he started and seemed to pull himself
+together.
+
+"I wish I knew!" he said aloud to himself, as he stepped rapidly
+towards the East. "Well, we'll be off to Bordighera now, _mon vieux_.
+We've lost Dick, I think, and we've lost----"
+
+The soliloquy died away in a sigh and a pathetic shrug.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+A day or two later, when Rainham called in the afternoon at the
+Kensington studio to announce his approaching flight from England,
+he found Mrs. Sylvester and Eve in occupation, and a sitting in
+progress. His greeting of Eve was somewhat constrained. He seemed to
+stumble over the congratulations, the utterance of which usage and
+old acquaintance demanded; and he was more at his ease when the ice
+was fairly broken.
+
+"I expected to find you here," he said, addressing Mrs. Sylvester.
+"I have been to your house, and they told me you would probably be
+at the studio--_the_ studio--so I came on."
+
+"Good boy, good boy!" said Lightmark, with as much approbation in
+his voice as the presence of the stick of a paint-brush between his
+teeth would allow. "You'll excuse our going on a little longer,
+won't you? It'll be too dark in a few minutes."
+
+"You don't look well, Philip," remarked Mrs. Sylvester presently,
+with a well-assumed air of solicitude. "You ought to have come to
+Lucerne with us, instead of spending all the summer in town."
+
+"Yes; why _didn't_ you, Philip?" cried Eve reproachfully. "It would
+have been so nice--oh, I'm so sorry, Dick, I didn't mean to
+move--you really ought to have come."
+
+"Well, there was the dock, you see, and business and all that sort
+of thing. I can't always neglect business, you know."
+
+Lightmark asserted emphatically that he _didn't_ know, while, on the
+other hand, Mrs. Sylvester was understood to remark, with a certain
+air of mystery, that she could quite understand what kept Philip in
+town.
+
+"Don't you think I might have been rather--rather a fifth wheel?"
+suggested Rainham feebly, entirely ignoring Mrs. Sylvester's remark,
+to which, indeed, he attached no special meaning.
+
+"Spare our blushes, old man," expostulated Dick. "It would have been
+awfully jolly. You would have been such a companion for Charles, you
+know," he added, with a malicious glance over his shoulder. "Oh
+dear! fog again. I think I must release you now, Eve. Tell me what
+you think of the portrait, now that I've worked in the background,
+Philip. Mrs. Sylvester, now don't you think I was right about the
+flowers?"
+
+There was, in fact, a charming, almost virginal delicacy and
+freshness of air and tone about the picture. The girl's simple,
+white dress, with only--the painter had so far prevailed over the
+milliner,--only a suggestion of bright ribands at throat and waist;
+the quaint chippendale chair, the sombre Spanish leather screen,
+which formed the background, and the pot of copper-coloured
+chrysanthemums, counterparts of the little cluster which Eve wore in
+the bosom of her gown, on a many-cornered Turkish table at the side:
+it had all the gay realism of modern Paris without losing the poetry
+of the old school, or attaining the hardness of the new.
+
+Rainham looked at it attentively, closely, for a long time. Then he
+said simply:
+
+"It's the best thing you have done, Dick. It will be one of the best
+portraits in the Academy, and you ought to get a good place on the
+line."
+
+"I'm so glad!" cried Eve rapturously, clasping her hands. "On the
+line! But," and her voice fell, "it isn't to go to the Academy.
+Mamma has promised Sir--Dick is going to send it to the Grosvenor.
+But it's pretty much the same, isn't it? Oh, now show Philip the
+sketch you have made for your Academy picture," she added, pointing
+to a board which stood on another easel, with a protecting veil over
+the paper which was stretched upon it. "You know _he_ can tell us if
+it's like the real thing."
+
+"If it's the Riviera, or--or dry docks," added Rainham modestly.
+
+But Lightmark stepped forward hastily, after a moment's hesitation,
+and put his hand on the drawing just as Eve was preparing with due
+ceremony to unveil it.
+
+"Excuse me, I don't want to show it to Rainham yet. I--I want to
+astonish him, you know."
+
+He laughed rather uneasily, and Eve gave way, with some surprise in
+her eyes, and a puzzled cloud on her pretty brow, and went and
+seated herself on the settee at her mother's side.
+
+"He's afraid of my critical eye, Mrs. Sylvester," said Rainham
+gravely. "That's what it is. Well, if you don't show it me now, you
+won't have another opportunity yet awhile."
+
+"That's it, Eve," exclaimed Lightmark hastily. "I'm afraid of his
+critical what's-his-name. You know he can be awfully severe
+sometimes, the old beggar, and I don't want him to curl me up and
+annihilate me while you're here."
+
+"I don't believe he would, if it were _ever_ so bad," said Eve, only
+half satisfied. "And it isn't; it's awfully good. But it's too dark
+to see anything now."
+
+"By Jove, so it is! Mrs. Sylvester, I'm awfully sorry; I always like
+the twilight myself. Rainham, would you mind ringing the bell.
+Thanks. Oh, don't apologize; the handle always comes off. I never
+use it myself, except when I have visitors. I go and shout in the
+passage; but Mrs. Grumbit objects to being shouted for when there
+are visitors on the premises. Great hand at etiquette, Mrs. Grumbit
+is."
+
+The lady in question arrived at this juncture, fortified by a new
+and imposing cap, and laden with candles and a tea-tray, which she
+deposited, with much clatter of teaspoons, on a table by Mrs.
+Sylvester's side.
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Grumbit. And now will you come to a poor bachelor's
+assistance, and pour out tea, Mrs. Sylvester? And I'm very sorry,
+but I haven't got any sugar-tongs. I generally borrow Copal's, but
+the beggar's gone out and locked his door. You ladies will have to
+imagine you're at Oxford."
+
+Mrs. Sylvester looked bewildered, and paused with one hand on the
+Satsuma teapot.
+
+"Don't you know, mamma, it isn't--form, don't you say? to have
+sugar-tongs at Oxford? It was one of the things Charles always
+objected to. I believe he tried to introduce them, but people always
+threw them out of the window. _I_ think they're an absurd invention."
+
+Rainham, as he watched her slender fingers with their dimpled
+knuckles, daintily selecting the most eligible lumps out of the
+cracked blue-and-white china teacup which did service for a
+sugar-basin, unhesitatingly agreed with her; though Mrs. Sylvester
+seemed to think her argument that sugar-tongs could be so
+pretty--"Queen Anne, you know"--entirely unanswerable.
+
+It was not until Mrs. Grumbit broke in upon the cosy little party to
+announce that the ladies' carriage was at the door that Rainham
+remembered the real object of his expedition.
+
+Then, when Eve, warmly wrapped in her furs, and with the glow of the
+firelight still in her face, held out a small gloved hand with a
+smiling "Au revoir, Philip," he shook his head rather sadly.
+
+"I'm afraid it must be good-bye--for some time, at least. I came to
+tell you that I am on the wing again. Doctor's orders, you know. I
+shall be in Bordighera on Friday, I expect."
+
+"And to-day's Tuesday," complained Eve.
+
+"And I was just going to ask you to dine with us, one day soon,"
+expostulated her mother.
+
+"You must come over at Christmas, old man," said Dick cheerfully.
+"For the wedding, you know. You've got to give me away, and be
+bridesmaid, and all that sort of thing."
+
+Rainham shook his head again.
+
+"I'm afraid not. You don't know my doctor. He wouldn't hear of it.
+No, you won't see me in town again before May, unless there's a
+radical reform in the climate."
+
+"Couldn't--couldn't we put it off till May?" suggested Eve naïvely.
+
+But the suggestion was not received with anything approaching
+enthusiasm.
+
+"Good-bye, Philip," said Eve again, when her lover was handing Mrs.
+Sylvester into the little brougham. "Mind you take great care of
+yourself."
+
+Rainham returned the frank pressure of her hand.
+
+"Good-bye," he said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+After all, Philip Rainham loitered on his way South. He spent a week
+in Paris, and passing on by way of the Mont Cenis, lingered in
+Turin, a city with a treacherous climate and ugly rectangular
+streets, which he detested, out of sheer idleness, for three days.
+On the fourth, waking to find winter upon him suddenly, and the
+ground already dazzling from a night's snow, he was seized with
+panic--an ancient horror of falling ill in strange places returning
+to him with fresh force, as he felt already the chill of the bleak
+plains of Piedmont in his bones. It sent him hurrying to his
+destination, Bordighera, by the first train; and it was not too
+soon: the misused lung asserted itself in a hæmorrhage, and by the
+time he reached the fair little town running out so coquettishly,
+amid its olive yards and palm-trees, into the blue Mediterranean, he
+was in no proper temper to soliloquize on its charms.
+
+The doctor had a willing slave in him for three weeks; then he
+revolted, and found himself sufficiently cured to sit when the sun
+shone--and sometimes when it did not--covered in a gray shawl,
+smoking innumerable cigarettes on a green, blistered seat in the
+garden of his hotel. He replied to the remonstrating that he had
+been ill before this bout, and would surely be ill again, but that
+temporarily he was a well man. It was only when he was alone that he
+could afford to admit how savage a reminder of his disabilities he
+had received. And, indeed, his days of captivity had left their mark
+on him--the increased gauntness of his figure apart--in a certain
+irritation and nerve distress, which inclined him for once to regret
+the multitude of acquaintance that his long habit of sojourning
+there had obtained. The clatter of English tongues at _table d'hôte_
+began to weary him; the heated controversy which waged over the
+gambling-tables of the little principality across the bay left him
+arid and tired; and the gossip of the place struck him as even more
+tedious and unprofitable than of old. He could no longer feign a
+decent interest in the flirtations of the three Miss Smiths, as they
+were recounted to him nightly by Mrs. Engel, the sympathetic widow
+who sat next to him, and whose sympathy he began, in the
+enlightenment of his indisposition, to distrust.
+
+The relief with which he hailed the arrival of the post and a budget
+of letters from England surprised himself. It struck him that there
+was something feverish and strange in this waiting for news. Even to
+himself he did not dare to define his interest, confessing how
+greatly he cared.
+
+Lightmark's epistles just then were frequent and brief. The marriage
+was definitely fixed; the Colonel, his uncle, had been liberal
+beyond his hopes: a house in Grove Road of some splendour had been
+taken for the young couple, who were to install themselves there
+when the honeymoon, involving a sojourn in Paris and a descent into
+Italy, was done. Hints of a visit to Rainham followed, which at
+first he ignored; repeated in subsequent epistles with a greater
+directness, their prospect filled him with a pleasure so strangely
+mixed with pain that his pride took alarm. He thought it necessary
+to disparage the scheme in a letter to Lightmark, of a coldness
+which disgusted himself. Remorse seized him when it had been
+despatched, and he cherished a hope that it might fail of its aim.
+This, however, seemed improbable, when a fortnight had elapsed and
+it had elicited no reply. From Lady Garnett, at the tail of one of
+those long, witty, railing letters, in which the old lady excelled,
+he heard that the marriage was an accomplished fact, and the birds
+had flown. Mrs. Lightmark! the phrase tripped easily from his tongue
+when he mentioned it at dinner to his neighbour, Mrs. Engel, to whom
+the persons were known. Later in his room, face to face with the
+facts which it signified, he had an intolerable hour. He had
+extinguished his candle, and sat, partially undressed, in a mood of
+singular blankness by the fire of gnarled olive logs, which had
+smouldered down into one dull, red mass; and Eve's face was imaged
+there to his sick fancy as he had seen it last in Dick's studio in
+the vague light of an October evening, and yet with a certain new
+shadow, half sad and half reproachful, in the beautiful eyes. After
+all, had he done his best for the child? Now that this thing was
+irrevocable and complete, a host of old misgivings and doubts, which
+he had believed long ago banished, broke in upon him. He had only
+asked that she should be happy--at least, he said, it had never
+been a question of himself. He certainly knew nothing to Lightmark's
+discredit, nothing which could have justified him in interfering,
+even if interference could have prevailed. The two had fallen in
+love with one another, and, the man not being visibly bad, the
+marriage had come about; was there more to say? And yet Rainham's
+ill-defined uneasiness still questioned and explored. A hundred
+little episodes in his friendship with the brilliant young painter,
+dismissed as of no import at the time, returned to him--instances,
+as it seemed now to his morbid imagination, in which that character,
+so frank and so enigmatic, rang scarcely true. And suddenly the
+tragical story of Kitty Crichton intruded itself before him, with
+all its shameful possibilities. Could Lightmark have lied to him?
+Had not his sudden acquiescence in the painter's rendering of the
+thing implied a lack of courage--been one of those undue indolences,
+to which he was so prone, rather than any real testimony of his
+esteem? Would not a more rigorous inquiry, a little patient
+investigation into so curious a coincidence, have been the more
+seemly part, as much for his friend's sake as for Eve's, so that
+this haunting, intolerable doubt might have been for ever put
+away--as surely it would have been? The contrary issue was too
+horrible for supposition. And he ended by mocking at himself with a
+half-sigh for carrying fastidiousness so far, recognising the
+mundane fitness of the match, and that heroic lovers, such as his
+tenderness for the damsel would have had, are, after all, rare,
+perhaps hardly existing out of visions in a somewhat gross world,
+where the finest ore is not without its considerable alloy.
+
+Two days later, as he sat upon his wonted seat, in lazy enjoyment of
+the midday sun, a _vetturino_, heralded far down the road by the
+jingle of his horse's bells, deposited a couple at the door whose
+faces were familiar. At _table d'hôte_, though he was separated from
+the new-comers by half a dozen covers, he had leisure to identify
+them as the Dollonds; and by-and-by the roving, impartial gaze of
+the Academician's wife encountering him, he could assure himself
+that the recognition was mutual. They came together at the end of
+_déjeuner_, and presently, at Mrs. Dollond's instigation, started for
+a stroll through the olives towards the old town.
+
+"Are you wintering here?" he asked after a moment, feeling that an
+affirmative answer would hardly be to his taste.
+
+But Mrs. Dollond, with an upward inclination of her vivacious
+shoulders, repudiated the notion. A whim of her own, she explained
+to Rainham confidentially, as they came abreast in the narrowing
+path, while Mr. Dollond strolled a little behind, cutting down
+vagrant weeds absently with his heavy oak stick.
+
+"Hugh wanted a month's holiday; and I wanted"--she dropped her
+voice, glancing over her shoulder with an air of mock mystery--"yes,
+Mr. Rainham, you must not be shocked, but I wanted a fortnight at
+Monte Carlo; and so I may as well tell you that our destination is
+there. We came from San Remo this morning, meaning to drive over
+right away; but this place was so pretty that Hugh insisted on
+staying."
+
+Rainham helped her up a difficult terrace, and remarked urbanely
+that he was in fortune's way.
+
+She threw him a brilliant smile.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Rainham, if we had only known that you were here! then we
+might have arranged differently; we could have stayed here
+pastorally, and driven up to that delightful little place on the
+hill. Tell me, how is it called?"
+
+She pointed with her scarlet parasol--they had emerged now on to the
+main road--at a little, turreted town perched far above them on the
+brow of an olive-crested hill.
+
+"It is Sasso," said Rainham. "I should have been delighted to come
+with you, but I am afraid it is out of the reach of carriages, and
+of invalids. You might go there on a mule."
+
+"Oh no!" she laughed; "I think on the whole we shall be more
+comfortable at the Hôtel de Paris. Can't we induce you to come with
+us now?"
+
+Rainham lifted his eyebrows, smiling a little and groping vaguely
+for an excuse, while Mrs. Dollond turned to her husband with a look
+which demanded corroboration of her speech.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Rainham, do come, if you possibly can," supplemented Mr.
+Dollond, coming forward in burlesque obedience. "We are boring each
+other horribly--I can answer for myself--and it would be an act of
+real charity."
+
+"Well, Hugh, I am ashamed of you! You really ought not to say such
+things. If you can't behave better than that, you may go on
+maltreating those thistles. I declare we have left a regular trail
+of heads in our wake,--like the Revolution, or Judge Jeffreys."
+
+"Bloody Jeffreys!" suggested Mr. Dollond mildly.
+
+His wife turned to Rainham with the little despairing gesture which
+she reckoned one of her most effective mannerisms.
+
+"Is not he dreadful? But you _will_ come, Mr. Rainham? I am sure you
+know all about systems, and--and things. You know I insist on
+winning; so I must have a system, mustn't I?"
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Dollond," said her companion humorously, "you remind me
+that the only system I have is a very bad one. I am afraid my doctor
+would not trust me with it at Monaco."
+
+"Oh!" said Mrs. Dollond reflectively; "but you need not gamble, you
+know! You can help me, and see that I don't get cheated. Hugh and I
+will see your doctor, and promise to take care of you. Hugh shall
+carry your shawl--he likes carrying shawls."
+
+"He is getting used to it," interposed her husband dryly.
+
+"Ah, well, that is settled," continued the lady gaily, leaving her
+victim no time to formulate more than the lamest of protests.
+
+By this time they had reached the middle of the cape, and they stood
+for a moment by the lazy fountain looking down at the Marina
+straggling below the palms; and beyond, at the outline of the French
+coast, with white Mentone set in it, precisely, like a jewel.
+
+"The dear little place!" cried Mrs. Dollond in a rapture; "I suppose
+Monaco is behind that cape. I wish we could see it. And it would not
+look a bit wicked from here. I declare, I should like to live
+there!"
+
+"I've no doubt you would, my dear!" said her husband; "but you
+sha'n't, so long as I have any voice in the matter. I don't get so
+much for my pictures that I can afford to contribute to M. Blanc's
+support."
+
+Rainham followed the direction of her eyes absently. "I have half a
+mind to go with you after all," he said.
+
+"Of course," said Mrs. Dollond; "it will do you worlds of good; we
+will drive you over with us to-morrow. And now, Mr. Rainham, if you
+don't mind, I think we will sit down. I can see that Hugh is getting
+out his sketch-book."
+
+She sank down as she spoke upon one of the rough stone seats which
+are scattered about the cape. Mr. Dollond had ensconced himself
+behind them, and was phlegmatically starting on a rough study of the
+old town, which rose in a ragged, compact mass a hundred yards away,
+with its background of sad olives and sapphire sky.
+
+Rainham followed the lady's example, tired himself by their scramble
+under the hot sun, and contented himself for a while by turning a
+deaf ear and polite, little mechanical gestures to her perennial
+flow of inconsequent chatter, which seemed quite impervious to
+fatigue, while he rested his eyes on the charming prospect at their
+feet; the ragged descent of red rocks, broken here and there by
+patches of burnt grass and pink mallows, the little sea-girt chapel
+of St. Ampelio, and the waste of violet sea. His inattentive ear was
+caught at last by the name of Lightmark occurring, recurring, in the
+light eddy of his companion's speech, and he turned to her with an
+air of apologetic inquiry.
+
+"Yes," Mrs. Dollond was observing, "it was quite a grand
+wedding; rather pretentious, you know, we thought it, for the
+Sylvesters--but, oh, a great affair! We stayed in London for it,
+although Hugh wanted to take a holiday. I could tell you all about
+the bridesmaids' dresses, and Mrs. Lightmark's, but I suppose you
+would not care. She looked very charming!"
+
+"Yes?" said Rainham, with a curious light in his averted eyes. Then
+he added, somewhat abruptly, "Brides always do, I suppose?"
+
+"Of course, if they have a good dressmaker. And the presents--there
+was quite a show. Your pearl necklace--how I envied her that! But,
+after all, weddings are so much alike."
+
+"I have never been to one," said the other absently.
+
+"Ah, then you ought, if only to get a little experience before your
+own time comes, you know. Yes, you really ought to have been there.
+It was quite a foregone conclusion that you would be best man. It
+was so funny to see Colonel Lightmark in that _rôle_, with that young
+Mr. Sylvester giving away the bride. It would have been so much
+better if they could have changed parts."
+
+"I am sorry to interrupt you," said Mr. Dollond, getting up and
+putting away his sketch-book; "I can't sketch; the place is full of
+locusts, and they are getting into my boots."
+
+Mrs. Dollond started up, shaking her skirts apprehensively, with an
+affectation of horror.
+
+"How I do hate jumping things! And, anyhow, I suppose we ought to be
+getting back to our hotel, or we shall be late for dinner. You don't
+know what Hugh can be like when one is late for dinner. He is
+capable of beginning without me."
+
+Rainham had risen with a ready response to her words, bordering
+almost on the ludicrous; and half an hour later he was congratulating
+himself that at least six seats intervened between his place and
+that of Mrs. Dollond at the dinner-table.
+
+And yet on the morrow he found himself, and not without a certain
+relief, sitting beside the mundane, little lady, and turning to her
+incessant ripple of speech something of the philosophic indifference
+to which her husband had attained, while a sturdy pair of
+gaily-caparisoned horses, whose bells made a constant accompaniment,
+not unpleasing in its preciseness, to the vagueness of Rainham's
+thought, hurried them over the dusty surface of the Cornice.
+
+Certainly the excursion into which he had been inveigled, rather
+from indolence than from any freak of his inclination, afforded him,
+now that it was undertaken, a certain desultory pleasure to which he
+had long been a stranger. Into the little shrug, comic and
+valedictory, of Mrs. Dollond's shoulders, as they passed the _Octroi_,
+a gesture discreetly mocking of the conditions they had left, he
+could enter with some humour, the appreciation of a resident who
+still permitted himself at times the licence of a casual visitor on
+his domain.
+
+"Tell me," Mrs. Dollond had asked, as they rattled out of the
+further gate of Ventimiglia, "why did the excellent lady who tried
+to monopolize conversation in the _salon_ last night appear so
+scandalized when I told her where we were going? Was I--surely now,
+Mr. Rainham, I was not indiscreet?"
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Dollond," said Rainham humorously, "you know it was a
+delicate subject. At our hotel we don't recognise Monte Carlo. We
+are divided upon the other topics in which we are interested: the
+intrigues of the lawn tennis club, and the orthodoxy of the English
+chaplain. But we are all orthodox about Monte Carlo, and Mrs. Engel
+is the pillar of our faith. We think it's----"
+
+"The devil?" interrupted Mr. Dollond, bending forward a little, with
+his bland smile.
+
+"Precisely," said Rainham; "that is what Mrs. Engel would say. Oh
+no, Mrs. Dollond, we don't drive over to Monte Carlo from
+Bordighera. At Mentone it is more regular; you see, you can get
+there from Mentone pretty much by accident. But from Bordighera it
+has too much the appearance of being a preconcerted thing."
+
+"It was particularly preconcerted here," put in the Academician with
+a yawn, and Mrs. Dollond remarked innocently that people who
+wintered in these places must have very singular ideas.
+
+The prospect was increasing in beauty as they wound their way along
+the historical road, now rendered obscure by the thick groves of
+olives on either side, now varied by little glimpses of the sea,
+which again they skirted from time to time, and so nearly that, as
+Mrs. Dollond remarked, it was like driving along the sands. Rainham
+identified spots for them as the prospect widened, naming sea-girt
+Mortola with its snug château, Mentone lying placidly with its two
+bays in the westering sun, and, now and again, notorious peaks of
+the Alpes Maritimes which bounded the horizon beyond. At the
+frontier bridge of St. Louis, where they alighted to meet the
+requirements of the Douane, even Mrs. Dollond's frivolity was
+changed into silent admiration of the savage beauty of the gorge.
+They stood for a while leaning upon the desolate bridge, turning
+reluctantly from the great beetling rocks of the ravine above to
+gaze with strange qualms into the yawning precipice beneath. Rainham
+pointed out the little thread of white which was the one dangerous
+pathway down the gorge, confessing his sympathy with the fatal
+fascination with which it had filled so many--he mentioned the name
+of a young Englishman staying at Mentone the year before amongst the
+number--at the ultimate cost of their lives.
+
+"Horrible!" exclaimed Mrs. Dollond, retreating to the carriage,
+which awaited them on the French side of the bridge. "I shall dream
+of it to-night."
+
+"I have dreamt of it," said Rainham simply. "When I was a boy I used
+to dream of climbing to the edge of the world and falling over.
+Nowadays, I dream of dropping over the Pont St. Louis: the sensation
+is much the same."
+
+"A very disagreeable one, I should think," said Mrs. Dollond,
+settling herself in her wraps with a little shudder.
+
+"No," said Rainham, with a smile. "I think, Mrs. Dollond, it was
+rather nice: it was the waking up which was disagreeable."
+
+They made their breakfast--a very late one--at Mentone, and dawdled
+over it, Mr. Dollond having disappeared at the last moment, and been
+found, after a lengthy search, sketching, in serene disregard of the
+inappropriateness of the occasion, a doorway in St. Michele.
+
+When at last they drove into the principality, the evening was well
+advanced. Even the irrepressible Mrs. Dollond was not to be enticed
+by the brilliant windows of the Casino from the sofa upon which she
+had stretched herself luxuriously, when their extensive dinner was
+at an end; and Rainham with a clear conscience could betake himself
+immediately to bed. But, in spite of his fatigue, he lay for a long
+time awake; the music of the concert-room, the strains of M.
+Oudshorn's skilful orchestra, floated in through the half-closed
+_persiennes_ of his room, and later mingled with his dreams, tinging
+them, perhaps, with some of that indefinable plaintiveness, a sort
+of sadness essentially ironical, with which all dance music, even
+the most extravagant, is deeply pervaded.
+
+A week later, as from the window of the receding Italian train he
+caught a last glimpse of the Dollonds on the crowded platform, he
+waved a polite farewell to them with a sensible relief. It was a
+week in which Mrs. Dollond had been greatly on his hands, for her
+husband had made no secret of the willingness with which he had
+accepted Rainham's escort for the indefatigable lady amongst the
+miscellaneous company of the tables, leaving him free to study the
+picturesque in the less heated atmosphere which he preferred. And a
+week of Mrs. Dollond, as Rainham was obliged to confess, was not
+good for any man to undergo.
+
+Nor was Mrs. Dollond's verdict upon their acquaintance, who had
+become for the space of seven days an intimate, more complimentary.
+
+"I suppose he was better than nobody," she remarked with philosophy
+as they made their way up the terrace. "He looked after my stakes,
+and did not play much himself, and was always at hand; but he was
+really very dull."
+
+"Better than me, I suppose you mean, my dear?" suggested her husband
+humorously. "Was he so dull? You ought to know; I really have hardly
+spoken to him."
+
+"Don't be absurd!" she remarked absently. Then she said a little
+abruptly: "It seems funny, now that one knows him, that there should
+be those stories."
+
+"Stories? About Rainham?"
+
+Her husband glanced at her with some surprise.
+
+"Yes," she said. "Of course, you never know anything; but he is
+talked about."
+
+"Ah, poor man!" said Mr. Dollond. "What has he done?"
+
+Mrs. Dollond's fair eyebrows were arched significantly, and Mrs.
+Dollond's gay shoulders shrugged with a gesture of elision, in which
+the essence of many scandals, generated and discussed in the
+discreet undertones of the ladies' hour, was nicely distributed.
+
+"Don't be dense, Hugh! It is quite notorious!"
+
+Mr. Dollond laughed his broad, tolerant laugh.
+
+"Well," he said, "I should never have thought it."
+
+Rainham, reaching his hotel the same afternoon, met Mrs. Engel in
+the hall; her formal bow, in which frosty disapproval of the sin,
+and a widow's tenderness for the middle-aged sinner, if repentant,
+were discreetly mingled, amused if it scarcely flattered him. He was
+still smiling at his recollection of the interview when the Swiss
+porter, accosting him in elaborately bad English, informed him that
+a lady and gentleman, who had left on the previous evening, had made
+particular inquiries after him. The name, he confessed, escaped him,
+but if Monsieur pleased---- He produced the visitors' book, in which
+Rainham read, scarcely now with surprise, the brief inscription,
+"Mr. and Mrs. Lightmark, from Cannes."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+There was a ceaseless hum of voices in the labyrinth of brilliant
+rooms, with their atmosphere of transient spring sunshine and
+permeating, faint odour of fresh paint. Few people came to see the
+pictures, which covered the walls with a crude patchwork of seas and
+goddesses, portraits and landscapes: all that by popular repute were
+worth seeing had been exhibited already to the people who were now
+invited to view them,--at the studios on Show Sunday, and on the
+Outsiders' Day. One entered the gloomy gates of Burlington House on
+the yearly occasion of the Private View because it was, socially, a
+great public function, in order to see the celebrities, who were
+sure to be there, from the latest actress to the newest bishop. In
+one corner a belated critic endeavoured to scratch hasty impressions
+on his shirt-cuff or the margin of a little square catalogue; in
+another an interested dealer used his best endeavours to rivet a
+patron's attention on the merits of his speculative purchase. The
+providers of the feast were not so much in evidence as their wives
+and daughters; the artist often affects to despise the occasion, and
+contents himself with a general survey--frequently limited to his
+own pictures--on Varnishing Day.
+
+The Hanging Committee had dealt kindly with Lightmark's Academy
+picture. When it was passed in review before these veterans, after a
+long procession of inanely smiling portraits, laboured, wooden
+landscapes, and preternaturally developed heroes, the expression of
+satiated boredom and damnation of draughts, which variously pervaded
+the little row of arbitrators, was for a moment dissipated. There
+was a movement of chairs, followed by an exchange of complimentary
+murmurs; and the picture was finally niched into a space which
+happened to fit it between two life-size portraits on the line in
+one of the smaller rooms.
+
+On the fashionable afternoon Lightmark's work was never without the
+little admiring crowd which denotes a picture of more than usual
+interest. The canvas, which had loomed so large in the new studio in
+Grove Road, was smaller than many of its neighbours, but its sombre
+strength of colour, relieved by the pale, silvery gold of its wide
+frame, and the white dresses of the ladies portrayed in the pictures
+on either side, made it at once noticeable.
+
+The critics next day referred to it as a nocturne in black and gold,
+and more than one of the daily journals contained an enthusiastic
+description of the subject--an ocean-steamer entering a Thames
+graving-dock at night-time, with torch-light effects; and a mist on
+the river.
+
+Eve fluttered delightedly from room to room with her mother,
+recurring always to the neighbourhood of her husband's picture, and
+receiving congratulations by the score. It had been a disappointment
+to her when her husband, at the eleventh hour, expressed his
+inability to be present; but even Mrs. Sylvester's remonstrances had
+failed to move him, and the two ladies had come under the Colonel's
+escort.
+
+"I didn't know your husband was so nervous," said Mrs. Dollond
+sceptically. "Is this the effect of matrimony?... Oh, Mrs.
+Lightmark, do look at that creature in peacock blue! Did you ever
+see such a gown? Have you seen my husband's pictures? He's got one
+in every room, nearly. Between you and me, they're all of them
+pretty bad; but so long as people don't know any better, and buy
+them, what does it matter? Ah, Colonel Lightmark, how do you do? Of
+course I've seen your nephew's picture. I've been saying all sorts
+of nice things about it to Mrs. Lightmark."
+
+"It's pretty good, I suppose," suggested the Colonel radiantly.
+"Have you seen the _Outcry_ this week? There's no end of a good notice
+about it, and about your husband's pictures, too."
+
+"Really? I wonder who wrote it. I must ask him to dinner, if he's
+respectable. We never read critiques nowadays. They're so dreadfully
+rude to Academicians, you know--always talking about 'pot-boilers,'
+and suggesting that they ought to retire on their laurels. As if
+laurels were any good! One can't keep a carriage on laurels."
+
+"No, by Jove! it wouldn't be good for the horses. I say, though,
+Mrs. Dollond, is one supposed to go through all the rooms?"
+
+"Oh yes," replied the lady composedly; "all except the
+water-colours, and sculpture, and architecture. One only goes there
+to flirt, as a rule. Personally, I always get up the pictures from
+'Academy Notes,' when I haven't seen them at the studios, you know.
+Yes; I should like some tea, please, since Mrs. Lightmark has
+deserted you. Is that Lady Garnett with her? What lovely white hair!
+I wonder where she gets it."
+
+Lady Garnett shrugged her shoulders a little petulantly after she
+had made the ghost of a return to Mrs. Dollond's airy greeting.
+
+"My dear," she said, turning to Eve confidentially, "may I confess
+to you that I am not altogether too fond of that woman? Is she a
+great friend of yours, or don't you know her well enough to abuse
+her? I like the husband; he amuses me, though he is rather a bear.
+Otherwise, I should not see very much of Mrs. Dollond, I promise
+you."
+
+Eve smiled at the thought of Mr. Dollond's eccentricities, and then
+her face grew rather grave.
+
+"Shall we go into the lecture-room?" she suggested. "It is cooler
+there among the statues, and perhaps we shall be able to sit down."
+
+The old lady assented with alacrity.
+
+"Yes," she said; "by all means let us leave these painty pictures,
+and we will have a chat; you shall tell me of your wanderings.
+Apropos, did you see anything of our friend Philip? His last
+letter--a long time ago; he is becoming a bad correspondent--struck
+me as rather _triste_, even for him. I'm afraid he is not well."
+
+"Yes," said Eve slowly; "we went over to Bordighera one day while we
+were at Cannes, and we stayed a night at the hotel, but we didn't
+see Mr. Rainham. He had gone over to Monte Carlo."
+
+"Ah, poor fellow, what an idea! I wonder what dragged him there."
+
+Eve looked at the old lady questioningly for a minute.
+
+"I think he went with the Dollonds," she answered gravely.
+
+"Ah, my dear, no wonder his letter was dull! Then you didn't see
+him? Well, I suppose he will come back soon. You mustn't be jealous
+of him, you know. He is very much _lié_ with your husband, isn't he?"
+
+"I don't suppose he will see quite so much of him now."
+
+There seemed to be a trace of weariness in the girl's voice as she
+answered, and Lady Garnett glanced at her sharply before she let her
+eyes continue their task of wandering in a kind of absent scrutiny
+of the sculptured exhibits in the room.
+
+"But of course not.... How terrible all these great plaster figures
+are, and the busts, too! They are so dreary, they have the air of
+being made for a cemetery. Don't they make you think of tombstones
+and mausoleums?"
+
+Eve looked at her a little wonderingly.
+
+"Are they very bad? Do you know, I rather like them. Not so much as
+the pictures, of course; but still I think some of them are
+charming, though I am rather glad Dick isn't a sculptor. Don't you
+like that? What is it--Bacchus on a panther?"
+
+"My dear, you are quite right," said the old lady decisively,
+dropping her tortoise-shell lorgnon into her lap, and suppressing a
+yawn. "Only, it is you who are charming! I must go to the Grosvenor
+as soon as it opens to see if your clever husband, who seems to be
+able to paint everything and everybody, has done you justice.... But
+you mustn't sit talking to an old grumbler like me any longer. Go
+back to your picture; Mr. Dollond will pilot you. And if you
+encounter Mary on the way, tell her that a certain discontented old
+lady of her acquaintance wants to be taken home. Au revoir."
+
+About five minutes later Mary Masters found her aunt half asleep.
+The paint had made her stupid, she said. She could understand now
+why painters did not improve as they grew older; it was the smell of
+the paint.
+
+"Ah," she said, as they passed out into the busy whirl of
+Piccadilly, "how glad I shall be to get back to my Masons and
+Corots. Though I like that pretty little Mrs. Lightmark.... Poor
+Philip! Now tell me whom you saw. Charles Sylvester, of course? But
+no, I am too sleepy now; you shall tell me all about it after
+dinner."
+
+It was six o'clock before the Colonel was able to deposit his bulky,
+military person rather stiffly on a cushioned seat, and to remove
+his immaculate silk hat, with an expression of weary satisfaction.
+He had devoted all the sunny spring afternoon, (when he might have
+been at Hurlingham, or playing whist at the "Rag"), to making his
+way, laboriously and apologetically, from room to room in search of
+friends and acquaintances, whom, when found, he would convoy
+strategically into the immediate vicinity of No. 37 in the First
+Room.
+
+"My nephew's picture," he explained; "nice thing! I don't know much
+about painting" (he called it paintin') "and art, and all that sort
+of thing, but I believe it's about as good as they make them."
+
+He had accepted all the inconsistent, murmured criticism almost as a
+personal tribute; and for the greater part at least of the afternoon
+his beaming face had completely belied the discomfort occasioned by
+his severe frock-coat and tightly-fitting patent-leather boots; and
+his yearning for a comfortable chair, with a box of cigars and a
+whisky-and-seltzer at his elbow, had been suppressed, rigidly and
+heroically.
+
+"I suppose it's devilish good," he thought, as he sat waiting for
+the rest of his party. "People seem to admire those splashes of
+yellow and black, and all those dirty colours. Personally, I think I
+prefer the girl in white next door. Hullo, there's Eve!"
+
+"Don't get up, Colonel," said Mrs. Sylvester; "we want to sit here
+for a little and hear what people say about Richard's picture. They
+make such amusing remarks sometimes! Not always complimentary; but,
+then, they often don't know anything about art."
+
+"Yes," said Eve, seating herself, with a delicate consideration for
+the new dress, which the occasion had demanded, between the Colonel
+and her mother; "we heard someone say that the flesh in that big
+Roman picture with the temple, you know--I can't pronounce the
+name--was like cotton wool--pink cotton wool! Oh, and that the girl
+in black, with the yellow fan, whose portrait is in the big room,
+must be at least eight feet high!"
+
+"Now, how the dickens could he tell that!" interposed the Colonel.
+
+"Oh, he was talking very learnedly, about heads and things. How
+provoking of that old gentleman in the gold spectacles! Standing
+just in front of Dick's picture with his back to it. He looks just
+exactly like a millionaire, and he won't look, and he's preventing
+other people from looking! Do turn him round, uncle, or move him on,
+or something!"
+
+"Do you see that man there?" whispered Mrs. Sylvester presently,
+"the tall man with the sandy hair and beard? I think he's a painter.
+He said just now that Richard's picture was amazingly good, and that
+he thought he knew where he got the idea from."
+
+"Why, of course," said the Colonel carelessly; "Dick got the idea
+from that beggar what's-his-name's dock--and a thundering good idea
+too! I wonder what time they close? Perhaps----"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Sylvester, buttoning her gloves, "I suppose we had
+better go."
+
+The room was nearly empty when McAllister passed before his friend's
+picture again, after a satisfactory interview with a gentleman from
+Bond Street on the subject of one of his own. McAllister, whose
+criticism Mrs. Sylvester had overheard and reported, had recently
+been elected Associate, owing the honour, according to some
+malicious people, more to his nationality than to his merit as a
+painter of cattle and landscapes. The _Outcry_, indeed, with reference
+to this promotion, and the continued neglect of older artists of
+greater public repute, had suggested, with its usual impertinence,
+that the motto of _Lasciate ogni speranza_, which was reported in
+certain circles to be almost visibly inscribed over the door of the
+Academicians' Committee-room, should be supplemented by the legend,
+"No English need apply."
+
+"It's good," he said reflectively, as he stopped in front of the
+picture, with something like a chuckle on his lips, and a twinkle in
+his shrewd, gray eyes. "More than good. You can see the clever
+French trick in every line of it, and they'll call it one of the
+pictures of the year. So it is, though there are dozens in the
+vaults downstairs worth two of it. But I thought this was Oswyn's
+subject? He was always talking about it. Well, I should like to see
+what he would have made of it!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+As the clock struck five Rainham looked up with an air of relief,
+flipping negligently across the table the heap of papers which had
+occupied him since lunch-time.
+
+"We must go into this some other time, Bullen," he remarked with a
+certain petulance. "I confess things look rather bad; but I suppose
+they can hold over till to-morrow?"
+
+The foreman assented dubiously, gathering together the despised
+sheets, and preparing for departure.
+
+"I've done my best, sir," he said a little sullenly; "but it is
+difficult for things to go smoothly when the master is always away;
+and you never will take no notice of business letters, you know,
+sir."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Rainham wearily; "I am sure you have, Bullen. If I
+go into the Bankruptcy Court, as you so frequently prophesy, it will
+be entirely my own fault. In the meantime you might tell your wife
+to send me up some tea--for two, Bullen, please. Mr. Oswyn will be
+up presently."
+
+The man retired, shutting the door with some ardour. Rainham rose,
+and, with the little, expansive shrug with which he usually
+discarded his commercial worries, wandered towards the window. The
+dock was empty and desolate: the rain, which had prevailed with a
+persistent dreariness since the morning, built morasses at regular
+intervals along the dock-side, splashed unceasingly into the
+stagnant green water which collected in slack seasons within the
+dock-gates. The dockman stood, one disconsolate figure in the
+general blankness, with his high boots and oilskins, smoking a short
+clay pipe by the door of the engine-room; and further out, under the
+dripping dome of an umbrella, sat Oswyn in a great pea-jacket,
+smoking, painting the mist, the rain, the white river with its few
+blurred barges and its background of dreary warehouses, in a supreme
+disregard of the dank discomfort of his surroundings.
+
+Rainham had tapped three times against the streaming pane before he
+succeeded in attracting his attention, and then the painter only
+responded to the wonted signal by an impatient, deprecating flourish
+of the hand which held the palette. The tea was already simmering on
+the rickety table in the bow-window, when Oswyn, staggering under
+his impedimenta, climbed the staircase, and shouldered his way
+familiarly into the room.
+
+"How fearfully wet you must be!" said his host lazily from the
+depths of an arm-chair. "Help yourself to a pair of slippers and a
+dry coat, and have some tea. It's strong enough even for you by this
+time."
+
+The other had disembarrassed himself of his dripping jacket and
+overalls, and now kicked off his shoes, with a short laugh. He was
+never a great talker in the daytime, and the dreary charm of the
+river world outside was still upon him. He dropped the sketch upon
+which he had been working rather contemptuously against the wall,
+where Rainham could see it, and selected a pair of slippers from
+quite a small heap in the corner by the fireplace.
+
+"I don't mind _your_ seeing my work, because you don't talk about it,"
+he said, glancing at Rainham quickly. "I hate people who try to say
+complimentary things; they don't often mean them, and when they do
+they talk absolute rot."
+
+"Yes," said the other sympathetically. "Shall I put a slice of lemon
+in your tea? I suppose I must live up to my reputation and say
+nothing about your sketch. But I must have it when it's finished!
+It's always most embarrassing to have to pay personal compliments,
+though I suppose some people like them."
+
+The painter grunted inarticulately between two sips of tea.
+
+"Like them! Don't your society artists and authors simply wallow in
+them? Have you got any cigarettes, or papers? I dropped mine into a
+puddle. Ah, thanks.... That's a pretty face. Whose is it?"
+
+The cigarette case, which Rainham handed to his guest, was a
+well-worn leather one, a somewhat ladylike article, with a
+photograph fitted into the dividing flap inside. Before answering
+the question he looked at the photograph absently for a moment, when
+the case had been returned to him.
+
+"It's not a very good photograph. It's meant for--for Mrs.
+Lightmark, when she was a little girl. She gave me the case with the
+portrait years ago, in Florence."
+
+Oswyn glanced at him curiously and shrewdly through a thin haze of
+blue smoke, watching him restore the faded, little receptacle almost
+reverentially to the breast-pocket of his coat.
+
+"Have you been to the Chamber of Horrors?" he asked suddenly, after
+a silent pause, broken only by the ceaseless lashing of the window
+by the raindrops.
+
+Rainham looked up with a start, half puzzled, seeking and finding an
+explanation in the faint, conscious humour which loosened the lines
+about the speaker's mouth.
+
+"The Chamber of---- Do you mean the R.A.? You do, you most
+irreverent of mortals! No, I have not been yet. Will you go with
+me?"
+
+"Heaven forbid! I have been once."
+
+"You have? And they didn't scalp you?"
+
+"I didn't stay long enough, I suppose. I only went to see one
+picture--Lightmark's."
+
+"Ah, that's just what I want to see! And you know I still have a
+weakness for the show. I expect you would like the new Salon
+better."
+
+"There are good things there," said Oswyn tersely, "and a great many
+abominations as well. I was over in Paris last week."
+
+Rainham glanced at him over his cup with a certain surprise.
+
+"I didn't know you ever went there now," he remarked.
+
+"No, I never go if I can help it. I hate Paris; it is _triste_ as a
+well, and full of ghosts. Ghosts! It's a city of the dead. But I had
+a picture there this time, and I went to look at it."
+
+"In the new Salon?"
+
+"In the new Salon. It was a little gray, dusky thing, three foot by
+two, and their flaming miles of canvas murdered it. I am not a
+scene-painter," he went on a little savagely. "I don't paint with a
+broom, and I have no ambition to do the sun, or an eruption of
+Vesuvius. So I doubt if I shall exhibit there again until the vogue
+alters. Oh, they are clever enough, those fellows! even the
+trickiest of them can draw, which is the last thing they learn here,
+and one or two are men of genius. But I should dearly like to set
+them down, _en plein air_ too, if they insist upon it, with the
+palette of Velasquez. I went out and wandered in the Morgue
+afterwards, and I confess its scheme of colour rested my eyes."
+
+"Do I know your picture?" asked Rainham to change the subject,
+finding him a little grim. "Is it the thing you were doing here?"
+
+Oswyn's head rested on one thin, colour-stained hand which shaded
+his eyes.
+
+"No," he said with a suggestion of constraint, "it was an old sketch
+which I had worked up--not the thing you knew. I shall not finish
+that----"
+
+"Not finish it!" cried Rainham. "But of course you must! why, it was
+superb; it promised a masterpiece!"
+
+"To tell you the truth," said Oswyn, "I can't finish it. I have
+painted it out."
+
+Rainham glanced at him with an air of consternation, of reproach.
+
+"My dear fellow," he said, "you are impossible! What in the world
+possessed you to do such a mad thing?"
+
+The painter hesitated a moment, looking at him irresolutely beneath
+his heavy, knitted brows.
+
+"I meant to tell you," he said, after a while; "but on the whole I
+think I would rather not. It is rather an unpleasant subject,
+Rainham, and if you don't mind we will change it."
+
+Oswyn had risen from his chair, with his wonted restlessness, and
+was gazing out upon the lazy, evening life of the great river. The
+monotonous accompaniment to their conversation, which had been so
+long sustained by the drip and splash outside, had grown
+intermittent, and now all but ceased; while a faint tinge of
+yellowish white upon the ripples, and a feathery rift in the gray
+dome of sky, announced a final effort on the part of the setting
+sun.
+
+The yard door swung noisily on its hinges, and a light step and
+voice became audible, and the sound of familiar conference with the
+dockman. Rainham lifted his head inquiringly, and Oswyn, shrugging
+his shoulders, left the window and regained his seat, picking up his
+sketch on the way.
+
+"Yes," he said in answer to a more direct inquiry on the other's
+part, "I think it was Lightmark."
+
+Almost as he spoke there was a step on the stair, followed by a
+boisterous knock at the door, and Dick entered effusively.
+
+"Well, _mon vieux_, how goes it? Why, you're all in the dark! They
+didn't tell me you were engaged.... Oh, is that you, Oswyn? How do
+you do?"
+
+"Quite an unexpected pleasure?" suggested Oswyn sardonically,
+nodding over his shoulder at the new-comer from his seat by the
+fire.
+
+Rainham's greeting had been far more cordial, and he still held his
+friend's hand between his own, gazing inquiringly into his face as
+if he wished to read something there.
+
+"Yes, I am back, you see," he said presently, when Dick had found
+himself a chair. "I have been here two days, and I was just
+beginning to think of looking you up. I was very sorry to miss you
+at Bordighera. How is Eve? It's very good of you to come all this
+way to see me; you must be pretty busy."
+
+"Oh, Eve is tremendously well! Thanks, no, I won't have any tea, but
+you might give me a whisky-and-soda. I had to come down into these
+wilds to look at a yacht which we think of taking for the summer.
+Quite a small one," he added half apologetically, as he detected the
+faint, amused surprise in the other's expression; "and as I found
+myself here, with a few minutes to spare before my train goes, I
+thought I would look in on the off chance of finding you. How is
+business just now? The dock didn't strike me as looking much like
+work as I came in. Pretty stagnant, eh?"
+
+Rainham shook his head.
+
+"Oh, it's much as usual--perhaps a little more so! Bullen continues
+to threaten me with bankruptcy, but I am getting used to it.
+Threatened men live long, you know."
+
+"Oh, you're all right!" answered Dick genially. "As long as Bullen
+looks after you, you won't come to grief."
+
+While the two were thus occupied in reuniting the chain of old
+associations, Oswyn had been silently, almost surreptitiously,
+preparing for departure; and he now came forward awkwardly, with his
+hat in one hand and the tools of his trade under his arm.
+
+"May I leave some of these things, here, or will they be in your
+way?"
+
+"But you're not going?" said Rainham, rising from his seat with a
+constraining gesture; "why, don't you remember we were going to dine
+together? Dick will stay too, _n'est ce pas_? It will be like old
+times. Mrs. Bullen has been preparing quite a feast, I assure you!"
+
+Oswyn paused irresolutely.
+
+"Don't let me drive you away," said Dick. "In any case I'm going
+myself in a few minutes. Yes," he added, turning to Rainham, "I'm
+very sorry, but I've got to take my wife out to dinner, and I shall
+have to catch a train in, let me see, about ten minutes."
+
+"Really? Well, then, clearly you must sit down again, Oswyn; I won't
+be left alone at any price. That's right. Now, Dick, tell me what
+you have been doing, and especially all about your Academy picture;
+I haven't seen even a critique of it. Of course it's a success? Have
+you sold it?"
+
+"Oh, spare my modesty!" protested Lightmark somewhat clumsily, with
+a quick glance at Oswyn. "It's all right, but we mustn't talk shop."
+
+"Yes, for God's sake spare his modesty!" supplemented the other
+painter almost brutally. "Look at his blushes. It isn't so bad as
+all that, Lightmark."
+
+"I don't even know the subject," pursued Rainham. "You might at
+least tell me what it was. Was it the canvas which you wouldn't show
+me, just before I went away--at the studio? The one about which you
+made such a mystery----?"
+
+"Oh bosh, old man!" interrupted Dick hurriedly, "I never made any
+mystery. It--it wasn't that. It's quite an ordinary subject, one of
+the river scenes which I sketched here. You had better go and see
+it. And come and see us. You know the address. I must be off!"
+
+"Wait a minute," interposed Oswyn, with a cadence in his voice which
+struck Rainham as the signal of something surpassing his wonted
+eccentricity. "Don't go yet. I said just now, Rainham, that I
+wouldn't tell you why I had painted out that picture, the picture
+which I had been fool enough to talk about so much, which I had
+intended to make a masterpiece. Well, I have changed my mind. I
+think you ought to know. Perhaps you would prefer to tell him?" he
+added, turning savagely to Lightmark, and speaking fast and loud
+with the curious muscular tremor which betokens difficult restraint.
+"No? Of course you will have the impudence to pretend that the
+conception was yours. Yes, curse you! you are quite capable of
+swearing that it was all yours--subject and treatment too.... But
+you can't deny that you heard me talking of the thing night after
+night at the club, when I have no doubt you hadn't even begun on
+your bastard imitation. One of the pictures of the year as they call
+it, as you and your damned crew of flatterers and critics call it...."
+
+He stopped for breath, clutching at the table with one hand and
+letting the other, which had been upraised in denunciation, fall at
+his side. He had meant to be calm, to limit himself strictly to an
+explanation; but in the face of his wrong and the wrong-doer the
+man's passionate nature had broken loose. Now, when he already half
+repented of the violence with which he had profaned the house of his
+friend, his eyes fell upon Rainham, and he felt abashed before the
+expression of pain which he had called into the other's face.
+
+"I don't know what all this means," said Rainham wearily, turning
+from Oswyn to Dick as he spoke; "but surely it is all wrong? Be
+quiet, Dick; you needn't say anything. If Oswyn is accusing you of
+plagiarism, of stealing his ideas, I can't believe it. I can't
+believe you meant to wrong him. The same thing must have occurred to
+both of you. Why, Oswyn, surely you see that? You have both been
+painting here, and you were both struck in the same way. Nothing
+could be simpler."
+
+Now Lightmark seemed to assume a more confident attitude, to become
+more like himself; and he was about to break the chain of silence,
+which had held him almost voiceless throughout Oswyn's attack, when
+Rainham again interrupted him.
+
+"I am sure you needn't say anything, Dick. We all know Oswyn; he--he
+wasn't serious. Go and catch your train, and forget all about it."
+
+The first words which Rainham spoke recalled to Oswyn the powerful
+reason which had determined him to preserve his old neutrality, and
+to make an offering of silence upon the altar of his regard for the
+only man with whom he could feel that he had something in common. If
+his vengeance could have vented itself upon a single victim, it
+would have fallen, strong and sure; but it was clear to his calmer
+self that this could not be; the consequences would be too
+far-reaching, and might even recoil upon himself. After all, what
+did it matter? There was a certain luxury in submission to
+injustice, a pleasure in watching the bolt of Nemesis descend when
+his hands were guiltless of the launching. And as he struggled with
+himself, hunting in retrospect for some excuse for what his passion
+railed at as weakness, a last straw fell into the scale, for he
+thought of the faded portrait in the cigarette-case.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+"My dear," said Lady Garnett, accepting a cup of tea from the hands
+of her niece, and regarding her at the same time, from her low
+cushioned chair, with a certain drollery, "do you know that it is
+exactly one week since Mr. Sylvester called?"
+
+Mary Masters' head was bent a little over her long _Suède_
+gloves--they had just returned from their afternoon drive in the
+Park--and she paused to remove her hat and veil before she replied.
+
+"And it is at least three weeks since Mr. Rainham was here."
+
+"Ah, poor Philip!" remarked the old lady, "he is always irregular;
+he may come, or he may not. I must ask him to dinner, by the way,
+soon. But I was talking of Mr. Sylvester, who is a model of
+punctuality. (Give me a piece of _baba_ for Mefistofèle, please!) Mr.
+Sylvester was here last Saturday, and the Saturday before that. I
+think it is highly probable, Mary, that we shall be honoured with a
+visit from Mr. Sylvester to-day."
+
+"I hope not!" said the girl with some energy. "I have a couple of
+songs that I must positively try over before to-night. Surely, it is
+a little late too, even for Mr. Sylvester."
+
+"It is barely half-past five," said Lady Garnett, lazily feeding her
+pug, "and he knows that we do not dine till eight. Resign yourself,
+_chèrie_; he will certainly come."
+
+She glanced across at the young girl, pointing, with her keen gaze,
+words which seemed trivial enough. And Mary, her calm forehead
+puckered with a certain vague annoyance which she disdained to
+analyse, understood perfectly all that the elder lady was too
+discreet to say. She sat for a little while, her hands resting idly
+in her lap, or smoothing the creases out of her long, soft gloves.
+Then she rose and moved quickly across to Lady Garnett's side, knelt
+suddenly down by her chair.
+
+"Ah, my aunt!" she cried impulsively, "tell me what is to be done?"
+
+Lady Garnett glanced up from the novel into which she had subsided;
+she laid it on the little tea-table with a sigh of relief at this
+sudden mood of confidence, coming a little strangely amidst the
+young girl's habitual reticence.
+
+"We will talk, my dear," she said, "now you are practical. I
+suppose, by the way, he has not proposed?"
+
+Mary shook her head.
+
+"That is it, Aunt Marcelle! That is exactly what I want to prevent.
+Is--is he going to?"
+
+Lady Garnett smiled, and her smile had a very definite quality
+indeed.
+
+"I would not cherish any false hopes, my dear. Charles Sylvester is
+a young man--not so very young though, by the way--whose conclusions
+are very slow, but when they arrive, _mon Dieu_! they are durable. I
+am sure he is terribly tenacious. It took him a long time to
+conclude that he was in love with you; at first, you know, he was a
+little troubled about your fortune, but at last he came to that
+conclusion--at Lucerne."
+
+"Oh, at Lucerne!" protested the young girl with a nervous laugh.
+"Surely not there!"
+
+"It was precisely at Lucerne," continued Lady Garnett, "that he
+decided you would make him an adorable wife, and, in effect, it was
+a considerable piece of wisdom. And since then his conclusions have
+been more rapid. The last has been that he will certainly marry
+you--with or without a _dot_--before the elections. You are serious,
+you know, my dear, though not so serious as he believes; you are a
+girl of intelligence, and he is going to stand for some place or
+other, and candidates with clever wives often obtain a majority over
+candidates who are clever but have no wives. Yes, my dear, he is
+certainly going to propose. You may postpone it by the use of great
+tact for a month or so; you will hardly do so for longer."
+
+"I don't want to postpone it," said Mary ruefully; "if it be
+inevitable, I would sooner have it over."
+
+"It will never be over," remarked Lady Garnett decisively. "Did I
+not say that he was tenacious--_comme on ne l'est plus_? You may
+refuse him once--twice; it will all be to go over again and again,
+until you end by accepting him."
+
+"Oh, Aunt Marcelle!" protested the young girl, with little flush of
+righteous wrath.
+
+"After all," continued the elder lady, ignoring her interruption,
+"are you so very sure that--that it would not do? There are many
+worse men in the world than Sylvester. Both _my_ husbands were
+profligates, in addition to being fools. At any rate, this dear
+Charles is very correct. And remember, the poor man is really in
+love with you."
+
+"I know," said Mary plaintively; "that is why I am so sorry. He is a
+good man, a conscientious man, and a gentleman; and really,
+sometimes lately, he has been quite simple and nice. Only----"
+
+Lady Garnett completed the sentence for her with an impartial shrug.
+
+"Only he is perfectly ridiculous, and as a lover quite impossible?
+My dear, I grant it you with all my heart, and I think he has all
+the qualities which make an excellent husband."
+
+As the young girl was still silent, unconvinced, she went on after a
+little while:
+
+"You know, Mary, I have never tried to marry you. Frankly, my dear,
+I do not believe very much in pushing marriages. My own, and most
+others that I have known intimately, might have been very reasonably
+made--let us say--in purgatory. But a girl must marry some time or
+other, if she be rich. And you will have plenty of money, my poor
+child! You shall do exactly as you please, but I must admit that
+Charles is a most unobjectionable _parti_. After all, there is only
+one other man I would sooner give you to, Mary, and he is
+impossible."
+
+"Aunt Marcelle! Aunt Marcelle!" pleaded the young girl faintly, her
+dark head bent very low now over the arm of the chair.
+
+Lady Garnett had been talking so far in a somewhat desultory
+fashion, interspersing her words with brief caresses to the pug who
+was curled up in her lap. Now she put down the little dog with a
+brusqueness which hurt his dignity; he pawed fretfully at Mary's
+dress, and, attracting no attention, trotted of to his basket on the
+rug, where he settled himself with a short growl of discontent. And
+Lady Garnett, with a sudden change of tone and a new tenderness in
+her voice, just stooped a little and touched the young girl's
+forehead with her thin lips.
+
+"My poor child!" she said, "my dear little Mary! Did you suppose I
+didn't know? Did you think I was blind, as well as very old, that I
+shouldn't see the change in you, and guess why?"
+
+"Ah!" cried the girl with a break in her voice. "What are you
+saying? What do you make me say?"
+
+"Nothing! nothing!" said the old lady; "you need not tell me
+anything. It is only I who tell you--like the old immortal in
+Daudet, _J'ai vu ça moi_!--and it will pass as everything passes. That
+is not the least sad part, though now you will hardly believe it.
+You see, I don't lie to you; I tell you quite plainly that it is no
+good. Some men are made so--_vois tu, ma chèrie_!--to see only one
+woman, an inaccessible one, when they seem to see many, and _he_ would
+be like that. Only it is a pity. And yet who would have foreseen
+it--that he should charm you, Mary? He so tired and old and _usé_--for
+he is old for you, dear, though he might be my son--with his
+humorous, indolent, mocking talk, and his great, sad eyes. It's
+wicked of me, Mary, but I love you for it; so few girls would have
+cared, for he _is_ a wretched match. And I blame myself, too."
+
+"Because I am foolish and utterly ashamed?" cried the girl from her
+obscurity, in a hard, small voice which the other did not know.
+
+"Foolish!" she exclaimed. "Well, we women are all that, and some
+men--the best of them. But ashamed? Because you have a wise mother,
+my darling, who guesses things? I have never had any children but
+you and him. And no one but I can ever know. No; I was sorry because
+I had to hurt you. But it was best, my dear, because you are so
+strong. Yes, you are strong, Mary!"
+
+"Am I?" said the girl wearily. "What is the good of it, I wonder?
+Except that it makes one suffer more and longer."
+
+"No," said Lady Garnett. "It makes one show it less, and only that
+matters. Aren't we going to Lady Dulminster to-night? Ah, my dear,
+the play must go on; we mustn't spoil the fun with sour faces,
+masks, and dominos except now and then! Believe me, _chèrie_,
+underneath it all we are much the same--very sad people. Only it
+wouldn't do to admit it. Life would be too terrible then. So we
+dance on and make believe we enjoy it, and by-and-by, if we play
+hard enough, we do believe it for a minute or two. From one point of
+view, you know, it is rather amusing."
+
+Mary looked up at last; her eyes, shining out of the white face,
+seemed to have grown suddenly very large and bright.
+
+"Does it go on always, Aunt Marcelle?" she asked with a child's
+directness.
+
+"Always!" said Lady Garnett promptly. "Only there are interludes,
+and then sometimes one guest steals away with his bosom friend into
+a corner, and they look under each other's masks. But it isn't a
+nice sight, and it mustn't happen very often, else they wouldn't be
+back in their places when the music began. Ah, my child!" she broke
+off suddenly, "I am talking nonsense to amuse you, and making you
+sadder all the time. But you know I think nobody was ever consoled
+by consolations unless it were the consoler."
+
+She drew the girl's blank face towards her, clasped the smooth brown
+head against her breast with two bird-like hands on which the
+diamonds glittered.
+
+"Cry, my dear!" she said at last; "that is the best of being
+young--that gift of tears. When one is old one laughs instead; but
+ah, _mon Dieu_! it is a queer kind of laughter."
+
+They sat locked together in silence until the room was quite dark,
+lit only by the vague lamplight which shone in through the fine lace
+curtains from the street. Then Mary rose and played a little, very
+softly, in the darkness, morsels of Chopin, until the footman came
+in with a bright lamp, announcing that dinner was on the table. And
+Charles Sylvester had not arrived.
+
+He atoned for this breach of his habit, however, on the morrow by
+making an early call upon the two ladies, whom he found alone,
+immediately after luncheon. He was very clean shaven, very carefully
+dressed, and with his closely buttoned frock-coat and his
+irreproachable hat, which he held ponderously in his hand during his
+protracted visit, he had the air of having come immediately from
+church.
+
+Lady Garnett taxed him with this occupation presently, suppressing
+her further thought that he looked still more like an aspirant to
+matrimony, and Charles admitted the impeachment; he had been in the
+morning with his sister, Mrs. Lightmark, to the Temple Church. His
+severe gaze was turned inquiringly upon Mary. Lady Garnett responded
+for her a little flippantly.
+
+"Oh, Mary went nowhere this morning, Mr. Sylvester--not even to the
+church parade. We were very late last night, at Lady Dulminster's.
+London grows later and later; we shall be dining at midnight soon."
+
+"I should like to go to the Temple Church sometimes," said Mary,
+"because of the singing, only it is so very far."
+
+Charles Sylvester bent forward with bland satisfaction; he had it so
+obviously on the tip of his tongue that he would be charmed to be
+her escort, that the girl hastened to interrupt him.
+
+"You were not at Lady Dulminster's, Mr. Sylvester? We quite expected
+to see you."
+
+"If I had known that you were to be there!" he exclaimed. Then he
+added: "I had a card, and, indeed, I fully intended to look in. But
+one is always so pressed for time just before the long vacation, and
+yesterday I was quite exhausted. Did you see any of my people?"
+
+"Yes," said Mary, "Eve was there; we expected her to play. It is a
+very musical house."
+
+"Ah, yes! I have heard so from my sister, and from Colonel
+Lightmark. He says that Lady Dulminster is really a most
+accomplished woman."
+
+"He looks as if he found her charming," put in Lady Garnett with a
+shrug. Then she added, suppressing a yawn, her thin fingers dallying
+regretfully with the leaves of her novel: "I suppose your exertions
+are nearly over, Mr. Sylvester. You will be going away soon?"
+
+He shook his head gravely.
+
+"I fear not for long. I may have a week's cruise with my
+brother-in-law--you know, he has a yacht for the summer--but my
+labours are only beginning. I have the elections in view. You agree
+with me, no doubt, Lady Garnett, that the Government is bound to go
+to the country in the autumn; you know, of course, that I am
+thinking of standing for----"
+
+"I congratulate you in advance, Mr. Sylvester! I am sure you will
+get in, especially if you have your sister down to canvass."
+
+"I am afraid Eve is not sufficiently interested in politics to be of
+much assistance," said the candidate. Then he went on, a little
+nervously, pulling at his collar: "You will wish me success, Miss
+Masters?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" said the girl hastily; "I am sure we both wish you that,
+Mr. Sylvester. We shall be most interested, shall we not, Aunt
+Marcelle?"
+
+Lady Garnett came to her assistance with smiling promptitude.
+
+"Of course, Mr. Sylvester; we will even wear your colours, if they
+are becoming, you know; and I am sure you would not fight under any
+others. And, mind, we will have no reforms--unless you like to try
+your hand on the climate. But nothing else! You are so fond of
+reforming, you English--even the most Conservative of you--that I
+live in constant fear of being reformed away. I hope, Mr. Sylvester,
+you are more Conservative than that."
+
+Charles Sylvester flushed a little; he cleared his throat
+elaborately before he replied:
+
+"I fear I have failed to make myself understood, Lady Garnett; in no
+sense do I call myself a Conservative, though I am prepared to vote
+with the party on the Irish Question. I am a Liberal Unionist, Lady
+Garnett. I may almost call myself a Radical Unionist. My views on
+the emancipation of labour, for instance, are quite advanced. I am
+prepared----"
+
+Mary interrupted him, absently, demurely, with a little speech that
+appeared to be a quotation.
+
+"Labour is a pretty beast in its cage to the philanthropic visitor
+with buns; its temper is better understood of the professional
+keeper."
+
+Lady Garnett arched her eyebrows pensively; Charles looked
+surprised, displeased; Mary hastened to explain, blushing a little:
+
+"I beg your pardon! the phrase is Mr. Rainham's. I believe it is the
+only political principle he has."
+
+Charles's displeasure at the maxim cooled to lofty disdain of its
+author.
+
+"Ah, yes!--pretty, but cynical, as I should say most of Mr.
+Rainham's principles were."
+
+Lady Garnett was aroused out of her state of vacant boredom for the
+first time into a certain interest. Mary sat, her hands clasped in
+her lap, the flush just dying away out of her pale cheeks, while Mr.
+Sylvester embarked upon an elaborate disquisition of his principles
+and his programme--it might have been an expansion of his
+Parliamentary address--which the elder lady, whom a chance phrase
+had started upon a new line of thought, scarcely considered.
+
+Does he know? she asked herself. Has this rather stupid young man
+grown suddenly acute enough to be jealous? Certainly there had been
+a flash, a trace of curious rancour in his brief mention of
+Rainham's name, for which it was scarcely easy to account. That the
+two men, in spite of their long juxtaposition, had never been more
+than acquaintances, had never been in the least degree friends, she
+was perfectly well aware; it was not in the nature of either of them
+to be more intimately allied.
+
+Rainham's indolent humour and fantastic melancholy, his genial
+disregard of popularity or success, could not but be displeasing to
+a man so precise and practical as the barrister. Only now she had
+scented, had dimly perceived beneath his speech, something more than
+the indefinable aversion of incompatible tempers, a very personal
+and present dislike. Had things passed between them, things of which
+she was ignorant? Was the sentiment, then, reciprocal? She hardly
+believed it: Rainham's placid temper gave to his largest hostilities
+the character merely of languid contempt; it was not worth the
+trouble to hate anyone, he had said to her so often--neither to hate
+nor to love. She could imagine him with infidelities on occasion to
+the last part of his rule; yes, she could imagine that--but for
+hatred, no! he had said rightly he was too indolent for that. It
+must be all on one side, then, as happens so frequently in life with
+love and hate, and the rest--all on one side. And the barrister had
+risen to take his leave before her reflections had brought her
+further than this.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+It must be admitted that when Lady Garnett insinuated, for the
+benefit of her half-incredulous inward counsellor, that Charles
+Sylvester, in spite of his almost aggressive panoply of
+self-assurance, had been smitten by the fever of jealousy, she fully
+sustained her reputation for perspicacity. Her conclusions were
+seldom wrong, and, indeed, the barrister, although he had
+professional motives for endeavouring to cloak himself with
+something of the wisdom of the serpent, was characterized far more
+by the somewhat stolid innocence of that proverbially moral, but
+less interesting creature, the dove; and it was an easy task for a
+keen observer, such as her ladyship undoubtedly was, to read him
+line upon line, like the most clearly printed of books. As in the
+case of a book, what one read was not always intelligible, and it
+might even on occasion be necessary to read between the obvious
+lines; but in this particular instance the page contained no
+cryptogram, and the astute old lady had read it without her
+spectacles.
+
+Charles was jealous; he had not insulted himself by admitting it
+even for an instant, but he was jealous; and his jealousy was more
+than the roving fever of all lovers, in that it had a definite,
+tangible object.
+
+It would have been contrary to his nature to allow either his love
+or the ensuing passion to interfere in any way with his professional
+duties or instincts; he was a lawyer, and an embryo Member of
+Parliament first, a man afterwards; and it was not until late in the
+afternoon of the day which followed his last recorded interview with
+Lady Garnett and her niece that he dismissed from his brain the
+complexities of "Brown and another _versus_ Johnson," and drew from an
+orderly mental pigeon-hole the bundle of papers bearing the neat
+endorsement, "_Re_ Miss Masters." When, to the ecstatic joy of his
+clerk, he had withdrawn himself from his chambers in Paper
+Buildings, and was walking briskly along the dusty Embankment in the
+direction of his club, he found himself, by a sequence which was
+natural, though he would have been the last to own it, already
+thinking of Rainham, and wondering, with a trace of dignified
+self-reproach, whether he had not been guilty of some remissness in
+the performance of his duty towards society, in the matter of that
+reprehensible individual and his aberrations from the paths of
+virtue. He did not stop to question himself too strictly as to the
+connection between his matrimonial aspirations and Rainham's
+peccadilloes; but he was able to assure himself that the assertion
+of his principles demanded a closer investigation, a more crucial
+analysis of certain ambiguous episodes.
+
+"Supposing," he argued, "supposing Rainham had given signs of a
+desire to marry my sister, or my cousin, or any other girl in whom I
+was interested, or, in short, whom I knew, it would obviously have
+been my duty, before giving my consent or approval, to find out all
+about his relations with that girl, that person whom I saw with him
+in the park--ah, yes! Kitty, that was her name. And, in a way, don't
+I owe far more to society in general than I do to any of my immediate
+friends in particular? Well, then I ought to know more about
+Kitty, so as to be prepared in case--that is, for emergencies....
+Why, for all I know, I may have been suspecting Rainham all this
+time quite unjustly. I'm sure I hope so." Here he shook his head
+sorrowfully. "But I'm afraid there's not much chance of that. The
+question remains, how am I to find out anything? It's no good asking
+Rainham; that goes without saying. It would be equally useless to
+try Lightmark: they're as thick as thieves, and he's not the sort of
+man to be pumped very easily. And yet, if Rainham's friends are out
+of the question, what's to be done? He hasn't got any enemies--that
+sort of man never has, except himself. How can I get hold of the
+girl? I suppose some people would set a detective to watch Rainham,
+and so on; but that's not to be thought of, in this case." He
+stopped close to Cleopatra's Needle, and frowned abstractedly over
+the stone parapet, absently following the struggles of a boy who was
+laboriously working a great, empty lighter across the wide,
+smoke-coloured river at a narrow angle with the shore. An idea
+suggested itself in flattering colours for a moment: he might pay a
+visit to the little restaurant or club in Turk Street, the shady
+place with a foreign name which he had forgotten. At the expense of
+a little tact, he might very probably succeed in inducing some of
+the careless, disreputable young artists who formed the
+frequentation of the place to talk about Rainham's amours. It even
+occurred to him that at a late hour Kitty herself might be seen
+there, dancing a can-can with Rainham, or singing songs with a
+riotous chorus. But in spite of this prospect, the notion was not
+sufficiently attractive. He had not enjoyed his introduction to the
+eccentric fraternity, on the occasion when he had been fired by
+Lightmark's early enthusiasm about the place to request to take him
+there to dine. He had felt, almost as much as the men to whom he was
+introduced, that he had no business there, that he was an outsider;
+he had even been snubbed. "And, after all," he said impatiently,
+resuming his homeward direction, "though I've got enough evidence to
+damn him twice over in the eyes of any man in the world, I suppose
+it wouldn't be enough to convince a woman, if she believed in him. I
+must get hold of Kitty--it's the only way to arrive at a certainty."
+
+After much deliberation to the same effect, he determined, somewhat
+reluctantly, that there was nothing for it but to endeavour to
+enlist the sympathies of one of Rainham's more intimate friends. He
+had recurred by this time to the unstable hypothesis that he was
+acting primarily in Rainham's interest, that his real motive was to
+arrive at the truth on the chance that it might be favourable to his
+unadmitted rival. It only remained for him to select out of the
+limited material at his disposal the man whom he should invite to
+enter upon this alliance. And when he reached the gloomy library of
+the eminently respectable club, where he was accustomed, before
+dining, to study the evening papers and to write his letters, the
+choice had been made; and after one or two abortive efforts, he
+composed to his satisfaction a diplomatic epistle, which he
+addressed to Oswyn (with whom he enjoyed a nodding acquaintance) at
+the restaurant in Turk Street.
+
+Late in the afternoon of the next day Sylvester sat alone and
+expectant before a pile of temporarily neglected papers, telling
+himself that Rainham ought to be very grateful for these strenuous
+efforts in the interests of his injured reputation. He was beginning
+to wonder nervously whether Oswyn would fail him, when he heard a
+knock at the outer door, followed by an unfamiliar step, and the
+clerk announced that a gentleman wished to see him by appointment on
+private business. The barrister rose from his seat with a portentous
+display of polite, awkward cordiality, and motioned his guest into a
+chair.
+
+"It's extremely good of you to take the trouble to come," he said
+tentatively.
+
+"That depends upon what you want of me," answered Oswyn shrewdly.
+"You said in your note that it was on a matter of vital importance
+to a friend of mine. I haven't so many friends that I can afford to
+shirk a little trouble in a matter which vitally concerns one of
+them. May I ask, in the first place, who is the friend?"
+
+Sylvester picked up the open brief which lay before him on the
+table, and folded it scrupulously.
+
+"Philip Rainham," he answered, and then shot a quick glance at
+Oswyn.
+
+"Rainham?" echoed the other with an air suggestive at once of
+surprise and relief, as if, perhaps, he had been expecting to hear
+another name. "You are right, he is a friend," he added simply.
+"What can I do for him?"
+
+"Well, the fact is, I'm afraid he's got into difficulties--a scrape,
+an imbroglio, with a woman!"
+
+The painter lifted his expressive eyebrows incredulously.
+
+"Since I last saw him--three days ago?"
+
+"Oh, dear, no; the thing's been going on, I should say, for quite a
+long time--more than a year to my knowledge."
+
+Oswyn reflected for a moment, gazing at Sylvester with some
+suspicion.
+
+"I don't think it troubles him much," he said brusquely. "Is it any
+business of mine--or of yours? Has he spoken to you about it?"
+
+Sylvester uttered a hasty negative.
+
+"Oh, no! He is not the sort of man who would. But other people talk.
+You see, I'm afraid there's some sort of black-mail going on, and he
+oughtn't to submit to it. His friends oughtn't to allow it. If--if
+one could see the woman and frighten her a little----"
+
+"Is that what you wanted me for?" asked Oswyn impatiently. "If so,
+allow me----"
+
+The other hastened to reassure him.
+
+"Oh, no, not at all. But I thought you might be able to tell me
+where the person is to be found, her address, or something about
+her. I understand that she was a model; you probably know her...."
+
+The painter shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Who is she? What is her name?"
+
+"Kitty--that's all I know."
+
+"Kitty? Kitty Crichton, I suppose."
+
+A light dawned on him; the name opened a door to many forgotten
+trivial incidents. He did not speak again for a minute, and when he
+broke the silence there was a harder tone in his voice, and he rose
+from his chair at the same time.
+
+"I don't see how this can concern me, or you, either. You must
+pardon me if I say that I dislike meddling, and people who meddle."
+
+Sylvester blushed hotly.
+
+"You don't suppose I want to do him anything but good," he said
+diplomatically, trying to convince himself that he was not damaging
+the reputation for perfect candour which he hoped that he enjoyed.
+"It's not a pleasant task, but there are circumstances in which one
+has to sacrifice one's scruples--one's feelings."
+
+Oswyn glanced at him again, with some contempt in the lines of his
+worn face.
+
+"Excuse me if I refrain from sounding your motives."
+
+Then he paused, fingering his soft felt hat. Suddenly his face was
+illumined by a remarkably grim smile, and it became evident to the
+man who was watching him so anxiously that there had occurred some
+change in his mental perspective.
+
+"I don't quite understand why you brought me into this," he added,
+the smile still hovering very lightly on his lips. "However, under
+the circumstances, I think I can't do much harm by putting you in
+the way of finding Mrs. Crichton. Let me recommend you to inquire
+for her at the office of the _Outcry_, the newspaper--she used to work
+for it, I believe--in Took's Court. They will know her address
+there. Took's Court--it's only a few minutes' walk from here.
+Thanks, I can find my way out...."
+
+"I suppose that was rather a stupid thing to do," he said
+regretfully, as he stopped in the doorway below to light a
+cigarette, "though not such a _bêtise_ as his, _mon dieu_!... But I
+couldn't resist the temptation. Now, I wonder if he's clever enough
+to find out the truth?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+The night was dark and still--so dark that above the tree-tops all
+was a soft, abysmal blank, so still that the Japanese lanterns
+scarcely swung on their strings among the apple-trees, and the
+leaves almost forgot to rustle. From the tent in the corner of the
+little garden (little, but large for a garden in London) the quaint,
+rapturous music of the Hungarian band floated in fitful
+extravagance, now wildly dominating, now graciously accompanying the
+murmur of many voices, the mingled pace of feet, and the lingering
+sweep of silken skirts upon the shadowed grass. The light streamed
+in broad, electric rays from the open windows of the low, wide
+house, and from the tall double doors of the studio, which had been
+added at the side, broken continually by the silhouettes of guests
+who entered the rooms or sought the cooler air outside, and dulling
+to the quiet glow of old stained glass the rich radiance of the
+fantastic coloured lanterns.
+
+It was one of the series of summer evenings on which, according to
+the cards which had been so widely circulated, Mr. and Mrs.
+Lightmark were "at home" to their friends and to their friends'
+friends; and Rainham, who was a late arrival at the elaborate house
+in Grove Road, was able after a time to recognise many familiar
+faces, some of them almost forgotten, among those who had elected to
+be present. The rooms, in spite of the outlet afforded by the
+garden, were all surprisingly full; and after a hurried exchange of
+greetings, which Eve's duties as hostess had compelled her to
+curtail, he had passed through a jungle of brilliant toilettes and
+unfamiliar figures into the newly-built, bright studio, where he had
+been told that he would find his friend. He had abundant leisure to
+corroborate the first impression of a splendour for which he was
+hardly prepared, which had seized him when he entered the hall and
+surrendered his coat to a courteous servant in livery, before
+Lightmark, radiant and flushed with success, singled him out in the
+corner to which he had retreated in loneliness.
+
+"So glad to see you, old man! we were hoping you would turn up.
+Better late than never. Isn't it a crush? I assure you our evenings
+are becoming quite an institution. You will find scores of people
+you know here. Excuse my leaving you. Not much like the old
+studio days, eh? Afternoon tea with Copal's cups and saucers, and
+Mrs. Thingumy's tea-cakes. Your friend Lady Garnett is here
+somewhere--I'll be shot if I know where. Try the garden; you can
+get out this way. See you again later."
+
+"All right, Dick," he answered with equanimity, smiling with a
+little inward amusement; "you look after your people. I will find my
+way about."
+
+As he made his way discreetly among the little groups of people who
+strolled processionally along the gravel walks and beneath the
+trees, or disposed themselves in basket chairs upon the lawn,
+feeling himself vaguely exhilarated by the not too abstruse music of
+the posturing fiddlers, his eyes caressed by the soft glow of the
+Japanese lanterns, strung like antique jewelled necklets against the
+almost tangible blackness of the night, he found himself listening
+with an half-malicious amusement to the commonplace of the
+conversational formulæ affected by the young world of society, the
+well-worn, patched-up questions, the anticipated answers. It was
+very little changed since the time when he had not yet emancipated
+himself from the dreary bondage of such functions. It was croquet
+then, lawn-tennis now; for the rest only the names were different.
+Presently he encountered McAllister, a solitary wanderer like
+himself, and they found themselves seats before long in the darkest
+corner of the garden, where a few chairs had been placed, outside
+the radius of the lanterns, underneath a weeping willow.
+
+"And they say painting doesn't pay," said the Scotchman, extending
+his long hands comprehensively, with a quiet chuckle. "And I'm not
+saying that it does, mind you, when a man has notions like that
+queer, cantankerous devil Oswyn. He wouldn't make anything pay in
+this world. But if a man's clever and canny, and has the sense to
+see on which side his bread's buttered ... why, it's just easier
+than nothing. And to think that the laddie isn't even an Associate."
+
+"Yes. I suppose he's getting on pretty well," suggested Rainham,
+with a lazy enjoyment of this frank worldliness.
+
+"Getting on! Doesn't it look like it? Isn't he entertaining his
+friends like--like a Rothschild? You know, of course, that he has
+sold his Academy picture, and next year's as well--and four figures
+for each of them?"
+
+"Yes; and he's commissioned to paint a life-size portrait of the
+Hereditary Grand-Duchess of Oberschnitzelsteinwurst--an undertaking,
+by the way, for which I don't envy him. Oh, Dick's all right! What
+have you got in the Academy this year, by the way? I'm ashamed to
+say I haven't been there yet."
+
+"You haven't! But you have seen Lightmark's picture? No? Well, it's
+a fine thing, and just as clever as---- But, mind you, I'm not
+prepared to say that Oswyn wouldn't have made something better out
+of it."
+
+"Yes," said Rainham slowly, with the chill of the old misgiving
+about his heart, as he remembered the stormy encounter at the dock,
+with the haunting shadow of doubt in his mind, laboriously dismissed
+as an offence against his loyalty. "It seems to me that Oswyn has
+more real genius in his little finger than Dick has in his whole
+body; I am sure of it. It was a pity that they should both have
+chosen the same subject, especially as their ideas, as to colour and
+treatment and so on, are so much the same. But, of course, Dick had
+a perfect right to finish and exhibit his picture, even if he knew
+that Oswyn was thinking of the same thing."
+
+McAllister assented hastily.
+
+"No doubt, no doubt; though Oswyn was just wild about it--you know
+his uncivilized ways--and I must admit I was a bit astonished
+myself, at first, when I saw the picture at Burlington House with
+Lightmark's signature to it. But then I didn't know anything of the
+rights of the case. He's a queer, cantankerous devil, and he's
+always being wronged, according to his own accounts, and not only by
+the critics. No one pays much attention to what he says nowadays.
+It's just that absinthe and the cigarettes that are the ruin of him,
+day and night. Poor devil! why can't he stick to whisky and a pipe,
+like a decent Christian!"
+
+"His queerness is all on the surface," said Rainham gravely. "You
+have to dig pretty deep to find out what he's really worth."
+
+Just then Eve hurried towards them through the trees, looking about
+her with an air of hesitation, carrying the train of her pale-gray
+brocade dress over one bare, girlish arm.
+
+"Is that you, Mr. McAllister?" she asked, recognising first in the
+darkness the gaunt figure and tawny beard of the Scotchman. "Oh, and
+Mr. Rainham too! This is really very wrong of you, monopolizing each
+other in this way. And don't you know," she added laughingly, "that
+this corner is especially dedicated to flirtations? You must really
+come and do your duty. Mr. McAllister, won't you take Miss Menzies
+in to have some supper? You know her, I think--a compatriot, isn't
+she? You will find her close to the tent. And you," she pursued,
+turning to Rainham, "you must take some one in, you know. Will you
+come this way, please, and I will introduce you to somebody. I am so
+sorry I was not at home when you called the other day," she said
+conventionally, as they edged their way by degrees towards the
+house.
+
+"Yes; I seem to have an unfortunate capacity for missing you
+nowadays. At Bordighera, for instance. I have certainly had no luck
+at all lately. I haven't even had an opportunity of telling you how
+charming I find your house."
+
+"Ah!" said Eve vaguely, her eyes wandering over the people who were
+grouped upon the gravel walk and under the veranda outside the
+windows of the supper-room, "we really seem to see nothing of you
+now. Oh, let me introduce you to Mrs. Gibson--Mrs. Everett P.
+Gibson. She's American; you'll find her very amusing."
+
+Rainham followed her obediently, thinking, with a quickly repressed
+passion of regret, of the child who would have confided to him her
+latest impressions of sorrow, of joy; finding something, which
+hardly emanated from himself, which made it seem difficult for him
+to gather up the threads of the old, charming intimacy with this new
+Eve--this woman, with her pretty, dignified bearing, and
+self-possessed, almost cold attitude. The introduction was duly
+effected, and for the next half-hour Rainham devoted himself
+heroically to the mental and physical entertainment (he was not
+obliged to do much talking) of the American lady, who hailed from
+the Far West, and lectured him volubly, with an exorbitant accent
+and a monotony of delivery, which began to tell on his nerves to an
+alarming degree, on her impressions of Europe, and especially
+England; the immense superiority of gas as a cooking and heating
+agent; the phenomenal attainments of her children; and the
+antiquities of Minneapolis.
+
+After supper he found himself listening to the band in the garden
+with a sentimental young lady, who made him fully conversant with
+her adoration of moonlit nights, waltzing, the latest tenor, and the
+scenery of Switzerland.
+
+It was already growing late, and people had begun to leave, when it
+struck him that, through no active fault of his own, other than a
+certain complaisant indolence, he had as yet exchanged only the
+briefest of greetings with Lady Garnett, while of Miss Masters only
+a glimpse had been vouchsafed to him, at the further end of the
+crowded supper-room. He wandered into the studio, where a little,
+intimate party had assembled around an easel, and he was fortunate
+enough in a few minutes to find himself invited to take possession
+of a vacant seat precisely by Mary's side.
+
+"Oh, you wicked person!" said Mary reproachfully. "Why do you never
+come to see us? and where have you been hiding yourself all the
+evening?"
+
+Rainham laughed gently.
+
+"I feel rather guilty, I own; but you know there is an execrable
+proverb which says, 'Duty first, and pleasure afterwards.' I have
+been living up to it, that's all. If you only knew how I have been
+longing to talk to somebody who wouldn't ask me whether the music
+didn't fill me with a passionate desire to dance! And how good it is
+to be with a person who doesn't ask you whether you play much
+lawn-tennis, or whether you prefer London to the country on the
+whole. Ah, Mary! I consider myself a model of self-denial; but I am
+rewarded now."
+
+"That's rather pretty for you," answered the girl approvingly; "and
+you are forgiven, though you have still to make your peace with Aunt
+Marcelle. Tell me what you have been doing, and what you have been
+reading...."
+
+The conversation drifted on, now and again becoming general, and
+including the rest of the circle, but always recurring and narrowing
+into the deeper stream of their old intimacy.
+
+"You are the only really satisfactory people I know," he said
+presently--"the only people who know how to enjoy life, so far as it
+is to be enjoyed."
+
+"You mustn't give me any credit for it; it's all Aunt Marcelle's
+doing. But I don't think I know what you mean exactly. Perhaps we
+oughtn't to feel flattered?"
+
+"I mean, you are the only people who understand that happiness
+doesn't depend on what one does or doesn't do--that it all depends
+on the point of view."
+
+"The way of looking at life generally?" she hazarded.
+
+"Precisely. True philosophy only admits one point of view--from
+outside. Aren't we always being told that life is only a play? Well,
+we clever people are the spectators, the audience. We look at the
+play from a comfortable seat in the stalls; and when the curtain
+drops at the end, we go home quietly and--sleep."
+
+Mary looked at him for a moment silently.
+
+"I'm not at all sure that we ought to feel flattered! You consider
+that you and I and her ladyship are spectators, then. Isn't it very
+selfish?"
+
+"More or less. Of course, it's impossible to do the thing thoroughly
+without being absolutely selfish--a hermit, in fact. I sometimes
+think I was intended for a hermit."
+
+Mary sighed covertly, though the smile still lingered in her brown
+eyes.
+
+"I'm afraid I only take a kind of sideways view of things. I should
+like to--to----"
+
+"To go up in a kind of moral balloon," suggested Rainham laughingly,
+"and get a bird's-eye view of life?"
+
+"Exactly; and drift about. Only then one would never get really
+interested in anything or anybody. I should want someone else in the
+balloon."
+
+"You must take me," said Rainham, still smiling.
+
+Mary looked at him quickly, and then turned away, shivering a
+little.
+
+"What nonsense we are talking!" she said suddenly. "And I'm afraid
+it isn't even original nonsense. We don't, really, want to be
+selfish, and we're not; you needn't pretend you are. And isn't it
+getting very, very late? Don't you think Mrs. Lightmark looks as if
+we ought to go? I don't mean that she looks inhospitable. But isn't
+she rather pale and tired? This sort of thing doesn't seem to suit
+her as well as her husband. Yes, I must really go."
+
+When Miss Masters had deserted him, after extracting a promise that
+he would take an early opportunity of paying his over-due respects
+to her aunt, and had gone with Mrs. Lightmark in search of the old
+lady, Rainham made his adieux, leaving Lightmark still radiant, and
+protesting hospitably against such early hours; and as he walked
+homewards, with a cigar unlighted between his lips, he smiled rather
+bitterly, as he thought how little he was able to adhere to the
+tenets of his philosophy. Why else should he regret so much and so
+often the act which had been rung down when ... And how many more
+acts and scenes were there to be?
+
+"Well, I suppose one must stay to the end," he said finally. "One
+isn't obliged to sit it out, but the audience are requested to keep
+their seats until the fall of the curtain. Yes, leaving early
+disturbs the other spectators."
+
+While Lady Garnett was being wrapped up with the attention due to
+her years and dignity, Mary and Eve sat talking in the hall, a
+square, wainscoted little room, hung with pale grass matting, and
+decorated brightly with quaint Breton faïence and old brass sconces.
+
+"I was so glad to see Philip here to-night," Mary was saying, while
+Eve fastened for her the clasp of a refractory bracelet. "We were
+afraid he was becoming quite a recluse, and that must be so bad for
+him!"
+
+"Almost as bad as too much society."
+
+"Yes; it's only another form of dissipation."
+
+"I'm not sure that it isn't better to have too much of other
+people's society than too much of one's own."
+
+"I don't think I ever regarded him from a--a society point of view.
+You know what I mean--like Colonel Lightmark, for instance. When I
+was a child I always thought of him as a sort of fairy godmother--a
+person who was always dropping from the clouds to take one for
+drives in the country, or with a box for the pantomime."
+
+Eve laughed at herself, and then sighed. Mary looked at her
+curiously for a moment, finding something cold, a trace of weariness
+or disdain in the clear voice and the pretty, childish face.
+
+"Philip was always like that, the kindest---- He has always been
+quite a hero for me--a kind of Colonel Newcome." Then she broke off
+rather suddenly, finding Eve in turn looking at her inquiringly.
+"Isn't it curious that we should both have known him so long without
+knowing each other?"
+
+"I suppose it was because we all lived so much abroad. And I don't
+think Philip talks about his friends very much...."
+
+Lady Garnett interrupted the _tête-à-tête_ conversation at this point,
+and when her little brougham had rolled away, and a few other late
+guests had left Eve alone with her husband, she sat for a few
+minutes in the deserted drawing-room, among a wilderness of empty
+chairs, meditating, with her chin resting on one hand, and her eyes
+absently contemplating the scattered petals of a copper-coloured
+rose, which had fallen from some dress or bouquet upon one of the
+Oriental rugs which partly covered the parquet floor.
+
+"Dick," she said presently to her husband, who was leaning against
+the rails of the veranda, lazily enjoying a final cigarette, "did it
+ever strike you that Philip Rainham was in love with anybody?"
+
+Lightmark turned and gazed at her through the open window
+wonderingly, almost suspiciously, and then broke into a laugh.
+
+"Or that anyone was in love with him?" she pursued gravely.
+
+"I don't think I ever noticed it," he answered, with another display
+of mirth. "What have you discovered now, little matchmaker?"
+
+"Not much. I was only thinking.... What a pity Charles wasn't here
+to-night!"
+
+"Oh, you little enigma! Is it that dear Charles who is to be pitied,
+or who? We, for instance?"
+
+But Eve assumed a superior air, and Lightmark, who hated riddles,
+dismissed the subject and the end of his cigarette simultaneously.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+One afternoon, three months later, Rainham, finding himself in the
+neighbourhood of Parton Street, took the occasion of knocking at
+Lady Garnett's door, and found, somewhat to his surprise, that the
+two ladies were returned. Introduced into their presence--they were
+sitting in the library, in close proximity to a considerable
+fire--he learnt that their summer wanderings that year had been of
+no extensive nature, and that they had come into residence a week
+ago.
+
+They had spent a month in a country house in Berkshire, the old lady
+told him presently, adding, with an explanatory grimace, that it was
+a house which belonged to a relation--the sort of place where one
+had to visit now and again; where a month went a very long way;
+where one had to draw largely on one's courtesy--on one's hypocrisy
+(if he preferred the word), not to throw up the cards at once, and
+retire after the first week.
+
+Rainham gathered from her resigned animadversions that the relations
+must be by marriage only: there was no Gallic quality in the
+atmosphere she described.
+
+It was a very nice house--Jacobean, she believed--or, rather, it
+would have been nice if they had had it to themselves. Unfortunately,
+it was very full: there were a great many stupid men who shot all
+day, and as many stupid women who talked scandal and went to
+sleep after dinner; also there were several pairs--or did one say
+"brace"?--of young people who flirted, but they lived in the
+conservatories. When one did not go to sleep after dinner, one
+played round games, or baccarat. She herself had refused to play,
+although they had wished to make her; personally, she preferred to
+go to sleep, or to listen to Mary's music. Yes, Mary was more
+fortunate: they had a very good piano, and an organ. Mary's music
+was a great success, although her admirers were apt to confuse
+Offenbach with Chopin; and some of the women appeared to think it
+was not quite ladylike to play so well, with such a professional
+manner. Still, Mary's music was a success, and that was more than
+could be said of her own conversation. That had been a distinct
+failure! They seemed to think she wished to make fun of things--of
+sacred things, the game laws, and agriculture, and the Established
+Church. Of course, she had no such intention: it was only that she
+wished for information, for instruction in these difficult national
+institutions, which, long as she had made her home in England, she
+feared she would never thoroughly comprehend.
+
+Mary had sat silently, with her hands clasped across her knees,
+while her aunt placidly poured forth these and similar comments
+(which were interspersed by questions and sympathetic monosyllables
+from Rainham), not so much acrimoniously, as in the tone of the
+humorous reporter, who is too indifferent to be actuated by a sense
+of injury.
+
+The girl struck him as having grown tired and listless--more
+listless than a merely physical fatigue would warrant. He
+interrupted now to ask her with a touch of compassion if she too had
+been very much bored.
+
+Her fine eyes were averted as she answered him, smiling a little:
+
+"I am rather glad to be back. It was a pretty place, and the gardens
+were charming, when it did not rain."
+
+Lady Garnett was overheard to murmur into the black ear of
+Mefistofèle that it always rained.
+
+"But on the whole--yes, I was rather bored," the girl continued
+abruptly.
+
+"The rain and the round games and the people?" Rainham echoed. "You
+have my sympathy."
+
+"I believe I rather liked the round games," said Mary, with a little
+laugh. "They were less tiresome than the rest; and the organ was a
+great solace; it was very perfect."
+
+"Ah, yes, she liked the round games," put in Lady Garnett; "and if
+two of her admirers had played them more, and turned over her music
+less, the organ might have been a greater solace."
+
+"They were very foolish," sighed the girl rather wearily.
+
+"Mr. Sylvester was there for the last fortnight," continued Lady
+Garnett, with some malice. "He succeeded Lord Overstock, as Mary's
+musical acolyte. In revenge, Lord Overstock wished to teach her
+baccarat, and Mr. Sylvester remonstrated. It was sublime! It was the
+one moment of amusement vouchsafed me."
+
+Mary flushed, locking her hands together nervously, with a trace of
+passion.
+
+"It was ridiculous! intolerable! He had no right----!"
+
+Lady Garnett bent forward, taking her hand.
+
+"Forgive me, _chérie_! I did not mean to annoy you.... You can imagine
+how glad we were to see you," she added, with a sudden turn to
+Rainham. "It was charming of you to call so soon; you could hardly
+have expected to find us."
+
+"You must not give me too much credit. I happened to be quite near,
+in Harley Street. I could not pass without inquiring."
+
+"Ah, well," she said, "since you are here----"
+
+She was looking absently away from him into an antique, silver
+basket which lay on the little table by her side, in which were
+miscellaneous trifles, odd pieces of lace, thimbles which she never
+used, a broken fan, a box of chocolates.
+
+"Mary, my dear," she said quickly, "I am so stupid! The old
+_bonbonnière_, with the brilliants? I must have left it on my
+dressing-table, or somewhere. That new housemaid--we really know
+nothing about her--it would be such a temptation. Would you
+mind----"
+
+"Is this----" Rainham began, and stopped short.
+
+Lady Garnett's brilliant eyes, and a little admonitory gesture of
+one hand, restrained him. When the girl had shut the door behind
+her, the elder lady turned to him with a quaint smile.
+
+"Is that it? Of course it is, my friend. You are singularly obtuse:
+a woman would have seen through me at once."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Rainham, somewhat mystified. "You mean it
+was a pretext?"
+
+"It was for you that I made it," she replied with dignity. "What was
+it you came to say?"
+
+The other was silent for a moment, cogitating. When he looked up at
+last, meeting her eyes, it was with something like a shiver, in a
+tone of genuine dismay, that he remarked:
+
+"Dear lady, there are times when you terrify me. You see too much.
+It is not--no, it is not human. I had meant to tell you nothing."
+
+He stopped short, lowering his voice, and looking from the depths of
+his low chair into the red fire.
+
+"It is not necessary, Philip," she continued presently, "that you
+should tell me; only, if you will be so secret, you should wear
+smoked glasses. Your eyes were so speaking that I was afraid--yes,
+afraid--when you came into the room. They looked haunted; they had
+the air of having seen a ghost!"
+
+"It was a very respectable ghost," he said grimly, "with a
+frock-coat and a bald head. You know Sir Egbert, I suppose?"
+
+"Only by name. I imagined that he was your spectre, when you spoke
+of Harley Street. Does he send you South again?"
+
+"No," said Rainham shortly; "he thinks it would be inexpedient--that
+was his phrase, inexpedient--in an hotel, you know, and all that....
+I was obliged to him, because in any case it would have been
+inconvenient to me to be abroad this year. I suppose, though, that
+if it would have done me any good I should have gone; but I have a
+great deal to arrange."
+
+He went on composedly to tell her of the most important of these
+arrangements--the disposal of his business. He had systematically
+neglected it for years, he explained, and it had ended by going to
+the dogs. So long as his foreman was there, that had not mattered so
+much; but Bullen had decided to desert him, and very wisely. He had
+accepted an offer to manage the works of a firm of North-Country
+shipbuilders; he was to shake the dust of Blackpool from off his
+feet in a very few months, and would probably make his fortune. And
+as he himself was not equal to bearing his incubus alone, he had put
+it in the market. A brand new company had bought it--that is to say,
+they had made him an offer--a ridiculously inadequate one, he was
+told, but which he was determined to accept; at any rate, it would
+leave him enough, when everything was paid, to live upon, for the
+rest of his life. The legal preliminaries were now being settled:
+they appeared to be interminable; but as in the meantime the
+dock-gates were shut, and the clerks had departed, he could not, so
+far as he saw, be losing money; that was a consolation.
+
+He had not come to the end of his disquisition before he discovered
+that he spoke to deaf ears. The old lady for once was inattentive:
+she had sat screening her face from the fire with a large palm fan
+while he unburdened himself, and she began now with a certain
+hesitation:
+
+"My pretext, Philip! When I said that I made it for you it was
+only half true. In effect, my dear, I had something to tell
+you--something disagreeable."
+
+"Concerning me?" he asked.
+
+"Certainly," she said--"something I have heard."
+
+He looked vaguely across at her, finding her obscurity a little
+strained, waiting for her to speak. The silence that intervened was
+beginning to harass him, when she said suddenly:
+
+"I will be quite plain. I think you ought to know. There is a
+scandal abroad about you--about you and some woman."
+
+"Some woman!" he repeated blankly. "What woman?" He leant back in
+his chair, laughing his pleasant, low laugh. "I am sorry," he said,
+"I can't be as seriously annoyed as I ought; it is too foolish. My
+conscience really does not help me to discover her--this woman. Do
+you know any more?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"It is not a nice story," she said. "No, I have heard no name; only
+the story is current. I have heard it from three sources. I thought
+you had better know of it."
+
+"Thank you," he answered, rising to go. "Yes, it is a thing one may
+as well know. It is very kind of them, these people, to take such
+trouble, to be sufficiently interested. Upon my honour, I do not
+know that I very much care. After all, what does it matter?"
+
+"Nothing to me," said Lady Garnett, with a little shrug of
+disdain--"nothing, _Dieu me pardonne_! even if it were true."
+
+"Well, good-bye," he said.
+
+As he held her hand for a moment between his own he thought it
+trembled slightly.
+
+"Ah, no!" she said quickly; "it is a phrase I decline. Come and see
+me soon. I am an old woman, my friend, and I have outlived my
+generation. I have said too many good-byes in my time. It is _au
+revoir_."
+
+"With all my heart," he said, smiling. "_Au revoir_."
+
+Her quaint intimation--that was the manner in which he characterized
+it--was already dismissed from his mind when he emerged into the
+street.
+
+He had too many graver preoccupations to be greatly troubled by this
+grotesque slander. Going on his way, however--a temporary cessation
+of the soft, persistent rain which had been falling for most of the
+day suggested a walk--a chance recollection brought him to a sudden
+stop, changing his indifference for a moment into the shadow of pale
+indignation. How dull of him not to have guessed at once! it must be
+that unfortunate girl, Kitty Crichton, with whom busybodies were
+associating his name. He wondered how they had discovered her, and
+by whom the stupid story had been set afloat. The baselessness of
+the scandal, conjoined with his immense apathy just then as to
+anything more that the malice of men could do, inclined him to
+amusement, the more so as he reflected how many months it was since
+the girl and her wretched history had passed from his ken. He had
+found her gone on his return from Italy in the spring, leaving no
+address and but the briefest acknowledgment of his good-will in a
+note, which stated that she had no longer any excuse for imposing on
+his kindness--had found friends. The letter closed, as he imagined,
+a painful history, which, since his service had been, after all, so
+fruitless, he could see ended with relief. To his interpretation,
+the girl had recovered her scoundrel journalist, or at least
+compelled him to contribute to her support; and after all, as it
+seemed, he had not done with her yet, though the fashion of her
+return was ghostly and immaterial enough. The subject galled him;
+there were always dim possibilities lurking in the background of it
+which he refused to contemplate; he dismissed it. His meditation had
+carried him through the bustle of Oxford Street to the Marble Arch,
+and, the weather still encouraging him, he decided to turn into the
+Park. Many rainy days had made the air exceedingly soft, and in his
+enjoyment of this unusual quality, and of the strangely sweet odour
+of the wet earth and mildewing leaves, he forgot for a while a
+certain momentous sentence of Sir Egbert Rome's, which had jingled
+in his head all that afternoon. Presently it tripped him up again,
+like the gross melody of a music-hall song, and caused him to drop
+absently upon the first seat, quite unconscious that it was in an
+unwholesome condition of moisture. He had turned his back on the
+brilliant patches of yellow and copper-coloured chrysanthemums on
+the flower-plots facing Park Lane, and he looked westwards over a
+wider expanse of grass and trees: the grass bestrewed with bright
+autumnal leaves, the trees obscured and formless, in a rising white
+mist, through which a pale sun struggled and was vanquished. He had
+never been in a fitter mood to appreciate the decay of the year, and
+suddenly he was seized, in the midst of his depression, with an
+immense thrill, almost causing him to throw out his arms with an
+embracing gesture to the autumn, the very personal charm, the
+mysterious and pitiful fascination of the season whose visible
+beauty seems to include all spiritual things. It cast a spell over
+him of a long mental silence, as one might say, in which all
+definite thought expired, from which he aroused himself at last with
+a shrug of self-contempt, to find inexplicable tears in his eyes.
+And just then an interruption came, not altogether unwelcome, in the
+greeting of a familiar voice. It was Lightmark, who had discovered
+him in the course of a rapid walk down the Row, and had crossed over
+the small patch of intervening grass to make his salutations.
+
+"I knew you by your back," he remarked, after they had shaken
+hands--"the ineffable languor of it; and, besides, who else but you
+would sit for choice on an October evening in such a wretched
+place?"
+
+He looked down ruefully at his patent leather shoes, which the damp
+grass had dulled.
+
+Rainham smiled vaguely; he needed an effort to pull himself
+together, to collect his energies sufficiently to meet the
+commonplace of conversation, after the curious detachment into which
+he had fallen; and he wondered aimlessly how long he had been there.
+
+"I suppose, like everyone else, Dick," he remarked after a while,
+"it is the weather which has brought you home at such an
+unfashionable date."
+
+"Yes," answered Lightmark; "it was very poor fun yachting. I shall
+stay in town altogether next year, I think. And you--you are not
+looking particularly fit; what have you done with yourself?"
+
+"Oh, I am fit enough," said Rainham lightly; "I have been in London,
+you see."
+
+"Well, I can't let you go now you are here. Won't you dine with us?
+Or rather--no, I believe we dine out. Come back and have some tea;
+Eve will be enchanted. I really decline to sit in that puddle."
+
+Rainham rose slowly.
+
+"Perhaps I will," he said. "I would have called before, if I had
+thought there was the least chance of finding you. And how do things
+go?"
+
+As they strolled along through the deserted Park, and Lightmark
+entertained his friend with an extravagant narration of their
+miseries on the _Lucifer_, the chronic sea-sickness of the ladies, the
+incapacity and intoxication of the steward, and the discontent of
+everybody on board--he spoke as if they had entertained a
+considerable party--Rainham's interested eyes had leisure to note a
+change in him, not altogether unexpected. He presented the same
+handsome, well-dressed, prosperous figure; and yet prosperity had
+in some degree coarsened him. The old charm of his boyish
+carelessness had been succeeded by a certain hard assurance, an air
+of mundane, if not almost commercial shrewdness, which gave him less
+the note of an artist than of a successful man of business. And
+where the old Lightmark, the Lightmark of the Café Grecco days,
+broke out at times, it was less pleasantly than of old, in a curious
+recklessness, a tendency, which jarred on Rainham's susceptible
+nerves, to dilate with a vanity which would have been vulgar, had it
+not been almost childish, on his lavish living, the magnitude of his
+expenditure.
+
+"You must find that sort of thing rather a tax?" he asked
+tentatively, after a description which struck him as unnecessarily
+exuberant of a hospitality in the summer.
+
+"Oh, it pays in the long run," remarked the other easily, "to keep
+open house and go everywhere. Thank Heaven, the uncle is liberal! I
+admit we have been going at rather a pace lately. But, then, I can
+knock off a couple of pictures as soon as I have a little time,
+which will raise the wind again. I know what the public wants, bless
+it!"
+
+Rainham shrugged his shoulders rather wearily.
+
+"Poor public! If it wants art made in that spirit, it is worse than
+I believed."
+
+Lightmark looked askance at him, frowning a little, pulling at his
+long moustache. He was absorbed for some time--they had turned into
+the Edgware Road, and the soft rain had begun again--in ineffectual
+pursuit of cabs. When at last he had caught a driver's eye, and they
+had settled themselves on the cushions of a hansom, he turned
+abruptly to his companion to ask him if he had seen the Academy
+before it closed.
+
+"You recognised your domain?" he asked lightly, when the other had
+responded in the affirmative--"in my picture, I mean?"
+
+He spoke quickly, in his accustomed blithe habit; it might have been
+merely a morbid fancy of Rainham's which traced a note of anxiety,
+of concealed uneasiness, in his accent, that the bare question
+scarcely justified.
+
+Rainham paused a moment: it was not only a passing thought of
+Oswyn's acrimony, and of the difficult minutes during which he had
+been thrown across Lightmark at the Dock, that constrained him; it
+was rather the recollection of his own careful scrutiny of the
+disputed canvas, when he had at last dragged himself with a
+disagreeable sense of moral responsibility into Burlington House,
+and had come away at last strangely dissatisfied. Acquitting Dick of
+any conscious plagiarism, of a breach of common honesty, he was
+disagreeably filled with a sense of the work's immeasurable
+inferiority to Oswyn's ruined masterpiece. It was clever, and
+audacious, and striking; it had had the fortune to be splendidly
+hung, and that was all, for all his goodwill, he could say. And
+since, after all, that was so little, would strike his friend as but
+a cold tribute after the panegyrics of the morning papers, he
+preferred to say nothing, deftly dropping the subject, and
+responding to the first half of his friend's question alone.
+
+"My domain, Dick? Ah, I forgot; you can hardly have heard that it is
+my domain no longer--or ceases to be very shortly. That has come to
+an end; I have sold it."
+
+Lightmark whistled softly.
+
+"Well, you surprise me! Of course I am glad; we will be glad too. We
+shall see more of you now, I suppose? or will you live abroad?"
+
+"Abroad?" echoed Rainham absently. "Oh, yes, very probably. But tell
+me, how is--Eve?"
+
+"As we seem to be arriving, I think I will let her tell you
+herself."
+
+They descended, and Rainham waited silently while his friend
+discharged the cabman, and let him in with his latch-key into the
+bright, spacious hall. Then, after glancing into the empty
+drawing-room, Lightmark preceded him up the thick carpeted stairs,
+on which their footsteps scarcely sounded, and stopped at the door
+of Eve's boudoir, through which a woman's voice, speaking rather
+rapidly, and, as it struck him, in a key of agitation, fell upon
+Rainham's ear with a certain familiarity, though he was sure it was
+not Eve's, and could not remember when or where he might have heard
+it. After a moment they went in.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+There are occasions when thought is terribly and comprehensively
+sudden: the rudimentary processes of reasoning, by analogy and
+syllogism, so slow and so laborious, turn to divination. We have an
+occult vision, immediate and complete, into the obscure manner of
+life, and crowd an infinity of discovery into a very few seconds. It
+was so with Philip Rainham now. Lightmark had scarcely closed the
+door, against which he now stood in a black silence, with the air of
+a man turned to stone; Rainham's eyes had only fallen once upon the
+two figures on the sofa--Eve crushed in a corner, a sorrowful,
+dainty shape in the silk and lace of her pretty tea-gown, with the
+white drawn face of a scared child; Kitty Crichton, in her cloak and
+hat, bending forward a little, the hectic flush of strong excitement
+colouring her checks, that were already branded by her malady--when
+he underwent a moral revolution. He had no more to learn. He glanced
+at Lightmark curiously, almost impartially, his loathing strangely
+tempered by a sort of self-contempt, that he should have been so
+deluded. The clumsy lies which this man had told him, and which he
+in his indolent charity had believed! All at once, and finally, in a
+flash of brutal illumination, he saw Lightmark, who had once been
+his friend, as he really was, naked and unclean. It stripped him of
+all his superficial qualities; the mask of genial good-nature, the
+air of good-fellowship, under which his gross egoism lay concealed
+that it might be more securely mischievous when it went loose. His
+amiability was an imposture, a dangerous harlequinade; the man was
+bad. It was a plausible scoundrel, a vulgar profligate with a
+handsome face and a few cheap talents--had he not been reduced to
+stealing the picture of his friend?--whom these two women had loved,
+to whom one of them was married. Ah, the sting of it lay there! Good
+or bad, he was Eve's husband, and she was his wife, bound to him
+until the end. And then, for the first time, seeing her there,
+helpless and terrified, in her forlorn prettiness, he deceived
+himself no longer, wrapped up his tenderness for the woman, his
+angry pity for her misery that was coming, in no false terms. Such
+self-deception, honest as it had been, was no longer possible. He
+knew now that he loved her, and all that his love had been--the very
+salt and savour of life to him, the one delicious and adorable pain
+relieving the gray _ennui_ of the rest of it, to remain with him
+always (even, as it seemed now, in the very article of death) as a
+reminder of the intolerable sweetness which life, under other
+conditions, might have contained. And inexplicably, in the midst of
+his desolation, his heart sang a sort of fierce pæan: as a woman,
+delivered of a man-child, goes triumphing to meet the sordidness of
+death, so was there in Rainham's rapid acceptance of his fruitless
+and ineffectual love a distinct sense of victory, in which pain
+expired--victory over the meanness and triviality of modern life,
+which could never seem quite mean and trivial again, since he had
+proved it to be capable of such moments; had looked once--and could
+so sing his "Nunc Dimittis"--upon the face of love. And it all
+happened in a second, and in a further second--for his thought,
+quickened by the emergency, still leapt forward with incredible
+swiftness--a great audacity seized Philip Rainham, to save the
+beloved woman pain. The devil would be at him later, would beset
+him, harass him, madden him with hint and opportunity of profiting
+by Lightmark's forfeiture. But the devil's turn was not yet; he was
+filled only with his great and reverent love, his sublime pity for
+the little tragical figure in front of him, whose house of painted
+cards tumbled. Well! he might save it for her for a little
+longer--at least, there was one desperate chance which he would try.
+
+He had lived too long, unconsciously, in the habit of seeking her
+happiness, that it should fail him now in her evil hour, in the
+first flush of his new consciousness (ah, yes, there was beauty in
+that, and victory!), for any base personal thought or animosity
+against the man. He would have given her so easily his life; should
+he grudge her his reputation? The reputation of a man with one foot
+in the grave--what did it matter? And it all came about in a few
+seconds.
+
+Before any one of that strange company had found time to speak,
+Rainham had grasped the situation, knew himself at last and the
+others, and was prepared, scarcely counting the cost, with his
+splendid lie. He made a step forward, then stopped suddenly, as if
+he were bracing himself for a moral conflict. His face was very
+white and rigid, his mouth set firmly; and the other three watched
+him with a strange expectancy depicted on all their countenances,
+amidst the various emotions proper to each of them; for he alone had
+the air of being master of the situation. And his resolve had need
+to be very keen, for just then Eve did a thing which might have
+wrecked it. She rose and came straight towards him; her pretty,
+distressed face was raised to his, still, in spite of its womanly
+anguish, with some of the pleading of a frightened child, who runs
+instinctively in its extremity to the person whom it knows best; and
+she gave him her two little trembling hands, which he held for a
+moment silently.
+
+"Philip," she said, in a low, constrained voice--"Philip, I have
+known you all my life--longer than anyone. You were always good to
+me. Tell me whether it's true or not what this woman has told me.
+Philip, I shall die if this be true!"
+
+He bent his head for a moment. He had a wild longing to give up,
+simply to clasp her in his arms and console her with kisses and
+incoherent words of tenderness, as he had done years ago, when she
+was a very small child, and ran to him with her tear-stained cheeks,
+after a difficulty with her governess. But he only put her away from
+him very quietly and sadly.
+
+"It is not true," he said quietly, "if it is anything against your
+husband."
+
+The girl on the sofa, Kitty Crichton, rose; she made a step forward
+irresolutely, seemed on the point of speaking, but something in
+Rainham's eyes coerced her, and Eve was crying. He continued very
+fast and low, as though he told with difficulty some shameful story,
+learnt by rote.
+
+"I tell you it is not true. Lightmark," he added sternly, "there has
+been a mistake--you see that--for which I apologize. Wake up, for
+God's sake! Come and see after your wife; some slander has upset
+her. This woman is--mine; I will take her away."
+
+The girl trembled violently; she appeared fascinated, terrified into
+a passive obedience by Rainham's imperious eyes, which burnt in his
+white face like the eyes of a dying man. She followed, half
+unconsciously, his beckoning hand. But Eve confronted her before she
+reached the door.
+
+"Whom am I to believe?" she cried scornfully. "Why did you say it?
+What was the good of it--a lie like that? It is a lie, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, yes!" said the girl hysterically, "it seems so. Oh, let me go,
+madam! I'm sorry I told you. I'll trouble nobody much longer. Call
+it a lie."
+
+She threw out her hands helplessly; she would have fallen, but
+Rainham caught her wrist, drew her toward him, supporting her with
+an arm.
+
+"Come," he said firmly, "this is no place for us."
+
+Eve regarded them all strangely, vaguely, the terror gradually dying
+out of her eyes--Lightmark expressionless and silent, as he had been
+all through the interview; the woman trembling on Rainham's arm, who
+stood beside her with his downcast eyes, the picture of conscious
+guilt. A curious anguish too pale to be indignation plucked at her
+heart-strings--anguish in which, unaccountably, the false charge
+against her husband was scarcely considered; that had become
+altogether remote and unreal, something barely historical, fading
+already away in the dim shadows of the past. What hurt her, with a
+dull pain which she could not analyse, was the sudden tarnishing of
+a scarcely-admitted ideal by Rainham's deliberate confession, making
+life appear for the moment intolerably sordid and mean. Would she
+have owned to herself that, with an almost unconscious instinct, she
+had judged these two men all along by a different standard? Hardly:
+she loved her husband, and her marriage had not yet dissipated the
+memory of those golden days of illusion preceding it, in which her
+love had been of a finer kind. Only that time, in which it would
+have been impossible for her to judge him, in which he could only do
+right in her eyes, was gone. Occasions had arrived when they had
+inevitably to differ, on which the girl had gently acquiesced--if
+not without a touch of scorn--in his action, but had not felt
+obliged to accept his point of view. There had been times when her
+pride had suffered--for underneath her childish exterior, her air of
+being just a dainty little figure of Watteau, she had a very
+sensitive and delicate pride of her own--and then, if she had
+succeeded in forgiving Lightmark, it had not been without an effort
+which had made it difficult for her to pardon herself. Sometimes,
+though she would scarcely have confessed it, her husband's mere
+approbativeness had almost shocked her. It was good, no doubt, to be
+popular, harmless even, to care for popularity--at least, one's
+traditions declared nothing to the contrary; but to care so
+exorbitantly as Lightmark appeared to do, to sacrifice so much to
+one's enthusiasm for pleasing inferior people--people whom, behind
+their backs, one was quite ready to tear to pieces, allowing them
+neither intelligence nor virtue--in just that there seemed to her
+some flaw of taste that was almost like a confession of failure.
+Surely she loved him, and was ready to forgive him much: not for
+worlds would she have confessed to disillusion. And yet, now and
+again, when the rush and ostentation of their new life, with its
+monotony of dinners and dances--so little like that which she had
+anticipated as the future lot of a painter's wife--had left her
+rather weary, a trifle sad, she had thought suddenly of her old
+friend Philip Rainham, and the thought had solaced her. There is a
+sort of pleasure, even when one is married to the most amiable of
+husbands, and is getting quite old--very nearly twenty--in turning
+from time to time to a person who has known one in the very shortest
+of frocks, and whose intimate connection with chocolates and
+"treats" is among one's earliest traditions. She made no contrasts;
+and yet when occasionally on one of those afternoons--there seemed
+to be so many of them--when she was "at home," when her bright,
+large drawing-room was fullest, and she was distracted to find
+herself confusing, amidst the clatter of teacups, dear Mrs.
+Henderson, who painted wild-flowers so cleverly, with dear Lady
+Lorimer, who was going on the stage, she looked up and saw Rainham
+hovering in the near distance, or sitting with his teacup balanced
+in one long white hand as he turned a politely tolerant ear to the
+small talk of a neighbour, she felt strangely rested. Trouble or
+confusion might come, she told herself, and how suddenly all these
+charming people, who were so surprisingly alike, and whose names
+were so exasperatingly different, would disappear. Dear Mrs.
+Henderson and dear Lady Lorimer, and that odious Mrs. Dollond--what
+was she saying to Dick now which had to be spoken with an air of
+such exaggerated intimacy in so discreet an undertone?--how swiftly
+they would all be gone, like the snows of last year! Only Philip
+Rainham, she was sure, would be there still, a little older,
+perhaps, with the air of being a little more tired of things, but
+inwardly the same, unalterably loyal and certain. The prospect was
+curiously sustaining, the more in that she had no tangible cause of
+uneasiness, was an extremely happy woman--it was so that she would
+have most frequently described herself--only growing at times a
+little weary of the fashionable tread-mill, and the daily routine of
+not particularly noble interests which it involved. Catching his
+eyes sometimes, as he sat there, looking out idly, indifferently,
+upon it all--this success which was the breath of life to
+Dick--she found him somewhat admirable; disdainful, fastidious,
+reserved--beneath his surface good-humour, his constant kindness, he
+could scarcely be a happy man. In flashes of sudden gratitude, she
+would have been glad often to have done something for him, had there
+been anything in the world to do. And then she laughed at herself
+for such a vain imagination. Had it not been his proper charm all
+along that he was a man for whom one could do nothing? precisely,
+because he wanted nothing, was so genuinely indifferent to anything
+that life could offer? And now all that was at an end; by his own
+confession he had finished it, admitting himself, with a frankness
+almost brutal, a man like other men, only with passions more sordid,
+and a temper more unscrupulous, in that he had ruined this wretched
+woman, whose coming there had left a trail of vileness over her own
+life.
+
+"Ah, yes, go!" she said, after a while, answering Rainham's
+exclamation. "For pity's sake, go!"
+
+Rainham bowed his head, obeyed her; as the door closed behind them
+he could hear that she cried softly, and that Lightmark, his silence
+at last broken, consoled her with inaudible words.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Rainham turned at random out of Grove Road, walking aimlessly, and
+very fast, without considering direction. He had passed the girl's
+arm through his own as they left the house; and in a sort of
+stupefied obedience she had submitted. To her, too, one way was the
+same as another, as dreary and as vain. With Rainham, indeed, after
+the tension of the last few minutes, into which he had crowded such
+a wealth of suffering and of illumination, a curious stupor had
+succeeded. For the moment he neither thought nor suffered: simply,
+it was good to be out there, in the darkness--the darkness of
+London--after that immense plunge, which was still too near him,
+that he should attempt to appreciate it in all its relations.
+By-and-by would be the season of reckoning, the just and delicate
+analysis, by nicely critical nature, of all that he had deliberately
+lost, when he might run desperately before the whips of his own
+thought; now he felt only the lethargy which succeeds strenuous
+action, that has been, in a measure, victorious; the physical
+well-being of walking rapidly, vaguely, through the comfortable
+shadows, allowing the cold rain to pelt refreshingly upon his face
+and aching temples. And it was not until they had gone so through
+several streets, whose names were a blank to him, that Rainham
+bethought him, with a touch of self-reproach, of his companion, and
+how ill her thin garments and slender figure were calculated to
+suffer the downpour, which he only found consoling. He drew her into
+the shelter of a doorway, signalled to a passing cab; and just then,
+the light of an adjacent street lamp falling upon her face, he
+realized for the first time in its sunken outline the progress of
+her malady.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said gently; "I did not understand that you
+were ill. You must tell me where you are lodging, and I will take
+you back." Then, as though he anticipated her hesitation, a tribute
+to her old ambiguity, become so useless, he added dryly: "You can
+tell me your address; you have no reason to hide yourself now."
+
+She glanced up at him furtively, shrinking back a little as though
+she feared his irony.
+
+"I live in Charlotte Street, No. --. But pray let me go alone, sir!
+It will not be your way."
+
+"I have rooms in Bloomsbury," he answered. "It will be entirely on
+my way."
+
+And the girl made no further protest, when he handed her into the
+cab, an inconvenient four-wheeler which had responded to his signal,
+and, after giving the driver the address which she had indicated,
+took his place silently beside her. Perhaps something of Rainham's
+own lethargy had infected her, after a scene so feverish; or perhaps
+she could not but feel dimly, and in a manner not to be analysed,
+how that, distant and apart as they two seemed, yet within the last
+hour, by Rainham's action, between her life and his a subtile,
+invisible chord had been stretched, so that the order of her going
+might well rest with him.
+
+She cast furtive glances at him from time to time as he sat back,
+obscure in his corner, gazing out with eyes which saw nothing at the
+blurred gas-lamps, and the red flashes of the more rapid vehicles
+which outstripped them. And now that the first stupefying effect of
+his intervention was wearing away--it seemed like a mad scene in a
+theatre, or some monstrous dream, so surprising and unreal--her
+primitive consciousness awoke, and set her wondering, inquiring,
+with bewilderment that was akin to terror, into the motives and
+bearing of their joint conduct. It had seemed to her natural enough
+then, as do the most grotesque of our sleeping visions when they are
+passing; but now that she was awake, relieved from the coercion of
+his eyes, she was roundly amazed at her own complicity in so
+stupendous a fiction. What had he made her do? Why had he taken this
+sin of another's on his own shoulders? Eve's piteous cry of
+"Philip!" at his entry recurred to her--the intimate nature of her
+appeal. The scent was promising; but it opened out vistas of a
+loyalty too fantastic and generous to be true. Her mature cynicism
+of a girl of the people, disillusioned and abused, flouted the idea.
+Did she not know "gentlemen" and the nature of their love? The girl
+was hardened by ill-usage, bitter from long brooding over her
+shame. She was glad when he turned to her at last, breaking a
+silence which the sullen roar of London outside and beyond them, the
+dreary rattling of the cab, seemed only to heighten, with a sudden
+gesture of despair.
+
+"If I had only known! If you had only told me two years ago!"
+
+The suppressed passion in his voice, his air, terrified the girl.
+She bent forward trembling.
+
+"Ah! what have I done, what have I done?" she moaned. "How did I
+know that it would all come like this? I meant no harm, sir. He
+persuaded me to deceive you after I had found out who he really was,
+to put you off the scent, keeping his name a secret. He said he had
+a right to ask that. He told me he was married, though he wasn't
+then. And afterwards he made me move, when you were abroad: he
+wanted my address not to be known. That was the condition he made of
+his seeing after the child; he swore he would provide for her then,
+and bring her up like a lady. And he sent me the money for a bit
+pretty regular. Oh, it was only for her sake, I promise you that! I
+wouldn't have touched a brass farthing for myself. But, after all,
+she _was_ his child. And then, somehow or other, the money didn't
+come. He went away--he was away all the summer--and he said he had
+so many calls on him, such expenses."
+
+"Ah, the scoundrel!" cried Rainham, between his set teeth.
+
+The girl took him up, hardly with an echo of his own resentment,
+rather with a sort of crushed directness, as one who acknowledged a
+bare fact, making no comment, merely admitting the obscure
+dreariness of things.
+
+"Yes; he was a scoundrel. He was bad all along. I think he has no
+heart. And he has made me bad too. I was a good enough girl of old,
+before I knew him. Only something came over me to-night when I found
+_her_ there, with that big house and the servants, and all that
+luxury, and thought how he couldn't spare a few pounds to bring his
+own child up decent. Oh, I was vile to-night. I frightened her.
+Perhaps it was best as it happened. It dazed her. She'll remember
+less. She'll only remember your part of it, sir."
+
+She glanced across at him with timid eyes, which asked him to be so
+good as to explain: all that had confused her so.
+
+"I don't understand," she murmured helplessly--"I don't understand."
+
+He ignored the interrogation in her eyes with a little gesture, half
+irritable and half entreating, which coerced her.
+
+"How did you come there?" he asked. "What was the good----"
+
+His question languished suddenly, and he let both hands fall slowly
+upon his knees. In effect, the uselessness of all argument, the
+futility of any recrimination in the face of what had been
+accomplished, was suddenly borne in upon him with irresistible
+force: and his momentary irritation against the malice of
+circumstance, the baseness of the man, was swallowed up in a rising
+lassitude which simply gave up.
+
+The girl continued after a while, in a low, rapid voice, her eyes
+fixed intently upon the opal in an antique ring which shone faintly
+upon one of Rainham's quiet hands, as though its steady radiance
+helped her speech:
+
+"It was all an accident--an accident. I was sick and tired of
+waiting and writing, and getting never a word in reply. My health
+went too, last winter, and ever since I have been getting weaker and
+worse. I knew what that meant: my mother died of a decline--yes, she
+is dead, thank God! this ten years--and it was then, when I knew I
+wouldn't get any better, and there was the child to think of, that I
+wanted to see him once more. There was a gentleman, too, who
+came----"
+
+She broke off for a moment, clasping her thin hands together, which
+trembled as though the memory of some past, fantastic terror had
+recurred.
+
+"It doesn't matter," she went on presently. "He frightened me, that
+was all. He had such a stern, smooth-spoken way with him; and he
+seemed to know so much. He said that he had heard of me and my
+story, and would befriend me if I would tell him the name of the man
+who ruined me. Yes, he would befriend me, help me to lead a
+respectable life."
+
+Her sunken eyes flashed for a moment, and her lip was scornfully
+curled.
+
+"God knows!" she cried, with a certain rude dignity, "I was always
+an honest woman but for Cyril--Dick she called him."
+
+The intimate term, tossed so lightly from those lips, caused Rainham
+to quiver, as though she had rasped raw wounds. It was the concrete
+touch giving flesh and blood to his vision of her past. It made the
+girl's old relation with Eve's husband grow into a very present
+horror, startlingly real and distinct.
+
+"Go on," he said at last, wearily.
+
+"Ah, I didn't tell him, sir," she explained, misinterpreting his
+silence. "I wouldn't have done that. He sore angered me, though he
+may have meant well. He was set on seeing the child then, but I
+wouldn't let him. It came over me after he was gone that that,
+maybe, was what he came for--the child. Someone might have put him
+on to take her from me--some society. Oh, I was at my wits' end,
+sir! for, you see, she is all I have--all--all! Then I made up my
+mind to go and see him. Bad as he is, he wouldn't have let them do
+it. Oh, I would have begged and prayed to him on my knees for that."
+
+She stopped for a moment, hectic and panting. She pressed both hands
+against her breast, as though she sought composure. Then she
+continued:
+
+"It was all a mistake, you know, my being shown in there to-night! I
+would never have sought her out myself, being where she is. Oh, I
+have my pride! It was the servant's mistake: he took me for a
+fitter, no doubt, from one of the big dressmakers. Perhaps there was
+one expected, I don't know. But I didn't think of that when I came
+in and found her sitting there, so proud and soft. It all came over
+me--how badly he had used me, and little Meg there at home, and hard
+Death coming on me--and I told her. It seemed quite natural then, as
+though I had come for that, just for that and nothing else, though,
+Heaven knows, it was never in my mind before. I was sorry
+afterwards. Yes, before you came in with _him_ I was sorry. It wasn't
+as if I owed her any grudge. How could she have known? She is an
+innocent young thing, after all--younger than I ever was--for all
+her fine dresses and her grand ladyish way. It was like striking a
+bit of a child.... God forgive him," she added half hysterically,
+"if he uses her as bad as me!"
+
+Rainham's hand stole to his side, and for a moment he averted his
+head. When he turned to her again she was uncertain whether it was
+more than a pang of sharp physical pain, such as she well knew
+herself, which had so suddenly blanched his lips.
+
+"For pity's sake, girl," he whispered, "be silent."
+
+She considered him for a moment silently in the elusive light, that
+matched the mental twilight in which she viewed his mood. His
+expression puzzled, evaded her; and she could not have explained the
+pity which he aroused.
+
+"I am sorry," she broke out again, moved by an impulse which she did
+not comprehend. "You did it for her."
+
+"Oh, for her! What does it matter since it is done? Say that it was
+an accident--a folly--that I am sorry too."
+
+"No," said the girl softly; "you are glad."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders with increasing weariness, an immense
+desire to have the subject ended and put away with forgotten things.
+
+"I am glad, then. Have it as you like."
+
+But she resumed with a pertinacity which his irritated nerves found
+malignant.
+
+"If it was that," she said ambiguously, "you had better have held
+your tongue. You had only to gain---- Ah, why did you do it? What
+was the good?"
+
+He made another gesture of lassitude; then, rousing himself, he
+remarked:
+
+"It was a calculation, then, a piece of simple arithmetic. If it
+gives her a little peace a little longer, why should three persons
+suffer--be sacrificed--when two might serve?"
+
+"Oh, him!" cried the girl scornfully; "he can't suffer--he hasn't a
+heart!"
+
+Rainham looked up at her at last. His fingers ceased playing with
+his ring.
+
+"Oh, let me count for a little," he murmured, with a little, ghastly
+laugh.
+
+The girl's eyes looked full into his, and in a moment they shone out
+of her face, which was suffused with a rosy flush that made her
+almost beautiful, with the illumination of some transcendent idea.
+
+"Ah, you _are_ a gentleman!" she cried.
+
+In the tension of their nerves they were neither aware that the cab
+had come to a standstill, and before he could prevent her, she had
+stooped swiftly down and caught his hand passionately to her lips.
+
+"Heaven forgive me! How unhappy you must be!" she said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+After all, things were not so complicated as they seemed. For Kitty
+was nearly at the end of her troubles; her trivial little life, with
+its commonplace tale of careless wrong and short-lived irony of
+suffering, telling with the more effect on a nature at once so light
+and so wanting in buoyancy, was soon to be hurried away and
+forgotten, amid the chaos of things broken and ruined.
+
+"I don't want to die," she said, day after day, to the sternly
+cheerful nurse who had her in charge at the quiet, sunny hospital in
+the suburbs, where Rainham had gained admission for her as
+in-patient. "But I don't know that I want to live, either."
+
+And so it had been from the beginning, poor soul, poor wavering
+fatalist! with a nature too innately weak to make an inception
+either of good or evil, the predestined prey of circumstance.
+
+As she lay in the long, white room dedicated to those stricken, like
+herself, with the disease that feeds on youth, her strength ebbing
+away quite painlessly, she often entered upon the pathless little
+track of introspection, a pathetic, illogical summing up of the
+conduct of her life, which always led so quickly to the same broad
+end of reassurance, followed by unreasoned condemnation--the
+conventional judgement on her very inability to discover where she
+had so gravely sinned, how and when she had earned the extreme
+penalty of reprobation and of death. She was too wicked, she
+concluded hopelessly, vaguely struggling with the memories of the
+teaching of her Sunday-school, too wicked to find out wherein her
+exceeding wickedness lay.
+
+One comfort she took to her sad heart, that Rainham had not
+condemned her; that he had only pitied her, while he reserved his
+damnation for the iron-bound, Sabbatarian world which had ruined and
+spurned another helpless victim. Rainham she believed implicitly,
+obeyed unquestioningly, with a sense of gratitude which had been
+largely mingled with self-reproach, until he had told her that, so
+far as he was concerned, she had nothing to reproach herself with.
+It never occurred to her for a moment now to question or to resent
+the part he had made her play on that tragical afternoon in Grove
+Road. Why should she? The imputation of a lie, what was that to her?
+Had he not taken it all, all her misery upon himself? Had he not
+fed, and clothed, and lodged her like the most penitent of
+prodigals, although she had no claim upon him until he chose to give
+it to her? Her benefactor could do no wrong, that was her creed; and
+it made things wonderfully smooth, the future on a sudden strangely
+simple. She had lied to him at the bidding of the other, and he had
+not resented it when he came to know the truth: she had brought
+shame on him, and he had not reproached her. A man like this was
+outside her experience; she regarded him with a kind of grateful
+amazement--a wondering veneration, which sometimes held her dumb in
+his presence.
+
+If she had felt unhappy at first about the future of her child--and
+there had been moments when this thought had been more bitter than
+all the rest of her life together--this care was taken from her when
+Rainham promised to adopt the little girl, or, better still, to
+induce Mrs. Bullen to open her motherly heart to her. "They'll be
+only too glad to get her," he had said decisively, interrupting her
+awkward little speech of thanks. "That will be all right. Mrs.
+Bullen hasn't known what to do with herself since her son went to
+sea; she wants a child to care for. You needn't worry yourself about
+that."
+
+It was after this that Kitty had owned to the nurse that she had no
+desire to live; and though the shifting of this burden enabled her
+to carry her life for a time less wearily, the end was not far; and
+the news of her death came to Rainham just after the first snowfall,
+in the middle of a dreary, cruel December.
+
+The winter wore on, and still Rainham was to be seen almost nightly
+in his now familiar corner by the fireside at Brodonowski's, in the
+seat next that which had become Oswyn's by right of almost
+immemorial occupation. His negotiations with the company who were to
+buy him out of his ancestral dock were still incomplete, and now he
+felt a strange reluctance to hurry matters, to hasten the day on
+which he should be forced to leave the little room looking out upon
+the unprofitable river which he loved.
+
+The two men would sit together, sometimes talking, but far more
+often not, until a very late hour; and when the doors were closed
+upon them they often wandered aimlessly in the empty streets,
+dismissing their cares in contemplation of great moonlit buildings,
+or the strong, silent river, sliding under the solemn bridges;
+united from day to day more closely by the rare sympathy which asks
+no questions and finds its chief expression in silence. One thing
+they both hated--to be alone; but loneliness for them was not what
+most mortals understand by the name. There was company for them in
+inanimate things--in books, in pictures, and even in objects less
+expressive; they were men who did not fear their thoughts, who
+looked to the past for their greatest pleasures. And now for Rainham
+the whole of life was a thing so essentially weary and flavourless
+that the _ennui_ of little things seemed hardly worth consideration.
+He was dumbly content to let destiny lead him whither it would,
+without apprehension, without expectation. Oswyn had asked him, one
+evening, just before they parted on the doorstep of the club, with a
+certain abruptness which the other had long since learnt to
+understand, why he was in London instead of being at Bordighera.
+Rainham sighed, echoing the question as if the idea suggested was
+entirely novel.
+
+"Why, because---- Well, for one thing, because you are in London and
+the Dollonds are at Bordighera. You don't know Mrs. Dollond?" he
+added, seeing that the other looked at him with a certain air of
+wistful distrust, a momentarily visible desire to see behind so
+obvious a veil.
+
+"No, thank God!" said Oswyn devoutly, shrugging his bent shoulders,
+and turning away with a relapse into his unwonted impassiveness.
+
+"But you have apparently heard of her," continued Rainham, with an
+effort toward humour. "And I am afraid people have been slandering
+her. She is a very excellent person, the soul of good-nature, and as
+amusing as--as an American comic paper! But in my present state of
+health I'm afraid she would be a little too much for me. I can stand
+her in homeopathic doses, but the Riviera isn't nearly big enough
+for the two of us as permanencies. No, I think I shall wait until
+next winter now."
+
+Oswyn shot a quick glance at him, and then looked away as suddenly,
+and after a brief silence they parted.
+
+Rainham was already beginning to consider himself secure from the
+inconvenient allusions to Lightmark and their altered relations,
+which he had at first nervously anticipated. Oswyn rarely mentioned
+the other painter's name, and accepted, without surprise or the
+faintest appearance of a desire for explanation, the self-evident
+fact of the breach between the two quondam allies; regarding it as
+in the natural course of events, and as an additional link in the
+chain of their intimacy. Indeed, Lightmark had long ceased to be a
+component element of the atmosphere of Brodonowski's: he no longer
+brought the sunshine of his expansive, elaborate presence into the
+limits of the dingy little place; nor did its clever, shabby
+constituents, with their bright-eyed contempt for the popular
+slaves of a fatuous public, care to swell the successful throng who
+worshipped the rising genius in his new temple in Grove Road. The
+fact that in those days Rainham avoided Lightmark's name, once so
+often quoted; his demeanour, when the more ignorant or less tactical
+of their mutual acquaintances pressed him with inquiries as to the
+well-being and work of his former friend, had not failed to suggest
+to the intimate circle that there had been a rupture, a change,
+something far more significant than the general severance which had
+gradually been effected between them, the unreclaimed children of
+the desert, and Richard Lightmark, the brilliant society painter;
+something as to which it seemed that explanation would not be
+forthcoming, as to which questions were undesirable. The perception
+of this did not demand much subtlety, and, in accordance with the
+instincts of their craft, Rainham's reticence was respected.
+
+"It was curious, when you come to think of it," Copal said
+reflectively one evening after his return from a late autumnal
+ramble in Finistère, and while the situation was still new to him,
+"very curious. Rainham and Lightmark were inseparable; so were
+Rainham and Oswyn. And all the time Lightmark and Oswyn were about
+as friendly as the toad and the harrow. Sounds like Euclid, doesn't
+it? Things equal to the same thing, and quite unequal to one
+another."
+
+"Yes," assented McAllister, thoughtfully stroking his reddish beard.
+"And there was a time--not so very long ago, either--when Lightmark
+and Oswyn were on pretty good terms too!"
+
+"Ah, well; most people quarrel with old Oswyn sooner or later. But
+it certainly does look a little as if--as if Lightmark had done
+something and the other two had found it out--Oswyn first. However,
+it's no business of ours. I suppose he's safe to be elected next
+week,--though he isn't a Scotchman, eh, Sandy old man?"
+
+"Quite," said the other laconically.
+
+And then their conversation was modulated into a less personal key
+as they resumed their discussion of the colony of American
+_pleinairistes_ with whom Rathbone had foregathered at Pontaven, and
+of the "paintability" of fields of _sarrasin_ and poplars.
+
+Rainham found it rather difficult to satisfy his inner self as to
+his real, fundamental motive for wintering in England. Sir Egbert's
+orders? They had not, after all, amounted to much more than an
+expression of opinion, and it was somewhat late for him to begin to
+obey his doctors. The transfer of his business? That could have been
+carried out just as well in his absence by his solicitors.
+
+For some time after Kitty's death--and her illness had certainly at
+first detained him--he was able to assure himself that he was
+waiting until little Margot (so he called the child) should have
+secured a firm foothold in the affections of his foreman's family;
+the fact that the Bullens were so soon to leave him seemed to render
+this all more necessary. But now, in the face of Bullen's somewhat
+deferential devotion and his wife's vociferous raptures, there
+hardly seemed to be room for doubt on this score. For the present,
+at least, the child ran no risk greater than that of being too much
+petted.
+
+And at last he was obliged to own that his inability to follow his
+established precedent was due to some moral deficiency, a species of
+cowardice which he could only vaguely analyse, but which was closely
+connected with his reluctance to isolate himself among the
+loquacious herd of those who sought for health or pleasure. If Oswyn
+would have accompanied him to the Riviera he would have gone; but
+Oswyn was not to be induced to forsake his beloved city, and so he
+stayed, telling himself that each week was to be the last.
+
+On a bright day, when spring seemed to be within measurable distance
+in spite of the cold, he made an expedition with Margot to
+Kensington Gardens; and they passed, on their way through the Park,
+the seat on which he had rested after his interview with Lady
+Garnett on that far-away October evening--the memory struck him now
+as of another life. It was frosty to-day, and the seat raised itself
+forlornly from quite a mound of snow. And when they left the Gardens
+he hailed a cab, and, before they had reached the Circus on their
+homeward journey, bade the man turn and drive northward, up Orchard
+Street and into Grove Road.
+
+It was dusk now, and there were bright touches of light in the
+windows of the low, white house, which he glanced at almost
+surreptitiously as they passed, and two carriages waited before the
+outer door.
+
+"My dear child," he remarked suddenly to the little girl, who was
+growing almost frightened by his frowning silence, "you should
+always, always remember that when a man has made a fool of himself,
+the best thing he can do is to clear out, and not return to his
+folly like the proverbial dog!"
+
+Margot looked solemnly puzzled for a moment, and then laughed,
+deciding boldly that this was a new and elaborate game--a joke,
+perhaps--which she was too little to understand, but which
+politeness and good-fellowship alike required her at least to
+appear to appreciate. They were great friends already, these two.
+Children always recognised an ally in the man who made so few
+friends among his peers, and for children--especially for pretty
+children of a prettiness which accorded with his own private
+views--Rainham had an undeniable weakness.
+
+On slack days--and they were always slack now--loungers about the
+precincts of the dock often caught a glimpse of the child's fair
+hair above the low level of the dark bow-window which leaned
+outwards from Rainham's room; and the foreman had even gone so far
+as to suggest that his master was bringing her up to the business.
+"Pays us for looking after her," he confided to his wife, "and looks
+after her himself!"
+
+Mrs. Bullen laughed and then sighed, being a soft-hearted woman,
+and inclined to grieve over their impending desertion of their
+unbusinesslike master.
+
+"Mr. Philip couldn't do more for her if he was her own father," she
+acknowledged appreciatively.
+
+Whereat Bullen had smiled with the superior air of one who knew--of
+one who had been down to the sea in ships, and was versed in the
+mysteries of the great world, of fathers and of children.
+
+"Right you are, old woman," he chuckled, "no more he could. Blessed
+if he could! And there's no mistake about that. And when you and me
+go North in the spring, why, it strikes me that we shall have to
+leave missie behind. Yes, that we shall: though I'd take her, glad
+enough, without the money."
+
+If at first his association with Margot reminded Rainham of another
+little girl whom he had loved, and whose place she could never even
+approximately fill, the memory was not a bitter one, and he was soon
+able to listen to her childish questioning without more than a
+gentle pang. In time, he even found a dreary transient pleasure in
+closing his eyes on the dank dun reality of Blackpool, while the
+child discoursed to her doll in the nook of the bow-window, and his
+fancy wandered in another sunnier, larger room, with open windows,
+and the hum of a softer language rising in frequent snatches from
+the steep street outside; with a faint perfume of wood fires in the
+balmy, shimmering air, a merry clatter and jingle of hoofs, and
+bells, and harness; and another daintier child voice ringing quaint,
+colloquial Italian in his ears. The awakening was certainly cruel,
+sometimes with almost the shock of a sudden savage blow, but the
+dream lasted and recurred: he had always been a dreamer, and every
+day found him more forgetful of the present, more familiar with the
+past.
+
+Upon his return, rather late, to the dock, he recognised, with a
+thrill of pleasure tinged with something of self-reproach, among the
+little pile of business letters which Mrs. Bullen brought to him
+with his tea-tray, the delicate angular handwriting of Lady Garnett,
+and he made haste to possess himself of the secret of the narrow
+envelope, of a by-gone fashion, secured with a careful seal.
+
+
+"MY DEAR" (so she wrote): "This is very absurd; yes, at the risk of
+offending you, I must tell you that it is not clever of you to take
+things so very much _au serieux_. I know more than you think, Philip.
+Mrs. Sylvester, who means well, doubtless--but, _mon Dieu_, what a
+woman!--Mrs. Sylvester has been here; she has spoken to me, and I am
+afraid I have scandalized her. 'You don't suppose he has married
+her,' I said, I confess not altogether disingenuously, and how
+mystified she looked! You will say that Mrs. Sylvester ought to mind
+her own affairs, and you will even find me a trifle impertinent,
+perhaps. But I claim my privilege. Am I not your godmother? Still, I
+am rather intrigued, I own. I don't want to ask what you have done,
+or why; whatever it is, I approve of it. What I find fault with is
+what you are doing, the part you are playing. You must not give me
+the chagrin of seeing Mrs. Sylvester and the admirable Charles
+triumphant at your expense, Philip. You must show yourself: you must
+come and see me; you must come to dinner forthwith, or I shall have
+to make you a visit at your dock. I must talk to you, mon cher! I am
+troubled about you, and so is Mary. Come to us, and Mary shall play
+to you and exorcise your demons. Besides, I am bored--horribly
+bored. Yes, even Mary bores me sometimes, and I her, doubtless; and
+we want you. We will own that we are selfish, after all, but you
+must come!"
+
+
+Then there was a postscript: "Mary suggests that possibly you are
+not so incomprehensible as I think; perhaps you are at Bordighera?
+But you ought to let us know."
+
+
+Rainham sat with the letter before him until Margot came to bid him
+good-night. And then he decided to take advantage of the suggestion
+of the postscript: surely, if he did not answer the dear old lady's
+letter, she would conclude that he was indeed upon his travels.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+If Eve could have mended her idol discreetly and permanently, so
+that for the outward world it would still present the same
+uncompromising surface, so that no inquisitive or bungling touch
+could bring to light the grim, disfiguring fracture which it had
+sustained, it is probable that she would have chosen this part, and
+hidden the grief of her life from the eyes of all save those who
+were so inseparably connected with the tragedy of that autumnal
+afternoon. But it was so completely shattered, the pieces were so
+many; and, worst of all, some of them were lost. To forget! What a
+world of bitter irony was in the word! And she could not even bury
+her illusions quietly and unobserved of uncharitable eyes; there was
+the sordid necessity of explanation to be faced, the lame pretexts
+to be fashioned, and the half-truths to be uttered, which bore an
+interpretation so far more damning than the full measure which it
+seemed so hard to give.
+
+Mrs. Sylvester, whose jealous maternal instincts continued to be on
+the alert hardly less keenly after her daughter's marriage than
+before, had soon detected something of oppression in the atmosphere;
+an explanation had been demanded, and the story, magnified somewhat
+in its least attractive features by Eve's natural reticence, had
+gone to swell the volume of similar experiences recorded in Mrs.
+Sylvester's brain. That she felt a genuine sorrow for Rainham is
+certain, for the grain of her nature was kindly enough beneath its
+veneer of worldly cleverness; but her grief was more than tempered
+by a sense of self-congratulation, of unlimited approval of the
+prudence which had enabled her to marry her daughter so
+irreproachably before the bubble burst. Indeed, the little glow of
+pride which mingled quite harmoniously with her nevertheless
+perfectly sincere regret, was an almost visible element in her moral
+atmosphere, as she emerged from the door of her daughter's house
+after this momentous interview, drawing her furs about her with a
+little shiver before she stepped into her well-appointed brougham.
+She had the air of saying to herself, "Dear me, dear, dear! it's
+very sad, it's very terrible; but I! how clever I have been, and how
+beautifully I behaved!" There was nothing particularly novel from
+her point of view in the story which she had just extracted from her
+reluctant daughter; the situation called for an edifying,
+comfortable sorrow, but by no means for surprise. It was what might
+have been expected--though this (which was somewhat hard) did not
+render the episode any the less reprehensible.
+
+And it was this feeling which had predominated during the lady's
+homeward drive, and the half hour's _tête-à-tête_, before dinner,
+which she had utilized for an exchange of confidences with her son.
+
+"I didn't know that there had been an--an exposure," he said, as he
+stood, a stiff, uncompromising figure, before the fire in the little
+drawing-room. "But I had an idea that it was inevitable from--from
+certain information which I have received. In fact, I have been
+rather puzzled. You must do me the justice to remember that I never
+liked the man--though he had his good points," he added a little
+awkwardly, as inconvenient memories of the many kindnesses which he
+had received at Rainham's hands thrust themselves upon him. "But I'm
+afraid he's hardly the sort of person one ought to be intimate with.
+Especially you, and Eve. Of course, for her it's out of the
+question."
+
+"Oh, of course," said Mrs. Sylvester decisively; "and they haven't
+seen him since, I need hardly say. In fact, they haven't even heard
+of him. They haven't told a soul except me, and of course I sha'n't
+tell anybody," the lady concluded with a sigh, as she remembered how
+difficult she had found it to drive straight home without breaking
+the vow of secrecy which her daughter had exacted from her.
+
+Whatever Mrs. Sylvester may have thought, it is certain that the
+interview, from which she enjoyed the impression of having emerged
+so triumphantly, had brought anything but consolation to her
+daughter, whose first impulse was to blame herself quite angrily for
+having admitted to her secret places, after all so natural a
+confidante.
+
+Nor had Eve repented of this feeling. As time went on she found her
+mother's somewhat too obviously complacent attitude more and more
+exasperating, and she compared her want of reserve very unfavourably
+with her husband's demeanour (it must be owned that he had his
+reasons for a certain reticence). Against Colonel Lightmark, also,
+she cherished something of resentment, for he, too, more especially
+in collaboration with her mother, was wont to indulge in elderly,
+moral reflections, which, although for the most part no names were
+mentioned, were evidently not directed generally and at hazard
+against the society of which the Colonel and Mrs. Sylvester formed
+ornaments so distinguished.
+
+Upon one afternoon, when Christmas was already a thing of the past,
+and the days were growing longer, it was with considerable relief
+that Eve heard the outer door close upon her mother, leaving
+her alone in the twilight of the smaller portion of the double
+drawing-room. She was alone, for Mrs. Sylvester had been the last
+to depart of a small crowd of afternoon callers, and Dick was
+interviewing somebody--a frame-maker, a model, or a dealer--in
+the studio. She sat with a book unopened in her hand, gazing
+intently into the fire, which cast responsive flickers over her
+face, giving a shadowed emphasis to the faint line which had begun
+to display itself, not unattractively, between her eyebrows and the
+irregular curve of her brown hair. She was growing very weary of it
+all, the distraction which she had sought, the forgetfulness of self
+which she had hoped to achieve, by living perpetually in a crowd.
+Indeed, to such a point had she carried her endeavours, that Mrs.
+Lightmark's beauty was already becoming a matter of almost public
+interest. She was a person to be recognised and recorded by
+sharp-eyed journalists at the play-houses on "first nights"; her
+carriage-horses performed extensive nightly pilgrimages in the
+regions of Kensington and Mayfair; and she had made a reputation for
+her dressmaker. And already she realized that her efforts to live
+outside herself were futile; moments like these must come, and the
+knowledge that, in spite of her countless friends and voluminous
+visiting list, she was alone.
+
+Her mother? Dick? After all, they were only in the position of
+occupying somewhat exceptionally prominent places on the
+visiting-list.
+
+As for her husband, after all these long months of married life, she
+could not say that she knew him. She regarded him with a kind of
+admiration of his personal, social attractions, in which she
+recognised him as fully her equal, with a kind of envy of the
+genius, which she could not entirely comprehend, but which seemed to
+make him so vastly her superior. And yet there was a shadow of doubt
+about it all: there had been sinister flashes, illumining, dimly
+enough, depths which the marital intimacy still left unfathomed,
+making her wonder whether her husband's candour might not mask
+something more terrible than forgotten follies, something that might
+prove a more real and irremovable barrier between them than even
+that indefinable want of a mutual horizon, of common ground upon
+which their traditions could unite themselves.
+
+So long as Dick had remained cheerfully masterful, and picturesquely
+_flamboyant_, without even an occasional betrayal of the bitterness
+which makes the one attribute savour of insolence, and the other of
+oppression, his wife had regarded him as exactly fulfilling the part
+for which he had obviously been cast--of a good-humoured,
+ornamental, domestic tyrant, to be openly obeyed and covertly
+coerced. A husband who assisted her acquisition of social laurels;
+who gave her more money than she asked for; who designed for her the
+most elaborate and enviable dresses--yes, her mother certainly had
+reasons for declaring him a paragon! But still Eve was vaguely
+conscious of a defect, a shortcoming. It was all very well so far as
+it went, but the prospect was by no means unbounded. And, then, had
+he not also designed gowns for Mrs. Dollond, and succeeded (there
+was a sting in this) where success was somewhat more difficult of
+achievement?
+
+Now, moreover, he had begun to carry an aggrieved air--an air which
+suggested that he pitied himself, that he considered that he had
+been unfairly dealt with, that he was entitled to assume the
+attitude of an innocent, injured victim of some blindly-dealt
+retribution. What did that mean? The only explanation which his wife
+could find for this symptomatic manifestation had its origin in the
+unhappy episode of which the memory was always on the threshold of
+her solitary thoughts, and, perhaps, of his. She began to feel, with
+a certain compunction, that Dick must resent the circumstances which
+obliged him practically to sever his acquaintance with a man who had
+indisputably figured for so many years as his nearest friend; and
+she asked herself sometimes whether the circumstances in question
+did not, in effect, centre in herself.
+
+Although the world was as yet far from being an open book for her,
+it was conceivable that Philip Rainham (even if one judged by
+appearances) had done nothing which need necessarily cast him beyond
+the pale of the unregenerate society of bachelordom. It never
+occurred to her that, so far as she herself was concerned, a renewal
+of the old relation was among possible things: if she had met Philip
+in public she would have made it clear to him that he was no longer
+on the same plane with her; that, from her point of view, he had
+practically ceased to exist.
+
+It was only when she was alone, and pleasant, bitter memories of the
+old days recurred, that she owned to herself how hard it was to
+think of this intimacy as severed by a rule of moral conduct no less
+inexorable, and even more cruel, than death. And yet there were
+moments--and this was one of them--when her husband's bearing seemed
+more portentous, when the explanation she had found possible seemed
+no longer probable, and uncomfortable doubts as to the real meaning
+of his uneasiness assailed her mind.
+
+A fragment of burning coal fell with a clatter into the grate: she
+welcomed the interruption, and for the moment abandoned her
+thoughts, only, however, to enter upon them again by a different
+path.
+
+"I wonder why I don't hate him?" she asked herself, almost
+wistfully. (She was not now thinking of her husband.) "I ought to
+hate him, I suppose, and to pity her. But I pity him, I think, and I
+hate--her."
+
+The fire still crackled cheerfully, and she began to feel its heat
+oppressive; she let her hands fall with a gesture half of contempt,
+half of despair, and then rose abruptly, and walked into the
+darkness of the larger room, from the unshuttered windows of which
+she could see the dark bulk of her husband's studio looming against
+the gray, smoke-coloured sky.
+
+While she stood, leaning with something of a forward tilt of her
+gracile figure, upon the ledge of the low, square window, the side
+door of the studio opened, letting a flood of light out upon the
+lawn, and with absent eyes she saw that her husband's visitor was
+taking his leave. Presently the door closed; the broad rays which
+had shone coldly from the skylight of the building died out, so
+abruptly that the change seemed almost audible; and simultaneously
+she heard her husband's careless step in the long glazed passage,
+half conservatory, half corridor, which led from her domain to his.
+He came in, softly humming an air from a comic opera, and then
+paused, peering into the darkness for an instant before he
+distinguished his wife's shape in dusky relief against the pale
+square of window.
+
+"Don't light the room!" she said quickly, as she saw him stretch his
+hand towards the little button which controlled the electric light;
+"we can talk in the dark."
+
+He stopped with his hand on the porcelain knob, breaking off his
+ditty in the middle of a bar.
+
+"By all means, if you like," he said, "though I should prefer to see
+you, you know."
+
+Then he dropped luxuriously into an easy-chair by the side of the
+fire, which continued to exhibit a comfortable, glowing redness.
+
+But very soon Lightmark became aware of a certain weight of
+apprehension, which took from him the power to enjoy these material
+comforts; unattractive possibilities seemed to hover in the silent
+darkness, and his more subtile senses were roused, and brought to a
+state of quivering tension, which was almost insupportable. His wife
+moved, and he felt that she had directed her eyes towards him,
+though he could not see her; and he winced instinctively, seeking to
+be first to break the silence, but unable to find a timely word to
+say. The blow fell, and even while she spoke he felt a quick
+admiration for the instinct which had enabled him to anticipate her
+thought.
+
+"Dick," she said quietly, without moving from her place by the
+window, "have you seen _him_ since----?"
+
+There was no need of names; he did not even notice the omission.
+Could she see his face, he wondered, in the firelight?
+
+"No!" he sighed, "no!"
+
+She came nearer to him, so near that he could hear her breathing,
+the touch of her fingers upon the back of a chair; and presently she
+spoke again:
+
+"You think there was no excuse for him?"
+
+"Ah--for excuse! She was pretty, you know!"
+
+He got up, and stood facing her for a moment in the darkness, and
+then, while she appeared to consider, glanced at his watch, and made
+a suggestion of movement towards the door.
+
+"Only a minute, Dick," she said, in the same set voice. "You will do
+me the justice to admit that I haven't alluded to this before. But I
+have been thinking--I can't help it--and I want to know----"
+
+"To know?" he echoed impatiently.
+
+"To know your position--our position; what you had to do with it
+all."
+
+"What is the good? What difference can it make?"
+
+"It's the doubt," she said--"the doubt. I thought you might like to
+explain."
+
+"To explain? Good Lord! what have I to explain? Is it not all
+settled, all clear? My dear child, let us be reasonable, let us
+forget; it's the only way."
+
+There was less of anger in his voice, but if Eve could have seen his
+eyes in the firelight, she might have noticed that they were very
+bright, and their pupils were contracted to hard, iridescent points.
+
+"How can it be settled," she asked wearily, "while there is this
+shadow of doubt? And to forget--Heaven knows I have tried!"
+
+Dick shrugged his shoulders tolerantly.
+
+"What do you want me to say?--to explain?"
+
+"Could you not have warned him, Dick? Did you not see it coming?
+She, that woman, was she not your model? Did he not meet her at your
+studio? Was not that the beginning of it all? Ah, can you say that
+you were not to blame?"
+
+She spoke fast, following question with question, as if she
+anticipated the answer with mingled feelings of hope and fear, and
+there was more of entreaty than of denunciation in her last words.
+
+"It's such an old story," he rejoined, with an air of feeble
+protest. "How could I foresee what would happen? And," he added,
+hardening himself, "they did not meet for the first time at my
+studio; on the contrary, it was he who brought her to me, and I
+suspected nothing. What more can I say? Surely it is all plain
+enough!"
+
+Eve sighed. It seemed to her husband that she was on the whole
+disappointed, and he felt that, while he was about it, he might have
+given himself a freer hand, and made himself emerge, not only
+without a stain upon his character--the expression occurred to him
+with a kind of familiar mockery--but with beaten drums and flying
+colours.
+
+He reflected that this was another example of the folly of
+attempting to economize. At the same time he was gently thrilled by
+what he owned to himself was a not ignoble emotion: that sigh seemed
+to speak so naturally and pathetically of disillusionment, it was
+such a simple little confession of a damaged ideal. It did not occur
+to him to suspect that the character of which his wife had formed
+too proudly high an estimate was his own.
+
+"Don't you think you might trust me?" he said presently in a milder,
+almost paternal tone, magnanimously prepared for a charming display
+of penitence, which it would be his duty rather to encourage than to
+deprecate.
+
+"To trust you?" replied Eve quickly. "Haven't I the appearance of
+trusting you? Don't I accept your explanations?"
+
+It was Lightmark's turn to sigh. His wife moved away, with an air of
+dismissing the subject.
+
+"It is quite dark; it must be time to dress for dinner. Please turn
+on the light." Then she added as she left the room, without waiting
+for an answer: "And you, do you find it so easy to forget?"
+
+When Lightmark was alone, he stood for a few minutes before the fire
+in meditation; then he clenched his fist viciously.
+
+"Confound the girl, and him, too! No, poor devil! he meant well. It
+was just the senseless, quixotic sort of thing one would have
+expected of him. But I don't know that it has done much good. It has
+made me feel a sneak, though I've only been lying to back him up.
+Why couldn't he let it alone? There would have been a storm, of
+course, but it would soon have blown over, and no one else need have
+known."
+
+He stopped in front of a mirror--he had been pacing up and down the
+room--and found himself looking rather pale in the soft, brilliant
+glow of the incandescent lamps. Moreover, the clock pointed to an
+hour very near that for which the carriage had been ordered.
+
+While he was dressing for dinner, it occurred to him--it was not
+for the first time--that, after all, it would take very little to
+render Rainham's bungling devotion, and his own meritorious
+aberrations from the path of truth, worse than nugatory. For what if
+Kitty should split?--so he elegantly expressed his fears--what if
+the girl, of whom he had heard nothing since the day of that
+deplorable scene, should break loose, and throw up the part which
+she had undertaken upon such very short notice?
+
+Decidedly, he felt that he was abundantly justified in resenting the
+false position into which he had been thrust; the imposture was too
+glaring. Would it not even now be well to remodel the situation with
+a greater semblance of adherence to facts--to make a clean breast of
+it? The crudity of the idea offended him; the process would
+necessarily be wanting in art. But possibly it was not yet too late
+to substitute a story which, if it caused him temporary discomfort,
+would at least leave him more certain of the future, the master of
+an easier, a less violently outraged conscience.
+
+At dinner the taciturnity, bordering on moroseness, of a talker
+usually so brilliant led his host to surmise that Lightmark had
+ruined a picture, his hostess to conclude that he had quarrelled
+with his wife. He came home early, and occupied the small hours of
+the morning in forming an amended plan of campaign, of which the
+first move took the shape of a somewhat voluminous letter, addressed
+to Philip Rainham.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+Charles Sylvester was a man of a somewhat austere punctuality, and
+there were few of his habits in which he took a juster pride than in
+the immemorial regularity with which he distributed the first few
+hours of his day. To rise at half-past seven, whatever might be the
+state of the temperature or the condition of the air; to reach the
+breakfast-room on the stroke of eight, and to devote half an hour to
+the perusal of the _Times_ and of his more intimate correspondence--of
+course, there were certain letters which he reserved until his
+arrival in chambers--while he discussed a moderate breakfast which
+seldom varied; to ride in the Row for another half-hour; and
+finally, having delivered his horse to a groom, who met him at the
+corner of Park Lane, to enter the precincts of the Temple, after a
+brisk walk through Piccadilly and the Strand, shortly after
+ten--these were infallible articles in his somewhat rigid creed.
+
+Mrs. Sylvester, therefore, was struck with all the surprise which
+results from an unprecedented breach of custom when, descending to
+breakfast at her own laxer hour one dark morning in February, she
+found her son still presiding at the table, absorbed in his letters.
+He pushed aside these and a packet of telegram forms as she entered,
+and, rising to accept her discreet kiss, responded to her implicit
+inquiry as to whether anything was wrong--her eyes had strayed
+involuntarily to the clock--by pointing her attention to a paragraph
+in the morning paper. His manner was more solemn than usual; it
+betrayed an undercurrent of suppressed excitement.
+
+"This is unusual," he remarked; "but, you see, I have an excuse."
+
+She followed the direction of his finger: "Death of the Member for
+North Mallow." The cream of the news was contained for her in the
+heading, and so she did not read the rest of the notice, which was a
+short one.
+
+Now, North Mallow was the respectable constituency in which a
+coalition of two parties had selected Mr. Sylvester to be their
+candidate at the next election, which this death had transferred
+into the immediate present.
+
+"My dear boy!" said Mrs. Sylvester sympathetically.
+
+Then she checked herself, recognising that a too open satisfaction
+in the event--opportune as it might be--would be hardly decent.
+
+"Of course, it is very sad for him, poor man!" she remarked. "But I
+cannot help feeling glad that you should be in the House, and so
+much sooner than we expected."
+
+He interrupted her with another discreet embrace.
+
+"My dear boy!" she said again vaguely, contentedly, as she poured
+herself a cup of tea.
+
+"He has been in bad health for some time," continued Charles. "He
+died two days ago at Cannes. It is astonishing that I did not hear
+the news before. I have wired to Hutchins, my election agent, and if
+I can manage it, I shall run down to Mallow. Of course one is sorry,
+but since it has been ordered so, after all, one has to think of the
+party."
+
+"Ah yes, the party," murmured Mrs. Sylvester sympathetically; "of
+course that is the great thing. I am sure you will distinguish
+yourself. I suppose there is no danger of a defeat?"
+
+"Oh, it is a safe seat! But one has always to canvass; there is
+always a certain risk. I sometimes wish----" He stopped short,
+pulled nervously at his collar, finding it a little difficult to
+express his meaning. "I think," he went on at last with a visible
+effort, flushing somewhat, "that I must marry. An intelligent woman
+devoted to my interests would be of great service to me now."
+
+Mrs. Sylvester allowed her eyes to remain in discreet observation of
+the tablecloth.
+
+"I have often thought so," she said at last quietly.
+
+"Indeed!" he remarked politely. "Yes; it is a matter, perhaps, which
+I should have discussed with you before. I am fully aware of the
+right you have---- I would not, I mean, have failed----"
+
+"Oh, my son!" she protested, "I am sure you have always been most
+correct."
+
+"I have tried to be," he said simply. "If I have said nothing to
+you, it has been because I wished to be cautious, not to commit
+myself, to be very sure----"
+
+"Of the lady's affection, do you mean?"
+
+"Ah, can one ever be sure of that? No; I mean rather of my own
+attitude, of my own situation. It has always seemed to me that
+marriage is a very great undertaking, a thing to be immensely
+considered, not to be embarked on rashly."
+
+"You view everything so justly!" she exclaimed. "Have you--am I to
+understand that you have a particular person in view?"
+
+He waved aside the compliment with a bland gesture, which asserted
+that only his magnanimity prevented him from acknowledging its
+truth.
+
+"Surely, surely!" he said. "You are perhaps aware how immensely
+I admire Miss Masters; that I have paid her very great
+attention--marked attention, I may say?"
+
+"I observed something of the kind at Lucerne. I did not know if it
+had continued; sometimes I thought so. Have you proposed to her?"
+
+"No," he said slowly; "I have not yet proposed to her. Naturally, I
+wished to consult you first."
+
+"I am sure, Charles," said his mother cheerfully, "that I shall be
+extremely pleased. She is a very nice girl. She is a great-niece of
+Lord Hazelbury, and connected with the Marshes, and I know she will
+have at least sixty thousand pounds."
+
+He glanced across at her, frowning a little, with a certain
+irritation.
+
+"I shall not marry her for her money," he said.
+
+"My dear boy," she retaliated, "I did not suppose you would be
+mercenary; only, a little money is very desirable; and Lady Garnett
+has a great deal, and Mary will certainly get her share of it."
+
+"Ah, I don't like her," put in Charles inconsequently; "she is a
+profane old woman."
+
+"Neither do I; but one must accept her. And Mary, after all, is only
+her niece."
+
+"She has a beautiful character," he continued slowly. (This time he
+was not speaking of Lady Garnett.) "I admire it more than I can say;
+it has very great depths."
+
+His mother looked up at him quickly, struck by his strenuous accent,
+for which she was scarcely prepared. She had a high notion of his
+character, of his ability, and was pleased, more pleased than she
+cared to admit, at the suitability of the match. He had always been
+an excellent, even a sympathetic son; and it had been part of his
+excellence that whenever he should marry, she had been quite certain
+that he would marry like this, selecting with dignity a young woman
+whom one could emphatically approve--a testimony to his constancy in
+certain definite traditions in which he had been reared, traditions,
+it may be said, which he adhered to with a tenacity that even
+exceeded her own.
+
+It had never entered into her calculations, however, to look upon
+him as an ardent lover, and yet it was as an ardent lover that he
+had just spoken. She recognised the tone.
+
+And, strangely enough, for the moment it happened to touch her, to
+give her an increased interest in the affair, though afterwards she
+could reflect that in a man of Charles' character, so soberly
+practical and mature, it was perhaps a trifle incongruous, and, at
+the best, not precisely the tone by which women are most likely to
+be won.
+
+She said placidly:
+
+"I hope you will succeed. If you take my advice, you will speak at
+once."
+
+"I had meant to take the first occasion," he said.
+
+"Ah, my dear," she put in, "you had better make one yourself."
+
+Charles simply smiled. Her approbation of his views, and the
+unwonted dissipation of a prolonged and indolent breakfast, together
+with the pleasant excitement of shortly taking the political field,
+had rendered him singularly mild.
+
+He remembered that he was invited that night to a dance of some
+magnitude, at a house big enough for privacy to be easily secured,
+and where Mary would certainly be.
+
+"Perhaps I will," he said, gathering up his voluminous papers as he
+prepared for departure, "this evening."
+
+He was still in the same mood of cheerful resolution when, after an
+exceptionally busy day, which had also ministered in an exceptional
+degree to his self-esteem (it had included an interview with one of
+the whips of his party, as well as a satisfactory conversation with
+his agent on the temper of the constituency whose member was so
+seasonably deceased), he had dressed at his club, and dawdled at his
+accustomed table in the large bright room over a solitary dinner.
+
+His head had been very full of his political ambitions, into which
+the image of Miss Masters had not inconveniently intruded. He had
+eminently that orderly faculty of detachment which allows a man to
+separate and disconnect the various interests of his life, admitting
+each only in its due order and place; but none the less had he been
+conscious all along that somewhere in the background of his mind her
+image subsisted, and now that he was at leisure again to give her
+that place of honour in his consideration which she had long been
+insensibly acquiring, he was more than ever determined to do all
+that lay in his power to make her his wife.
+
+It amazed him almost that he had not put the important question long
+before, so vital and inevitable had it become; and he scarcely
+considered, in his curious egoism, his scant acquaintance with the
+subtilty of a woman's mind, how much Mary herself might have
+contributed to the delay by her careful avoidance of intimate
+topics, by the cloak of elaborate indifference in which she had
+wrapped herself whenever she had not been able to avoid being alone
+with him; so that, however much he had desired it, he could never,
+without doing her gross violence, have succeeded in striking the
+precisely right personal note.
+
+To-night, however, there should be no more fencing; of that he was
+thoroughly resolved. He would be eloquent and sustained,
+impassioned, and, if necessary, humble--but, above all, perfectly
+direct; he would brook no faltering, feminine evasions; would insist
+on an answer, and on a right answer too, pointing out, with the
+close reasoning acquired in his profession, the superb propriety of
+the match. And he believed that she would be convinced. Was it not
+half of her attraction that she was a woman of intelligence, not a
+silly school-girl, who flirted and danced?
+
+In spite of his self-esteem, however, he was not unwise enough to
+feel sure of the result. Were not all women, even the best of them,
+notoriously perverse? And there was always, conceivably, that
+inopportune third party, a preferred rival, to be counted with, who
+might have been first on the field.
+
+Considering these things, he allowed himself a glass of chartreuse
+with his coffee, and the unwonted luxury of a cigar, over which he
+lingered, growing more nervous as its white ash lengthened and the
+occasion drew near. Yet he could remind himself at last that--at any
+rate, to his knowledge--there was no one else whose pretensions the
+lady preferred, since Rainham, the man whom he had marked as
+dangerous, was socially damned, and no longer to be feared.
+
+It was very nearly eleven before he reached the house to which he
+had been invited, and where he found a very brilliant party already
+in progress. The house was chiefly a legal and political one,
+although there seemed to be a fair leaven of literary and artistic
+celebrities among the more solid reputations; and for some time he
+was engrossed by various of his Parliamentary acquaintances, who
+questioned and encouraged him. Two or three had newly arrived from
+the House, where an important division had just been declared; and
+Charles listened with some impatience to their account of it, gazing
+absently, over their heads, at the maze of pretty toilettes, which
+made an agreeable _frou-frou_ over the polished floor, although the
+debate had been upon a question in which he was warmly interested.
+
+He escaped from them at last with a murmured apology, an intimation
+that he wished to find somebody, and made his way slowly into the
+adjoining room, from which the strains of waltz music floated in,
+and where they danced. His friends found his demeanour noticeable,
+and were inclined to wonder with some amusement, knowing his
+habitual equanimity, that the vacancy at North Mallow should have
+undermined it. When he entered the ball-room he stopped for a
+moment, flushing a little. The first person he had seen, between the
+heads of the floating couples, was Lady Garnett, on a little raised
+seat at the further end of the large room, engaged in an animated
+conversation with an ambassador. He realized quickly that she would
+not have come alone.
+
+He waited until the music ceased and the dispersal of the dancers
+made the passage of the floor practicable, then he set off in her
+direction, trusting that he might find her niece in the vicinity.
+Halfway down he stopped again; he had recognised his sister, who
+fanned herself languidly, seated on one of two chairs partially
+concealed by a great mass of exotic shrubbery, in pots, which formed
+almost an alcove. She removed her long soft skirt, which she had
+thrown over the vacant seat, as he approached; and at this tacit
+invitation he accepted it.
+
+"Only until the rightful owner comes," he explained. "But I see you
+so seldom now that I must not lose this chance. I suppose you are
+keeping it for someone?"
+
+"It is for Miss Masters," said Mrs. Lightmark; "but she won't want
+it yet. She has just gone down to supper."
+
+"Ah, so much the better. I want to see her."
+
+"Do you?" she asked indifferently. "Well, you had better keep me
+company until she comes. It is a long time since I saw you."
+
+He considered her for a moment with a heavy, fraternal appreciation.
+
+"Yes," he said--"yes, it is a long time, Eve. But, of course, we
+have each our own occupations, our own duties now. And being the
+wife of a successful painter must involve almost as many as
+being--if I may say so--a fairly successful barrister. Gratified as
+we are, my dear--my mother and I--at the success of your marriage,
+which has proved more brilliant even than we hoped, I must say that
+we often regret having lost you. We are duller people, I fear, since
+you have left us. However, we can still think of the old days, as
+you, no doubt, do sometimes."
+
+She gave a faint, little, elusive smile, behind her fan.
+
+"Oh, I am afraid I have forgotten them," she said. Then she went on
+quickly, before he had time to reply: "Another thing, too, I had
+almost forgotten--to congratulate you--on Mr. Humphrey's death."
+
+"My dear Eve!" He looked at her with some reproof, with an air of
+finding her a little crude. "You should not say such things, Eve! I
+deeply deplore----"
+
+"Shouldn't I?" she asked flippantly. "Dick told me you were to
+succeed to his seat. Isn't it true?"
+
+He ignored her question, busied himself with an obdurate button on
+his glove. She watched him over her fan, half smiling, with her
+brilliant eyes.
+
+"You are cynical," he remarked at last. "I dare say I shall get in.
+Is Lightmark here?"
+
+"Yes, he is here. He has taken Mrs. Van der Gucht--the American
+Petroleum Queen they call her, don't they?--down to supper. She
+wants him to paint her portrait, at his own price. He will be here
+to fetch me at half-past eleven. I believe we have to move on
+then."
+
+"Move on?" he asked, with an air of mystification.
+
+"Show ourselves at another house," she replied. "It's a convenient
+practice, you know; one gets two advertisements in one night.
+Besides, one saves one's self a little that way; one sometimes gets
+an evening off."
+
+"You talk as if you were an actress," he said, with offended irony.
+"I don't understand your tone. Does Miss Masters accompany you?"
+
+"I think not. Did you say you wanted to see her?"
+
+"Particularly; it is chiefly for that I am here."
+
+"She is a very nice girl," remarked his sister gently. "I hope----"
+She hesitated slightly; then held out her hand to him, which
+involuntarily he clasped. "I hope you will have a satisfactory
+conversation, Charles."
+
+He glanced at her for a moment silently, feeling a secret pleasure
+in her discrimination.
+
+"You look very well," he said at last, "only rather tired. That is a
+very pretty dress."
+
+She smiled vaguely.
+
+"I didn't know you ever noticed dresses. Yes, I am rather tired. Ah,
+there is Mary--and Dick."
+
+The girl came towards them at this moment, looking pretty and
+distinguished in her square-cut, dark gown; and Lightmark followed,
+carrying her bouquet of great yellow roses, which he held
+appreciatively under his nose.
+
+He nodded to Charles Sylvester, who was shaking hands with Mary;
+then he turned to his wife.
+
+"If you are ready, dear," he said lightly, "I expect the carriage
+is. Miss Masters, you know we have another dance to do. My
+brother-in-law will see after you and your bouquet, if you will
+allow me."
+
+"Oh, give it me, please," cried the girl, with a nervous laugh. "I
+really did not know you were carrying it. Thanks so much."
+
+She had succeeded almost mechanically to Mrs. Lightmark's vacated
+chair; and as she sat there, with her big nosegay on her lap, he was
+struck by her extreme pallor, the lassitude in her fine eyes. He
+ventured to remark on it, when the other two had left them, and she
+had not made, as he had feared and half anticipated, any motion to
+rise.
+
+"Yes, the rooms are hot and dreadfully full. There are too many
+sweet-smelling flowers about; they make one faint. It's a relief to
+sit down in comparative quiet and calm for a little."
+
+He was emboldened by her quiescence to resume his chair at her side.
+
+"I won't ask you to dance, then," he said; "and allow me to hope
+that no one else has done so."
+
+She glanced indifferently at her card.
+
+"No. 10," he added anxiously; "a waltz, after the Lancers."
+
+"I see some vague initials," she said; "but probably my partner will
+not be able to find me, thanks to these shrubs."
+
+"I hope not, with all my heart," said Charles devoutly. "At any
+rate, I can sit with you until you are claimed."
+
+"As you like," she replied wearily. "Are you not anxious to dance?"
+
+"I am not a great dancer at any time," he protested; "and to-night
+my heart would be particularly out of it. I came for another
+purpose."
+
+He spoke tensely, and there was a slight tremor in his voice,
+ordinarily so clear and dogmatic, which alarmed the girl so that she
+forgot her weariness and meditated a retreat.
+
+"Oh, so did I," she replied with forced gaiety. "I came to look
+after my aunt, which reminds me that this is hardly the way to do
+it. Will you please take me to her?"
+
+"I assure you she does not want you," cried Charles eagerly. "I saw
+her not ten minutes ago with M. de Loudéac. They seemed to be
+talking most intimately."
+
+"He is an old friend," said Mary; "but, still, they may have
+finished by this time. One can say a great deal in ten minutes."
+
+"Ah!" he put in quickly, "only give me them, Miss Masters."
+
+"I really think it is unnecessary," she murmured with a rapid flush.
+She made another movement, as if she would rise, dropping her
+bouquet in her haste to prevent his speech. He picked it up quickly
+and replaced it in her hands.
+
+"No, don't go, Miss Masters," he insisted. "I surely have a right to
+be heard. After all, I do not require ten minutes, nor five. Only I
+came to say----"
+
+"Ah, don't say it, Mr. Sylvester," she pleaded. "What is the good?"
+
+"I mean that I love you! I want you immensely to be my wife."
+
+She bent her head over her flowers, so that her eyes were quite
+hidden, and he could not see that they were full of tears; and for a
+long time there was silence, in which Sylvester's foot kept time
+nervously with the music. The girl bitterly reproached her
+tiredness, which had dulled apprehension so far that she had not
+realized at once the danger of the situation, nor retreated while
+there was yet time. She had always dreaded this; and now that it was
+accomplished, an illimitable vista of the disagreeable consequences
+broadened out before her. The ice being once broken, however she
+might answer him now, a repetition, perhaps even several, could
+scarcely be avoided; she foresaw that his persistence would be
+immense, so that with whatsoever finality she might refuse him, it
+would all be to go over again. And with it all was joined her
+natural reluctance to give an honest gentleman pain, only heightened
+by her sense that, for the first time in her knowledge of the man,
+the evident sincerity of his purpose had given simplicity to his
+speech. He for once had been neither formal nor absurd, and the
+uniqueness of the fact, taken in conjunction with her share in it,
+seemed to have given him a claim on her consideration. He had cast
+aside the armour of self-conceit at which she could have thrown a
+dart without remorse, and the man seeming so defenceless, she had a
+desire to deal gently with him.
+
+"Mr. Sylvester," she said at last, looking up at him, "I am so
+sorry, but please do not speak of this any more. Believe me, it is
+quite impossible. I am sensible of the honour you do me, deeply
+sensible, only it is impossible. Let us forget this--this mistake,
+and be better friends than we have ever been before."
+
+"Ah, Mary," he broke out, "you must not answer me like that, without
+consideration. Why should it be impossible?"
+
+"Forgive me," she said gently; "only I am tired now. And
+consideration would not alter it. Let me go."
+
+He put one hand out detaining her, and she sank back again wearily
+on her chair.
+
+"If you are tired, so much the more reason that you should hear me.
+You will not be tired if you marry me. If you are tired, it is
+because your life has no great interests: it's frivolous; it is
+dribbled away on little things. You don't really care for it--you
+are too good for it--the sort of life you lead."
+
+"The sort of life I lead?"
+
+"The ideals of your set, of the people who surround your aunt, of
+your aunt herself. The whole thing is barren."
+
+"Are we more frivolous than the rest?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"You are better than the rest," he said promptly. "That is why I
+want you to marry me. You were made for great interests--for a large
+scene."
+
+"What are they--your great interests, your ideals?" she asked
+presently. "How are they so much better than ours?--though I don't
+know what ours may be."
+
+"If you marry me, you will find out," he said. "Oh, you shall have
+them, I promise you that! I want you immensely, Mary! I am just
+going into public life, I mean to go far--and if I have your
+support, your sympathy, if you become my wife, I shall go much
+farther. And I want to take you away from all this littleness, and
+put you where you can be felt, where your character--I can't say how
+I admire it--may have scope."
+
+"I am sorry," she said again; "you are very good, and you do me
+great honour: but I can only answer as before--it is not possible."
+
+"Ah, but you give no reason!" he cried. "There is no reason."
+
+"Is it not a good enough one that I do not love you?" said the girl.
+
+"Only marry me," he persisted, "and that will come. I don't want to
+hurry you, you know. I would rather you would take time and
+consider; give me your answer in a week or two's time."
+
+They were silent for a little; Sylvester was now perfectly composed:
+his own agitation seemed to have communicated itself to the girl,
+whom he watched intently, with his bland, impartial gaze. She had
+closed her eyes, was resting her chin on her bouquet, and appeared
+to be deeply meditating his words. She looked up at last with a
+little shiver.
+
+"I am very tired," she said. "If I promise to think over what you
+have said to-night and to give you my answer in a month's time, will
+you try and find Lady Garnett for me now?"
+
+"Ah, Miss Masters--Mary!" he said, "that is all I want."
+
+"And in the meantime," she pursued gently, "to allow the subject to
+drop?"
+
+"You must make your own terms," he said; "but surely I may come and
+see you?"
+
+"Very well," she consented, after a moment; "if it gives you any
+pleasure, you may come."
+
+At which Charles simply took her cold, irresponsive hand in his own,
+with a silent pressure. Irresponsive as it was, however, he reminded
+himself, she had made no effective protest against the gesture.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+At Lady Day, when the negotiations for the sale of his unprofitable
+riverside domain were finally concluded, Rainham scarcely regretted
+to find that an ample margin had been left before the new company
+took possession; and he had still several months, during which he
+might remain in occupation of his old habitation, and arrange
+leisurely for the subsequent disposition of his books and more
+intimate personal chattels. The dilapidated old house was to be
+pulled down by the new owners (the plans for an extensive warehouse,
+to be erected on the site of it, were already in the hands of the
+builders), and this also was a fact from which Rainham derived a
+certain satisfaction.
+
+Insensibly, the spot had discovered a charm for him: the few rooms,
+which had been his for so long, although, actually, so small a
+proportion of his days had been spent in them, had gradually taken
+the impress of his personality--the faded carpets, the familiar
+grouping of pictures and books, the very shape of the apartment, and
+the discoloured paper on the walls, expressed him in a way that
+certainly no other abiding place, which might conceivably await him,
+could ever do. And he took a dreary pleasure in the consideration
+that, after he had gone, the rooms would know no other occupant;
+that from the glazed and barred windows of the dreary building,
+which was to take the place of the quaint old house, when it was
+levelled to the ground, no person would ever gaze out, exactly as he
+had done, at the white and melancholy river; in which, as he said to
+himself fantastically, he had cast, one by one, as the days
+lengthened, his interests, his passions, his desires.
+
+Years before, by an accident of inheritance, he had come into the
+property with an immense antipathy:--a white elephant that would
+bring him neither profit nor honour, but which the modest competence
+that he had previously enjoyed did not allow him to refuse. It had
+altered the tenor of his existence, destroyed his youth and his
+ambitions, and represented for many years, more completely than
+anything else, the element of failure which had run through his
+life.
+
+And, after all, now that deliverance was at hand, he was by no means
+jubilant. In escaping from this thraldom of so many years, he felt
+something of the chagrin with which a man witnesses the removal of
+some long-cherished and inveterate grievance; the more so, in that
+he could now remind himself impartially how small it had been, how
+little, after all, he had allowed it to weigh upon him. In effect,
+had he not always done very much as he liked, lived half his time
+abroad in his preferred places, chosen his own friends, and followed
+his own tastes without greatly considering his inherited occupation?
+He must look deeper than that, he reflected, within himself, or into
+the nature of things themselves, actually to seize and define that
+curious flaw which had made life seem to him at last (from what
+wearied psychologist, read long ago and half forgotten, did he cull
+the phrase?) "a long disease of the spirit."
+
+For appreciations of this kind, he had, nowadays, ample leisure; and
+unprofitable as it appeared (he did not even pretend to himself that
+it would lead anywhere, since what faint illumination he might
+strike from it could only refer to the past), he was seldom tired of
+searching for them.
+
+A hard March, cited generally as the coldest within the memory of a
+generation, following a winter of fog and rain, had made him an
+inveterate prisoner within the four walls of his apartment. He had,
+indeed, the run of others at this time, for the Bullens had left him
+(at the last there had been no question of little Margot's
+appropriation; Rainham had taken it so serenely for granted that she
+would remain with him), but this was a privilege of which he did not
+avail himself. And the place, stripped of all its commercial
+attributes, had fallen into an immense desuetude, to which the charm
+of silence, and of a deeper solitude than it had ever possessed
+before, was attached.
+
+The dock gates were finally closed; a hard frost of many days'
+duration had almost hermetically sealed them, and the drip of Thames
+water through the sluices formed immediately into long, fantastic
+stalactites of clear ice. Rainham found it difficult to believe, at
+times, that the bustle of the wharves, the roar of maritime London,
+still went on at his elbows, the deserted yard cast such a panoply
+of silence round him. It was as though he had fallen suddenly from
+the midst of men into some wholly abandoned region, a land of
+perpetual snows. It symbolized well for him the fantastic separation
+which he had suffered from the rest of the world; so that, but for
+the painter Oswyn, who was a constant visitor, and had, indeed,
+since the departure of the Bullens, a room set apart for him in the
+house, he might have been already dead and buried, and his old life
+would not have seemed more remote. And if he found the atmosphere of
+Blackpool, more often than not, to be of soothing quality, or at
+least a harmonious setting to the long and aimless course of
+introspection on which he had embarked, there were also times when
+it had a certain terror for him.
+
+It came upon him in the evening, as a rule, when Margot had been
+carried away to bed by the hard-featured old woman who had succeeded
+Mrs. Bullen in the superintendence of his household; for the child,
+with her sweet, shrill voice and her infantile chatter, had come to
+seem to him far more even than Oswyn, about whom there would always
+lurk something shadowy and unreal, a last link with the living; when
+the tide was nearly out, so that the stillness was not even broken
+by the long, lugubrious syren of a passing steamer, his isolation
+was borne in upon him with something of the sting of sharp, physical
+pain.
+
+The dark old room, with its mildewing wainscot, became full of
+ghosts; and he could fancy that the spirits of his ancestors were
+returned from the other side of Styx to finger the pages of bygone
+ledgers, and to mock from between the shadows of his incongruous
+bookshelves, at their degenerate descendant. And these did but give
+place, amid strange creaking and contortions of the decaying walls,
+to spectres more intimate, whose reprobation moved him more: the
+faces of many persons whom he had known forming themselves, with
+extraordinary vividness, out of the darkness, and in the red embers
+of the fire, and each adding its item of particular scorn to the
+round accusation of futility brought by the rest. They were part of
+his introspection, all those--he was not sick enough to hold them
+real--but nevertheless they gave him food for much vigilant thought,
+which came back always to the great interest of his life. Futility!
+Did she too, the beloved woman, point an accusing finger, casting
+back at him a sacrifice which, certainly, in his then disability
+seemed to him vain enough? For all his goodwill, had he gained any
+more for her than a short respite, the temporal reconstruction of a
+fading illusion?--and at what a price! The irony of things was just
+then so present to him that he could readily believe he had done no
+more than that--enough merely to embitter her knowledge when it
+should finally come. And an old saying of Lady Garnett's returned to
+him, which, at the time, he had disputed; but which struck him now
+with the sharp stab of an intimate truth. "You could have prevented
+it, had you wished." Yes, he might have prevented it, if only he had
+foreseen; the wise old woman had not made a mistake. And yet he had
+wished to prevent it, in a manner, only his colder second
+thoughts--he made no allowance now for their generous intention--had
+found propriety in the match, and his long habit of spectatorship
+had made the personal effort, which interference would have
+involved, impossible.
+
+Harking back scrupulously to the remote days of Eve's girlhood, his
+morbid recollection collected a variety of scattered threads, of
+dispersed signs and tokens, which led him to ask at last, with a
+gathering dread, whether he had not made a mistake, must not plead
+guilty to a charge of malingering, or, at least, of intellectual
+cowardice in acquiescing so supinely in defeat?
+
+Was it true, then, that a man found in life very much what he
+brought to the search?
+
+Certainly, the world was full of persons who had been broken on the
+wheel for their proper audacity, because they had sought so much
+more than was to be found; but might it not be equally true that one
+could err on the other side, expect, desire too little, less even
+than was there, and so reap finally, as he had done, in an immense
+lassitude and disgust of all things, born neither of satiety nor of
+disappointment, the full measure of one's reward? Perhaps success in
+the difficult art of life depended, almost as much as in the plastic
+arts, upon conviction, upon the personal enthusiasm which one
+brought to bear upon its conduct, and was never really compatible
+with that attitude of half-disdainful toleration which he had so
+early acquired.
+
+Yet that was a confession of failure he was loath to make, or admit
+that he had been too much afraid of high passions and great affairs,
+had been fastidious and reserved only to dissipate his life on whims
+and small interests--those seemed to him now too great refusals to
+be contemplated without regret. His depression had reached its
+lowest pitch when he had asked himself whether in love, as in life,
+his error might not have been the same; and his passion, like the
+rest, a thing without conviction, and thereby foredoomed to fail.
+And it was a sensible alleviation of his mood when he could answer
+this question finally with a firm negative.
+
+Certainly, his vain desire for her personal presence, for the
+consolation of her voice and eyes, was with him always, like the
+ache of physical hunger or thirst--the one thing real in a world of
+shadows.
+
+Reaching this point one night, and relapsing, as was his wont, into
+a vaguer mood of reminiscence, not wholly unpleasant, which the
+darkness of the quiet room, lit only by the fire of logs, turned at
+last into drowsiness, he looked up presently, with a sudden start,
+to find Oswyn standing over him.
+
+"I am sorry," said the painter; "I am afraid I have awaked you. The
+room was so dark that I imagined you had gone to bed. I came to warm
+myself before turning in."
+
+Rainham shifted his chair a little, and watched the other as he
+extended his thin, nervous hands to the glow.
+
+"Don't apologize," he said; "I haven't so many visitors that I can
+afford to miss the best of them. Besides, I was only half asleep, or
+half awake, as you like to look at it."
+
+"Oh, look at it!" cried Oswyn. "My dear fellow, I don't, and won't."
+
+He pointed his words, which Rainham found meaningless enough, with
+an impatient dig of his rusty boot against the fragrant wood, and
+his friend considered him curiously in the light of the blaze which
+his gesture had provoked.
+
+"Is there anything wrong?" he asked. "More wrong than usual, I
+mean."
+
+"As you like to look at it," echoed the other; "a mare's nest--a
+discovery of the blessed public--oh, but a discovery! Two or three
+clever young newspaper men, with a tip from Paris to help them, have
+made a discovery; they have unearthed a disreputable painting
+genius, one Oswyn, and found the inevitable Jew of culture--you know
+the type, all nose and shekels--to finance their boom. Oh, it's
+genuine! I have Mosenthal's letter in my pocket--it was handed me by
+McAllister--offering his gallery, the pick of Bond Street. Oswyn's
+Exhibition, with expurgations and reservations, of course, but an
+exhibition! Don't you congratulate me?"
+
+Rainham glanced up at him, smiling; at last he said whimsically:
+
+"If you don't want me to, of course I won't. But _après_, where's the
+harm?"
+
+"Ah, they don't understand," cried the other quickly, acridly. "They
+don't understand."
+
+He had drawn his chair beside Rainham, and sat with his large,
+uncouth head propped on one hand, and the latter could perceive that
+his mouth was twisted with vague irony and some subtile emotion
+which eluded him.
+
+"You are the great paradox!" he sighed at last. "For Heaven's sake,
+be reasonable! It is a chance, whoever makes it, and you mustn't
+miss it, for the sake of a few--the just, the pure, the discreet,
+who do know good work--as well as for your own. After all, we are
+not all gross, and fatuous, and vulgar; there are some of us who
+know, who care, who make fine distinctions. Consider us!"
+
+"Consider you?" cried the other quickly. "Ah, _mon gros_, don't
+I--more than anything?"
+
+Then he continued in a lighter key:
+
+"However, I don't refuse; you take me too literally. It was the last
+bitter cry of my spleen. I have put myself in Mosenthal's hands;
+I've sold him two pictures."
+
+"In that case, then, why am I not to be glad?"
+
+"Oh, it's success!" said Oswyn. He glanced contemptuously at his
+frayed shirt-cuff, with the broad stains of paint upon it. "Be glad,
+if you like; I am glad in a way. God knows, I have arrears to make
+up with the flesh-pots of Egypt. And I have paid my price for it.
+Oh, I have damnably paid my price!"
+
+Rainham shrugged his shoulders absently.
+
+"Yes, one pays," he agreed--"one pays, some time or other, to the
+last penny."
+
+His friend rose, pushed his chair back impatiently: he had the air
+of suppressing some fierce emotion, of anxiously seeking
+self-control. At last he moved over to the black square of window,
+and stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out at nothing, at
+the frosty fantasies which had collected on the glass.
+
+"If it had come ten years ago," he said in a low, constrained voice,
+"ten years ago, in Paris.... Oh, man, man!" he went on bitterly, "if
+you could know, if you could dimly imagine the horrors, the mad,
+furious horrors, the things I have seen and suffered, since then."
+
+He pulled himself up sharply, and concluded with a little mirthless
+laugh, as though he were ashamed of his outburst.
+
+"You would consume a great deal of raw spirit, to take the taste out
+of your mouth. And my 'Medusa' is to hang for the future in Mr.
+Mosenthal's dining-room! Will he understand her, do you think?"
+
+Rainham was silent, wondering at his friend's departure from his
+wonted reticence, which, however, scarcely surprised him. He had
+never sought to penetrate the dark background, against which the
+painter's solitary figure stood. He was content to accept him as he
+was, asking no questions, and hardly forming, even in his own mind,
+conjectures as to what his previous history and relations might have
+been. He was not ignorant, indeed, that he was a man who had been in
+dark places; it had always seemed possible to account for him on the
+theory that he lived on the memory of an inextinguishable sorrow.
+
+And now this possibility had received corroboration from his own
+words, shedding a new light, in which both his character and his
+genius became more intelligible. He had only stood out of the
+shadows which obscured him for one instant; but that instant had
+been enough.
+
+And Rainham did not find the occasion less valuable, nor the
+impression which he had received less pitiful, because he believed
+it to be ultimate and unique; his friend would make no vain,
+elaborate confidences; he would simply step back into his old
+obscurity, leaving Rainham with the memory of that instructive cry
+which had been wrung from him by the irony of tardy recognition,
+when he had seen him luridly standing over the wreck of his honour
+and of his life. And with his pity there came to him a fresh sense
+of the greatness of the painter's work. His genius, so full of
+suffering, and of the sense of an almost fiendish cruelty in things,
+was, simply, his life, his experience, his remorse.
+
+With the hand of a master, with the finest technique, which made his
+work admirable even to persons who misinterpreted or were revolted
+by its conception, he rendered the things he had known, so that his
+art was nothing so much as an expression of his personal pain in
+life.
+
+In the light of this vision into the bottom of Oswyn's soul,
+Rainham's own pain seemed suddenly shallow and remote; he had gazed
+for a moment upon a blacker desolation than any which he could know.
+He felt a new, a tolerant sympathy towards his friend, and it struck
+him, not for the first time, but with an increased force, as he
+reminded himself how his days were bounded, that they had many
+things which they had still to say, things which must certainly be
+said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+In the same room one afternoon a fortnight later, Oswyn sat,
+absently correcting the draft catalogue of his exhibition, when he
+received an intimation, which for some days he had expected--his
+friend felt strong enough to see him. He put down his pen, glancing
+up inquiringly at the bearer of this message, a young woman in the
+neat, depressing garb of a professional nurse; but for answer she
+slightly shook her head with the disinterested complacency of the
+woman used to sickness, who would encourage no false notions.
+
+"It is only temporary," she said with deliberation. "I fear there
+has been no real improvement; the patient is steadily losing
+strength. Only he insists on seeing you; and when they are like
+that, one must give them what they want. I must beg you to excite
+him as little as possible."
+
+Oswyn bowed a dreary assent, and followed her up the obscure
+staircase, which creaked sullenly beneath his tread. And he stood
+for a few moments in silence, until his eyes were accustomed to the
+darkened room, when the nurse had gently closed the door behind him,
+leaving him alone with his friend.
+
+He almost believed, at first, that Rainham must be sleeping, he lay
+back with such extreme quietness in the large old-fashioned bed. And
+seeing him there in that new helplessness, he realized, almost for
+the first time, how little there was to say or to hope.
+
+He had never, indeed, been ignorant that his friend's hold on life
+was precarious; some such scene as this had often been in his mind
+before; only, insensibly, Rainham's own jesting attitude towards his
+disabilities had half imposed on him, and made that possibility
+appear intangible and remote. But now, in view of the change which
+the last fortnight had wrought in him, he could cherish no
+illusions; the worst that was possible was all now that one could
+expect. He was a charming, generous, clever fellow, and he was
+dying; that was a thing one could not get over.
+
+He moved across to the bedside, and Rainham's eyes suddenly opened.
+They were immensely large, strangely brilliant; his face had fallen
+in, was so white and long and lean, that these tremendous eyes
+seemed almost all of the man that was still to be accounted.
+
+Oswyn derived the impression from them that, while his friend's body
+had been failing, his mind had never been more vigorous; that,
+during these long nights and days, when he had lain so motionless,
+in so continued a silence, it had only been because he was thinking
+with redoubled intensity.
+
+Presently, as Rainham's lips moved slightly, he drew nearer, and
+bent his head over him.
+
+"Don't talk," he said nervously, as Rainham appeared to struggle
+with the difficulty of utterance; "don't tire yourself. I've only
+come to look at you. Wait until you are a little stronger."
+
+Rainham raised his hand impatiently.
+
+"It won't tire me, and tired or not there are things I must speak
+of. Is she in the room--the nurse?"
+
+He spoke slowly, and with a visible effort; but his voice, although
+it scarcely rose above a whisper, and seemed shadowy and far away,
+was deliberate and distinct. Oswyn shook his head.
+
+"She has given me half an hour; you must not abuse it. I have
+promised to keep you quiet. I really believe you are a little
+better."
+
+"I am well enough for what I want--to talk to you. After that, I
+will be as quiet as you like, for as long as you like. Only I have
+been keeping myself for this all these last few days that I have
+lain here like a log, listening to the ticking of that merciless
+clock. They thought I was sleeping, unconscious, very likely. I have
+been collecting myself, thinking immensely, waiting for this."
+
+"I have always been here," said the other simply, "in case you
+should send for me. I have been painting Margot. She is a dear
+little soul; she misses you sadly."
+
+"It is of her partly that I must speak. I have left all I can to
+her. If you will sometimes give her a thought; she is absolutely
+without belongings. I don't wish to make it a charge on you, a
+burden, only sometimes it has struck me lately that you were
+interested in the child, that you liked her, and I have taken the
+liberty of making you a sort of guardian. She could live with the
+Bullens----"
+
+"Oh, I like her--I like her!" cried Oswyn, with a short laugh. Then
+he went on more seriously, half-apologetically, as though the other
+might have found his mirth ill-timed: "My dear friend, it is a great
+honour, a great pleasure, you give me. I, too, have no belongings,
+no interests; this might be a great one. I never thought of it
+before, I must admit; but I will adopt her. She shall live with me,
+if it's necessary. Only, ah! let us hope still that this may not be
+necessary, that it is premature."
+
+The other held up a thin hand deprecatingly.
+
+"Ah, don't let us fence with the truth. I have always seen it
+coming, and why should I lie about it, now that it is come? When one
+is as tired as I am, there is only one other thing which
+happens--one dies. You don't suppose I should have sent for you like
+this if it hadn't been so?"
+
+He lay very still for a moment or two with his eyes closed, as if
+the effort which speech cost him was considerable. At last he said
+abruptly:
+
+"There are things you should know; she is Lightmark's child."
+
+Oswyn had seated himself on a low chair by the bed; he kept his head
+averted, as does a priest who hears confessions; and he gazed with
+absent eyes at the fire which burned sulkily, at the row of
+medicine-bottles on the mantelpiece, at all the dreary paraphernalia
+of a sick-room.
+
+"Yes, she is Lightmark's child," continued Rainham; "and the mother
+was that girl whom we found two years ago--do you remember?--the
+night of your first visit here outside the gates. She called herself
+Mrs. Crichton. It's a miserable story; I only discovered it quite
+recently."
+
+Oswyn drew in a deep breath, which sounded like a sigh in the
+strangely still room.
+
+It did not so much suggest surprise as the indefinable relief which
+a man feels when accident permits him to express cognizance of some
+fact of which he has long been inwardly assured.
+
+"I knew that long ago," he said at last. "I suspected it when I
+first saw the girl; but I said nothing to you at the time; perhaps I
+was wrong. Afterwards, when we knew each other better, there seemed
+no occasion; I had almost forgotten the episode."
+
+"Yes," went on the other faintly; "we have all made mistakes--I more
+than most folk, perhaps."
+
+Then he asked suddenly:
+
+"Had you any motive, any reason for your suspicion?"
+
+"It was the name Crichton--the man's pseudonym on the _Outcry_. It
+flashed across me then that she was after Lightmark. He was just
+severing his connection with the paper. He had always kept it very
+close, and I dare say I was one of the few persons who were in the
+secret. That is why, at the bottom of his heart, he is afraid of
+me--afraid that I shall bring it up. It's the one thing he is
+ashamed of."
+
+"I see, I see," cried Rainham wearily; "the wretched fellow!"
+
+"Dear man, why should we think of him?" broke in Oswyn; "he isn't
+worth it. Now of all seasons can't we find a topic less unsavoury?"
+
+"You don't understand," continued Rainham, after a slight pause in
+his thin, far-away voice. "I am not thinking of him, or only
+indirectly. I have found him out, and I should be content enough to
+forget him if it were possible. Only, unfortunately, he happens to
+be inextricably entangled with all that is most sacred, most
+important to me. It is of his wife--Mrs. Lightmark: do you know
+her?--that I think."
+
+Oswyn shook his head.
+
+"I know her only by sight, as we all do; she is very beautiful."
+
+"I don't mind telling you that I have considered her a great
+deal--yes, immensely. I should not speak of it--of her--unless I
+were dying; but, after all, when one is dying, there are things one
+may say. I have held my peace so long. And since I have been lying
+here I have had time to ponder it, to have thought it all out. It
+seems to me that simply for her sake someone should know
+before--before the occasion passes--just the plain truth. Of course,
+Sylvester by rights ought to be the man, only I can't ask him to
+come to me--there are reasons; and, besides, he is an ass."
+
+"Yes, he is an ass," admitted Oswyn simply; "that is reason enough."
+
+And just then there flashed into his mind the one notable occasion
+on which the barrister had run across him, his intriguing letter and
+the ineffectual visit which had followed it--ineffectual as he had
+supposed, but which might nevertheless, he reflected now, have had
+its results, ironical and inopportune enough. It was a memory of no
+importance, and yet it seemed just then to be the last of a long
+train of small lights that led to a whole torch of illumination, in
+which the existence of little Margot and her quaint juxtaposition
+with his friend, which in his general easy attitude towards the
+fantastic he had not troubled to investigate, was amply and
+generously justified. He turned round suddenly, caught his friend's
+thin hand, which he held.
+
+"Ah, don't trouble to explain, to make me understand," he murmured.
+"It's enough that I understand you have done something very fine,
+that you are the most generous of men."
+
+Rainham was silent for a moment: he had no longer the physical
+capacity of smiling; but there was a gleam of the old humour in his
+eyes, as he replied:
+
+"Only the most fortunate--in my friends; they are so clever, they
+see things so quickly. You make this very easy."
+
+Oswyn did not shift for a while from his position: he was touched,
+moved more deeply than he showed; and there was a trace of emotion
+in his voice--of something which resembled envy.
+
+"The happy woman! It is she who ought to know, to understand."
+
+"It is for that I wished to tell you," went on Rainham faintly,
+"that she might know some day, that there might be just one person
+who could give her the truth in its season. Yes! I wanted her to be
+always in ignorance of what she had made of her life, of the kind of
+man she has married. She was such a child; it seemed too pitiful. It
+was for that I did it, damned myself in her eyes, to give her a
+little longer--a sort of respite. Very likely I made a mistake!
+Those things can't be concealed for ever, and the longer the
+illusion lasts, the more bitter the awakening. Only if it might
+serve her later, in her darkest hour, as a sort of after-thought, it
+won't have been quite vain. That is how I see it now: I want her to
+know immensely--to know that she has always been unspeakably dear to
+me. Ah, don't mistake me! It's not for myself, it's not yet; I shall
+have done with life, done with love, by that time. When one is as
+tired as I am, death seems very good; only it hasn't those things.
+Nothing can make any difference to me; I am thinking of her, that
+some day or other it will be for her benefit to understand, to
+remember----"
+
+"To remember?"
+
+"Yes, to remember," repeated Rainham quietly, "that her unhappiness
+has its compensation; if she has been bitterly wronged, she has also
+been fervently loved."
+
+The other said nothing for a long time, simply considered the
+situation which Rainham's words, and still more even than anything
+that he had said, the things that he had not said, had strikingly
+revealed to him, leaving him, at the last, in a state of mingled
+emotions over which, perhaps, awe predominated.
+
+At last he remarked abruptly:
+
+"It _is_ you who are fortunate; you are so nearly done with it all;
+you've such a long rest before you." Then he added with a new
+solemnity: "You may trust me, Rainham. When it is seasonable, Mrs.
+Lightmark shall know the truth. Perhaps she will come to me for it--
+Heaven knows!--stranger things have happened. You have my hand upon
+it; I think you are right."
+
+"Right? You mean that it wasn't a mistake, a _bêtise_?"
+
+"_Felix culpa_! If it was a mistake it was a very fine one."
+
+"Ah! I don't regret it," said Rainham, "only----"
+
+"Only it was a mistake to suppose that life was to be arranged. That
+was all I meant. Yes; I don't believe in much, but I believe in
+necessity. You can't get over it yourself, and you can't--no, not
+for all your goodwill, your generosity--get over it for another.
+There are simply inevitable results of irrevocable causes, and no
+place for repentance or restitution. And yet you help her, not as
+you meant to, and not now; but ah, you help her!"
+
+"So long as I do that----" murmured Rainham, with a deep inhalation,
+closing his eyes wearily, in a manner which revealed how severely
+the intimate strain of conversation had told upon him.
+
+Oswyn waited a little longer, in half expectation of his further
+utterance; but Rainham made no sign, lay quite motionless and
+hushed, his hands clasped outside of the counterpane as if already
+in the imitation of death; then the other rose and made a quiet
+exit, imagining that his friend slept, or would soon sleep.
+
+And yet actually, in spite of the extreme physical weariness which
+had gradually stolen over him, dulling his senses, so that he was
+hardly conscious of Oswyn's departure, or of the subdued entrance of
+the nurse, who had been discreetly waiting for it, Rainham's mind
+was still keenly vigilant; and it was in the relief of a certain new
+lucidity, an almost hieratic calm, that he reviewed that recent
+interview, in which he had so deliberately unburdened himself. It
+seemed as if, in his great weakness, the ache of his old desire, his
+fever of longing, bad suddenly left him, giving place (as though the
+literal wasting away of his body had really given freer access to
+that pure spirit, its prisoner), to a love now altogether purged of
+passion, and become strangely tolerable and sweet.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+If Philip Rainham's name, during that long, hard winter and
+ungracious spring--near the close of which he turned his face, with
+the least little sigh of regret, to the wall--was not often
+mentioned in the house in Parton Street, at whose door he had
+formerly knocked so often, it must not be supposed that by its
+occupants it had been in any way forgotten. He had not committed the
+discourtesy of leaving Lady Garnett's note unanswered; on the
+contrary, he had answered it both promptly and--as it seemed to
+him--well, in a letter which was certainly diplomatic, suggesting as
+it did--at least, to Mary Masters, to whom it had been shown--that
+he was on the point of an immediate flight South.
+
+Whether the elder lady was equally deceived by his ambiguous
+phrases, it was not so easy to declare. She had, at this time less
+than ever, the mode of persons who wear their hearts upon their
+sleeves; her mask of half-cynical good-humour was constantly up; and
+she met the girl's hinted interrogations--for directly the nature of
+their uneasiness, by a sort of tacit agreement, was not alluded
+to--with the same smiling indifference, the same air of bland
+reassurance which she brought to the discussion of a sauce or an
+_entremet_ at one of those select little dinner-parties on which she
+piqued herself, and which latterly had been more incessant and more
+select than ever.
+
+Only on Mary's sensitive ear something in the elaborately cheerful
+tone in which she mentioned their vanished friend would occasionally
+jar. It was too perfectly well done not to appear a little
+exaggerated; and though she could force a smile at Lady Garnett's
+persistent picture of the recalcitrant godson basking, with his
+pretext of ill-health, on the sunny terraces of Monte Carlo, she
+none the less cherished a suspicion that the picture was as little
+convincing to its author as to herself, that her aunt also had
+silent moments in which she credited the more depressing theory.
+
+And the long silence simply deepened her conviction that, all the
+time they were imposing upon themselves with such vain conjectures,
+he was actually within their reach, sick and sorry and alone, in
+that terrible Blackpool, which she peopled, in her imagination of a
+young lady whose eastward wanderings had never extended beyond a
+flower show in the Temple Gardens, with a host of vague,
+inconceivable horrors.
+
+From Bordighera, from Monaco, she argued, he would certainly have
+written, if it were only a line of reassurance, for there his
+isolation was impregnable. Only the fact that he had stayed on in
+London could account for the need of this second arm of silence, as
+well as of solitude, to enforce his complete withdrawal from the
+torment of tongues.
+
+Certainly, wherever he might actually be, the girl had never
+realized more fully than just then what an irreparable gap
+estrangement from him made in her life.
+
+There was, indeed, no pause in the stream of clever, cultivated,
+charming persons who rang daily at their discriminating door, who
+drank tea in their drawing-room, and talked felicitously for their
+entertainment.
+
+It was a miscellaneous company, although the portal was difficult in
+a manner, and opened only on conditions of its own--conditions, it
+may be said, which, to the uninitiated, to the excluded, seemed
+fantastic enough.
+
+One might be anything, Lady Garnett's constant practice seemed to
+enunciate, provided one was not a bore; one could represent
+anything--birth or wealth, or the conspicuous absence of these
+qualities--so long as one also effectively represented one's self.
+This was the somewhat democratic form which the old lady's
+aristocratic tradition assumed.
+
+It was not, then, without a certain pang of self-reproach that Mary
+wondered one evening--it was at the conclusion of one of their most
+successful entertainments--that a company so brilliant, so
+distinguished, should have left her only with a nervous headache and
+a distinct sense of satisfaction that the last guest had gone.
+
+Was she, then, after all an unworthy partaker of the feast which her
+aunt had so long and liberally spread for her delectation?
+
+As she sat in her own room, still in her dress of the evening,
+before the comfortable fire, which cast vague half-lights into the
+dark, spacious corners--she had extinguished the illumination of
+candles which her maid had left her, a sort of unconscious tribute
+to the economical traditions of her youth--she found herself
+considering this question and the side issues it involved very
+carefully.
+
+Was it for some flaw in her nature, some lack of subtilty, or inbred
+stupidity, that she found the inmates of Parton Street so
+uninspiring, had been so little amused?
+
+The dozen who had dined with them to-night--how typical they might
+be of the rest!--original and unlike each other as they were, each
+having his special distinction, his particular note, were hardly
+separable in her mind. They were very cultivated, very subtile, very
+cynical. Their talk, which flashed quickest around Lady Garnett, who
+was the readiest of them all, could not possibly have been better;
+it was like the rapid passes of exquisite fencers with foils. And
+they all seemed to have been everywhere, to have read everything,
+and at the last to believe in nothing--in themselves and their own
+paradoxes least of all. There was nothing in the world which existed
+except that one might make of it an elegant joke. And yet of old,
+the girl reflected, she had found them stimulating enough; their
+limitations, at least, had not seemed to her to weigh seriously
+against their qualities, negative though these last might be.
+
+Had it been, then, simply the presence of Mr. Rainham which had
+leavened the company, and the personal fascination of his
+friendship--indefinable and unobtrusive as that had been--which had
+enabled her to adopt for the moment their urbane, impartial point of
+view?
+
+Perhaps there had been a particle of truth in the charge so solemnly
+levelled at her by Mr. Sylvester: it was a false position that she
+maintained.
+
+The attitude of Lady Garnett and her intimates, of persons (the
+phrase of Steele's recurred to her as meeting it appropriately) "who
+had seen the world enough to undervalue it with good breeding," must
+seem to her at last a little sterile when she was conscious--never
+more than now--of how clearly and swiftly the healthy young blood
+coursed through her veins, dissipating any morbid imaginations that
+she might feel inclined to cherish. She looked out at life, in her
+conviction that so little of it had yet been lived, that for her it
+might easily be a long affair, with eyes which were still full of
+interest and, to a certain degree, of hope; and this did not detract
+from at least one "impossible loyalty," from which it seemed to her
+she would never waver. And Charles Sylvester's infelicitous proposal
+recurred to her, and she was forced to ask herself whether, after
+all, it was quite so infelicitous as it seemed. Might not some sort
+of solution to the difficulties which oppressed her be offered by
+that alliance? Conscientiously she considered the question, and for
+a long time; but with the closest consideration the prospect refused
+to cheer her, remained singularly uninviting. And yet, arid as the
+notion appeared of a procession hand-in-hand through life with a
+husband so soberly precise, to the tune of political music, she was
+still hardly decided upon her answer when she at length reluctantly
+left her comfortable fire and composed herself to sleep.
+
+It was not until a day or two later that a prolonged visit from the
+subject of these hesitations reminded her--perhaps more forcibly
+than before--that, however in his absence she might oscillate, in
+his actual presence a firm negative was, after all, the only answer
+which could ever suffice.
+
+At the close of what seemed a singularly long afternoon, during
+which her aunt, who was confined to her room with a bad headache,
+had left to her the burden of entertaining, Mary came to this
+conclusion.
+
+Mr. Sylvester had come with the first of her callers, and had made
+no sign of moving when the last had gone. And in the silence, a
+little portentous, which had ensued when they were left together,
+the girl had read easily the reason of his protracted stay. She
+glanced furtively, with a suggestion of weariness in her eyes, at
+the little jewelled watch on her wrist, wondering if in the arrival
+of a belated visitor there might not still be some respite.
+
+"You are not going out?" he asked tentatively, detecting her. "I
+expect my sister will be here soon."
+
+"No, I am not going out," admitted the girl reluctantly. "I am on
+duty, you know. Somebody may arrive at any minute," she added, not
+quite ingenuously. "Let us hope it will be your sister."
+
+"I hope not--not just yet," he protested. "It is so long, Miss
+Masters, since I have seen you alone. That is my excuse for having
+remained such an unconscionable time. I have to seize an
+opportunity."
+
+She made no remark, sitting back in the chair, her fine head bent a
+little, thoughtfully, her hands folded quietly in her lap, in an
+attitude of resignation to the inevitable.
+
+"You can't mistake me," he went on at last eagerly. "I have kept to
+the stipulation; I have been silent for a long time. I have been to
+see you, certainly, but not so often as I should have liked, and I
+have said nothing to you of the only thing that was in my head.
+Now"--he hesitated for an instant, then completed his phrase with an
+intonation almost passionate--"now I want my reward! Can't
+you--can't you give it me, Mary?"
+
+The girl said nothing for a moment, looking away from him into the
+corners of the empty room, her delicate eyebrows knitted a little,
+as though she sought inspiration from some of Lady Garnett's choicer
+_bibelôts_, from the little rose and amber shepherdess of Watteau, who
+glanced out at her daintily, imperturbably from the midst of her
+_fête galante_. At last she said quietly:
+
+"I am sorry, Mr. Sylvester, I can only say, as I said before, it is
+a great honour you do me, but it's impossible."
+
+"Perhaps I should have waited longer," suggested Charles, after a
+moment's silence, in which he appeared to be deeply pondering her
+sentence. "I have taken you by surprise; you have not sufficiently
+considered----"
+
+"Oh, I have considered," cried the girl quickly, with a sudden
+flush. "I have considered it more seriously than you may believe,
+more, perhaps, than I ought."
+
+"Than you ought?" he interrupted blankly.
+
+"Yes," she said simply. "I mean that if it could ever have been
+right to answer you as you wished, it would have been right all at
+once; thinking would not alter it. I am sorry, chiefly, that I
+allowed this--this procrastination; that I did not make you take my
+decision that night, at Lady Mallory's. Yes, for that I was to
+blame. Only, some day I think you will see that I was right, that it
+would never have done."
+
+"Never have done!" he repeated, with an accent full of grieved
+resentment. "I think it would have done so admirably. I hardly
+understand----"
+
+"I mean," said poor Mary helplessly, "that you estimated me wrongly.
+I _am_ frivolous--your interests would not have been safe in my hands.
+You would have married me on a misunderstanding."
+
+"No," said Charles morosely, "I can't believe that! You are not
+plain with me, you are not sincere. You don't really believe that
+you are frivolous, that we should not suit. In what way am I so
+impossible? Is it my politics that you object to? I shall be happy
+to discuss them with you. I am not intolerant; I should not expect
+you to agree with me in everything. You give me no reasons for
+this--this absurd prejudice; you are not direct; you indulge in
+generalizations."
+
+He spoke in a constrained monotone, which seemed to Mary, in spite
+of her genuine regret for the pain she gave him, unreasonably full
+of reproach.
+
+"Ah!" she cried sharply, "since I don't love you, is not that a
+reason? Oh, believe me," she went on rather wearily, "I have no
+prejudice, not a grain. I would sooner marry you than not. Only I
+cannot bring myself to feel towards you as a woman ought to the man
+she marries. Very likely I shall never marry."
+
+He considered her, half angrily, in silence, with his unanimated
+eyes; his dignity suffered in discomposure, and lacking this,
+pretentious as it was, he seemed to lack everything, becoming
+unimportant and absurd.
+
+"Oh, you will marry!" he said at last sullenly, an assertion which
+Mary did not trouble to refute.
+
+He returned the next minute, with a persistency which the girl began
+to find irritating, to his charge.
+
+"I don't understand it. They seem to me wilful, unworthy of you,
+your reasons; it's perverse--yes, that is what it is, perverse! You
+are not really happy here; the life doesn't suit you."
+
+"What a discovery!" cried the girl half mockingly. "I am not really
+happy! Well, if I admit it?"
+
+"I could make you so by taking you out of it. You are too good for
+it all, too good to sit and pour out tea for--for the sort of people
+who come here."
+
+"Do you mean," she asked, with a touch of scorn in her voice, "that
+we are not respectable?"
+
+"That is not you who speak," he persisted; "it is your aunt who
+speaks through you. I know it is the fashion now to cry out against
+one, even in good society, to call one straitlaced, if one respects
+certain conventions. There are some I respect profoundly; and not
+the least that one which forbids right-minded gentlewomen to receive
+men of notoriously disgraceful lives. One should draw the line; one
+should draw it at that Hungarian pianist who was here this
+afternoon. Your aunt, of course, is a Frenchwoman; she has different
+ideas. But you, I can't believe that you care for this society, for
+people like Kronopolski and--and Rainham. Oh, it hurts me, and I
+imagine how distasteful it must be to you, that you must suffer
+these people. I want to take you away from it all."
+
+The girl had risen, flushing a little. She replied haughtily, with a
+vibration of passion in her voice:
+
+"You are not generous, Mr. Sylvester. You are not even just. What
+right have I ever given you to dictate to me whom I shall know or
+refuse to know? I, too, have my convictions; and I think your view
+is narrow, and uncharitable, and false. You see, we don't agree
+enough.... Ah, let it end, Mr. Sylvester!" She went on more gently,
+but very tiredly, her pale face revealing how the interview had
+strained her: "I wish you all the good in the world, but I can't
+marry you. Let us shake hands on that, and say good-bye."
+
+Sylvester had also risen to his feet, and he stood facing her for a
+moment indecisively, as though he hardly credited the finality of
+his rejection.
+
+They were still in this attitude, and the fact gave a certain tinge
+of embarrassment to their greetings, when the door opened, and Mrs.
+Lightmark was announced.
+
+"I was on the point of going," explained Charles nervously. "I
+thought you were not coming, you know."
+
+Eve made no effort to detain him, half suspecting that she had
+appeared at a strenuous moment. When the barrister had departed
+(Mary had just extended to him the tips of her frigid fingers), and
+Eve's polite inquiries after Lady Garnett's health had been
+satisfied, she remarked:
+
+"I really only came in for a cup of tea. I walked across from Dorset
+Square. I have sent the carriage to pick up my husband at his club:
+it's coming back for me. You look tired, Mary. I think I oughtn't to
+stay. You look as if you had been having a political afternoon. Poor
+Charles, since he has been in the House, can think of nothing but
+blue-books."
+
+"Tired?" queried the girl listlessly; "no, not particularly.
+Besides, I am always glad to see you, it happens so seldom."
+
+"Yes; except in a crowd. One has never any time. Have you heard, by
+the way, that my husband is one of the new Associates?"
+
+She went on quickly, preventing Mary's murmured congratulations:
+
+"Yes, they have elected him. I suppose it is a very good thing. He
+has his hands full of portraits now."
+
+Then she remarked inconsequently--the rapidity with which she passed
+from topic to topic half surprised Mary, who did not remember the
+trait of old:
+
+"We are going to the theatre to-night--that is to say, if my husband
+has been able to get seats. It's the first night of a new comedy. I
+meant to ask you to come with us, only it was an uncertainty. If the
+box is not forthcoming, you must come when we do go. Only, of
+course, it will not be the _première_."
+
+"I should like to," said Mary vaguely. "I don't care so much about
+first nights. I like the theatre; but I go so seldom. Aunt Marcelle
+does not care for English plays; she says they are like stale
+bread-and-butter. I tell her that is not so bad."
+
+"The _mot_, you mean?"
+
+"Partly; but also the thing. Bread-and-butter is a change after a
+great many _petits fours_."
+
+Mrs. Lightmark smiled a little absently as she sat smoothing the
+creases out of her pretty, fawn-coloured gloves.
+
+"Oh, the _petits fours_," she said, "for choice. One can take more of
+them, and amuse one's self longer."
+
+They heard a carriage draw up suddenly in the street below, and Eve,
+who had been glancing from time to time expectantly at the window,
+went over and looked out. She recognised her liveries and the two
+handsome bays.
+
+"Perhaps I had better not let him come up," she said; "it is late
+already, and you will be wanting to dress."
+
+Lightmark had just alighted from the carriage when his wife joined
+him in the street. He held the door for her silently, and stopped
+for a moment to give the direction, "Home," to the coachman before
+he took the place at her side.
+
+She turned to him after a while inquiringly, finding something of
+unwonted gravity in his manner.
+
+"Did you get the box?" she asked.
+
+"The box?" he repeated blankly. Then, pulling himself up, "No," he
+said quickly, "I forgot all about it. The fact is, I heard something
+this afternoon which put it out of my head. I am afraid," he went
+on, with a growing hesitation, "you will be rather shocked."
+
+"Ah," she cried quickly, catching at her breath, "something has
+happened. Tell me. Don't preface it; I can bear anything if you will
+only tell me straight out."
+
+"It's Rainham," he murmured. "He died last night at Blackpool. I
+heard it from McAllister, at the club."
+
+He looked away from her vaguely out of his window at the pale
+streets, where a few lamps were beginning to appear, waiting in a
+fever of apprehension, which he vainly sought to justify, for some
+word or comment on the part of his wife.
+
+As none came, and the silence grew intolerable, he ventured at last
+to glance furtively across at her. Her face seemed to him a shade
+paler than before, but that might be exaggerated by the relief of
+her rich and sombre furs. Her eyes were quite expressionless and
+blank, although she had the air of being immensely thoughtful; her
+mouth was inscrutable and unmoved. And he experienced a sudden pang
+of horror at the anticipation of a dinner alone with her, with the
+ghostly presence of this news dividing them, before he reminded
+himself that Colonel Lightmark was to be of the party.
+
+For, perhaps, the first time in his life the prospect of his uncle's
+company afforded him a sensation of relief.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+When Oswyn emerged from the narrow doorway of the gallery in Bond
+Street, which on the morrow was to be filled with the heterogeneous
+presence of those who, for different reasons, are honoured with
+cards of invitation to private views, it was still daylight,
+although the lamps had been lighted; and the east wind, which during
+the earlier hours of the day had made the young summer seem such a
+mockery of flowery illusions, had taken a more genial air from the
+south into alliance; and there was something at once caressing and
+exhilarating in their united touch as they wandered in gentle eddies
+up the crooked thoroughfare.
+
+Oswyn paused upon the pavement, outside the showroom which Mosenthal
+called a gallery, gazing up the road towards Oxford Street, with a
+momentary appreciation of the subtile early evening charm, which
+lent so real a beauty even to a vista of commonplace shop-fronts and
+chimney-pots, straightening his bent figure, and wondering whither
+to betake himself.
+
+He had not allowed his friend's death to be an excuse for abandoning
+the projected exhibition; indeed, when this event occurred, he was
+already too far compromised; and he even found the labour involved
+in the preparations for the new departure a very welcome
+distraction--the one thing which made it possible for the desolate
+man to stay on in London, which, he assured himself dogmatically,
+was the only place on earth where he could face life with an
+indifference which was at least a tolerable imitation of equanimity.
+
+To get together the materials for even a modest exhibition of the
+kind which he contemplated, it became necessary for him to ransack
+old portfolios, and to borrow from dealers, and from his few
+discriminating private patrons, works which had but recently left
+his studio and could still be traced; to utilize all the hours of
+daylight accorded to him by a grudging season for finishing,
+mounting, and retouching.
+
+The man who made frames for Oswyn knew him of old as an exacting
+customer and hard to please, who insisted on a rigid adherence to
+his own designs, and was quick to detect inferior workmanship or
+material; but during the last few days he had been driven almost to
+rebellion by the painter's exigencies; never had such calls been
+made upon him for flawless glass, and delicately varied shades of
+gold and silver; never had artist's eye been so ruthless in the
+condemnation of imperfect mitres and superfluous plaster.
+
+But now the work of preparation was at an end: the catalogues had
+been printed, and his _impresario_ had judiciously circulated
+invitations to press and public: the work was done, and the workman
+felt only weary and indifferent. If the public howled, what did it
+matter? Their hostility would be for him a corroboration, for his
+Jew an invaluable advertisement. If they fawned, so much the better:
+it would not hurt him, and Mosenthal would still have his
+advertisement. If they were indifferent, well, so was he.
+
+The question of pecuniary profit troubled him not at all (though
+here his Jew joined issue): what in the world could he do with
+money, now? He could paint a picture in a month which would keep him
+for six, and the dealer who bought it probably for a year.
+
+Margot was already provided for, even handsomely: in that respect,
+at least, her first adopted father had left no void for his
+successor to fill.
+
+So again he shrugged his shoulders. And upon that evening, for the
+first time since Rainham's death, he dined, more solitary and more
+silent than ever, at his familiar table at Brodonowski's. He found
+that, after all, his nervous anticipation of inconvenient
+protestations of sympathy was not fulfilled; there were not many men
+who knew him more than by sight at Brodonowski's, and the few of his
+old associates who were there had the good sense to exhibit nothing
+extraordinary in their demeanour towards him. Only they were a
+little less wildly humorous than of old, and more forbearing in
+their sallies; the conversation died out for an instant as he made
+his way quickly, with the faintest sign of recognition, through
+their midst--and that was all.
+
+Rainham's death had affected some of them for a few days perhaps,
+but it had not the shock of the unexpected; they chiefly wondered
+that he had dragged his life through so cruel a winter. And his
+close alliance with Oswyn had, as a natural consequence, debarred
+him from a real intimacy with any of the other men, who, for the
+most part younger, cultivated different friendships and different
+pursuits.
+
+They had missed Oswyn during his seclusion of the last few weeks; he
+was so essentially the presiding, silent genius of the place--a man
+to be pointed out to new-comers, half ironically, as the greatest,
+most deeply injured, of them all; the possessor of a talent
+unapproached and unappreciated. They felt that his presence lent a
+distinction to the dingy resort which it otherwise frequently
+lacked: and he had come to be so far regarded as a permanent
+institution, of an almost official nature, that even on the coldest
+nights his chair by the fireside had remained untenanted.
+
+When the next morning came, Oswyn felt desperately inclined to break
+the promise which Mosenthal had, with some difficulty, exacted from
+him, and to keep far from Bond Street and the crowd who even then
+were assembling to cast their careless glances and light words at
+the work of his life; it was only the fear of the taint of
+cowardice, and a certain perversity, which induced him eventually to
+present himself within the gallery rather late in the afternoon.
+
+As he entered the room, looking about him with a kind of challenge,
+many eyes were turned upon him (for people go to private views not
+to see pictures--that is generally impossible--but to see and be
+seen of men), but few had any suspicion that this strange man, with
+the shabby, old-fashioned apparel, and expression half nervous, half
+defiant, was the painter whose pictures they were pretending to
+criticise.
+
+Very few of those present--hardly half a dozen perhaps--knew him
+even by sight; and while his evident disregard for social convention
+marked him, for the discerning observer, as a person of probably
+artistic distinction, the general conjecture set him down, not as a
+painter--he did not seem to be of that type--but as a man of
+letters--probably a maker of obscure verse.
+
+When he had mastered the first wild impulse which prompted him to
+tear his pictures down, to turn their faces to the wall--anything to
+hide them from this smiling, languid, well-dressed crowd--and
+resigned himself to observation, he saw that Mosenthal was beaming
+at him complacently, through the massive gold spectacles which
+adorned and modified the bridge of his compromising nose, from his
+seat behind the table, where information as to the prices of the
+exhibits could be obtained.
+
+There were exactly forty drawings and paintings to be seen upon the
+sparsely-covered walls, which had been draped for the occasion with
+coarsely-woven linen of a dull olive-green, and about half of these
+were drawings and studies, small in point of size, executed in chalk
+and pastels.
+
+The greater part of these represented ordinary scenes of London
+outdoor life--a deserted corner of Kensington Gardens, with tall
+soot-blackened trees lifting their stately tracery of dark branches
+into the sky; a reach of the wide, muddy river, with a gaunt bridge
+looming through the fog; a gin-palace at night time, with garish
+lamps shining out upon the wet streets and crouching beggars.
+
+Of the remainder, which included a few portraits and some
+imaginative subjects, the greater number were painted in oils, and
+the largest canvas would not have seemed out of place on the walls
+of an ordinary room.
+
+Oswyn smiled grimly as he noticed that the portrait of Margot, which
+he had begun for Rainham and finished for himself, was a
+considerable centre of attraction; there was quite a dense crowd in
+the vicinity of this canvas (it is true, it was near the tea-table),
+and it included two bishops, a duke, and an actress, of whom the
+last-named was certainly more stared at than the picture.
+
+It irritated him, in spite of his contempt for the throng, to see
+people standing, chatting, with their backs turned towards his
+creations; and when Mosenthal informed him in a triumphant
+stage-whisper, leaning across the table littered with catalogues,
+that nine of the pictures had already found purchasers, he was
+almost inclined to rebel, to refuse to ratify the sales.
+
+The only friendly face which he encountered during the afternoon was
+that of McAllister, who presently brought his congratulations and
+conspicuous presence to the corner to which Oswyn had betaken
+himself; and for a time he found himself listening, while the
+Scotchman enlightened him, somewhat against his will, as to the
+names and celebrity of the distinguished visitors whom he was
+supposed to be receiving.
+
+He was assured that the press notices could not fail to be
+favourable (he mentally promised himself that nothing should
+induce him to read a newspaper for at least a fortnight),
+and the flattering comments of Mr. This and Lady That were
+half-apologetically retailed for his presumed delectation.
+
+As his eyes wandered, with his attention, furtively round the room,
+they presently encountered, in their passage from group to group, a
+face which seemed vaguely familiar--the face of a woman, whom he
+certainly had never known, but whose beauty, he thought, was not
+appealing to his admiration for the first time.
+
+She was standing with her profile turned towards him, gazing gravely
+at his study of a pale figure, with beautiful eyes and an armful of
+wonderfully coloured poppies, which he called "Thanatos, the
+Peace-bearer."
+
+When she moved, presently, her gaze rested on him for a moment, with
+the faintest note of inquiry interrupting the smile with which she
+was listening to the sallies of her escort for the time being; the
+smile and glance revealed her more perfectly to Oswyn, and he was
+prepared to hear McAllister greet her as Mrs. Lightmark when, a few
+minutes later, she passed them on her way round the room.
+
+Eve had spent the week which followed the afternoon upon which her
+husband had stunned her with the news of Philip Rainham's death
+almost in solitude.
+
+Lightmark had been obliged to pay a hasty visit to Berlin, on
+business connected with an International Art Congress, and his wife
+at the last moment decided, somewhat to his relief, that she would
+not accompany him. A man of naturally quick perception, and with a
+certain vein of nervous alertness underlying his outer clothing of
+careless candour, he could not help feeling that when he was alone
+with his wife he was being watched, that traps were set for him--in
+short, that he was suspected. And not only when they were alone had
+he cause for alarm: in crowded rooms, at mammoth dinner-parties,
+and colossal assemblies he frequently became aware, by a sense even
+quicker than vision, that his wife's eyes were directed upon him
+from the farther side of the room, the opposite end of the
+dinner-table, with that wistful, childish expression in their
+depths, which, growing sterner and more critical of late, had ended
+by boring him.
+
+Before Rainham's death, Eve, in her private discussions of the
+situation, had generally concluded by dismissing the subject
+petulantly, with a summing-up only partially convincing, that
+everything would come right in the end; that in time that miserable
+scene would be forgotten or explained away; and that the old
+intimacy, of which it was at once so bitter and so pleasant to
+dream, would be restored.
+
+Her training--of which her mother was justly proud--had endowed her
+with a respect for social convention too great to allow her to think
+of rebelling against the existing order of things. She consoled
+herself by the reflection that at least she had committed no fault,
+and that no active discipline of penitence could justly be expected
+of her.
+
+Concerning the truth of Rainham's story she could not fail to
+harbour doubts; that her husband was concealing something was daily
+more plainly revealed to her.
+
+It was hard that she should suffer, but what could she do? At the
+bottom of her heart, in spite of the feeling of resentment which
+assailed her when--as it often did--the idea occurred to her that he
+had not exhibited towards her the perfect frankness which their old
+friendship demanded, she pitied Rainham. There were even times--such
+was her state of doubt--when she pitied her husband, and blamed
+herself for suspecting him of--she hardly owned what.
+
+But, most of all, she pitied herself. She felt that in any case she
+had been wronged, whether Philip's ill-told tale was true or false.
+
+But her pride enabled her to keep her doubts locked within her own
+heart, to present a smiling, if occasionally pale, face to the
+world, in whose doings she took so large a part, and even to deceive
+Mrs. Sylvester.
+
+And now Philip was dead! The severance, which she had persuaded
+herself was only temporary, was on a sudden rendered inexorably
+complete and eternal.
+
+The blow was a cruel one, and for a time it seemed to be succeeded
+by a kind of rebellious insensibility. Eve felt demoralized, and
+careless of the future; her frame of mind was precisely that of the
+man who is making his first hasty steps along the headlong road
+which is popularly spoken of as leading to the devil.
+
+Later she began to reproach herself. She reflected, with a kind of
+scornful wonder at her weakness, that she had allowed all chance of
+explanation to escape; the one man whom she could trust, who would
+surely give her a straightforward answer if she appealed to him by
+the memory of the old days, was beyond the reach of her questions,
+silent to eternity. Her former sorrow seemed trivial by comparison
+with this.
+
+On his return, Lightmark found his wife looking so pale and tired
+that he broke off in the middle of the story of his flattering
+reception at the German Court to express a suggestion for her
+benefit, that she had better go to Brighton or somewhere to recruit.
+She would never get through the season at this rate. Yes, she must
+certainly take a holiday, directly after the Academy Private View.
+
+Eve caught at the idea, only she did not wait for the Academy to
+open. She went for a fortnight, accompanied by an old servant of the
+family, who regarded her mistress's birth as quite a recent event,
+to Mrs. Sylvester's cottage in Norfolk.
+
+When Mrs. Lightmark came back to town her face was still pale, but
+her brow wore a serener air, and her eyes had lost their look of
+apprehension. The woman had arisen triumphant out of the ashes of
+her childhood, with a heart determined to know the truth, and to
+face it, however bitter it might prove to be. Meanwhile, she would
+not judge hastily.
+
+As she drove up Bond Street one day soon after her return to town,
+the advertisement of Oswyn's exhibition caught her eye. She would
+probably have remembered a name so uncommon if she had only heard it
+once, and, as it was, she had heard it several times, and associated
+with it, moreover, a certain reticence which could not fail to
+arouse a woman's curiosity.
+
+Later, when Mosenthal's card of invitation for the Private View
+arrived, she noted the day upon her list of engagements.
+
+On the morning of Oswyn's ordeal, Eve sent a message to her husband,
+who was engaged with a model in the studio, to notify to him her
+intention of taking the carriage into town later in the afternoon;
+to which he had returned a gallant reply, expressing a hope that, if
+it would not bore her too much, she would pick him up somewhere and
+drive him home. Where and when could he meet her? The reply, "At
+Mosenthal's at five o'clock," did not surprise him. He did not
+happen to have the vaguest idea as to what was the attraction of the
+day at that particular gallery. It might be Burmese landscapes, or
+portraits of parrots; it was all one to him. It was extremely
+decorous in his wife to affect picture-galleries, and Mosenthal's
+place was conveniently near to his favourite club.
+
+A few minutes before the appointed hour he made his way, from the
+new and alarmingly revolutionary club-house, where he had been
+indulging in afternoon tea in company with Felicia Dollond, to the
+gallery, outside which his horses were already waiting, and,
+perceiving Oswyn's name on the placards disposed on either side of
+the entrance, he felt only a momentary hesitation.
+
+Oswyn would probably not be there; and, after all, why should he not
+inspect the man's pictures?
+
+Before reasons had time to present themselves he had passed into the
+room, and had been deferentially welcomed and presented with a
+catalogue by the proprietor in person.
+
+The room was still crowded, and it was oppressively warm, with an
+atmosphere redolent of woollen and silken fabrics, like a milliner's
+shop on the day of a sale.
+
+At first he made no effort to join his wife, whom he discerned from
+afar talking to a pillar of the Church in gaiters and a
+broad-brimmed hat.
+
+He looked at the pictures whenever there was a break in the sequence
+of bows and greetings which had to be exchanged with two-thirds of
+the people in the room; and as he looked he was smitten with a quick
+thrill of admiration: he was still young enough to recognise the
+hand of the master. And in his admiration there was a trace of a
+frank envy, a certain unresentful humiliation--the feeling which he
+could remember to have experienced many times in the old days, when
+he put aside the sonnet he had just finished for some fashionable
+magazine, and took down from his limited bookshelf the little
+time-worn volume which contained the almost forgotten work of a poet
+whose name would have fallen strangely on the editorial ear.
+
+Before long there was a general departure, and Lightmark, flushed
+with the triumphs of a conversation in which, in the very centre of
+an admiring group of his antagonist's worshippers, he had
+successfully measured swords with a notorious wit, turned to look
+for his wife; and, for the first time, meeting Oswyn's eye,
+half-involuntarily advanced to greet him.
+
+"This is an unexpected honour," said Oswyn coldly, disregarding the
+proffered hand; "unexpected and unwelcome!"
+
+Then he would have turned away, leaving his contempt and hatred
+unspoken, but his passion was too strong.
+
+"Have you come to seek ideas for your next Academy picture," he
+continued quickly, with a sneer trembling on his lips, "or for the
+_Outcry_?"
+
+Lightmark grew a little pale, biting his lip, and frowning for a
+moment, before he assumed a desperate mask of good-humour.
+
+"Hang it, man!" he answered quickly, "be reasonable! Haven't you
+forgiven me yet? Though what you have to forgive---- I only want to
+congratulate you, to tell you that I admire your work--immensely."
+
+"I don't want your congratulations," interrupted the other hoarsely.
+"I might forget the wrong which, as you well know, you have done me;
+that is nothing! But have you forgotten your--your friend, Rainham?
+You had better go," he added, with a savage gesture. "Go! before I
+denounce you, proclaim you, you pitiful scoundrel!"
+
+The man's forced calm had given way to a quivering passion; his lips
+trembled under the stress of the words which thronged to them; and
+as he turned on his heel, with a glance eloquent of loathing, he did
+not notice that Eve was standing close behind her husband, with
+parted lips, and intent eyes gleaming out of a face as pale as his
+own.
+
+Lightmark recovered himself quickly, shrugging his shoulders as soon
+as the other was out of earshot. He glanced at his wife, who was
+following Oswyn with her eyes; he did not dare to ask, or even to
+think, what she might have heard.
+
+"The man's mad," he said lightly, "madder than ever!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+It was Margot who gave him the letter: Oswyn remembered that
+afterwards with a kind of superstition. She came to meet him,
+wearing an air of immense importance, when his quick step fell upon
+the bare wooden stairway which led to his rooms.
+
+"There's a letter for you," she said, nodding impressively, "a big
+letter, with a seal on it; and Mrs. Thomas had to write something on
+a piece of green paper before the postman would give it to her."
+
+Then she followed him into the twilight of the attic which was his
+studio, and watched him gravely while he lighted the gas and, in
+deference to her curiosity, broke the seal.
+
+The envelope contained a letter, and a considerable bundle of
+papers, folded small, and neatly tied together with red tape.
+
+When he had read the letter, he turned the package over with a sigh,
+reflectively eying it for some minutes, and then put it aside.
+
+Later, when Mrs. Thomas, his landlady, had carried the child away to
+bed, he took, the papers up again, and, after some hesitation,
+slowly untied the tape which encircled them.
+
+The letter was from Messrs. Furnival and Co., the firm of solicitors
+who had acted for Rainham, and were now representing Oswyn as his
+friend's sole executor.
+
+It contained a brief intimation that the grant of probate of the
+late Mr. Rainham's will had been duly extracted, and ended with a
+request that the executor would consider the inclosed bundle of
+documents, which appeared to be of a private nature, and decide
+whether they should be preserved or destroyed.
+
+When he had removed the tape, Oswyn noticed that a great many of the
+letters had the appearance of being in the same handwriting; these
+were tied up separately with a piece of narrow faded silk riband,
+and it was evident that they were arranged more or less in order of
+date; the writing in the case of the earliest letter being that of a
+child, while the most recent, dated less than a year ago, was a
+short note, an invitation, with the signature "Eve Lightmark."
+
+Oswyn contemplated the little bundle with an air of indecision,
+falling at last into a long reverie, his thoughts wandering from the
+letters to the child, the woman who had written them, the woman
+whose name his friend so rarely breathed, whose face he had seen for
+the first time, proud, and cold, and beautiful, that very afternoon.
+Did she, too, care? Would she guard her secret as jealously?
+
+Suddenly he frowned; the thought of Lightmark's effrontery recurred,
+breaking his contemplative calm and disturbing his speculations. He
+laid the papers aside without further investigation, and, after
+gazing for a few minutes vacantly out of the uncurtained window,
+rolled a fresh cigarette and went out into the night.
+
+Next morning he made an expedition to Lincoln's Inn Fields to see
+Messrs. Furnival and Co., taking the packet with him. The partner
+who had the matter in hand was engaged, and he was kept waiting for
+nearly half an hour, in a dusty room with an elaborately moulded
+ceiling, and a carved wooden chimney-piece and scrolled panelling of
+some beauty, both disfigured with thick layers of dingy brown paint.
+A fire had just been lighted, in deference to the unseasonable
+coldness of the June day, and the room was full of pungent smoke.
+
+As he waited his irritation increased. Lightmark's impertinent
+intrusion (such it appeared to him) and the scene which had ensued,
+had entirely aroused him from the state of indifference into which,
+when the incident occurred, he was beginning to relapse. The man was
+dangerous; a malign passion, a craving for vengeance, slept in him,
+born of his southern blood, and glancing out now and again at his
+eyes, like the fire which darts from the windows of a burning
+building.
+
+He wondered now, as he thought of the wrongs he had borne, as it
+seemed to him, so patiently; in Rainham's lifetime there had
+doubtless been reasons, but was he never to retaliate? Had not he
+considered other people enough? His forbearance struck him now as a
+kind of weakness, as something almost contemptible, to be thought of
+with a feeling akin to shame.
+
+Finally he was ushered up into Mr. Furnival's room, a pleasant
+apartment on the first floor, with windows looking out upon a
+charming oasis of grass and trees. The lawyer apologized for keeping
+him waiting, intimated delicately that he had a pressing appointment
+in five minutes' time, and expressed his sympathy with Oswyn's
+difficulty as to the letters.
+
+"It's quite a matter for you to decide," he said. "If you like to
+take the responsibility you may burn them forthwith, unread; or you
+may give them to me, to file with the other papers. But I should
+advise you to glance through the later letters, at all events. May I
+look at them? Thanks."
+
+Oswyn had given him the packet of letters, and he spread them out on
+the table at which he was sitting, methodically, in little heaps,
+clearing a space among the piles of drafts and abstracts which lay
+before him.
+
+"I think we may destroy these," said Oswyn, pointing to the little
+bundle tied up with riband. "I think I know what they are."
+
+"As you like," said Mr. Furnival; "they appear to be from a lady.
+Yes, I don't think you need read them."
+
+"And these," continued Oswyn. "They are all from Lady Garnett, and
+it is extremely unlikely that they can have any business reference."
+
+"That disposes of nearly all," said the lawyer cheerfully. "I may
+put them on the fire, then?"
+
+Oswyn bowed a grave assent, and Mr. Furnival dropped the little
+packets quickly into the hottest part of the fire.
+
+"Now, here is a letter with a very recent postmark," he continued.
+"A man's writing, too, I should say. Will you read this, while I go
+through the others? It looks like rather a long epistle."
+
+The handwriting seemed familiar to Oswyn, and his hand trembled
+slightly as he turned to the signature for corroboration. As he
+guessed, it was from Lightmark.
+
+"I think I had better read this," he said grimly, half to himself.
+
+He glanced quickly through the letter, and then read it a second
+time slowly, and while he was reading it his expression was such as
+to confirm the solicitor's previous opinion, that the man was a
+little bit mad.
+
+When he had finished his perusal (he thought at the time that he
+should never forget a single word of that disgraceful letter), Oswyn
+sat in silence for some minutes, intently watching Mr. Furnival's
+struggles with a large bundle of papers and a small black bag.
+
+The letter had, if such a thing were possible, increased his
+contempt for the writer; that the man was insincere (Oswyn would
+have used a far stronger term) he had been aware from the beginning;
+now he knew that he was a coward, a creature almost unworthy of his
+hatred.
+
+A quick thought struck him, and he smiled.
+
+"We won't burn this--at present, at any rate," he said quietly. "Is
+there anything else for me to read?"
+
+The lawyer shuffled the remaining papers together quickly.
+
+"I think not: these are chiefly bills which have since been paid.
+Will you keep that letter, or do you wish us to do anything about
+it?"
+
+Oswyn deliberated for a moment, with a curious expression flitting
+over his face, biting his lip and frowning slightly, as he gazed at
+the fireplace, where Rainham's long-cherished letters from Eve and
+Lady Garnett's delicate, witty compositions were represented by a
+little heap of wavering black ashes.
+
+The lawyer looked at his watch uneasily.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Oswyn quickly; "I needn't keep you any
+longer. Will you let me have an envelope? I dare say they can give
+me Mr. Sylvester's address downstairs--Mr. Charles Sylvester, the
+barrister?"
+
+"The new member, you mean, of course?" said the lawyer. "He has
+chambers in Paper Buildings, No. 11. Do you know him?"
+
+"I am going to send him this letter," said Oswyn briefly, folding it
+up and bestowing it in the envelope which Mr. Furnival had given
+him. "Thanks, no, I needn't trouble you to have it posted: I prefer
+to leave it at Mr. Sylvester's chambers myself."
+
+"He was a great friend of the late Mr. Rainham, as, of course, you
+know," said the lawyer, as they parted at the door. "Mr. Rainham
+introduced him to us when he was quite a young man--soon after he
+was called, in fact, and we gave him his first brief--the first of a
+good many! He's been one of our standing counsel for years.
+Good-day!"
+
+As he made his way towards the Temple, Oswyn smiled to himself
+rather savagely, tasting in anticipation the sweets of long-deferred
+revenge. The flame of his ancient discontent with the academical art
+of the day, which had been fed by his personal hatred of one
+particularly successful exponent of it, was fanned into fury. And,
+at the same time, as he proceeded, with short, hasty steps, amply
+armed for the vindication of his friend, in his grim fatalism he
+seemed to himself immensely the instrument of destiny, which had so
+given his enemy into his hands.
+
+He paused when he reached Fleet Street; entering the first
+public-house, at haphazard, to order six pennyworth of brandy, which
+he drank neat across the counter, with slow, appreciative sips, as
+he reminded himself that, the excellence of his ammunition
+notwithstanding, he was still without any definite plan of campaign.
+
+Would his luck desert him again? Would Sylvester be away, or refuse
+to see him? or, while receiving him, contrive by some sinuous legal
+device, adroitly to divert his attack? The mere contemplation of any
+such frustration dulled him strangely.
+
+He called for his glass to be replenished, and emptied it sharply:
+and immediately the generous spirit moved his pulse, rebuked him for
+his depression, sent him briskly on on his way.
+
+As he lifted the ponderous knocker upon Sylvester's door, he
+remembered vividly the only other occasion upon which he had visited
+those chambers. With the member for Mallow, too, indiscreet busybody
+that he was, had he not a reckoning to settle? The choice of him as
+an instrument of his punishment, which, if it was primarily directed
+against another, should not leave him wholly unscathed, gave a zest
+to his malice, and increased firmness to his manner, as he curtly
+ordered the clerk to take in his card.
+
+"Is it an appointment?" this youth had asked dubiously, "because if
+it isn't----"
+
+"Mr. Sylvester will see me," said Oswyn with irritation, "if you
+will have the goodness to do as you are told, and give him my name."
+
+At which the youth had smiled loftily and retired, only to return
+five minutes later with an air of greater humility and information
+that the legislator was disengaged.
+
+Charles looked up at him from the table at which he was sitting,
+with an open volume of Hansard before him, coldly waving him to a
+chair--an offer which Oswyn, mentally damning his superciliousness,
+ignored.
+
+"My business is very brief," he said quickly; "I can explain it
+standing."
+
+"I understand that it is urgent, Mr.--Mr. Oswyn. Otherwise, you
+know, I am a busy man."
+
+"You mean that my call is inconvenient? I can quite imagine it. I
+should hardly have troubled you if you had not once taken the
+trouble to send for me--you, perhaps, have forgotten the occurrence;
+that seemed to give me a sort of right, a claim on your attention."
+
+"I recognised it," said Charles gravely, in a tone which implied
+that, had he not given this nicety the benefit of his liberal
+consideration, the intruder would never have penetrated so far.
+"Since that is agreed, may I ask you to explain your business as
+expeditiously as possible?"
+
+Oswyn smiled with some irony; and Sylvester suppressed a little
+shudder, reflecting that the man's uncouthness almost transgressed
+the bounds of decency.
+
+"I can quote your own words on a previous occasion: it concerns the
+honour of a friend--the honour of your family, if you like it
+better."
+
+Sylvester shut his volume sharply, glanced up at the other with
+suppressed irritation.
+
+"That is not a matter I can discuss with you," he said at last.
+
+"I simply intend you to read," went on Oswyn calmly, "a letter which
+your brother-in-law wrote to my friend, Philip Rainham, a few weeks
+before his death."
+
+Charles rose from his chair quickly, avoiding the other's face.
+
+"I regret that I can't assist you," he said haughtily; "I have no
+interest whatever in the affairs of the late Mr. Rainham, and I must
+decline to read your letter."
+
+He glanced significantly at the door, not suppressing a slight yawn;
+it was incredible how this repulsive little artist, with his
+indelicate propositions, bored him.
+
+But Oswyn ignored his gesture; simply laid the missive in question
+on the table; then he glanced casually at his watch.
+
+"I can't compel you to read this letter," he said in the same
+studiously calm voice. "I warn you that your honour is gravely
+interested in its contents, and I will give you five minutes in
+which to decide. If you still persist in your determination, I have
+no course left but to send copies of it to some of Rainham's most
+intimate friends, and to your sister, Mrs. Lightmark."
+
+He had his watch in one hand, but his gaze, curiously ironical,
+followed the direction of Charles's irresolute eyes, and the five
+minutes had not elapsed before he realized--and a touch of triumph
+mingled with his immense contempt of the man and his pompous
+unreality--that Charles's resolution had succumbed.
+
+He stretched out his hand for the letter, unfolded it deliberately,
+and read it once, twice, three times, with a judicial slowness,
+which the other, who was now curiously moved, found exasperating.
+
+When at last he looked up at Oswyn he shaded his eyes with one hand,
+but his face remained for the rest imperturbable and expressionless.
+The painter saw that his discretion was larger than he had imagined.
+
+If the reading had been disagreeably illuminative--and Oswyn
+believed that under his surface composure he concealed, at least, a
+terrible wound to his pride--he was not going to allow this
+impression to appear.
+
+"I might suggest that this document is a forgery," he said after a
+moment.
+
+Oswyn indulged in a little, harsh laugh, shrugging his shoulders.
+
+"That would be too fatuous, Mr. Sylvester."
+
+"I might suggest it," went on Charles slowly. "Perhaps, then, you
+will be surprised when I tell you that I believe it to be genuine.
+May I ask, Mr. Oswyn, why you move in this matter?"
+
+"As Rainham's friend," said Oswyn quickly, "I intend to expose the
+miserable calumny which clouded his last days."
+
+"A public scandal would be greatly to be deplored," Charles hazarded
+inconsequently, in the tone of a man who argued with himself.
+
+Oswyn made as if he would have taken up the letter with a gesture of
+sudden impatience; but Charles intercepted him quickly, and his
+voice had a grave simplicity in it which arrested the other's
+attention.
+
+"Don't mistake me, Mr. Oswyn; I have not the least desire or
+intention to suppress this document. I must expect you to judge me
+harshly; but you will surely see that my honour is as deeply
+concerned in the redressing of Mr. Rainham's reputation as anyone's
+can be, only I am naturally desirous of sparing my--of sparing the
+innocent persons who are unfortunately mixed up in the affair
+unnecessary pain, the scandal of publicity."
+
+"There are certain persons who must absolutely know the truth," said
+Oswyn bluntly.
+
+"If I pledge you my word that the persons whom you mean shall be
+immediately enlightened, will you leave me to act alone?"
+
+The other was silent for a moment revolving the proposition, half
+surprised at the unwonted humility of the barrister's eagerness. At
+last he said, with a short, ambiguous laugh:
+
+"I will leave it in your hands, Mr. Sylvester."
+
+He underwent a momentary repentance of his own readiness when he was
+in the street, and had turned his face to Soho again; it seemed
+almost childishly trusting. But presently, remembering he knew not
+what shade of curious sternness in Sylvester's manner, he decided
+that he had done wisely--it was on some such result as this that he
+had counted in his coming--and that the score, stupendous as it was,
+would be accurately settled.
+
+For a long while, after his unwelcome visitor had departed, Charles
+sat silent and buried in deep thought.
+
+From time to time he glanced vaguely at the letter which Oswyn had
+abandoned, and he wondered--but quite inconsequently, and with no
+heart to make the experiment--whether any further perusal of those
+disgraceful lines could explain or palliate the blunt obloquy of the
+writer's conduct. His concise, legal habit of mind forbade him to
+cherish any false illusions.
+
+Lightmark, writing in an hour of intimate excitement, when the
+burden of his friend's sacrifice seemed for a fleeting moment more
+intolerable than the wrench of explanation with his wife, had too
+effectually compromised himself. He had cringed, procrastinated,
+promised; had been abject, hypocritical, explicit.
+
+It seemed to Sylvester, in the first flush of his honourable
+disgust, that there was no generous restitution which the man had
+not promised, no craven meanness to which he had not amply
+confessed.
+
+He dropped his correct head upon his hands with something like a
+moan, as he contrasted the ironical silence which had been Rainham's
+only answer to this effusion--a silence which had since been
+irrevocably sealed. He had never before been so disheartened, had
+never seemed so intimately associated with disgrace.
+
+Even the abortive ending of his passion--he knew that this was
+deep-seated and genuine, although its outward expression had been
+formal and cold--seemed a tolerable experience in comparison.
+
+But this was dishonour absolute, and dishonour which could never be
+perfectly atoned.
+
+Had not he in his personal antipathy to Philip Rainham--the tide of
+that ancient hostility surged over him again even while he vowed
+sternly to make the fullest amends--had he not seized with indecent
+eagerness upon any pretext or occasion to justify his dislike?
+
+He had, at least, assisted unjustly to destroy Rainham's reputation,
+giving his adherence to the vainest of vain lies; and however
+zealous he might be in destroying this elaborate structure which he
+had helped to build, however successful the disagreeable task of
+enlightening his sister and the maligned man's most interested
+friends might prove, the reproach upon his own foresight would
+remain.
+
+It was notable that, in the somewhat hard integrity of his
+character, he did not for a moment seek to persuade himself, as a
+man of greater sympathy might have done, that Eve was a person to
+whom the truth could legitimately be spared.
+
+How she would suffer it, and whither her indignation might lead her,
+he did not care to inquire; these were matters with which henceforth
+he should decline to meddle. His part would be done when he had
+given her the simple information that was her due--that they had
+made a great mistake; that her husband was not to be trusted.
+
+He tried to prepare the few set phrases in which the intelligence
+would be couched, but found none that were satisfactory. The effort
+appeared more and more stupendous as the afternoon advanced, until
+at last, with astonishment at his weakness which refused to be
+analysed, he recognised that, after all, it was not possible. It was
+news which he could not give to his sister with his own lips.
+
+Mary Masters as a possible mediator suddenly occurred to him. He
+recognised by some occult instinct that she was one of the persons
+for whom Oswyn had stipulated, to whom restitution was due, and at
+once he resolved to appeal to her.
+
+He reminded himself that the Lightmarks were entertaining that
+evening on a scale of quite exceptional grandeur, that he had a card
+for their fancy-dress ball, from which Lady Garnett and her niece
+would hardly be absentees. If he could see the girl beforehand, she
+would doubtless find the time and occasion to say what was
+necessary.
+
+He had recovered his composure when, at no considerable interval
+after the formation of this resolve, he was ushered into Lady
+Garnett's drawing-room. It was his first appearance there since the
+rejection of his suit (he had not had the courage to renew it,
+although he was by no means prepared to admit that it was hopeless),
+and in the slight embarrassment which this recollection caused him
+he hardly regretted the presence of a second visitor, although his
+identification as a certain Lord Overstock, whom he believed to be
+opposed to him in more ways than in his political views (he was a
+notorious Tory), was not made without a jealous pang. He greeted
+Mary, however, without undue formality, and went over to Lady
+Garnett.
+
+The old lady glanced up at him rather listlessly. She was growing
+deaf, or feigned deafness. He said to himself that perhaps she was
+much older than they knew--was growing tired. Her _persiflage_, which
+Charles had never much appreciated, was less frequent than of old,
+and she no longer poured out her witticisms with the placid
+sweetness of a person offering you _bonbons_. There were sentences in
+her talk--it was when she spoke of the couple opposite them, who
+were conveniently out of ear-shot--which the barrister found
+deliberately malignant.
+
+"You mean that it is settled?" she asked, affecting to misunderstand
+some trivial remark. "Ah, no, but it will arrange itself--it is
+coming. You think she will make an admirable duchess? She has
+sometimes quite the grand air. Have you not found that out? You know
+his father is very old; he cannot in reason live much longer. And
+such estates! Personally, too, the nicest of boys, and as proper as
+if he had something to gain by it. And yet, in England, a Duke can
+do almost anything and be respected. Ah, Mr. Sylvester, you did not
+use your opportunity!"
+
+"I want one now," he said rather coldly, "of saying two words to
+Miss Masters."
+
+She just raised her delicate eyebrows.
+
+"Will it be very useful?"
+
+Charles flushed slightly, then he frowned.
+
+"It has nothing to do with myself. I have some news she should hear.
+Perhaps you yourself----"
+
+She interrupted him with a little mirthless laugh.
+
+"I will not hear anything serious, and you look to me very serious.
+I am old enough to have promised never again to be serious in my
+life."
+
+She submitted, however, to listen to him, seeing that his weighty
+confidences would not be brooked; and when he had finished--he said
+what he had to say in very few words--she glanced up at him with the
+same air of impenetrable indifference.
+
+"Come!" she said, "what does it matter to me that you acted in
+exceedingly bad taste, and repent it? It made no difference to me--I
+am not the _police des moeurs_. If I were you, I would hold my tongue."
+
+Then she added, as he glanced at her with evident mystification,
+shrugging her shoulders:
+
+"When one is dead, Mr. Sylvester, what does it matter?"
+
+He turned away rather impatiently, his eyes following the fine lines
+of Mary's face, which he saw in profile.
+
+He noticed that she talked with animation, and that Lord Overstock's
+expression was frankly admiring. At last the old lady said:
+
+"But, yes; you must tell Mary--by all means. To her it will mean
+much. See, the Marquis is going; if you wish I will leave you alone
+together."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+"Now, isn't it a pretty dance?" murmured Mrs. Dollond rapturously,
+as she sank into a low chair in a corner secure from the traffic of
+the kaleidoscopic crowd which had invaded Mrs. Lightmark's
+drawing-room, and opened her painted fan with a little sigh intended
+to express her beatitude.
+
+Colonel Lightmark, to whom Mrs. Dollond addressed this complimentary
+query (which, after all, was more of an assertion or challenge, in
+that it took its answer for granted), was arrayed in the brilliant
+scarlet and silver of the regiment which had once the honour of
+calling him Colonel; his tunic was so tight that sitting down was
+almost an impossibility for him, and Mrs. Dollond, who looked
+charming in her powder and brocade, could not help wondering whether
+any mortal buttons could stand the strain; and, on the other hand,
+the dimensions of his patent leather boots were such that standing,
+for a man of his weight, involved a torture which it was hard to
+conceal. And yet the veteran was happy--he was positively radiant.
+He felt that his nephew's success in the world of Art and of Society
+considerably enhanced his own importance; he was not ashamed to owe
+a portion of his brilliance to borrowed light--and tonight one could
+not count the celebrities on the fingers of both hands.
+
+The old hero-worshipper gazed complacently at the little
+ever-shifting crowd which surrounded his nephew and his niece (so he
+called her) at their post near the doorway, and he listened to Mrs.
+Dollond's sparkling sallies with a blissful ignorance of her secret
+ambition in the direction of a partner who would make her dance, and
+for whose edification she would be able to liken the Colonel's
+warlike figure to a newly-boiled lobster, or a ripe tomato.
+
+"Regular flower-show, isn't it?" he suggested, naïvely reinforcing
+his simile. "I don't know what the dickens they're all meant
+for, but a good many of them seem to have escaped from the
+Lyceum--Juliets, and Portias, and Shylocks, and so forth."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Dollond. "I think the Shylocks must be
+picture-dealers, you know. But their conversation isn't very
+Shakespearian, is it? I heard Hamlet say, just now, that the floor
+was too perfect for anything, and Ophelia--she was dancing with a
+Pierrot _incroyable_--told her partner that she adored waltzing to a
+string band!"
+
+They both laughed, the Colonel shortly and boisterously, Mrs.
+Dollond in a manner which suggested careful study before a
+looking-glass, with an effect of dimples and of flashing teeth.
+
+"What wicked things you say, Colonel Lightmark," she added demurely.
+"Who is that stately person in the dark figured silk, with a
+cinque-cento ruff? Isn't it Lady Garnett's niece?"
+
+"Yes, that's Miss Masters," said the Colonel, "and I suppose that's
+Lady Garnett with her. I don't think I've ever met Lady Garnett,
+though I've often heard of her. What is her dress--whom is she
+intended to represent? I don't see how the dickens one's expected to
+know, but you're so clever."
+
+"Oh, she's dressed as--as Lady Garnett! What a lot of people--_real_
+people, you know--there are here to-night! Dear me, there's the
+music again already. I believe I've got to dance this time. I do
+hope my partner's dress won't clash with mine too awfully. That's
+the worst of fancy dress balls; they really ought to be
+stage-managed by a painter, and the period ought to be limited.
+One's never safe. Our dance, Mr. Copal? Number six? Yes, I think it
+must be! A polka? Then we'll waltz!"
+
+And the Colonel, who was not a dancing man, was left in not
+unwelcome solitude to reflect somewhat ponderously on the advantages
+of possessing a nephew and niece young enough, brilliant enough, and
+rich enough--though that was partly _his_ affair--to cultivate the
+very pink and perfection of smart society. He regarded Dick in the
+light of a profitable investment.
+
+When the young people, so to speak, came to the rescue of the
+avuncular hulk, it was already beginning to drift into the corner of
+the harbour devoted to derelicts.
+
+The friends who had developed about his path in such flattering
+numbers when he came home from India, and retired, with a
+newly-acquired fortune and a vague halo of military distinction
+about his person, into the ranks of the half-paid, were beginning to
+find him rather old and, frankly, a considerable bore; but the
+timely benevolence which he had extended to his nephew was, it
+appeared, to have its reward in this world in the shape of a kind of
+reflected rejuvenescence, a temporary respite from the limbo of (how
+he hated the word!) fogeydom.
+
+When Dick married, his uncle was already settling down in a narrow
+groove among the people of yesterday; now he felt that he had once
+more established his foothold among the people of to-day.
+
+Presently he noticed that Lady Dulminster had arrived, and he made
+his way across the room to meet her with a quite youthful
+bashfulness, cannoning apologetically against Romeos and
+Marguerites, hoping that she would like his uniform.
+
+There was one person, at least, in the room who made no attempt to
+assure herself that she was enjoying the vivid gaiety of these
+parti-coloured revels.
+
+Mary Masters, when she had time for solitary thought, found that the
+atmosphere of the charming room was full of mockery. For her, the
+passionate vibrations of the strained, incessant strings seemed to
+breathe the wild complaint of lost souls; the multitudinous tread of
+gliding feet, the lingering sweep of silken skirts, the faint, sweet
+perfume of exotic flowers, all had a new and strange significance;
+the effect of an orchestral fugue wearily repeating the expression
+of a frenzied heartlessness, a great unrest.
+
+The girl was completely unstrung. Since Charles had brought her
+news, which, after all, had been merely a corroboration, her nerves
+had played her false; the balance of her mind was thrown out of
+poise; and the fact that she was there at all seemed only a part of
+her failing, an additional proof of her moral collapse.
+
+Seated on a low ottoman, in a little recess among the tall palms and
+tree-ferns, which lined the passage leading from the ball-room to
+the studio, she was startled presently from her reverie by Mrs.
+Lightmark, who confronted her, a dainty figure in the pale rose
+colour and apple-green of one of Watteau's most unpractical
+shepherdesses.
+
+"Not dancing, Mary!" she protested, smiling a little languidly.
+"What does it mean? Why are you sitting in stately solitude with
+such an evident contempt for our frivolity?"
+
+"Frivolity!" echoed Miss Masters. "I _have_ been dancing, this last
+waltz, with Lord Overstock. I have sent him to find my fan. I told
+him exactly where to look, but I suppose he can't discover it. He's
+not very clever, you know!"
+
+"Poor Lord Overstock! I hope he won't find it just yet and come to
+turn me out of his seat. I'm _so_ tired of standing, of introducing
+men whose names I never knew to girls whose names I have forgotten,
+and of trying to avoid introducing the same people twice over. It's
+so difficult to recognize people in their powder and patches!"
+
+"Yes," said Mary slowly, with a kind of inward resentment which she
+could not subdue, although she felt that it was unreasonable, "I
+almost wonder that you recognised me."
+
+Eve glanced at her, struck by her tone, trying to read her
+expression in the dim light, a shadow of bewilderment passing over
+her own face and for a moment lowering the brilliancy of her eyes.
+Then she smiled again, dismissing her thought with a little laugh
+which broke off abruptly.
+
+"One so soon forgets!" the other added, with an intention in her
+voice, an involuntary betrayal which she almost immediately
+regretted.
+
+"Forgets!"
+
+Eve caught up the word eagerly, almost passionately, her voice
+falling into a lower key.
+
+"Forget! Forgive and forget!" repeated Mary quickly and recklessly,
+letting her eyes wander from her own clasped hands to Eve's bouquet
+of delicate, scentless fritillaries, which lay neglected where it
+had fallen on the floor between their feet. "How easy it sounds!--is
+perhaps--and yet--I have not so much to forget--or to be forgiven!"
+
+The last words were almost whispered, but for Eve's imagination,
+poised on tiptoe like a hunted creature blindly listening for the
+approach of the Pursuer, they were full of suggestion, of
+denunciation.
+
+She remembered now, with a swiftly banished pang of jealousy, that
+this girl had loved him.
+
+Her thought sped back to a summer evening nearly a year ago, when it
+had seemed to her that she had surprised her friend's secret.
+
+"What do you mean, Mary?" she demanded courageously. "What have I to
+be forgiven? Don't despise me; don't, for Heaven's sake, don't play
+with me! I am all in the dark! Are you accusing me? Do you think
+because I say nothing that I have forgotten--that I can forget? Is
+it something about--him?"
+
+Mary cast a rapid glance at her.
+
+"Are you afraid of his name, then?"
+
+Eve dropped her hands despairingly.
+
+"Ah, you do! You _are_ playing with me! About Philip Rainham, then!
+For Heaven's sake speak! Do you know what I only guess--that he was
+innocent? For God's sake say it!"
+
+It was Mary's turn to look bewildered, to feel penitent. She began
+to recognise that there were greater depths in Eve's nature than she
+had suspected, that her indifference might, after all, prove to have
+been merely a mask.
+
+"You guess--innocent--don't you know, then?"
+
+"Nothing, nothing! I only suspect--believe! I have been groping
+alone in the darkness--and yet I _do_ know! He was innocent--he played
+a part?"
+
+"Yes," said Mary gently; "he sacrificed himself, for another!"
+
+"He sacrificed himself--for me. Ah, say it! say it!"
+
+Mary was greatly puzzled and at the same time moved--filled with a
+supreme compassion for this woman who was yet such a child, so
+dainty and frail a thing to confront the deadly knowledge that she
+had made a shipwreck of a life, of lives.
+
+And yet, was there not also a ring of exultation, a challenge in her
+last words?
+
+At least, her sorrow was ennobled. She was invested with a sombre
+glory, as one who had inspired a rare and perfect devotion.
+
+And, after all, had she not already been considered enough?
+
+A silence ensued, during which Eve seemed to be wrapped in steadfast
+thought.
+
+She grew calmer, picking up her bouquet, and sedulously arranging
+its disordered foliage; while Lord Overstock, who had arrived with
+Mary's fan, poured forth elaborate apologies, protesting that she
+must give him another dance--the second extra--to make up for the
+time he had lost.
+
+Already the music was beginning for the next dance, and people
+passed in couples, laughing and talking gaily, a motley procession,
+on their way into the ball-room.
+
+"I thought your brother would have told you," said Mary softly,
+bending over her programme and gathering her skirts together with a
+suggestion of departure.
+
+"Charles? He was always prejudiced against him--always his enemy!"
+
+"That is why; he is very just, very conscientious. He told me this
+afternoon."
+
+Mary's voice sank a little lower. She was standing now. She could
+see her prospective partner looking for her. She wondered vaguely
+whether Eve accepted the alternative, whether she realized that, to
+prove Philip innocent, was to establish her husband's guilt, his
+original wrong-doing, and subsequent cowardice.
+
+"But--Charles! How did he know? Does he believe it? Who told him?"
+
+Mary had gently disengaged her arm from Eve's restraining hand. She
+stepped back for an instant, excusing herself to her expectant
+cavalier.
+
+"One of Philip's friends told him to-day--proved it to him, he says.
+It was a Mr. Oswyn."
+
+A minute later Mary found herself in the ball-room, making heroic
+efforts to divide her entire attention impartially between the
+strains of the band and the remarks of her partner.
+
+She was afraid to pass in review the conduct of those few minutes
+which had seemed so long. Had it really all occurred in the interval
+between two waltzes?
+
+For the present she drew a mental curtain over the scene. She lacked
+the courage to gaze upon her handiwork, although she was not without
+a hopeful instinct that, when she criticised it in sober daylight,
+she would even approve of what she had done. Her determination did
+not, however, carry her further than the middle of the dance.
+
+The room was now crowded to repletion, and she readily fell in with
+her partner's suggestion that they should take a turn in the cooler
+atmosphere of the garden; and as she passed the threshold, a rapid,
+retrospective glance informed her that Eve was once more playing her
+arduous part of hostess.
+
+Never had actress more anxiously awaited the fall of the curtain
+upon her scene. Her husband, in the gallant russet of a falconer,
+was dancing now with Mrs. Dollond: she could hear his frequent
+laughter, and, though she turned her eyes away, see him bending over
+his partner to catch the words, trivial enough no doubt, which she
+seemed to whisper with such an air of confidence. But, though she
+had heard him address Mrs. Dollond by her Christian name, she did
+not pay him the compliment of being jealous: the time for that had
+passed. The account which she had to demand of him related to a
+matter far more serious than the most flagrant of flirtations--she
+only longed to confront him, to tear from him a confession, not so
+much with a view to humiliate him as to enlighten herself, and to
+force him to make the only reparation in his power.
+
+When the music had ceased, and the measured tread of feet lapsed
+into the confusion of independent wanderings, Eve turned to find her
+husband close behind her, and Mrs. Dollond firing off a neat little
+speech of congratulation, panting a little, and making play with her
+elaborate fan.
+
+She was quick to seize the opportunity for which she had waited so
+eagerly; with a few words of smiling apology to Mrs. Dollond and the
+others who were gathered round her, she intimated to her husband
+that she wished him to come with her, to attend to something: she
+assumed a playful air of mystery.
+
+"Oh, you must go!" said Mrs. Dollond, "your wife is planning some
+delightful surprise for us: I can see it in her eyes! Though, what
+one could want more----"
+
+The music began again, and the couples took their places for the
+Lancers: there was to be a Shakespearian set, and another of
+Waverley notabilities.
+
+Under cover of the discussion and confusion which this scheme
+involved, Eve withdrew, leading the way into the room which they
+called the library, and which was full of superfluous furniture,
+removed from the drawing-room to make space for the dancers. Her
+husband followed, lifting his eyebrows, with a chivalrous but not
+wholly successful attempt to disguise his impatience.
+
+When he had closed the door, Eve turned suddenly and confronted him,
+interrupting the question which was on his lips. He noticed, with a
+quick apprehension, that she was very pale, that the smile which she
+had worn for her guests had given place to an expression even more
+ominous than her pallor and the trembling of her lips.
+
+"Why have I brought you here?" she echoed. "I don't know, I might
+have asked you before them all--perhaps you would have preferred
+that! But I won't keep you long. The truth! That is all I want!"
+
+He frowned, with a vicious movement of his lips: then meeting her
+gaze, made an awkward effort to seem at ease.
+
+"My dear child!" he said, stepping back and leaning his back against
+the door, "what melodrama! The truth! what truth?"
+
+"How often you must have withheld it from me, to ask like that! The
+truth about Philip Rainham, and that woman: that is what I ask!"
+
+Lightmark exclaimed petulantly at this:
+
+"Haven't we discussed it all before? Haven't you questioned me
+beyond all limits? Haven't you said that you believed me? And what a
+time----"
+
+"Yes, I have asked you before. Is it my fault that you have lied? Is
+it my fault that you have made it possible for--for someone else to
+prove to me, to-night, that you have deceived me? The time is not of
+my making. But now, I must have the truth; it is the only
+reparation, the last thing I shall ask of you!"
+
+"You must be mad!" he stammered, his self-possession deserting him;
+"you don't know--you have no right to speak to me like this. You
+don't understand these things; you must let me judge for you----"
+
+"The only thing I understand clearly is that you have blackened
+another man's--your friend's--memory. Isn't that enough? Can you
+deny that you have allowed him to bear your shame? I know now that
+he was innocent; I insist that you shall tell me the rest!"
+
+"The rest!" he repeated impatiently, shifting his attitude. "I won't
+submit to this cross-examination! I have explained it all before; I
+decline to say any more!"
+
+"Then you cling to your lie?"
+
+"Lie? Pray, don't be so sensational; you talk like the heroine of a
+fifth-rate drama! Who has put such a mad idea into your head? Let me
+warn you that there are limits to my patience!"
+
+"I will tell you, if you will come with me and deny it to his
+face--if you will refute his proofs."
+
+"Proofs! You have no right to ask such a thing! I tell you, I have
+acted for the best. Why should you believe the first comer rather
+than me?"
+
+"Why? You can ask why!" she interposed.
+
+"Let me beg of you to come back with me to our guests; we shall be
+missed--people will talk!"
+
+Eve shrugged her shoulders defiantly, ironically.
+
+"You prevaricate; you won't, you can't be candid! There is only one
+other man who can tell me the truth--you make it necessary, I must
+go to him."
+
+Lightmark clenched his hand viciously upon the handle of the door.
+
+"I decline to discuss this damnable folly any longer; if you won't
+come with me I shall go alone; I shall say that you are ill--really,
+I think you must be!"
+
+"Go by all means!" she replied indifferently, "but tell me first,
+where can I find Mr. Oswyn?"
+
+He paused, gazing at her blankly.
+
+"Oswyn?"
+
+"Yes. The man who is not afraid to denounce you. If you won't
+enlighten me, if you won't clear your--your friend's memory--it may
+be at the expense of your own--perhaps he will."
+
+"Oswyn!" he stammered, "Oswyn!"
+
+"His address!" she demanded quickly. "Please understand that for the
+future I am independent; I will go to him at once! If you won't give
+me his address, if---- Would you prefer that I should ask my brother
+for it? That is my alternative!"
+
+Lightmark found something very disconcerting in his wife's steadfast
+gaze, in the uncompromising calm, the quiet passion of her
+demeanour; his one desire was to put an end to this scene, which
+oppressed him as a nightmare, before he should entirely lose all
+power of self-control.
+
+He felt himself almost incapable of thought, unable to weigh the
+meaning of her words, her threats; the readiness of resource which
+served him so deftly in little things had deserted him now, as it
+invariably did in the face of a real emergency.
+
+If he could temporize, he might be able to arrive at something more
+like a plan of action, to concentrate his efforts in one direction.
+
+He realized that if his wife fulfilled her threat, which was the
+more alarming in that it was not an angry one, but had every
+appearance of being backed by deliberate intention--if she appealed
+to her brother, whose moral principles he estimated more highly than
+his tact or worldly wisdom--there appeared to be every prospect of
+an aggravated scandal. For if Charles Sylvester (who was
+unfortunately among the revellers) declined to furnish his sister
+with Oswyn's address, was it not certain that she would apply
+elsewhere? And, after all, might not Oswyn adhere to the silence
+which he had so long maintained?
+
+He reasoned quickly and indeterminately, vaguely skimming the
+surface of many ominous probabilities and finding no hopeful
+resting-place for conjecture, finally allowing a little desperate
+gesture to escape him.
+
+The music had stopped amid the desultory clapping of hands, and he
+could hear people passing outside on their way into the garden. He
+turned the handle slowly without opening the door.
+
+"Be reasonable!" he appealed. "There is still time; let us go into
+the ballroom; let us forget this folly!"
+
+"You may go," she replied contemptuously; "I have no wish to detain
+you--far from it. But if you leave me without giving me Mr. Oswyn's
+address I shall ask Charles for it, and if Charles----"
+
+Her husband interrupted her savagely.
+
+"Oh, if you are bent on making a fool of yourself, I suppose I can't
+prevent you. The man lives at 61, Frith Street. Now you have it. I
+wash my hands of the whole affair."
+
+He opened the door, and she passed out gravely before him, holding
+her bouquet to her down-turned face; and then they parted tacitly,
+the husband turning towards the door which led into the garden, the
+wife making her way into the ball-room, and thence towards the
+studio.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+In the empty studio, from which, for one night, most of her
+husband's impedimenta had been removed to allow place for the long
+supper-table, which glistened faintly in the pale electric light,
+she paused only long enough to wrap her fantastic person in the dark
+cloak which she had caught up on her way.
+
+Then she let herself out quietly by the private door into the road.
+And she stood still a moment, blotted against the shadows,
+hesitating, vaguely considering her next step.
+
+The honey-coloured moon, casting its strange, silken glamour over
+the white house, over the black outline of the trees in the garden,
+spangled here and there with Japanese lanterns, gave an air of
+immense unreality to the scene; and the tremulous notes of the
+violins, which floated faintly down to her from the half-opened
+windows of the ball-room, only heightened this effect, seeming just
+then to be no more than the music of moonbeams to which the fairies
+dance.
+
+For a moment a sudden weakness and timidity overcame her. In a world
+so transcendently unreal--had not she just seen her happiness become
+the very dream of a shadow?--was it not the merest futility to take
+a step so definite, to be passionate or intense? Better rather to
+rest for a little in this vague world of half-lights into which she
+had stepped, under the cooling stars, and then to return and take up
+one's old place in the masque.
+
+But her fantasy passed. In the distance two glowing orbs of a hansom
+came slowly towards her, and her purpose grew suddenly very strong.
+
+The man reined in his horse with an inquiring glance at the hooded
+figure on the pavement, seeking a fare. And it was without
+hesitation that she engaged him, giving him the number of Oswyn's
+house in Frith Street, Soho, in her calm, well-bred voice, and
+bidding him be quick.
+
+But the horse was incapable--tired, perhaps (she recalled the fact
+long afterwards, and the very shape and colour of the bony,
+ill-groomed animal, as one remembers trivial details upon occasions
+of great import); and after a while she resigned herself to a
+tedious drive.
+
+As they rattled along confusedly through the crowded streets she
+caught from time to time the reflection of her own face in the two
+little mirrors at each side, and wondered to find herself the same.
+For she did not deceive herself, nor undervalue the crushing force
+of the blow which she had received.
+
+To her husband, when she turned scornfully from his clumsy
+evasions--for a moment, perhaps, to herself--she had justified the
+singular course she was taking by an overwhelming necessity of
+immediately facing the truth, in which, perhaps, there still lurked
+the dim possibility of explanation whereby her husband's vileness
+might find the shadow of an excuse.
+
+But with further reflection--and she was reflecting with passionate
+intensity--this little glow-worm of hope expired. The truth! She
+knew it already--had known before, almost instinctively--that Philip
+Rainham's justification could only be the warrant of her husband's
+guilt; no corroboration of Oswyn's could make that dreary fact any
+plainer than it was already.
+
+No, it was hardly the truth which she desired so much as an act of
+tardy expiation which she would make. For with the bitterness of her
+conviction that, for all her wealth, and her beauty, and her youth,
+she had, none the less, irretrievably thrown away her life, there
+mingled an immense contrition at having been so blind and hard, so
+culpably unjust to the most generous of men, who had deliberately
+effaced himself for her good.
+
+And the exceeding bitterness of her self-reproach, which alone saved
+her composure, forbidding the mockery of tears, was only exaggerated
+when she remembered how vain her remorse must remain. It mattered no
+jot that she was sorry, since death had sealed their estrangement
+ironically for all time.
+
+In her passionate recognition of his constant justice and kindness,
+which of old, vainly striving to perpetuate the fading illusion of
+her husband's honour (her generosity did not pause to remember how
+vain these efforts had been), she had discounted for hypocrisy, she
+felt that no price of personal suffering would have been too heavy
+if only for one hour, one moment, she could have recalled him from
+the world of shadows to her side.
+
+She could figure to herself, refining on her misery, his attitude in
+such a case: the half sad, half jesting reassurance of his gravely
+pardoning eyes.
+
+They haunted her just then, those eyes of Philip Rainham, which had
+been to the last so ambiguous and so sad, and were now perpetually
+closed.
+
+And for the first time a suspicion flashed across her mind, which,
+while it made her heart flutter like a frightened bird, seemed to
+her the one drop hitherto lacking in the cup of her unhappiness.
+Had, then, after all, that gentle indifference of her friend masked
+an immense hunger, a deeply-felt need of personal tenderness, which
+she might have supplied--ah, how gladly!--if she had known? Could he
+have cared more deeply than people knew?
+
+She reminded herself the next moment, as they came to a sudden
+standstill before a dark-green door, how idle all such questions
+were--vain beating of the hands against the shut door of death!
+
+She alighted and dismissed her cab, and in the interval which
+elapsed before her ring was answered by a slovenly little servant,
+who gaped visibly at the lady's hurried request that her name should
+be taken up to Mr. Oswyn, she had leisure for the first time to
+realize the strangeness of her course.
+
+Her mother, Charles, her guests--Felicia Dollond and the rest--how
+would they consider the adventure if ever they should know? It was
+easy to imagine their attitude of shocked disapproval, and her
+brother's disgusted repudiation of the whole business as a thing,
+most emphatically, which one did not do. Ah, no! it was not a
+departure such as this that a well-bred society Spartan could even
+decently contemplate! And it was almost with a laugh, devoid,
+indeed, of merriment, that Eve tossed consideration of these
+scruples contemptuously away.
+
+At last she was in revolt against their world and the pedantry of
+its little inflexible laws; and all her old traditions had become
+odious to her, seeming, for the moment, deeply tainted with
+dishonour, and partly the cause of her disastrous plight. A great,
+ruining wave had broken over her life, and in her passionate
+helplessness she cried only for some firm and absolute shore, else
+the silence of the engulfing waters, not for the vain ropes of
+social convention with which they would drag her back into the
+perilous security from which she had been swept; and she had
+forgotten everything but her imperative need, which had brought her
+there, when the lodging-house drudge returned and ushered her
+clumsily into Oswyn's presence.
+
+It was a sitting-room on the second floor which the artist occupied,
+by no means an uncomfortable apartment, though Eve's first
+impression of it was immeasurably sordid, and she realized, with a
+touch of pity, that the painter's difficult genius had no tact of
+application to his surroundings.
+
+Had, then, the painter of "Thanatos the Peacebearer"--that
+incomparable work!--no personal taste, to be violated by the crude
+wall-paper and the vulgar vases, containing impossible flowers,
+which jostled against broken tobacco-pipes and a half empty bottle
+of milk on the mantelpiece?
+
+There was an immense untidiness everywhere; a disorder of children's
+toys and torn picture-books would have prepared Eve for the
+discovery of a sleeping child with brilliant hair coiled up in a rug
+on the sofa, if her eyes had not been arrested by an unframed canvas
+on an easel, the only picture, save some worthless prints in common
+gilt frames, which was visible. It was the head of Philip Rainham,
+immortalized by the brush of his friend, which awaited her--the eyes
+already closed, the pale lips still smiling with that superbly
+ironical smile of the dead.
+
+She had not greeted Oswyn on her entrance, and now she had ceased to
+remember that he was there, as she stood contemplating the portrait
+with her rapt and sorrowful gaze, while Oswyn, leaning across the
+table, implicitly accepting the situation, which had to him all the
+naturalness of the unexpected, considered her in his turn.
+
+He had never before seen her to such advantage, and, remembering
+that early presentment of her which Lightmark had exhibited in the
+Grosvenor, he realized how much she had developed. The singular
+nobility and purity of her beauty amazed him; it shone out like the
+starry night; and, standing there remote and silent (in her
+abstraction she had let her cloak slide to the ground, revealing her
+white arms, her fanciful, incongruous attire), she seemed, indeed, a
+creature of another world.
+
+When she turned to him at last there was an immense and solemn
+entreaty in her eyes for candour and directness, an appeal to be
+spared no bitter knowledge that he might possess--for the whole
+truth.
+
+"Tell me," she began slowly, calmly, though he was not ignorant that
+her composure was the result of an immense inward effort. "I can't
+explain why I have come to you--perhaps you yourself can explain
+that better than I. I don't know what you may think of me--I am too
+unhappy to care. I have no claim upon you. I only entreat you to
+answer me a question which perhaps no one now living can answer but
+you. Ah!"--she broke off with a gesture of sudden passion--"I have
+been so cruelly kept in the dark."
+
+Oswyn lowered his eyes for a moment, considering. A curious wave of
+reminiscence swept over him, giving to this strange juxtaposition
+the last touch of completion.
+
+He remembered Rainham's long reticence, and his unburdening himself
+at the last, in a conviction that there would be a season when the
+truth would be best. And he said to himself that this time had come.
+
+"Mrs. Lightmark," he said at last, in a low, constrained voice, "I
+promise to answer any question that is within my knowledge."
+
+"It is about my--my husband and Philip Rainham. What passed between
+them in the autumn of last year? Who was that woman?"
+
+He did not reply for a moment; but unconsciously his eyes met hers
+full, and in their brief encounter it was possible that many truths
+were silently told. Presently she continued:
+
+"You need not tell me, Mr. Oswyn. I can see your answer as plainly
+as if you had spoken. It is my husband----"
+
+She broke off sharply, let her beautiful head droop with a movement
+of deep prostration upon her hands.
+
+"What have I done, what have I done," she moaned, "that this
+dishonour should come to me?"
+
+It was a long time before she looked up at him.
+
+"Why did he do it?" she whispered.
+
+"Have you never guessed?" he asked in his turn. "I will tell you,
+Mrs. Lightmark. I was with him when he was dying. He wished you to
+know; he had some such time as this in his mind. It was a sort of
+message."
+
+"He wished me to know--a sort of message," she repeated blankly. "He
+spoke of me, then--he forgave me for my hard judgement, for knowing
+him so ill?"
+
+"It was himself that he did not forgive for not having guarded you
+better, for having been deceived by your husband. He spoke of you to
+me very fully at the last when we both saw that his death was merely
+a question of days. I saw then what I had sometimes suspected
+before, that you had absorbed his whole life, that his devotion to
+you was a kind of religion."
+
+"He loved me?" she asked at last, in a hushed, strange voice, white
+to the lips.
+
+Oswyn bowed his head.
+
+"Ever since you were a child. It was very beautiful, and it was with
+him at the last as a light. Don't reproach yourself; it was to
+prevent that that he wished you to be told."
+
+"To prevent it!" she cried, with tragical scorn. "Am I not to
+reproach myself that I was hard and callous and cold; that I never
+understood nor cared; that I was not with him? Not reproach myself?
+Oh, Philip, Philip!" she called, breaking down utterly, laying her
+face in her hands.
+
+Oswyn averted his eyes, giving her passion time to appease itself.
+When he glanced at her again, she had gathered her cloak round her,
+was standing by the picture from which she seemed loath to remove
+her eyes.
+
+"You gave him great happiness," he suggested gently, "in the only
+manner in which it was possible. Remember only that. He must in any
+case have died."
+
+He imagined that she hardly heard him, absorbed in the desolation of
+her own thought; and when she turned to him again, quite ready for
+departure now, he saw by the hard light in her eyes that she had
+recurred to her husband, to the irreparable gulf which must
+henceforth divide them.
+
+"I can't go back to him," she whispered, as if she communed with
+herself. "I hate him; yes, I hate him, with my whole soul. He has
+lied to me too much; he has made me do such a cruel wrong. There are
+things which one can't forgive. Ah, no! it's not possible."
+
+Oswyn viewed her compassionately, while a somewhat bitter smile
+played about his mouth.
+
+"No, you will go back, Mrs. Lightmark! Forgive me," he added,
+raising his hand, interrupting her, as she seemed on the point of
+speech. "I don't want to intrude on you--on your thoughts, with
+advice or consolation. They are articles I don't deal in. Only I
+will tell you--I who know--that in revolt also there is vanity. You
+are bruised and broken and disillusioned, and you want to hide away
+from the world and escape into yourself, or from yourself; it's all
+the same. Ah, Mrs. Lightmark, believe me, in life that is not
+possible, or where it is most possible is in a crowd. Go back to
+your guests; I know, you see, whence you come; take up your part in
+the play, the masque; be ready with your cues. It's all masks and
+dominoes; what does the form or colour of it matter? Underneath it
+all you are yourself, with your beautiful sorrow, your memories,
+your transcendent happiness--nothing can touch that; what does it
+matter?"
+
+"Happiness!" she ejaculated, rather in wonder than in scorn, for in
+spite of her great weariness she had been struck by the genuine
+accent struggling through his half ironical speech.
+
+"Most happy," he said, with a deep inhalation. "Haven't you an ideal
+which life, with its cruelties, its grossness, can never touch?"
+
+Then he added quickly, in words of Philip Rainham, which had flashed
+with sudden appositeness across his mind.
+
+"Your misery has its compensation; you have been wronged, but you
+have also been loved."
+
+"Ah, my friend!" she cried, turning toward the picture with a new
+and more beautiful illumination in her eyes, "was it for this that
+you did it?"
+
+Oswyn said nothing, and Eve moved towards the door, discovering for
+the first time, on her way, the sleeping child. She stopped for a
+moment, and the other watched her with breathless curiosity,
+uncertain how far her knowledge might extend.
+
+And as she stood there, wondering, a great wave of colour suffused
+her white face; the next moment she was gone, but in the light of
+that pure blush Oswyn seemed to have discovered that her tragical
+enlightenment was complete.
+
+When she turned once more into the street, she had already set
+herself gravely, with a strange and factitious composure, to face
+her life. It stretched itself out before her like a great, gray
+plain, the arid desolation of the road being rendered only more
+terrible by the flowers with which it would be strewn. For suddenly,
+while Oswyn had been speaking, she had recognised that after all she
+would go back; the other course had been merely the first bitter
+cry, half hysterical, of her grief.
+
+By her husband's side, with the semblance of amity between them
+still, utterly apart and estranged as they must in reality
+henceforth perpetually be, it seemed to her that she could none the
+less religiously cherish the memory of her friend because she would
+turn a smiling mask to the world's indifference, wearing mourning in
+her heart. And deeply as she had suffered, in the midst of her
+remorse she could still remind herself that in the last half hour
+she had gained more than she had lost; that life, however tedious it
+might be, was in a manner consecrated by this great devotion, which
+death had embalmed, to be a light to her in lonely places and dark
+hours, a perpetual after-thought against the cynicism or despair to
+which her imitation of happiness might conduce.
+
+The mask of a smile, and mourning in her heart! Yes, it was in some
+such phrase as that that the life which began then for her must be
+expressed--for her, and perhaps, she reflected sadly, for others,
+for many, the justest and the best.
+
+And in the meantime she would go back to her dancers, resume once
+more her well-worn _rôle_ of the brilliant and efficient hostess. She
+wondered if it would be difficult to account for herself, to explain
+an absence so unprecedented, if, as was doubtless the case, her
+figure had been missed. But the next moment she smiled a trifle
+bitterly, for she had reminded herself of her husband's proved
+facility of prevarication, which she felt certain would already have
+been usefully employed.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A COMEDY OF MASKS***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 16703-8.txt or 16703-8.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/7/0/16703
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/16703-8.zip b/16703-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9d266e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16703-8.zip
diff --git a/16703.txt b/16703.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..308f487
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16703.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11245 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Comedy of Masks, by Ernest Dowson and
+Arthur Moore
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: A Comedy of Masks
+       A Novel
+
+
+Author: Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 16, 2005  [eBook #16703]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A COMEDY OF MASKS***
+
+
+Digitized by Robert Bamford. Further proofreading and formatting by Andrew
+Sly. 
+
+
+
+A COMEDY OF MASKS
+
+A Novel
+
+by
+
+ERNEST DOWSON and ARTHUR MOORE
+
+1893
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+In that intricate and obscure locality, which stretches between the
+Tower and Poplar, a tarry region, scarcely suspected by the majority
+of Londoners, to whom the "Port of London" is an expression purely
+geographical, there is, or was not many years ago, to be found a
+certain dry dock called Blackpool, but better known from time
+immemorial to skippers and longshoremen, and all who go down to the
+sea in ships, as "Rainham's Dock."
+
+Many years ago, in the days of the first Rainham and of wooden
+ships, it had been no doubt a flourishing ship-yard; and, indeed,
+models of wooden leviathans of the period, which had been turned
+out, not a few, in those palmy days, were still dusty ornaments of
+its somewhat antique office. But as time went on, and the age of
+iron intervened, and the advance on the Clyde and the Tyne had made
+Thames ship-building a thing of the past, Blackpool Dock had ceased
+to be of commercial importance. No more ships were built there, and
+fewer ships put in to be overhauled and painted; while even these
+were for the most part of a class viewed at Lloyd's with scant
+favour, which seemed, like the yard itself, to have fallen somewhat
+behind the day. The original Rainham had not bequeathed his energy
+along with his hoards to his descendants; and, indeed, the last of
+these, Philip Rainham, a man of weak health, original Rainham had
+not bequeathed his energy along with his hoards to his descendants;
+and, indeed, the last of these, Philip Rainham, a man of weak
+health, whose tastes, although these were veiled in obscurity, were
+supposed to trench little upon shipping, let the business jog along
+so much after its own fashion, that the popular view hinted at its
+imminent dissolution. A dignified, scarcely prosperous quiet seemed
+the normal air of Blackpool Dock, so that even when it was busiest
+--and work still came in, almost by tradition, with a certain
+steadiness--when the hammers of the riveters and the shipwrights
+awoke the echoes from sunrise to sunset, with a ferocious regularity
+which the present proprietor could almost deplore, there was still a
+suggestion of mildewed antiquity about it all that was, at least to
+the nostrils of the outsider, not unpleasing. And when the ships
+were painted, and had departed, it resumed very easily its more
+regular aspect of picturesque dilapidation. For in spite of its
+sordid surroundings and its occasional lapses into bustle, Blackpool
+Dock, as Rainham would sometimes remind himself, when its commercial
+motive was pressed upon him too forcibly, was deeply permeated by
+the spirit of the picturesque.
+
+Certainly Mr. Richard Lightmark, a young artist, in whose work some
+excellent judges were beginning already to discern, if not the hand
+of the master, at least a touch remarkably happy, was inclined to
+plume himself on having discovered, in his search after originality,
+the artistic points of a dockyard.
+
+It was on his first visit to Rainham, whom he had met abroad some
+years before, and with whom he had contracted an alliance that
+promised to be permanent, that Lightmark had decided his study
+should certainly be the river. Rainham had a set of rooms in the
+house of his foreman, an eighteenth-century house, full of carved
+oak mantels and curious alcoves, a ramshackle structure within the
+dock-gates, with a quaint balcony staircase, like the approach to a
+Swiss chalet, leading down into the yard. In London these apartments
+were his sole domicile; though, to his friends, none of whom lived
+nearer to him than Bloomsbury, this seemed a piece of conduct too
+flagrantly eccentric--on a parity with his explanation of it,
+alleging necessity of living on the spot: an explanation somewhat
+droll, in the face of his constant lengthy absence, during the whole
+of the winter, when he handed the reins of government to his
+manager, and took care of a diseased lung in a warmer climate. To
+Lightmark, however, dining with his friend for the first time on
+chops burnt barbarously and an inferior pudding, residence even in a
+less salubrious quarter than Blackpool would have been amply
+justified, in view of the many charming effects--for the most part
+coldly sad and white--which the river offered, towards evening, from
+the window of his friend's dining-room.
+
+After his first visit, he availed himself eagerly of Rainham's
+invitation to make his property the point of view from which he
+could most conveniently transfer to canvas his impressions; and he
+worked hard for months, with an industry that came upon his friend
+as a surprise, at the uneven outlines of the Thames warehouses, and
+the sharp-pointed masts that rose so trenchantly above them. He had
+generated an habit of coming and going, as he pleased, without
+consideration of his host's absences; and latterly, in the early
+spring--whose caprices in England Rainham was never in a hurry to
+encounter--the easel and painting tools of the assiduous artist had
+become an almost constant feature of the landscape.
+
+Now, towards the close of an exceptionally brilliant day in the
+finish of May, he was putting the last touches to a picture which
+had occupied him for some months, and which he hoped to have
+completed for Rainham's return. As he stood on the wharf, which ran
+down to the river-side, leaning back against a crane of ancient
+pattern, and viewing his easel from a few yards' distance
+critically, he could not contemplate the result without a certain
+complacency.
+
+"It's deuced good, after all," he said to himself, with his head
+poised a little on one side. "Yes, old Rainham will like this. And,
+by Jove! what matters a good deal more, the hangers will like it,
+and if it's sold--and, confound it! it must be sold--it will be a
+case of three figures."
+
+He had one hand in his pocket, and instinctively--it may have been
+the result of his meditation--he fell to jingling some coins in it.
+They were not very many, but just then, though he was a young
+gentleman keenly alive to the advantages of a full purse, their
+paucity hardly troubled him. He felt, for the nonce, assured of his
+facility, and doubtless had a vista of unlimited commissions and the
+world at his feet, for he drew himself up to his full height of six
+feet and looked out beyond the easel with a smile that had no longer
+its origin in the fruition of the artist. Indeed, as he stood there,
+in his light, lax dress and the fulness of his youth, he had (his
+art apart) excuse for self-complacency. He was very pleasant to look
+upon, with an air of having always been popular with his fellows,
+and the favourite of women; this, too, was borne out by his history.
+Not a beautiful man, by any means, but the best type of English
+comeliness: ruddy-coloured, straight, and healthy; muscular, but
+without a suggestion of brutality. His yellow moustache, a shade
+lighter than his hair--which, although he wore it cropped, showed a
+tendency to be curling--concealed a mouth that was his only
+questionable feature. It was not the sensitive mouth of the through
+and through artist, and the lines of it were vacillating. The lips,
+had they not been hidden, would have surprised by their fulness,
+contradicting, in some part, the curious coldness of his light blue
+eyes. All said, however, he remained a singularly handsome fellow;
+and the slight consciousness which he occasionally betrayed, that
+his personality was pleasing, hardly detracted from it; it was,
+after all, a harmless vanity that his friends could afford to
+overlook. Just then his thoughts, which had wandered many leagues
+from the warehouses of Blackpool, were brought up sharply by the
+noise of an approaching footstep. He started slightly, but a moment
+later greeted the new-comer with a pleasant smile of recognition. It
+was Rainham's foreman and general manager, with whom the artist, as
+with most persons with whom he was often in contact, was on
+excellent, and even familiar, terms.
+
+"Look here, Bullen," he said, twisting the easel round a little,
+"the picture is practically finished. A few more strokes--I shall do
+them at home--and it is ready for the Academy. How do you like it?"
+
+Mr. Bullen bent down his burly form and honoured the little canvas
+with a respectful scrutiny.
+
+"That is Trinidad Wharf, sir, I suppose?" he suggested, pointing
+with a huge forefinger at the background a little uncertainly.
+
+"That is Trinidad Wharf, Bullen, certainly! And those masts are
+from the ships in the Commercial Docks. But the river, the
+atmosphere--that's the point--how do they strike you?"
+
+"Well, it's beautiful, sir," remarked Bullen cordially; "painted
+like the life, you may say. But isn't it just a little smudgy, sir?"
+
+"That's the beauty of it, Bullen. It's impressionism, you
+Philistine!--a sort of modified impressionism, you know, to suit the
+hangers. 'Gad, Bullen, you ought to be a hanger yourself! Bullen,
+my dear man, if it wasn't that you _do_ know how to paint a ship's
+side, I would even go so far as to say that you have all the
+qualifications of an Academician."
+
+"Ah, if it comes to that, Mr. Lightmark, I dare say I could put them
+up to some dodges. I am a judge of 'composition.'"
+
+"Composition? The devil you are! Ah, you mean that infernal compound
+which they cover ships' bottoms with? What an atrocious pun!" The
+man looked puzzled. "Bullen, R.A., great at composition; it sounds
+well," continued Lightmark gaily, just touching in the brown sail of
+a barge.
+
+"I've a nephew in the Royal Artillery, sir," said Mr. Bullen; "but I
+fear he is a bad lot."
+
+"Oh, they all are!" said Lightmark, "an abandoned crew."
+
+His eyes wandered off to the bridge over which the road ran,
+dividing the dry dock from the outer basin and wharf on which they
+stood. A bevy of factory girls in extensive hats stuck with
+brilliant Whitechapel feathers were passing; one of them, who was
+pretty, caught Lightmark's eyes and flung him a saucy compliment,
+which he returned with light badinage in kind that made the foreman
+grin.
+
+"They know a fine man when they see one, as well as my lady," he
+said. Then he added, as if by an afterthought, lowering his voice a
+little: "By the way, Mr. Lightmark, there was a young lady--a young
+person here yesterday--making inquiries."
+
+Lightmark bent down, frowning a little at a fly which had entangled
+itself on his palette.
+
+"Yes?" he remarked tentatively, when the offender had been removed.
+
+"It was a young lady come after someone, who, she said, had been
+here lately: a Mr. Dighton or Crichton was the name, I think. It was
+the dockman she asked."
+
+"Nobody comes here of that name that I know of," said Lightmark.
+
+"Not to my knowledge," said Bullen.
+
+"Curious!" remarked Lightmark gravely.
+
+"Very, sir!" said Bullen, with equal gravity.
+
+Lightmark looked up abruptly: the two men's eyes met, and they both
+laughed, the artist a little nervously.
+
+"What did you tell her, Bullen?"
+
+"No such person known here, sir. I sent her away as wise as she
+came. I hold with minding my own business, and asking no questions."
+
+"An excellent maxim, Bullen!" said Lightmark, preparing to pack up
+his easel. "I have long believed you to be a man of discretion.
+Well, I must even be moving."
+
+"You know the governor is back, sir?"
+
+Lightmark dropped the paint-brush he was cleaning, with a movement
+of genuine surprise.
+
+"I never knew it," he said; "I will run up and have a yarn with him.
+I thought he wasn't expected till to-morrow at the earliest?"
+
+"Nor he was, Mr. Lightmark. But he travelled right through from
+Italy, and got to London late last night. He slept at the Great
+Eastern, and I went up to him in the City this morning. He hasn't
+been here more than half an hour."
+
+"Nobody told me," said Lightmark. "Gad! I am glad. I will take him
+up the picture. Will you carry the other traps into the house,
+Bullen?"
+
+He packed them up, and then stood a trifle irresolutely, his hand
+feeling over the coins in his pocket. Presently he produced two of
+them, a sovereign and a shilling.
+
+"By the way, Bullen!" he said, "there is a little function common in
+your trade, the gift of a new hat. It costs a guinea, I am told;
+though judging from the general appearance of longshoremen, the
+result seems a little inadequate. Bullen, we are pretty old friends
+now, and I expect I shall not be down here so often just at present.
+Allow me--to give you a new hat."
+
+The foreman's huge fist closed on the artist's slender one.
+
+"Thank you, sir! You are such a facetious gentleman. You may depend
+upon me."
+
+"I do," said Lightmark, with a sudden lapse into seriousness, and
+frowning a little.
+
+If something had cast a shadow over the artist for the moment he
+must have had a faculty of quick recovery, for there was certainly
+no shade of constraint upon his handsome face when a minute later he
+made his way up the balcony steps and into the office labelled
+"Private," and, depositing his canvas upon the floor, treated his
+friend to a prolonged handshaking.
+
+"My dear Dick!" said Rainham, "this is a pleasant surprise. I had
+not the remotest notion you were here."
+
+"I thought you were at Bordighera, till Bullen told me of your
+arrival ten minutes ago," said Lightmark, with a frank laugh. "And
+how well----"
+
+Rainham held up his hand--a very white, nervous hand with one ring
+of quaint pattern on the forefinger--deprecatingly.
+
+"My dear fellow, I know exactly what you are going to say. Don't be
+conventional--don't say it. I have a fraudulent countenance if I do
+look well; and I don't, and I am not. I am as bad as I ever was."
+
+"Well, come now, Rainham, at any rate you are no worse."
+
+"Oh, I am no worse!" admitted the dry dock proprietor. "But, then, I
+could not afford to be much worse. However, my health is a subject
+which palls on me after a time. Tell me about yourself."
+
+He looked up with a smile, in which an onlooker might have detected
+a spark of malice, as though Rainham were aware that his suggested
+topic was not without attraction to his friend. He was a slight man
+of middle height, and of no apparent distinction, and his face with
+all its petulant lines of lassitude and ill-health--the wear and
+tear of forty years having done with him the work of fifty--struck
+one who saw Philip Rainham for the first time by nothing so much as
+by his ugliness. And yet few persons who knew him would have
+hesitated to allow to his nervous, suffering visage a certain
+indefinable charm. The large head set on a figure markedly
+ungraceful, on which the clothes seldom fitted, was shapely and
+refined, although the features were indefensible, even grotesque.
+And his mouth, with its constrained thin lips and the acrid lines
+about it, was unmistakably a strong one. His deep-set eyes,
+moreover, of a dark gray colour, gleamed from under his thick
+eyebrows with a pleasant directness; while his smile, which some
+people called cynical, as his habit of speech most certainly was,
+was found by others extraordinarily sympathetic.
+
+"Yes, tell me about yourself, Dick," he said again.
+
+"I have done a picture, if that is what you mean, besides some
+portraits; I have worked down here like a galley slave for the last
+three months."
+
+"And is the queer little _estaminet_ in Soho still in evidence? Do the
+men of to-morrow still meet there nightly and weigh the claims of
+the men of to-day?"
+
+Lightmark smiled a trifle absently; his eyes had wandered off to his
+picture in the corner.
+
+"Oh, I believe so!" he said at last; "I dine there occasionally when
+I have time. But I have been going out a good deal lately, and I
+hardly ever do have time.... May I smoke, by the way?"
+
+Rainham nodded gently, and the artist pulled out his case and
+started a fragrant cigarette.
+
+"You see, Rainham," he continued, sending a blue ring sailing across
+the room, "I am not so young as I was last year, and I have seen a
+good deal more of the world."
+
+"I see, Dick," said Rainham. "Well, go on!"
+
+"I mean," he explained, "that those men who meet at Brodonowski's
+are very good fellows, and deuced clever, and all that; but I doubt
+if they are the sort of men it is well to get too much mixed up
+with. They are rather _outre_, you know; though, of course, they are
+awfully good fellows in their way."
+
+"Precisely!" said Rainham, "you are becoming a very Solomon, Dick!"
+
+He sat playing idly with the ring on his forefinger, watching the
+artist's smoke with the same curiously obscure smile. It had the
+effect on Lightmark now, as Rainham's smile did on many people,
+however innocent it might be of satiric intention, of infusing his
+next remarks with the accent of apology.
+
+"You see, Rainham, one has to think of what will help one on, as
+well as what one likes. There is a man I have come to know lately--a
+very good man too, a barrister--who is always dinning that into me.
+He has introduced me to some very useful people, and is always
+urging me not to commit myself. And Brodonowski's is rather
+committal, you know. However, we must dine there together again one
+day, soon, and then you will understand it."
+
+"Oh, I understand it, Dick!" said Rainham. "But let me see the
+picture while the light lasts."
+
+"Oh, yes!" cried Lightmark eagerly. "We must not forget the
+picture." He hoisted it up to a suitable light, and Rainham stood by
+the bow-window, from which one almost obtained the point of view
+which the artist had chosen, regarding it in a critical silence.
+
+"What do you call it?" he asked at last.
+
+"'The Gray River,'" said Lightmark; then a little impatiently: "But
+how do you find it? Are you waiting for a tripod?"
+
+"I don't think I shall tell you. By falling into personal criticism,
+unless one is either dishonest or trivial, one runs the risk of
+losing a friend."
+
+"Oh, nonsense, man! It's not such a daub as that. I will risk your
+candour."
+
+Rainham shrugged his shoulder.
+
+"If you will have it, Dick--only, don't think that I am to be coaxed
+into compliments."
+
+"_Is_ it bad?" asked Lightmark sceptically.
+
+"On the contrary, it is surprisingly good. It's clever and pretty;
+sure to be hung, sure to sell. Only you have come down a peg. The
+sentiment about that river is very pretty, and that mist is
+eminently pictorial; but it's not the river you would have painted
+last year; and that mist--I have seen it in a good many pictures
+now--is a mist that one can't quite believe in. It's the art that
+pays, but it's not the art you talked at Brodonowski's last summer,
+that is all."
+
+Lightmark tugged at his moustache a little ruefully. Rainham had an
+idea that his ups and downs were tremendous. His mind was a
+mountainous country, and if he had elations, he had also depressions
+as acute. Yet his elasticity was enormous, and he could throw off
+troublesome intruders, in the shape of memories or regrets, with the
+ease of a slow-worm casting its skin. And so now his confidence was
+only shaken for a moment, and he was able to reply gaily to
+Rainham's last thrust:
+
+"My dear fellow, I expect I talked a good deal of trash last year,
+after all"--a statement which the other did not find it worth while
+to deny.
+
+They had resumed their places at the table, and Lightmark, with a
+half-sheet of note-paper before him, was dashing off profiles. They
+were all the same--the head of a girl: a childish face with a
+straight, small nose, and rough hair gathered up high above her head
+in a plain knot. Rainham, leaning over, watched him with an amused
+smile.
+
+"The current infatuation, Dick, or the last but one?"
+
+"No," he said; "only a girl I know. Awfully pretty, isn't she?"
+
+Rainham, who was a little short-sighted, took up the paper
+carelessly. He dropped it after a minute with a slight start.
+
+"I think I know her," he said. "You have a knack of catching faces.
+Is it Miss Sylvester?"
+
+"Yes; it is Eve Sylvester," said Lightmark. "Do you know them? I see
+a good deal of them now."
+
+"I have known them a good many years," said Rainham.
+
+"They have never spoken of you to me," said Lightmark.
+
+"No? I dare say not. Why should they?" He was silent for a moment,
+looking thoughtfully at his ring. Then he said abruptly: "I think I
+know now who your friend the barrister is, Dick. I recognise the
+style. It is Charles Sylvester, is it not?"
+
+"You are a wizard," answered the other, laughing. "Yes, it is." Then
+he asked: "Don't you think she is awfully pretty?"
+
+"Miss Sylvester?... Very likely; she was a very pretty child. You
+know, she had not come out last year. Are you going?"
+
+Lightmark had pulled out his watch absently, and he leapt up as he
+discovered the lateness of the hour.
+
+"Heavens, yes! I am dining out, and I shall barely have time to
+dress. I will fetch my traps to-morrow; then we might dine together
+afterwards."
+
+"As you like," said the elder man. "I have no engagements yet."
+
+Lightmark left him with a genial nod, and a moment later Rainham saw
+him through the window passing with long impetuous strides across
+the bridge. Then he returned to his desk, and wrote a letter or two
+until the light failed, when he pushed his chair back, and sat, pen
+in hand, looking meditatively, vaguely, at the antiquated maps upon
+the walls.
+
+Presently his eye fell on Lightmark's derelict paper, with its
+scribble of a girl's head. He considered it thoughtfully for some
+time, starting a little, and covering it with his blotting-paper,
+when Mrs. Bullen, his housekeeper, entered with a cup of tea--a
+freak of his nerves which made him smile when she had gone.
+
+Even then he left his tea for a long time, cooling and untasted,
+while he sat lethargically lolling back, and regarding from time to
+time the pencilled profile with his sad eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The period of Lightmark's boyhood had not been an altogether happy
+one. His earliest recollections carried him back to a time when he
+lived a wandering, desolate life with his father and mother, in an
+endless series of Continental hotels and _pensions_. He was prepared
+to assert, with confidence, that his mother had been a very
+beautiful person, who carried an air of the most abundant affection
+for him on the numerous occasions when she received her friends. Of
+his father, who had, as far as possible, ignored his existence, he
+remembered very little.
+
+During these years there had been frequent difficulties, the nature
+of which he had since learned entirely to comprehend; controversies
+with white-waistcoated proprietors of hotels and voluble
+tradespeople, generally followed by a severance of hastily-cemented
+friendships, and a departure of apparently unpremeditated
+abruptness.
+
+When his mother died, he was sent to a fairly good school in
+England, where his father occasionally visited him, and where he had
+been terribly bullied at first, and had afterwards learned to bully
+in turn. He spent his holidays in London, at the house of his
+grandmother--an excellent old lady, who petted and scolded him
+almost simultaneously, who talked mysteriously about his "poor dear
+father," and took care that he went to church regularly, and had
+dancing-lessons three times a week.
+
+His father's death, which occurred at Monaco somewhat unexpectedly,
+and on the subject of which his grandmother maintained a certain
+reserve, affected the boy but little; in fact, the first real grief
+which he could remember to have experienced was when the old lady
+herself died--he was then nineteen years old--leaving him her
+blessing and a sum of Consols sufficient to produce an income of
+about L250 a year.
+
+The boy's inclinations leaned in the direction of Oxford, and in
+this he was supported by his only-surviving relative, his uncle,
+Colonel Lightmark, a loud-voiced cavalry officer, who had been the
+terror of Richard's juvenile existence, and who, as executor of the
+old lady's will, was fully aware of the position in which her death
+had left him, and her desire that he should go into the Church.
+
+At one of the less fashionable colleges, which he selected because
+he was enamoured of its picturesque inner quadrangle, and of the
+quaint Dutch glass in the chapel windows, Lightmark was popular with
+his peers, and, for his first term, in tolerably good odour with the
+dons, who decided, on his coming up to matriculate, that he ought to
+read for honours. And he did read for honours, after a fashion, for
+nearly a scholastic year, after which an unfortunate excursion to
+Abingdon, and a boisterous re-entry into the University precincts,
+at the latter part of which the junior proctor and his satellites
+were painfully conspicuous, ended in his being "sent down" for a
+term. Whereupon he decided to travel, a decision prompted as much by
+a not unnatural desire to avoid avuncular criticism as by a
+constitutional yearning for the sunny South. Besides, one could live
+for next to nothing abroad.
+
+During the next few years his proceedings were wrapped in a veil of
+mystery which he never entirely threw aside. Rainham, it is true,
+saw him occasionally at this time, for, indeed, it was soon after
+his first arrival in Paris that Lightmark made his friend's
+acquaintance, sealed by their subsequent journey together to Rome.
+But Rainham was discreet. Lightmark before long informed his uncle,
+with whom he at first communicated through the post on the subject
+of dividends, that he was studying Art, to which his uncle had
+replied:
+
+"Don't be a d----d fool. Come back and take your degree."
+
+This letter Dick had light-heartedly ignored, and he received his
+next cheque from his uncle's solicitors, together with a polite
+request that he would keep them informed as to his wanderings, and
+an intimation that his uncle found it more convenient to make them
+the channel of correspondence for the future.
+
+At Paris it was generally conceded that, for an Englishman, the
+delicacy of Lightmark's touch, and the daring of his conception and
+execution, were really marvellous; and if only he could draw! But he
+was too impatient for the end to spend the necessary time in
+perfecting the means.
+
+At Rome he tried his hand at sculpture, and made a few sketches
+which his attractive personality rather than their intrinsic merit
+enabled him to sell. The _camaraderie_ of the Cafe Grecco welcomed him
+with open arms; and he was to be encountered, in the season, at the
+most fashionable studio tea-parties and diplomatic dances. Before
+long his talent in the direction of seizing likenesses secured him a
+well-paid post as caricaturist-in-chief on the staff of a Republican
+journal of more wit than discretion; and it was in this capacity
+that he gained his literary experience. On the eve of the
+suppression of this enterprising organ the Minister of Police
+thought it a favourable opportunity to express to Lightmark
+privately his opinion that he was not likely to find the atmosphere
+of Rome particularly salubrious during the next few months.
+Whereupon our friend had shrugged his shoulders, and after
+ironically thanking the official for his disinterested advice, he
+had given a farewell banquet of great splendour at the Grecco,
+packed up palettes and paint-boxes, and started for London, where
+his friends persuaded him that his talent would be recognised. And
+at London he had arrived, travelling by ruinously easy stages, and
+breaking the journey at Florence, where he sketched and smoked pipes
+innumerable on the Lung Arno; at Venice, where he affected
+cigarettes, and indulged in a desperate flirtation with a pretty
+black-eyed marchesa; at Monaco, where he gambled; and at Paris,
+where he spent his winnings, and foregathered with his friends of
+the Quartier Latin.
+
+His empty pockets suggested the immediate necessity for work in a
+manner more emphatic than agreeable. His uncle, upon whom he called
+at his club, invited him to dinner, lectured him with considerable
+eloquence, and practically declined to have any more to do with the
+young reprobate, which shook Lightmark's faith in the teaching of
+parables.
+
+However, he set to work in the two little rooms beneath the tiles
+which he rented in Bloomsbury, and which served him as bedroom and
+studio; and for a few weeks he finished sketches by day, and wrote
+sonnets for magazines, and frivolous articles for dailies, by night.
+And, strange to say, though there were times when success seemed
+very hard to grasp, and when he was obliged to forestall
+quarter-day, and even to borrow money from Rainham--when that bird
+of passage was within reach--he sold sketches from time to time; he
+obtained commissions for portraits; and the editors occasionally
+read and retained his contributions.
+
+In course of time he moved further west, to the then unfashionable
+neighbourhood of Holland Park, and devoted his energies to the
+production of a work which should make an impression at the Academy.
+It was his first large picture in oils, an anonymous portrait,
+treated with all the audacity and _chic_ of the modern French school,
+of a fair-haired girl in a quaint fancy dress, standing under the
+soft light of Japanese lanterns, in a conservatory, with a
+background of masses of flowers.
+
+And when it was finished, Rainham and the small coterie of artists
+who were intimate with Lightmark were generously enthusiastic in
+their expressions of approval.
+
+"But I don't know about the Academy, old man," said one of these
+critics dubiously, after the first spontaneous outburst of
+discussion. "Of course it's good enough, but it's not exactly their
+style, you know. The old duffers on the Hanging Committee wouldn't
+understand it----"
+
+And though Lightmark maintained his intention in the face of this
+criticism, the picture was never submitted to the hangers. Rainham
+brought a wealthy American ship-owner to see it, and when the
+committee sat in judgment, the work was already on the high seas on
+its way to New York.
+
+After all, Lightmark owed his nascent reputation to work of a less
+important nature--a few landscapes which appeared on the walls of
+Bond Street galleries, and were transferred in course of time to
+fashionable drawing-rooms; a few portraits, which the uninitiated
+thought admirable because they were so "like." Moreover, he could
+flatter discreetly, and he took care not to bore his sitter; two
+admirable qualities in a portrait-painter who desires to succeed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+It was to one of his sitters that Lightmark owed his introduction to
+the Sylvesters. Charles Sylvester had been told that Lightmark was a
+man who would certainly achieve greatness, and he felt that here was
+an opportunity to add all hitherto missing leaf to his laurels, by
+constituting himself a patron of art, a position not often attained
+by young barristers even when, as in Sylvester's case, they have
+already designs upon a snug constituency.
+
+Sylvester began by giving his _protege_ a commission to paint his
+mother's portrait, and before this work was finished a very
+appreciable degree of intimacy had sprung up between the Sylvester
+family and the young painter, who found no difficulty in gratifying
+a woman-of-the-world's passion for small-talk and fashionable
+intelligence--judiciously culled from the columns of the daily
+newspapers with the art of a practised wielder of the scissors and
+paste-brush.
+
+With Miss Sylvester he had a less easy task. She was a girl who had
+from a very early age been accustomed to have her impressions
+moulded by her self-assertive elder brother; and he, at any rate at
+first, had been careful to show that he regarded Lightmark as an
+object of his patronage rather than as a friend who could meet him
+on his own exalted level. He had been known, in his earlier years,
+to speak somewhat contemptuously of "artists"; and, indeed, his want
+of sympathy with Bohemians in general had given Eve occasion for
+much wondering mental comment, when her brother first spoke of
+introducing the portrait-painter to the family circle.
+
+However, brotherly rule over a girl's opinions is apt to be
+disestablished when she draws near the autumn of her teens; and
+after her emancipation from the schoolroom and short frocks, Miss
+Eve began to think it was time that she should be allowed to
+entertain and express views of her own. And after her first ball, an
+occasion on which her programme had speedily been besieged, and the
+_debutante_ marked as dangerous by the observant mothers of
+marriageable sons and daughters--after this important function,
+even Charles had begun to regard his pretty sister with a certain
+amount of deference. He certainly had reason to congratulate himself
+on having so attractive a young person to pour out his coffee and
+compose his "buttonholes" before he started for chambers in the
+morning. Eve was at an age when the wild-rose tints of a complexion
+fostered by judicious walks and schoolroom teas had not yet yielded
+to the baneful influence of late dinners and the other orgies which
+society conducts in an unduly-heated atmosphere. Her figure was
+still almost childishly slim, but graceful, and straight enough to
+defy criticism in the ball-room or the saddle. Her eyes were gray,
+with a curious, starry expression in their depths, which always
+suggested that the smile which was so often on her lips was quite
+ready to exaggerate the dimples in her cheeks. Her hair was
+refractory, from her own point of view; but Lightmark found the
+tangled brown masses, which she wore gathered into a loose knot high
+at the back of her shapely head, entirely charming, and suggestive,
+in a way, of one of Lancret's wood nymphs.
+
+She could never bring herself to believe that her nose was pretty,
+although in the seclusion of her chamber she had frankly criticised
+her reflected image; and perhaps it _was_ a trifle too small for most
+critics. Still, her admirers declared that, especially in profile,
+it was delightfully piquant, and vastly preferable to the
+uninteresting aquilines which adorned the countenances of her mother
+and brother. A provoking, childish, charming face, when all was
+said; it was not wonderful that Lightmark would fain put it upon
+canvas. And, indeed, so far as the young girl herself was concerned,
+he had already a conditional promise. She had no objection whatever
+to make, provided that Charles was first consulted; only she had no
+dress that would meet the occasion. And when Lightmark protested
+that the airy white garment, with here and there a suggestion of
+cream-coloured lace and sulphur ribbons, which she was wearing, was
+entirely right, she scouted the idea with scorn.
+
+"This old frock, Mr. Lightmark," she exclaimed, with a pretty
+display of disdain for his taste, "why, I've worn the old thing for
+months! No; if Charles says I may have my portrait painted, I shall
+go straight off to Madame Sophie, and then you may paint me and send
+me to the Academy or Grosvenor in all my glory."
+
+Lightmark had found it quite useless to protest, well as he knew
+that the ordinary French milliner can be warranted to succeed in
+producing a garment almost as unpaintable as a masculine black
+frock-coat.
+
+On the afternoon of the day after Rainham's return to the dock,
+Lightmark was caressing his fair moustache upon the doorstep of the
+Sylvesters' house, No. 137, Park Street, West, a mansion of
+unpretending size, glorious in its summer coat of white paint,
+relieved only by the turquoise-blue tiles which surrounded the
+window-boxes, and the darker blue of the railings and front-door. He
+was calling ostensibly for the purpose of inquiring how Charles
+Sylvester liked the frame which he had selected for the
+recently-finished portrait; really in order to induce her brother to
+allow Eve to sit to him. Sounds as of discussion floated down the
+wide staircase; and when the servant opened the drawing-room door
+preparatory to announcing him, Lightmark heard--and it startled
+him--a well-remembered voice upraised in playful protest.
+
+"No, 'pon my word, Mrs. Sylvester, my young scamp of a nephew hasn't
+done you justice, 'pon my soul he hasn't."
+
+At first he felt almost inclined to turn tail; though he had long
+been aware that the Sylvesters were cognisant of his relationship to
+the somewhat notorious old Colonel, and that they knew him, as
+everyone did, he had never contemplated the possibility of meeting
+his uncle there.
+
+And when he had shaken hands in a bewildered manner with Mrs.
+Sylvester and Eve, he perceived that his uncle was greeting him with
+an almost paternal cordiality.
+
+"Why, Dick, my boy, 'pon my soul I haven't seen you for an age! You
+mustn't neglect your gouty old uncle, you know, Dick; when are you
+going to paint his portrait, in review order, eh? Not until you've
+painted Miss Eve here, I'll be bound."
+
+The prodigal nephew needed all his by no means deficient stock of
+nerve to enable him to present an unmoved countenance to this
+unexpected attack of geniality. This, he thought, as he returned the
+other's greeting with as great a semblance of ease as he could
+muster--this was the uncle who had declined to recognise him when
+they met a few months ago, in the broadest daylight, in Pall Mall!
+
+Presently, while he was trying to recover his equanimity by devoting
+himself to the cult of Eve, he heard the colonel whisper in a
+confidential undertone to their hostess:
+
+"Devilish clever fellow, my nephew, y'know, though perhaps I
+oughtn't to say so. Those newspaper beggars think very highly of
+him--the critics, y'know, and all that; why, 'pon my soul, I was
+reading something about him only this morning at the club in the
+what's-his-name--the __Outcry__. Said he ought to be in the Academy."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Sylvester sympathetically, "you are quite right to
+be proud of him, Colonel Lightmark. Charles thinks he is very
+clever, and he is _so_ pleased with my portrait. We want him to paint
+Eve, you know, only---- Oh, do let me give you another cup of tea,
+Mr. Lightmark! Two lumps of sugar, I think?"
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Sylvester. Do you know, I have discovered that we
+have a mutual friend--that is to say, I found out not long ago,
+quite by accident, that my very good friend, Philip Rainham, has the
+pleasure of your acquaintance."
+
+"Oh, really!" said Eve delightedly; "do you know Philip--Mr.
+Rainham? And have you seen him lately? We haven't heard anything of
+him for weeks and weeks--not since Christmas, have we, mamma?"
+
+"Ah!" answered Lightmark, smiling, and letting his eyes wander over
+the white expanse of the Colonel's waistcoat. "I don't wonder at
+that. You see, he has been nursing himself on the Riviera all the
+winter, lucky dog! He only came back last night. I saw him at his
+dock, you know, down the river--such a jolly old place. I have been
+sketching there, on and off, nearly all the spring. He lets me make
+myself quite at home."
+
+"Take care, Dick, my boy," said the Colonel sententiously, fixing
+his black-rimmed eyeglass under the bushy white brow that shaded his
+right eye; "don't you let him entice you into that business. Don't
+pay nowadays! All the shipping goes up North, y'know. The poor old
+Thames is only used for regattas now, and penny steamers."
+
+"How very nice for the Thames!" cried Eve. "Why, there's nothing I
+like more than regattas! I do so hope we shall go to Henley this
+year; but houseboats are so expensive, and it's no fun unless you
+have a houseboat. We had a punt last year, a sort of thing like a
+long butler's tray, and Charles got into fearful difficulties. You
+know, it looks so easy to push a punt along with a pole, but the
+pole has a wicked way of sticking in the mud at critical
+moments--when they are clearing the course, for instance. Oh, it was
+dreadful! Everybody was looking at us, and I felt like one of those
+horrid people who always get in the way at the Oxford and Cambridge
+boat-race!"
+
+"Or the Derby dog, by Jove!" suggested the Colonel.
+
+"I can sympathize with you fully, Miss Sylvester," said his nephew.
+"I shouldn't like to say how many times in the course of my first
+summer term at Oxford I found myself sprawling ignominiously in the
+Cherwell, instead of posing in a picturesque attitude in the stern
+of my punt. And one looked such a fool going up to college in wet
+things. But there aren't many regattas going on in the regions below
+London Bridge nowadays. It's not much like Henley or Marlow, though
+it's pretty enough in its way at times. You ought to get Rainham to
+invite you to the dock; you would create an impression on the
+natives, and of course he would be delighted. He's got a most
+amiable housekeeper, though I don't think she has heard of thin
+bread-and-butter; and I have discovered that his foreman is a judge
+of art--a regular Ruskin."
+
+"And how is poor Philip, Mr. Lightmark?" asked Mrs. Sylvester
+tentatively. "You must bring him here very soon, and make him give
+an account of himself."
+
+"Oh," said Lightmark vaguely, "he's looking pretty fit, though he
+doesn't like to be told so. I really believe he would be unhappy if
+he were in robust health. He finds his damaged lung such a good
+pretext for neglecting the dock; and if it got quite well, half the
+occupation of his life would be gone."
+
+Mrs. Sylvester and Eve both protested laughingly against this
+somewhat heartless view of the case; and after declining an offer of
+the back seats of the carriage, which was already waiting at the
+door to take Mrs. Sylvester and her daughter for their anteprandial
+drive in the Park, and expressing their regret that they had not
+seen Charles, uncle and nephew took their leave together.
+
+"Dick, my boy," said the colonel, when they were safely in the
+street, "you must come and dine with me. Not tonight; I am going to
+take Lady Dulminster to the French play. Let me have your address,
+or come and look me up at the club. I'm dev'lish glad you're getting
+on so well, my boy, though you were a fool not to stay up at Oxford
+and take your degree. After all, though, perhaps you aren't quite
+the cut for the Church or a fellowship, and--and the Sylvesters are
+dev'lish good people to know, Dick. Ta, ta! Don't forget to come and
+see me."
+
+So saying, Dick's versatile uncle waved his cheroot by way of adieu,
+and clambered laboriously into a hansom.
+
+"By Jove!" said the younger man blankly, "what a ridiculous old
+humbug it is! And how he used to frighten me in the old days with
+his confounded cavalry bluster! I rather think I _will_ look him up:
+and I'll dine with him three times a week if he likes. Meanwhile,
+it's time for me to go and meet old Rainham, and take him round to
+Brodonowski's. What a ripping sunset!"
+
+And he strolled light-heartedly through Grosvenor Square, the smoke
+of his cigarette fading away behind him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+When Rainham pushed back the door of the dim little restaurant in
+Turk Street, Soho, he stood a moment, blinking his eyes a little in
+the sudden change from the bright summer sunshine, before he assured
+himself that his friend had not yet arrived. Half a dozen men were
+sitting about smoking or discussing various drinks. The faces of
+several were familiar to him, but there were none of them whom he
+knew; so he took his seat at a table near the door and ordered a
+vermouth to occupy him until Lightmark, whose unpunctuality was
+notorious, should put in an appearance. In the interim his eyes
+strayed round the establishment, taking stock of the walls with
+their rough decorations, and the _clientele_, and noting, not without
+a certain pleasure, that during the six months in which he had been
+absent neither had suffered much alteration.
+
+Indeed, to Philip Rainham, who had doubtless in his blood the taint
+of Bohemia, Brodonowski's and the enthusiasm of its guests had a
+very definite charm. They were almost all of them artists; they were
+all of them young and ardent; and they had a habit of propounding
+their views, which were always of the most advanced nature, with a
+vehemence which to Rainham represented all the disinterestedness of
+youth. Very often they were exceedingly well worth knowing, though
+in the majority of cases the world had not found it out. He knew
+very few of them personally; he had been taken there first by
+Lightmark, when the latter was fresh from Paris, and had been
+himself more in touch with them. But he had often sat smoking
+silently a little outside the main group, listening, with a
+deferential air that sat upon his age somewhat oddly, to their
+audacious propaganda.
+
+In his mind he would sometimes contrast the coterie with certain
+artistic houses, more socially important, which he had from
+time to time frequented: where earnest-eyed women in graceful
+garments--which certainly afforded a rest to the eye--dispensed tea
+from a _samovar_, and discoursed discreetly of the current Academy and
+the most recent symptomatic novel.
+
+The delight of a visible, orderly culture permeating their manners
+and their conversation was a real one, and yet, Rainham reflected,
+it left one at the last a trifle weary, a little cold. It seemed to
+him that this restaurant, with its perennial smell of garlic, its
+discoloured knife-handles, its frequentation of picturesque poverty,
+possessed actually an horizon that was somewhat less limited.
+
+Indeed, the dingy room, its assemblage apart, had many traces of an
+artistic patronage. The rough walls were adorned, in imitation of
+the familiar Roman haunt, of which this was, so to speak, a colony,
+with a host of fantastic sketches: rapid silhouettes in charcoal,
+drawn for illustration or refutation in the heat of some strenuous
+argument; caricatures in the same medium, some of them trenchantly
+like, of the customers as well as of certain artistic celebrities,
+whose laurels Brodonowski's had not approved, varied here and there
+by an epigram or a doggerel couplet, damning the Philistine.
+
+Rainham smiled as he recognised occasionally the grotesque travesty
+of a familiar face. Presently his eyes were arrested by a drawing
+which was new to him, a face of striking ugliness, offering
+advantages to the caricaturist of which, doubtless, he had not
+omitted to avail himself. It imposed itself on Rainham, for the
+savage strength which it displayed, and for an element in its
+hideousness which suggested beauty. He was still absorbed in the
+study of this face when Lightmark entered and took his place
+opposite him with a brief apology for his tardiness. He was dressed
+well, with a white orchid in his button-hole, and looked prosperous
+and rosy. Some light badinage on this score from his various
+acquaintances in the restaurant he parried with a good-humoured
+nonchalance; then he betook himself to consideration of the _menu_.
+
+"I have been calling on your friends, the Sylvesters," he explained
+after a while, "and I could not get away before. My uncle was there,
+by the way. You have heard me speak of him?"
+
+"Your uncle, who holds such a lax view of the avuncular offices?"
+
+Lightmark smiled a little self-congratulatory smile.
+
+"Ah, that's changed. The old boy was deuced friendly--gave me his
+whole hand instead of two fingers, and asked me to dine with him. I
+think," he went on after a moment, "the Sylvesters have been putting
+in a good word for me. Or perhaps it was Mrs. Sylvester's portrait
+which did the job."
+
+"Ah," said Rainham, "you have painted her, have you?"
+
+Their fish occupied them in silence. Lightmark, a trifle flushed
+from his rapid walk, smiled from time to time absently, as though
+his thoughts were pleasant ones. The older man thought he had seldom
+seen him looking more boyishly handsome. Presently his eyes again
+caught the head which had so struck his fancy.
+
+"Is that yours, Dick?" he asked.
+
+Lightmark followed the direction of his eyes to the opposite wall.
+
+"I believe it is," he remarked, with a shade of deprecation in his
+manner. "It is Oswyn. Don't you know him?"
+
+"I don't know him," said the other, sipping his thin Medoc. "But I
+think I should like to. What is he?"
+
+"He will be here soon, no doubt, and then you will see for yourself.
+He is Oswyn! I knew him in Paris better than I do now. He was in
+B----'s studio; and B---- swore that he had a magnificent genius. He
+painted a monstrous picture which the Salon wouldn't hang; but B----
+bought it, and hung it in his studio, where it frightened his models
+into fits. Last year he came to London, where he makes enough, when
+he is sober, by painting pot-boilers for the dealers, to keep him in
+absinthe and tobacco, which are apparently his sole sustenance. In
+the meanwhile he is painting a masterpiece; at least, so he will
+tell you. He is a virulent fanatic, whose art is the most monstrous
+thing imaginable. He is--but talk of the devil----"
+
+He broke off and nodded to a little, lean man of ambiguous age, in a
+strained coat, who entered at this moment with a rapid lurching
+gait. He sat down immediately opposite them, under Lightmark's
+presentment, with which Rainham curiously compared him. And it
+struck him that there was something in that oddly repulsive figure
+which Lightmark's superficial crayon had missed. The long, haggard
+face was there, with its ill-kempt hair and beard; and the lips,
+which, when they parted in a smile that was too full of irony,
+revealed the man's uneven, discoloured teeth. Rainham lost sight of
+his uncouthness in a sense of his extreme power. His eyes, which
+were restless and extraordinarily brilliant, met Rainham's
+presently; and the latter was conscious of a certain fascination in
+their sustained gaze. In spite of the air of savagery which pervaded
+the man, it was a movement of sympathy which, on the whole, he
+experienced towards him. And it seemed as if this sentiment were
+reciprocal, for when the German youth, who was the cupbearer of the
+establishment, had taken Oswyn's order, and had brought him absinthe
+in a long glass, he motioned it abruptly to the opposite table. Then
+he crossed over and accosted Lightmark, whom he had not hitherto
+appeared to recognise, with a word of greeting. Lightmark murmured
+his name and Rainham's, and the strange, little man nodded to him
+not unamiably.
+
+"I must smoke, if you don't mind," he said, after a moment.
+
+They nodded assent, and he produced tobacco in a screw of newspaper
+from the pocket of his coat, and began rapidly to make cigarettes.
+Rainham watched the dexterous movements of his long nervous
+hands--the colour of old ivory--and found them noticeable.
+
+"You are not an artist, I think," he suggested after a moment,
+fixing his curiously intent eyes on Rainham.
+
+"No," admitted the other, smiling, "I am afraid I am not. I am only
+here on sufferance. I am a mender of ships."
+
+"He is a connoisseur," put in Lightmark gaily. "It's an accident
+that he happens to be connected with shipping--a fortunate one,
+though, for he owns a most picturesque old shanty in the far East.
+But actually he does not know a rudder post from a jib-boom."
+
+"I suppose you have been painting it?" said Oswyn shortly.
+
+Lightmark nodded.
+
+"I have been painting the river from his wharf. The picture is just
+finished, and on the whole I am pleased with it. You should come in
+and give it a look, Oswyn, some time. You haven't seen my new
+studio."
+
+"I never go west of Regent Street," said Oswyn brusquely.
+
+Lightmark laughed a little nervously.
+
+"Oswyn doesn't believe in me, you know, Philip," he explained
+lightly. "It is a humiliating thing to have to say, but I may as
+well say it, to save him the trouble. He is so infernally frank
+about it, you know. He thinks that I am a humbug, that I don't take
+my art seriously, and because, when I have painted my picture, I
+begin to think about the pieces of silver, he is not quite sure that
+I may not be a descendant of Judas. And then, worst of all, I have
+committed the unpardonable sin: I have been hung at Burlington
+House. Isn't that about it, Oswyn?"
+
+The elder man laughed his low, mirthless laugh.
+
+"We understand each other, Dick; but you don't quite do yourself
+justice--or me. I have an immense respect for your talent. I feel
+sure you will achieve greatness--in Burlington House."
+
+"Well, it's a respectable institution," said the young man soberly.
+
+Oswyn finished his drink at a long, thirsty gulp, watching the young
+man askance with his impressive eyes. Rainham noticed for the first
+time that he had a curious trick of smiling with his lips only--or
+was it of sneering?--while the upper part of his face and his heavy
+brows frowned.
+
+"By the way, Lightmark," he observed presently, "I have to
+congratulate you on your renown. There is quite a long panegyric on
+your picture in the _Outcry_ this week. Do you know who wrote it?"
+
+"Damn it, man!" broke out Lightmark, with a vehemence which, to
+Rainham, seemed uncalled for, "how should I know? I haven't seen the
+rag for an age."
+
+There was an angry light in his eyes, but it faded immediately.
+
+Oswyn continued apologetically:
+
+"I beg your pardon. It must be very annoying to you to be puffed
+indiscreetly. But I fancied, you know----"
+
+Lightmark, flushing a little, interrupted him, laying his hand with
+a quick gesture, that might have contained an appeal in it, on the
+painter's frayed coat-sleeve.
+
+"Your glass is empty, and we are about ready for our coffee. What
+will you take?"
+
+Oswyn repeated his order, smiling still a little remotely, as he let
+the water trickle down from a scientific height to his glass,
+whipping the crystal green of its contents into a nebulous yellow.
+Rainham, who had listened to the little passage of arms in silence,
+felt troubled, uneasy. The air seemed thunderous, and was heavy with
+unspoken words. There appeared to be an under-current of
+understanding between the two painters which was the reverse of
+sympathetic, and made conversation difficult and volcanic. It caused
+him to remind himself, a trifle sadly, how little, after all, one
+knew of even one's nearest friend--and Lightmark, perhaps, occupied
+to him that relation--how much of the country of his mind remains
+perpetually undiscovered; and it made him wonder, as he had
+sometimes wondered before, whether the very open and sunny nature of
+the young painter, which was so large a part of his charm, had not
+its concealed shadows--how far, briefly, Lightmark's very frankness
+might not be a refinement of secretiveness?
+
+If, however, a word here and there, a trait surprised, indefinable,
+led him on occasion to doubt of his dominant impression of
+Lightmark's character, these doubts were never of long duration; and
+he would dismiss them, barely entertained, even as a sort of
+disloyalty, to the limbo of stillborn fancies. And so now, with his
+accustomed generosity, he speedily flung himself into the breach,
+and did his best to drive the conversation into impersonal and
+presumably safer channels. He touched on the prospects of the
+Academy, of academic art, and art in general, and by-and-by, as
+Oswyn rose to the discussion, he became himself interested, and was
+actuated less by a wish to make conversation than to draw his new
+friend out. And as the artist leant forward, grew excited, with his
+white, lean face working into strange contortions--as he shot out
+his savage paradoxes, expounding the gospel of the new art a trifle
+thickly now, and rolling and as rapidly smoking perpetual
+cigarettes, he found him again strangely attractive.
+
+He had flashes of insight, it seemed to Rainham; there was something
+in his caustic criticism which led him to believe that he could at
+another time have justified himself, defended reasonably and sanely
+a position that was at least tenable.
+
+But the tide of his spleen invariably overtook him, and he abandoned
+exegesis for tirade. The _bourgeois_, limited scope of the art in
+vogue--this was the burden of his reiterated rabid attacks; art
+watered down to suit the public's insipid palate, and he quoted
+Chamfort furiously: "Combien de sots faut-il pour faire un
+public?"--the art of simpering prettiness, without root or fruit in
+life, the art of absolute convention. He ran over a list of
+successful names with an ever-growing rancour--artistic hacks, the
+crew of them, the journalists of painting--with a side glance at
+Lightmark, who sat pulling his flaxen moustache, looking stiff and
+nervous--he would hang the lot of them to-morrow if he had his way,
+for corrupters of taste, or, better still, condemn them to perpetual
+incarceration in the company of their own daubs. These people, in
+fine, the mutual admiration society of incompetents--where was their
+justification, where would they be in a decade or so? The hangers-on
+of the fashionable world, caring for their art as a means of
+success, of acquiring guineas or a baronetcy or a couple of
+initials, who dropped the little technique they possessed as soon as
+they had a competency, and foisted their pictures most on people
+when they had forgotten how to paint. _Pompiers_, _fumistes_, makers of
+respectable _pommade_--as the painter's potations increased, his
+English became less fluent, and he was driven back constantly to the
+dialect of the Paris _ateliers_, which was more familiar to him than
+his mother tongue. Ah! how he hated these people and their
+thread-paper morality, and their sordid conception of art--a
+prettiness that would sell!
+
+Rainham had heard it all before; it was full of spleen and rancour,
+unnecessarily violent, and, conceivably, unjust. But what he could
+not help recognising, in spite of his repulsion, was a certain
+nobility and singleness in the man, ruin as he was. Virtue came out
+of him; he had the saving quality of genius, and it was a veritable
+burning passion of perfection, which masqueraded in his spleen. His
+conception of art for the sake of art only might be erroneous, but
+it was at least exalted; and the instinct which drove him always for
+his material directly to life, rejecting nothing as common or
+unclean--in the violence of his revolt, perhaps dwelling too
+uniformly on what was fundamentally ugly--might be disputable, but
+was obviously sincere. The last notion which Rainham took away with
+him, when they parted late in the evening (Oswyn having suddenly
+lapsed from the eloquence to the incoherency of drunkenness), was a
+wish to see more of him. He had given him his card, and he waited
+until he had seen him place it--after observing it for some moments
+attentively with lack-lustre eyes--in the security of his waistcoat.
+And as the two friends walked towards Charing Cross, Rainham
+observed that he hoped he would call.
+
+"He is a disreputable fellow," said Lightmark a little sullenly,
+"and an unprofitable acquaintance. You will find it less difficult
+to persuade him to make you a visit than to finish it." At which
+Rainham had merely shrugged his shoulders, finding his friend,
+perhaps for the first time, a little _banal_.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+A day or two later, as Rainham sat in his river-bound office
+struggling, by way of luncheon, with the most primitive of chops,
+his eyes, wandering away from a somewhat mechanic scrutiny of the
+_Shipping Gazette_, fell upon the shifting calendar on the
+mantelpiece.
+
+The dial noted Thursday; and he reminded himself that on that day
+his friend, Lady Garnett, had a perennial habit of being at home to
+her intimates, on the list of whom Rainham could acknowledge,
+without undue vanity, his name occurred high. There was a touch of
+self-reproach in his added reminder that a week had elapsed since
+his return, and he had not already hastened to clasp the excellent
+old lady's hand. It was an unprecedented postponement and an
+infringement of a time-honoured habit; and Rainham had for his habit
+all the respect of a man who is always indolent and often ill;
+though it must be admitted that to his clerks, who viewed the trait
+complacently, and to the importunate Bullen, who resented it, he
+seemed to be only regular in his irregularity. He decided that at
+least this occasion should not be allowed to slip; a free afternoon
+would benefit him. He was always rather lavish of those licenses;
+and it seemed to him that the tintinnabulation of teacups in Lady
+Garnett's primrose and gray drawing-room would be a bearable change
+from the din of a hundred hammers, which had pelted him through the
+open windows all the morning. They were patching a little wooden
+barque with copper, and he paused a moment in the yard, leaning on
+his slim umbrella to admire the brilliant yellow of the renewed
+sheets, standing out in vivid blots against the tarnished verdigris
+of the old. To pass from Blackpool to the West, however, is a tardy
+process; and when Rainham reached the spruce, little house in one of
+the most select of the discreet and uniform streets which adjoin
+Portman Square, he found the clatter of teacups for the most part
+over. There were, in fact, only two persons in the long room, which,
+with its open Erard, and its innumerable _bibelots_, and its plenitude
+of quaint, impossible chairs, seemed quite cosily exiguous. An old
+lady with a beautiful, refined face and a wealth of white hair,
+which was still charming to look at, sat in an attitude full of
+comfortable indolence, with a small pug in her lap, who bounced at
+Rainham with a bark of friendly recognition. A young lady, at the
+other side of the room (she was at least young by courtesy), who was
+pouring out tea, stopped short in this operation to greet the new
+visitor with a little soft exclamation, in which pleasure and
+surprise mingled equally. The old lady also looked up smiling. She
+seemed both good-natured and distinguished, and she had the air--a
+sort of tired complacency--of a person who has been saying witty
+things for a whole afternoon, and is at last in the enjoyment of a
+well-deserved rest. She extended both hands to Rainham, who held
+them for a minute in his own, silently smiling down at her, before
+he released them to greet her companion.
+
+She was a tall, pale girl in a black dress, whom at first sight the
+impartial observer might easily declare to be neither pretty nor
+young. As a matter of fact, she was younger than she seemed, for she
+was barely five-and-twenty, although her face and manner belonged
+to a type which, even in girlhood, already forestalls some of the
+gravity and reserve that arrive with years. As for her beauty, there
+were those who disputed it altogether; and yet even when one had
+gone so far as to declare that Mary Masters was plain, one had, in
+justice, to add that she possessed none the less a distinct and
+delicate charm of her own. It was a daisy-like charm differing in
+kind from the charm of Eve Sylvester, which was that of a violet or
+a child, perpetually perfuming the air. It could be traced at
+last--for she had not a good feature--to the possession of a pair
+of very soft, and shy, brown eyes, and of a voice, simply agreeable
+in conversation, which burgeoned out in song into the richest
+contralto imaginable, causing her to be known widely in society as
+"the Miss Masters who sings." Indeed, she had a wonderful musical
+talent, which she had cultivated largely. Her playing had even
+approved itself to the difficult Rubinstein; and, although she had a
+certain reputation for cleverness, the loss to society when she left
+the music-stool to mingle in it was generally felt not to be met by
+a corresponding gain; and, indeed, as a rule, people did not
+consider her separately. The generality were inclined simply to
+accept her, in relation to her aunt, Lady Garnett, with whom she had
+lived since she was a girl of sixteen, as any other of that witty
+old woman's impedimenta--her pug Mefistofele, or her matchless
+enamels, or her Watteau fans. As she came towards him now with a cup
+in her hand, her pale face a little flushed, her dark hair braided
+very plainly and neatly above her high forehead, Rainham could not
+help thinking that she would make an adorable old maid.
+
+"You look well, Mary," he remarked, holding her at arms' length
+critically, with the freedom of an old friend. "You look insultingly
+well--I hope you don't mean it."
+
+"I am afraid I do," laughed the girl. "I wish I could say as much
+for you."
+
+Rainham shook his head with burlesque solemnity, and sank down with
+his fragile cup into the most comfortable of the Louis Quinze chairs
+which he could select.
+
+"It's delightful to be back again," he remarked, letting his eyes
+wander round the familiar walls. "I know your things by heart, Lady
+Garnett; there's not one of them I could spare. Thanks, Mary, no
+sugar; cream, if you please. After all, I don't know anyone who has
+such charming rooms. Let me see if there is anything new. Yes, those
+enamels; introduce me, Mary, please. Yes, they are very nice. By
+the way, I picked up some old point for you at Genoa, only I have
+not unpacked it yet. But the Gustave Moreau, where is that? Ah,
+I see you have shifted it over the piano. Yes, it is exactly
+the same; you are all precisely the same; it's delightful, such
+constancy--delightful! I take it as a personal compliment. But where
+are all the delightful people?"
+
+Lady Garnett smiled placidly.
+
+"The delightful people have gone. To tell you the truth, I am just a
+little glad, especially as you have dropped in from the clouds, or
+the Riviera di Ponente--which is it, Philip?"
+
+"To be frank with you, from neither. I have it on my conscience to
+tell you that I have been back some days. I wanted to come here
+before."
+
+"Ah well, so long as you have come now!" said the old lady.
+
+"Your knock was mystifying, Philip," put in the girl presently; "we
+expected nobody else but the Sylvesters, and when we heard your
+solitary step our hearts sank. We thought that Charles Sylvester had
+taken it into his head to come by himself."
+
+"He is a terrible young man," said Lady Garnett; "he is almost as
+limited as his mamma, and he takes himself more seriously. When he
+is with his sister one can tolerate him, but alone----"
+
+She held up her thin wrinkled hands with a little gesture of
+elision, at which her expressive shoulders assisted. She was of
+French extraction, the last survivor of an illustrious family; and
+reconciled as she had become to England--for years she had hardly
+left London--a slight and very pretty accent, and this trick of her
+shoulders, remained to remind people that her point of view was
+still essentially foreign. Rainham, who had from his boyhood found
+England somewhat a prison-house, adored her for this trait. The
+quaint old woman, indeed, with her smooth, well-bred voice, her
+elaborate complexion, her little, dignified incongruities, had
+always been the greatest solace to him. She had the charm of all
+rococo things; she represented so much that had passed away,
+exhaling a sort of elegant wickedness to find a parallel to which
+one had to seek back to the days of the Regency. Of course, in
+society, she passed for being very devout; and, indeed, her little
+pieties, her unfailing attendance at Mass on days of Obligation, at
+the chapel of the French Embassy hard by, struck Rainham as most
+edifying. Really he perceived that her devout attitude was purely
+traditional, a form of good manners. She remained the same wicked,
+charming old Sadducee as before: her morocco-bound _paroissien_ might
+appear on festivals and occasions; she still slept as often as not
+of nights with "Candide" under her pillow.
+
+The knowledge of a certain sentiment which they shared towards the
+limitations of London (they were both persons strikingly without
+prejudice) lent a certain piquancy to their old-established
+relations, an allusive flavour to their conversation--it was always
+highly seasoned with badinage--that puzzled many of their common
+acquaintance enormously.
+
+Mary Masters, as a shy and serious maiden, fresh from a country
+parsonage, remembered well the astonishment, mingled with something
+not unlike awe, with which she had first heard them talk. Philip
+Rainham had been calling, as it might be now, when she arrived, and
+Lady Garnett had promptly introduced him to her as her godson,
+because, as she remarked lightly, if he is not, he ought to have
+been. To which Philip had replied, in a like humour, that it was all
+the same: if they hadn't that relation, at any rate their behaviour
+implied it.
+
+It was a novelty in her small and serious experience to find herself
+in conjunction with such frivolity; she was almost inclined to be
+shocked. Nevertheless, in the ten years during which she had made
+her home in Parton Street, Mary Masters had surmounted her awe, if
+her astonishment still occasionally obtained. Neither her aunt nor
+Rainham had altered, nor had they grown perceptibly older.
+
+Watching the latter to-day as he sat lolling back lazily, balancing
+his teacup, she was curiously reminded of her first impression of
+him; taking stock of her humorously, silently, in almost the same
+attitude, with the same sad eyes. And since Mary, too, had remained
+virtually unchanged, it is to the credit of the head of a
+particularly serious little daughter of the Puritans that she had
+ended by appreciating them both. In fact, she had discovered that
+neither of them was so frivolous as it appeared, or, at least, that
+there were visitors in Parton Street who seemed less frivolous,
+and whose frivolity shocked her more. Her shy brown eyes were
+penetrative, and often saw more than one would have imagined, and
+at last they believed that they had seen through the philosophic
+indifference of Lady Garnett's shrug, the gentle irony of Rainham's
+perpetual smile, the various masks of tragic comedians on a stage
+where there is no prompter, where the footlights are most pitiless,
+and where the gallery is only too lavish of its cat-calls at the
+smallest slip. Beneath it all she saw two people who understood each
+other as well as any two persons in the world. Did they understand
+each other so well that they could afford to trifle? She had an idea
+that their silences were eloquent, and that they might well be
+lavish of the crudity of speech. Oh, they pretended very well! The
+young girl found something admirable in the hard, polished surface
+which her aunt presented to the world: her rouge and her diamonds,
+her little bird-like air of living only in the present, of being
+intensely interested, of having no regrets--a manner to which
+Rainham responded so fluently with an assumption that she was
+right, that things were an excellent joke. After all, perhaps they
+pretended too much; at least, she found herself often, when they
+were present, falling away into reveries full of conjecture, from
+which, as happened now, she only awoke with a slight blush to find
+herself directly addressed.
+
+"Wake up, Mary! we are talking of the Sylvesters. I was telling
+Philip that his little friend Eve has become entirely charming."
+
+"Yes," said Mary slowly; "she is charming, certainly. Haven't you
+seen her, Philip? You used to be constantly there."
+
+Rainham assumed the air of reflection.
+
+"Really, I believe I used, when Eve was in short frocks, and Charles
+conspicuously absent. Like Lady Garnett, I find the barrister
+exhausting. He is very unlike his father."
+
+"We are going to Switzerland with them this summer, you know,
+Philip? Will you join us?"
+
+"Ah!" he put his cup down, not responding for a moment. "It would be
+delightful, but I am afraid impossible. You see, there's the dock;
+I have been away from it six months, and I shall have to repeat the
+process when the fogs begin. No, Lady Garnett, I won't be tempted."
+
+She began to press him, and they fenced rapidly for some minutes,
+laughing. Rainham had just been induced to promise that he would at
+least consider the proposition, when the footman announced Mr. and
+Miss Sylvester. They came in a moment later; and while the
+barrister, a tall well-dressed man, with the shaven upper lip and
+neat whisker of his class, and a back which seemed to bend with
+difficulty, explained to Lady Garnett that his mother was suffering
+too much from neuralgia to come with them, Rainham resumed his
+acquaintance with the young girl. He had seen little of her during
+the past two years, and in the last of them, in which she had
+changed most, he had not seen her at all. It was with a slight
+shock, then, that he realized how completely she had grown up. He
+remembered her in so many phases of childhood and little girlhood,
+ranging up from a time when her speech was incoherent, and she had
+sat on his knee and played with his watch, to the more recent
+occasions when he had met her riding in the Park with her brother;
+and she had waved her little whip to him, looking particularly slim
+and pretty in the very trying costume which fashion prescribes for
+little girls who ride.
+
+They had always been very good friends; she had been a most engaging
+little companion, and really, he reflected, he had been extremely
+fond of her. It gave him a distinct pain to reflect that their
+relation had, in the nature of things, come to an end. Gradually, as
+they talked, the young girl growing out of the first restraint of
+her shyness, and falling back into something of her old manner, the
+first painful impression of her entire strangeness left Rainham. In
+spite of her mature, little society air, her engaging attempts at
+worldliness, she was, after all, not so grown-up as she seemed. The
+child gleamed out here and there quite daintily, and as he indulged
+in reminiscence, and reminded her of some of their more remote
+adventures, her merriment found utterance very childishly.
+
+"Our most tragical encounter, though, was with the monkey. Have you
+forgotten that? It was on one of your birthdays--you had a good many
+of them in Florence--I forget which it was. You must have been about
+ten. I had taken you to the Zoological Gardens, such as they were."
+
+Her laughter rippled out softly again.
+
+"I remember," she nodded, "it was dreadful."
+
+"Yes," he said; "we were at the monkey-cage; you had grown tired of
+feeding the ostrich with _centesimi_."
+
+"Oh, Philip!" she interrupted him; "I never, _never_ would have done
+such a thing. It was you who used to give the poor bird _centesimi_.
+I only used to watch."
+
+"Ah, you connived at it, anyhow," he went on. "Well, we were feeding
+the monkeys, this time with melon-seeds, when we somehow aroused the
+ire of a particularly ugly brute, who must have been distantly
+connected with a bull. Anyhow, he made a grab at the scarlet _berret_
+you were wearing, just missed your hair, and demolished the cap."
+
+"I remember," she laughed. "You tied your handkerchief round my
+head, like an old peasant woman, and took me back in a carriage. And
+mamma was dreadfully angry about the cap, because she had bought it
+at Biarritz, and couldn't replace it in Italy. She thought you ought
+to have taken steps to get it back."
+
+"Dear me!" said Rainham solemnly, "why didn't I think of it before?
+I wonder if it's too late to do anything now."
+
+The girl's laughter broke out again, this time attracting the
+attention of her brother, who was discussing the projected travels,
+with the aid of Bradshaw, at Mary Masters' side. He glanced at them
+askance, pulling at his collar in his stiff, nervous fashion a
+little uneasily.
+
+"What a long time ago all that seems, Philip!" she remarked after a
+while.
+
+He was silent for a moment examining his finger-nails intently.
+
+"Yes," he said rather sadly; "I suppose it does. I dare say you
+wouldn't care much for the Zoo now?"
+
+"Oh, I shouldn't mind," she said gaily, "if you will take me."
+
+But a move had been made opposite, and Charles Sylvester, coming up
+to them, overheard this last remark.
+
+"I think we must be off," he said, consulting his watch. "Where is
+Rainham going to take you?"
+
+"To Florence," she said, smiling, "to the Zoo."
+
+"Ah, a good idea," he murmured. "Well, good-bye, Lady Garnett;
+good-day, Rainham. I am sorry to see you don't seem to have
+benefited much by your winter abroad. I almost wonder you came back
+so soon. Was not it rather unwise? This treacherous climate, you
+know."
+
+"Yes," said Rainham; "I, too, think you are right. I think I had
+much better have stayed--very much better."
+
+"Ah, well," he said, "you must take care of yourself, and give us a
+look in if you have time."
+
+Eve looked up at him, flushing a little, as though she found her
+brother's formal politeness lacking in hospitality. She was struck
+then, as she had not been yet during her visit, by a curious
+lassitude in her old friend's face. It affected her with an
+unconscious pity, causing her to second her brother's somewhat
+chilly invitation more cordially.
+
+The humour which had shone in Rainham's eyes while they had been
+talking seemed to have gone out suddenly, like a lamp, leaving them
+blank and tired. It shocked her to realize how old and ill he had
+become.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Indolence and ill-health, in the opinion of many the salient points
+in Philip Rainham's character, had left him at forty with little of
+the social habit. The circle of his intimates had sensibly narrowed,
+and for the rest he was becoming more and more conscious that people
+whom one does not know exceedingly well are not worth knowing at
+all. The process of dining out two or three times a week in the
+company of two or three persons whose claims on his attention were
+of the slenderest he found a process attended with less and less
+pleasure the older he grew. There were few houses now which he
+frequented, and this year, when he had made an effort to devote a
+couple of evenings to the renewal of some acquaintance of the
+winter, and had discovered, as he had discovered anew each season,
+that the effort gave him no appreciable compensations for the
+disagreeables it involved, he made fresh resolutions of abstinence,
+and on the whole he kept them amazingly well.
+
+For the most part, when he was not routed out by Lightmark (and
+since the young artist was in train to become a social acquisition
+this happened less frequently than of old), it was at Blackpool that
+he spent his evenings. He had, it is true, a standing invitation to
+dinner at Lady Garnett's when that old lady found herself at home;
+but Portman Square was remote, and evening dress, to a man with one
+lung in a climate which had so fickle a trick of registering itself
+either at the extreme top or bottom of the thermometer, presented
+various discomforts. His den behind the office--a little
+sitting-room with a bay-window facing Blackpool Reach, a room
+filled with books that had no relation to shipping, and hung round
+with etchings and pictures in those curiously-low tones for which he
+had so unreasonable an affection--was what he cherished most in
+London. He read little now, but the mere presence of the books he
+loved best in rough, uneven cases, painted black, lining the walls,
+caressed him. As with persons one has loved and grown used to
+loving, it was not always needful that they should speak to him; it
+was sufficient, simply, that they should be there. Neither did he
+write on these long, interminable evenings, which were prolonged
+sometimes far into the night. He had ended by being able to smile
+at his literary ambitions of twenty, cultivating his indolence as
+something choice and original, finding his destiny appropriate.
+
+He spent the time in interminable reveries, sitting with a volume
+before him, as often as not unopened, smoking incessantly, and
+looking out of the window. The habit amused himself at times; it was
+so eminently symbolic of his destiny. Life, after all, had been to
+him nothing so much as that--a long looking out of window, the
+impartial spectatorship of a crowd of persons and passions from
+which he had come at last to seem strangely detached, almost as
+much as from this chameleon river, which he had observed with such
+satisfaction in all its manifold gradations of character and colour;
+its curious cold grayness in the beginning of an autumnal dawn; the
+illusion of warmth and depth which it sustained at noon, bringing
+up its burden of leviathans on the top of the flood; its sheen on
+moonless nights, when only little punctures, green and red and
+orange, and its audible stillness, reminded him that down in the
+obscurity the great polluted stream stole on wearily, monotonously,
+everlastingly to the sea. It was changeful and changeless. He
+thought he knew its effects by heart, but it had always new ones in
+reserve to surprise and delight him. He declared it at last to be
+inexhaustible. It was like a diamond on sunny days, flashing out
+light in every little ripple; in the late, sunless afternoon the
+light lay deeply within it, and it seemed jealous of giving back the
+least particle. He compared it then to an opal or a sapphire, which
+shine with the same parsimonious radiance.
+
+One night, while he sat smoking in his wonted meditative fashion,
+he had a visitor--the painter Oswyn. He had almost forgotten his
+invitation, but he reminded himself of his first impression, and
+greeted him with a cordiality which the other seemed to find
+surprising. He took him into his sanctuary and found him whisky and
+a pipe; then he set himself to make the painter talk, a task which
+he found by no means arduous.
+
+Oswyn was sober, and Rainham was surprised after a while at his
+sanity. He decided that, though one might differ from him, dissent
+from his premises or his conclusions, he was still a man to be taken
+seriously. His fluency was as remarkable as ever, and at first as
+spleenful; by-and-by his outrageous mood gave way, and, in response
+to some of Rainham's adroit thrusts, he condescended to stand on his
+defence. He could give a reasonable account of himself; was prepared
+clearly, and succinctly, and seriously with his justification.
+Rainham was impressed anew by his singleness, the purity of his
+artistic passion. His life might be disgraceful, indescribable: his
+art lay apart from it; and when he took up a brush an enthusiasm,
+a devotion to art, almost religious, steadied his hand.
+
+"You may think me a charlatan," he said, with the same savage
+earnestness, "but I can tell you I am not. I may fail or I may
+succeed, as the world counts those things. It is all the same: I
+believe in myself. It is sufficient to me if I approve myself, and
+the world may go to damnation! What I care for is my idea!... yes,
+my idea, that's it! They can howl at me," he went on; "but they can
+never say of any stroke of my brush that I put it there for them. I
+could have painted pictures like Lightmark if I had cared, you know,
+but I did not care!"
+
+"And yet he has great facility," said Rainham tentatively.
+
+"He has more," said Oswyn bitterly, "or, at least, he had--genius.
+And he has deliberately chosen to go the wrong way, to be
+conventional. He can't plead 'invincible ignorance' like the others;
+he ought to know better. Well, he has his reward; but I can't
+forgive him."
+
+Rainham shrugged his shoulders with something between a sigh and a
+laugh.
+
+"Poor boy! he is young, you know. Perhaps he will live to see the
+errors of his ways."
+
+"When he's an Academician, I suppose?" suggested the other
+ironically. "Do they ever see the errors of their ways? If they do
+they don't show it. No; he will marry a rich wife, and make speeches
+at banquets, and paint portraits of celebrities, for the rest of his
+days. And in fifty years' time people will say, 'Lightmark, R.A.?
+Who the devil was he?'"
+
+By this time the young moon had risen, and its cold light shimmered
+on the misty river. Rainham refilled his pipe, and opened the window
+still more widely.
+
+"By Jove, what a night!" he said. "What a night for a painter! I am
+sure you are longing to be out in it. I'm afraid there's nothing to
+show you in the dock at present; you must come down again when
+there's a ship coming in at night. I feel quite reconciled to the
+dock on those occasions. Shall we go for a stroll in the
+moonlight--and seek impressions?"
+
+Oswyn's restless humour welcomed the suggestion, and he was already
+waiting, his soft felt hat in one ungloved hand, and a heavy,
+quaintly carved stick in the other.
+
+They stood for some minutes on the little, square, pulpit-like
+landing, at the top of the creaking wooden staircase, which led down
+the side of the building from office to yard, listening to the faint
+drip of the water through the sluice-gates; the wail of a child
+outside the walls, and the pacing step of the woman who hushed it;
+the distant intermittent roar of the song which reached them through
+the often opened doors of a public-house. Presently the
+night-watchman lumbered out of his sentry-box by the gates, his dim
+lantern sounding pools of mysterious darkness, which were untouched
+by the solitary gas-lamp in the street outside, and which the faint
+moonlight only seemed to intensify.
+
+Oswyn drew in a long breath of the cool, caressing air, momentarily
+straightening his bent figure. Then he gave a short laugh, which
+startled Rainham from the familiar state of half-smiling reverie to
+which he was always so ready to recur.
+
+"The last time I saw the river like this," he said--"the last time
+I was down here at night, that is--was when I went with a Malay
+model of mine to his favourite opium den."
+
+"You have not repeated the experiment?" asked Rainham absently.
+
+"No; not yet, at any rate. It made my hand shake so damnably for a
+week afterwards that I couldn't paint. Besides, I doubt if I could
+find the place again. I couldn't get the Malay to come away at all;
+he is probably there still."
+
+"Beg your pardon, sir," said the night-watchman hoarsely, when they
+reached the bottom of the difficult staircase, "there's been a young
+woman here asking for a gentleman of the name of Crichton. I told
+her there weren't no one of that name here, and Mr. Bullen, sir, he
+saw her, and sent her away. I thought I had better mention it to
+you, sir."
+
+"Crichton? Crichton?" repeated Rainham indifferently. "I don't know
+anyone of that name. Some mistake, I suppose, or---- Well, sailors
+will be sailors! Thank you, Andrewes, that will do. Good-night--or,
+rather, we shall be back in half an hour or so." He turned to Oswyn,
+who had been hanging back to avoid any appearance of interest in the
+conversation, for corroboration. "You will come back, of course?"
+
+"Rather late, isn't it? I think I had better catch some train before
+midnight, if there is one."
+
+"Oh, there are plenty of trains," said Rainham vaguely. "We can
+settle that matter later. I can give you a bed here, you know, or a
+berth, at any rate."
+
+As they stepped through the narrow opening in the gate, a dark form
+sprang forward out of the shadow, and then stopped timidly.
+
+"Oh, Cyril!" cried a woman's plaintive voice. "Cyril! I knew you
+were here, and they wouldn't let me---- Ah, my God! it isn't Cyril
+after all...!"
+
+The voice--and it struck Rainham that it was not the voice of a
+woman of the sort one would expect to encounter in the streets at
+that hour--died away in a broken sob, and the girl fell back a step,
+almost dropping the child she carried in her arms.
+
+Her evident despair appealed to Rainham's somewhat inconveniently
+assertive sensibility.
+
+He hesitated for a moment, glancing from the girl to Oswyn, and
+noting that the face, too, had a certain beauty which was not of the
+order affected by the women of Blackpool.
+
+"Don't go," he said to Oswyn, who had withdrawn a few paces. "I
+won't keep you a moment!"
+
+The baby in the woman's arms set up a feeble wail, and it was borne
+in upon Rainham's mind that the unhappy creature with the white face
+and pleading dark eyes had been waiting long.
+
+"Didn't my foreman tell you that the--that the gentleman you asked
+for is not here?" he inquired gently. "No one here has ever heard of
+Mr. Crichton. I'm afraid you have made a mistake.... Hadn't you
+better go home? I'm sure it would be best for your child."
+
+"Home?" echoed the girl bitterly. Then, changing her tone, "But I
+saw him here with my own eyes!" she pleaded. "I saw him at the
+window there not a week ago quite plain, and then they told me he
+wasn't here! I'm sure he would see me if he only knew--if he only
+knew!"
+
+"He may have been here," suggested Rainham doubtfully. "There are a
+great many people here from day to day, and we don't always know
+their names. But I assure you he isn't here now."
+
+The girl--for in spite of her pale misery she did not look
+more--drew her dark shawl more closely round herself and the child
+with a little, despairing shudder, glancing over her shoulder.
+Rainham let his eyes rest on the frail figure pityingly, and a
+thought of the river behind her struck him with a sudden chill.
+
+He put his hand, almost surreptitiously, into his pocket.
+
+"Where do you live?" he asked. "Near here?" The girl mentioned a
+street which he sometimes passed through when economy of time
+induced him to make an otherwise undesirable short-cut to the
+railway station. "Well," he said presently, "I can't keep my friend
+here waiting, you know. Come and see me to-morrow morning about
+midday, and I will see if I can help you. Only you must promise me
+to go straight home now! And"--here he dropped a coin quickly into
+her hand--"buy something for your child; you both look as if you
+wanted it."
+
+The girl looked at him dumbly for a moment.
+
+"I will come, sir, and--and thank you!" she said, with a quaver in
+her voice. And then, in obedience to Rainham's playfully threatening
+gesture, she turned away.
+
+Rainham gazed after her until she had turned the corner.
+
+"I'm sorry to have treated you to this--scene," he said
+apologetically, as he joined Oswyn, who was gazing over the narrow
+bridge. "I felt bound to do something for the girl, after she had
+been wasting all that time outside my gates. Did you notice what a
+pretty, refined face she had? I wonder who the man can be--Crichton,
+Cecil Crichton, wasn't it?... I never heard the name before. It
+doesn't sound like a sailor's name."
+
+"Cecil Crichton?" echoed the other. "No ... and yet it sounds
+familiar. Perhaps I am thinking of the Admirable, though he wasn't
+Cecil, as far as I remember. The old story, I suppose. Cecil
+Crichton--ah, Cyril Crichton?" he repeated. Then, dismissing the
+subject somewhat brutally, "Ah, well, it's no business of mine! Will
+you give me a light? Thanks!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+At three o'clock Lightmark dismissed his model--an Italian, with a
+wonderfully fine torso and admirable capabilities for picturesque
+pose, whom he had easily persuaded to abandon his ice-cream barrow
+to sit for him two or three times a week, acting the part of studio
+servant in the intervals.
+
+"That will do, Cesare," he said, "_aspetto persone_; besides, you're
+shivering: I shall have you catching cold next, and I can't paint
+while you're sneezing. Yes, you're quite right, _e un freddo
+terribile_, considering that it's July. Off with you now, and come
+again at the same time on Friday. _Si conservi_--that's to say, don't
+get drunk in the interval; it makes you look such a brute that I
+can't paint you."
+
+While the model transformed himself from a scantily-attired Roman
+gladiator into an Italian of the ordinary Saffron Hill description,
+Lightmark hastily washed his brushes, turned down his shirt sleeves,
+and donned the becoming velvet painting-jacket, which Mrs. Dollond
+had so much admired.
+
+"I hope they won't notice Cesare's pipe," he said anxiously. "Even
+though he doesn't smoke here, it always seems to hang about. Perhaps
+I had better open the window and burn a pastille. And now, are we
+prepared to receive Philistia? Yes, I don't think the place looks
+bad, and--but perhaps Mrs. Sylvester mightn't like the gladiator. He
+certainly is deucedly anatomical at present. I'll go and leave him
+in Copal's studio, and then I can borrow his tea-things at the same
+time."
+
+The studio was a lofty room on the ground-floor with an
+elaborately-devised skylight, and a large window facing north,
+through which a distant glimpse of Holland Park could be obtained.
+Lightmark had covered the floor with pale Indian matting, with a bit
+of strong colour, here and there, in the shape of a modern Turkish
+rug. For furniture, he had picked up some old chairs and a large
+straight-backed settee with grotesquely-carved legs, which, with the
+aid of a judicious arrangement of drapery, looked eminently
+attractive, and conveyed an impression of comfort which closer
+acquaintance did not altogether belie. Then there was the platform,
+covered with dark cloth, on which his models posed; the rickety
+table with many drawers, in which he kept brushes and colours; a lay
+figure, disguised as a Venetian flower-girl, which had collapsed
+tipsily into a corner; two or three easels; and a tall, stamped
+leather screen, which was useful for backgrounds. A few sketches,
+mostly unframed, stood in a row on the narrow shelf which ran along
+the pale-green distempered walls; and more were stacked in the
+corners--some in portfolios, and some with their dusty backs exposed
+to view. The palette which he had been using lay, like a great
+fantastic leaf, upon the table, amid a chaos of broken crayons,
+dingy stumps, photographs of sitters, pellets of bread, disreputable
+colour-tubes, and small bottles of linseed-oil, varnish, and
+turpentine. A sketch for Mrs. Sylvester's portrait, in crayons, was
+propped against the foot of an easel (Lightmark hoped that her son
+might buy it for his chambers); the canvas which he had prepared
+against the much-delayed sitting due from Miss Sylvester exposed its
+blank surface on another. A tall Japanese jar full of purple and
+yellow irises, a tribute to his expected guests, stood on the dusty
+black stove.
+
+He had barely had time to arrange the borrowed tea-things, and to
+set a kettle on a little spirit-lamp behind the screen, when Mrs.
+Dollond and her husband were announced. He threw his black sombrero
+somewhat theatrically into a corner, and advanced with effusion to
+meet them. Mrs. Dollond had taken a decided interest in the young
+painter ever since the delightfully uncandid reflection of her by no
+means youthful beauty, which he had exhibited at the Grosvenor, had
+provoked so much comment among her friends.
+
+She was a plump, little, fair-haired woman, with blue eyes, a very
+pink and white complexion, small hands, and a passion for dress with
+which people who had known her before her marriage, as a slim maiden
+devoted to sage-green draperies and square-toed shoes, declined to
+credit her, until they were told that she had, to put it plainly,
+grown fat--a development which compelled her to give up aestheticism
+and employ a _modiste_.
+
+Her husband, who followed her into the room, carrying her
+impedimenta, wore the bored expression of the R.A. who is expected
+to admire the work of an outsider. He was the abject slave of his
+good-natured wife--she _was_ good-natured, in spite of her love of
+scandal--and his only fault from her point of view, and his greatest
+one in the eyes of people in general, lay in an unfortunate habit of
+thinking aloud, a dangerous characteristic, which persons who are
+apt to find themselves in the position of critic should at any cost
+eradicate. Luckily, his benevolence was such that these outspoken
+comments were never really virulent, and not often offensive.
+
+Mrs. Dollond seated herself smilingly on the least rickety chair,
+disposed of her veil with one neatly-gloved hand, and prepared a
+tortoiseshell eyeglass for action with the other.
+
+"What a charming portrait!" she said, pointing with her plump
+index-finger to the sketch of Mrs. Sylvester. "Do I know the lady, I
+wonder? Oh! I do believe it's that Mrs. Sylvester."
+
+"Yes," said Lightmark. "If you remember, you introduced me to her at
+the Academy soiree last year. I expect her here this afternoon, with
+her daughter. I am going to paint Miss Sylvester's portrait."
+
+"Ah," said Mrs. Dollond mischievously, "and that accounts for the
+pastille. You never made such preparations when _I_ sat to you. I
+suppose you thought that a painter's wife could not possibly object
+to tobacco."
+
+"And she certainly doesn't, judging by her consumption of
+cigarettes!" interposed her husband.
+
+"Hugh, I'm ashamed of you. You know I'm a martyr to asthma--and
+cigarettes aren't tobacco. But how old is Miss Sylvester? Is she
+pretty?"
+
+"Don't ask me to describe her, Mrs. Dollond. Wait till you see
+her--she's coming, you know. What do you think of that river-scape,
+most reverend signor? It's one of the little things I've been doing
+down at Rainham's Dock--down at Blackpool."
+
+The Academician tried to appear interested as he assumed the
+conventional bird-like pose of the picture-gazer, and surveyed the
+sketch.
+
+"Very pretty--very pretty! I should hardly have thought it was the
+Thames, though. It isn't muddy enough. In fact, the whole scheme of
+colour is much too clean for London. Quite absurd! Not a bit like
+it! Eh, my dear, what was I saying? Oh yes, I like the effect of the
+sunlight on that brown sail immensely. It's really very clever, very
+clever."
+
+Mrs. Dollond, who never knew what her husband would say next,
+welcomed the influx of a small throng of visitors with a sigh of
+relief.
+
+The Sylvesters and Philip Rainham, arriving at the same time, found
+the little studio almost crowded. Besides the Dollonds there were
+two or three of the Turk Street fraternity; a young sculptor, newly
+arrived from Rome, with his wife; Dionysus F. Quain, an American
+interested in petroleum, who had patronized Lightmark also at Rome;
+and Copal, whose studio was in the same building, and who was
+manifestly anxious about his Chelsea teacups.
+
+Mrs. Sylvester greeted her _protege_ with a flattering degree of
+warmth which was entirely absent from the stare and conventional
+smile with which she honoured Mrs. Dollond, and the somewhat
+impertinent air of patronage which she wore when one or two of the
+young artists were introduced to her. If they did not mind, Mrs.
+Dollond was inclined to be resentful, for the moment, at least; and,
+as a preliminary attack, she maliciously encouraged Eve, who,
+ensconced in a corner, blissfully unconscious of the maternal
+anxiety which the other matron had detected, was eagerly turning
+over the contents of a portfolio which she had unearthed from its
+lurking-place behind her chair.
+
+Rainham was looking over her shoulder, admiring the charming poise
+of the girl's head, and the contours of her wrists and hands, as she
+submitted the drawings to his inspection. Charles Sylvester
+stationed himself close by, and devoted himself to buttonholing the
+American senator, to the obvious discomfort of his victim, whose
+knowledge of Pennsylvanian oil-wells was infinitely greater than his
+acquaintance with the rudiments of summary jurisdiction, as
+practised in his native State, and who, after hazarding a remark to
+the effect that Judge Lynch had long since retired from the Bench,
+had, as he would have put it, "pretty considerably petered out."
+
+"I hope my daughter isn't indiscreet?" Mrs. Sylvester had hazarded,
+after catching Lightmark's eye on its return journey from a glance
+in the direction of the little group in the corner; and the young
+man had reassured her hastily, before misgivings had time to assail
+him, and when they did, he hoped for the best. For a painter's
+portfolio is, after all, hardly less confidential than a diary, and
+may be on occasion almost as compromising, in spite of the fact that
+the records it contains are written in cipher.
+
+The sunlight, mellowed to a dull straw colour by its passage through
+London air, slanted in at the window, falling first on Charles
+Sylvester's handsome face, with its eminently professional, severely
+cut features, and the careful limitation of whisker, which seemed so
+completely in harmony with his shaven upper lip and the
+unsympathetic scrutiny of his double eyeglass; then, losing some of
+its brightness among the little ripples of brown hair which a
+gracious Providence had forbidden her hat to conceal, fell like a
+halo upon the pale green wall behind Eve's head.
+
+The young artists--the "boys," as they would have called
+themselves--were circulating busily with teacups and _petits fours_,
+and the chatter of voices bore testimony to the preponderance of the
+Bohemian element. It is only the dwellers on the confines who lose
+their voices in the Temple of Art--a goddess who, to judge by her
+votaries, is not wont to take pleasure in silence.
+
+"Oh," said Eve, in reply to one of Rainham's remarks, "is that
+Bordighera? What lovely blue water! and what perfectly delicious
+little fishing-boats! I should like to go there. Charles is going to
+take us to Lucerne in a week or two, you know, when the Long
+Vacation begins. But I suppose we shall hardly get to Italy."
+
+"Yes, that's Bordighera"--with a sigh--"my happy hunting-ground. And
+the water is much bluer really--only don't tell Dick I said so. Yes,
+you ought to go there. If you stayed late enough you would have me
+dropping in on you one fine day, as soon as the fogs begin here.
+Happy thought! Why shouldn't we all winter out there?"
+
+"That would be nice," said Eve, rather doubtfully; "but, you know,
+there's Charles--he would have to come back for the Law Courts in
+the autumn, and he would be so lonely all by himself. And--and
+there's my portrait. Mr. Lightmark wants to get that ready for next
+year's Academy; and I can't sit to him very often, as it is, because
+of _chaperons_, you know."
+
+Meanwhile Lightmark was telling Mrs. Dollond, in a confidential
+undertone, some story of a fair American sitter, who, on his
+expressing himself dissatisfied with his efforts worthily to
+transfer her complexion to canvas, had at once offered to send her
+maid round to his studio with an assortment of her favourite _poudre
+de rose_. Dollond listened with an amused smile to a recital of the
+sculptor's impressions of the Salon, which he had taken on his way
+from Rome. Copal was making desperate efforts to count his precious
+teacups, a task which their scattered positions rendered
+distressingly difficult. Charles Sylvester was somewhat listlessly
+cross-examining a P.R.A. in embryo as to the exact meaning of
+"breadth" in a painting; and Mr. Quain had been making his way as
+unostentatiously as the creakiness of his boots would permit towards
+the door. Eve had despatched one of "the boys" in search of a
+portfolio to replace the one which she had exhausted, and another
+had been entrusted with the safe bestowal of her empty teacup. The
+new portfolio, when it arrived, proved to be filled, not as the
+others, with landscapes and waterscapes, but with studies from
+life--Capri fisher girls, groups of market people, Venetian boatmen,
+and hasty sketches for portraits.
+
+Eve paused rather longer than usual over one of these, the picture
+of a pretty fair-haired girl, dressed as Pierrette, the general lack
+of detail and absence of background only making the vigorously
+outlined face more distinct.
+
+"What a pretty girl, Philip!" said the young critic presently; "and
+how curiously she's dressed! What is she intended to represent? Is
+it a fancy dress?... Mr. Rainham, if you don't attend, I won't show
+you any more pictures."
+
+"Tyrant," said Rainham absently, as he carried his eyes from the
+contemplative stare with which they had been regarding the vagaries
+of a butterfly on the skylight. "What have you found now?--Kitty, by
+Jove!"
+
+He had no sooner uttered these last three words, in a very different
+tone to that of his previous idle remarks, than he cursed his
+indiscretion. It was a piece of _gaucherie_ which he would find it
+hard to forgive in himself, and Lightmark might well resent it.
+
+"Kitty?" asked Eve, with some surprise, "who is Kitty? Mr.
+Lightmark, please tell us who this charming young lady, whom Mr.
+Rainham calls Kitty, is, since he won't."
+
+"Kitty?" repeated Lightmark, with only a momentary hesitation, which
+the suddenness of the query might well account for; "I'm afraid I
+don't quite remember. There are so many Kitties, you know. All
+models are either Kitty or Polly. But if Rainham says it's Kitty,
+depend upon it he's right. He's got a wonderful memory for faces,
+especially pretty ones.--Yes," he added mischievously, "you ask
+Rainham."
+
+Mrs. Sylvester looked uneasy, and, to her subsequent disgust, began
+to press "dear Mrs. Dollond" to come and see her.
+
+Charles, who had looked up sharply at the first mention of the name,
+which had so disturbed the usually imperturbable Rainham, fixed his
+interrogative glasses first on the latter and then on Lightmark, and
+finally let them rest, with an expression of inquiring censure, on
+Rainham, whose confusion savoured to his mind so unmistakably of
+guilt that "Gentlemen of the jury" rose almost automatically to his
+lips. Nor did Rainham's attempt to smooth matters assist him.
+
+"I must have seen the girl at the studio," he said, "when Lightmark
+was painting her. It's certainly a striking likeness, and that's
+what astonished me, you know. Almost like seeing a ghost. Ah, that
+little fellow used to sit for Lightmark in Rome--little sunburnt
+ruffian. We picked him up on the Ghetto, almost starving, and he got
+quite an artistic connection before we left. He was positively
+growing too fat; prosperity spoiled him as a model."
+
+"Really?" said Eve listlessly. "I don't think I want to look at any
+more drawings; one can have too much of a good thing, and it must be
+time for us to go. We're dining out, and Charles doesn't like
+dressing in a hurry. Yes, mamma is buttoning her gloves. Good-bye,
+Mr. Rainham. Shall we see you again before we go to Switzerland? Ah,
+well, let's hope so. Au revoir, Mr. Lightmark. If you really think
+it's worth while for me to give you a solitary sitting next
+week----"
+
+"If you would be so good. You see, I should have some ideas to go on
+with. Don't I deserve some reward, too, for allowing Rainham to
+monopolize you all the afternoon? And if you don't give me a sitting
+now, I'm afraid you will forget all about it when you come back to
+town; whereas, if we make a beginning, you will have to see it
+through--you will be compromised."
+
+"What a stupid expression!" thought Mrs. Sylvester as the carriage
+rolled along the Kensington highroad.
+
+Charles was unusually silent during the drive. The subject which
+occupied his thoughts was not one which he would have dreamed of
+ventilating even with his mother, and Eve's presence seemed to
+render the faintest allusion to it impracticable.
+
+He had no great affection or even regard for Philip Rainham, whom he
+contemplated with that undefined disdain which a younger man so
+often feels for one who is too old to be on his own level, and too
+young to inspire reverence. The half-pitying regard which Mrs.
+Sylvester bestowed on the man who had been to her husband as a very
+dear younger brother had never furthered Rainham's advancement in
+her son's favour; and the manner in which Eve had centred her
+childish affections in Philip, who had made her his especial
+favourite, was even more prejudicial to his interests in that
+quarter. Hitherto, indeed, Sylvester's vague dislike had been so
+undemonstrative and immaterial that he would hardly have owned to it
+as such, and far less would he have acknowledged that he was,
+however unconsciously, feeling for a peg on which to hang it, for
+ground to support it; and yet from the first moment when the man's
+startled voice drew the questioning eyes upon his embarrassment, the
+judicial mind had been able to plume itself upon the penetration
+which had enabled it to detect something of doubtful odour about him
+from the first. "Kitty!" That word might explain so much--Rainham's
+long sojourns away from his business, for example.
+
+Charles looked at Eve and frowned. Decidedly, thought the young
+moralist, the old intimacy must be discouraged. Nor did the fact
+that Rainham had been the source of his first brief, as well as of
+subsequent others, though it was not forgotten, suggest the
+advisability of a compromise; he even began to take a certain pride
+in the determination with which he was bringing himself to
+contemplate the sacrifice of so useful a friendship.
+
+When they reached home there was barely time to dress for dinner,
+and Charles had no opportunity for a _tete-a-tete_ discussion of the
+situation with his mother that evening. And as he breakfasted early
+next day and dined at the club, he had ample time in which to
+determine that, for the present, he would avoid anything in the
+shape of a family conference, and would content himself with keeping
+his eye on the _mauvais sujet_.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+As soon as Lightmark and Rainham were left alone in the twilight of
+the studio, the former flung himself into a chair with a sigh of
+relief, and devoted himself to rolling and lighting a cigarette.
+Rainham picked up his hat, consulted his watch, with a preoccupation
+of mind which prevented him from noticing what the time was,
+and, refusing the proffered tobacco-pouch and the suggested
+whisky-and-soda, seemed about to go. Then he stopped, with his back
+turned towards his host and a pretence of examining a sketch.
+
+"I'm sorry I made such an ass of myself about that study--that girl,
+you know," he said presently. "The fact is, I saw her the other day,
+and the coincidence was rather startling."
+
+Lightmark blew a light cloud of smoke from his lips before he spoke.
+
+"Oh, it doesn't matter in the least, old man. You didn't implicate
+me, as it happened, though I'm afraid you got yourself into rather
+hot water. A poor devil of a painter must have models, and it's
+recognised, but men of business----! It's quite another thing.
+There's no possible connection between girls and dry docks." Then he
+added lightly, "Where are you going to dine to-night? Let's go to
+one of our Leicester Square haunts, or shall we get into a hansom
+and drive to Richmond? I've sold old Quain a picture, and I feel
+extravagantly inclined. What do you say? Under which _chef_? Speak, or
+let's toss up."
+
+Rainham appeared to consider for a moment; then he sat down again.
+
+"About that girl," he said; "I suppose you _do_ remember something
+about her? She must have been very pretty when you painted her,
+though she's nothing wonderful now, poor thing! I don't want to pump
+you, Dick, but she seems to have been pretty badly treated, and I
+want to see if I can't help her."
+
+"Help her!" with a shrug. "For goodness' sake tell me: is it Don
+Quixote or Don Lothario that you are playing?"
+
+"I should have thought you need hardly have asked," answered the
+other a little sadly. "I found the wretched creature waiting, with
+an equally wretched baby, both apparently not far from starvation,
+outside the dock the other night; and--well, I thought she might be
+waiting for you."
+
+Lightmark threw the stump of his cigarette into a corner viciously,
+with a dangerous glance at the other.
+
+"Why the devil should she have been waiting for me? Did she say she
+was waiting for me? How should a model know that I had been painting
+there? But I don't want to quarrel with you, and, after all you've
+done for me, I suppose you've a certain right to put yourself _in
+loco parentis_, and all that sort of thing. Tell me all you have
+found out about the girl--all she has told you, that is to say, and
+then I'll see what I can do."
+
+This masterly suggestion seemed to Rainham both plausible and
+practical, and he proceeded to unfold the whole story of his first
+meeting with Kitty. When he reached the part of his narrative which
+brought out the girl's explanation that she was seeking to speak
+with a Mr. Crichton, Lightmark looked at him again covertly, with
+the same threatening light in his glance. Then, apparently
+reassured, he resigned himself again to listen, with a cigarette
+unlighted between his fingers.
+
+"You say Oswyn heard the whole story?" he asked, when Rainham had
+finished. "Did the girl seem to know him? Or did _he_ seem to have
+heard of this Crichton before?"
+
+"No," said Rainham reflectively; "the girl didn't know Oswyn,
+though, on the other hand, he seemed certain that he had seen her
+face somewhere--probably in that study of yours, by the way; and he
+appeared to think that I ought to have heard of Crichton--Cyril
+Crichton. He told me that the man wrote clever, scurrilous articles
+on art and the drama for the _Outcry_. But I don't read English papers
+much. You see, our difficulty is that Cyril Crichton is obviously a
+nom de plume, and no one--not even the people at the _Outcry_
+office--know, or will say, who the man is; Kitty has tried. I
+suppose the editor knows all right, but he is discreet."
+
+"Ah!" cried Lightmark. "Now I remember something about her. Have you
+got your hat? Let's get into a hansom and go and dine--I'm
+positively starving. I'll stand you a dinner at the Cavour--standing
+you a dinner will be such a new sensation; and new sensations are
+the only things worth living for. I will tell you about Kitty in the
+cab. What a beneficent old beggar you are!"
+
+As they drove rapidly eastward along the High Street of Old
+Kensington, where the pale orange of the lamplight was just
+beginning to tell in the dusk, Lightmark explained how, some two
+years ago or more, he had been talking to a stranger in a railway
+carriage, and lamenting the difficulty of finding really pretty
+girls who would act as models; how the stranger had told him that he
+knew of such a one--a dressmaker's apprentice, or something of that
+sort, who found the work and hours too hard; and how, finally, Kitty
+had called at his studio--the old one in Bloomsbury--and had sat to
+him, perhaps half a dozen times, before vanishing from his
+knowledge. This account had been freely interspersed with
+exclamations on the beauty of the evening light in the Park, and the
+subtle charm of the hour after sunset, more exquisite in the clear
+atmosphere of Paris, but still sufficiently lovely even in London,
+and acknowledged by both of them to be one of the few compensations
+accorded to the dwellers in the much-abused Metropolis.
+
+"I'm sorry," said Rainham penitently; "I had a stupid sort of idea
+that you were mixed up in the business somehow. I thought so even
+before I saw the sketch, because I couldn't understand whom else she
+could have been looking for at the dock. It's very mysterious."
+
+"I shouldn't bother about the girl if I were you," replied the other
+light-heartedly. "Even if I had been mixed up with her, as you
+gracefully express it, _you_ wouldn't have anything to do with it. I
+believe you think I've been playing the devil with her now, you old
+moralist! Hear me swear, by yon pale---- Dash it! there isn't a
+moon--well, by the cresset on the top of the Empire, that the young
+person in question has been my model for a brief space, and nothing
+more. Only my model in the strictest sense of the word. No, I'll pay
+the cab for once in a way."
+
+When they had dined, sitting at their favourite table, which, from
+its position at the end, commanded a view of the bright exotic room,
+with its cosmopolitan contents, their wants cared for by the
+head-waiter, who adored Lightmark for his knowledge of his
+mother-tongue, recognising and being recognised by the forgotten of
+their acquaintance, who were also dining there, Lightmark proposed
+an adjournment to the little theatre in Dean Street hard by, where
+"Niniche" was being played for the last time by a clever company
+from across the Channel.
+
+"We must go to the theatre," he said, "unless you prefer a hall; I
+confess I'm sick of them. I haven't satisfied my ideas of
+extravagance nearly yet. We will go and sit in the stalls at the
+Royalty and see Jane May and the others; it will remind us of old
+days."
+
+"But, my dear fellow," expostulated the other, "it's so late, and
+we're in morning dress. Let's go to-morrow night instead."
+
+"Ah no! to-morrow I sha'n't be in the right mood. Never put off till
+to-morrow, you know. Our not being in evening dress won't matter a
+bit, they'll only think we're critics; and 'Niniche' doesn't begin
+till nine."
+
+On their speedy arrival at the modest portals of the little theatre,
+Lightmark instructed his companion, with an air of mystery, to wait,
+and presently emerged, smiling, from a triumphant encounter with the
+gentleman presiding at the box-office.
+
+"They had no stalls left," he whispered; "but they're going to put
+us in two chairs at the side."
+
+The house, with the exception of the more popular places, was
+crowded; and the boisterous absurdity of the farce was at its
+height. Rainham at first felt quite disconcerted by the proximity of
+the ludicrous figure in bathing dress who was leaning over the
+footlights, and declaiming his woes with a directness of appeal to
+the audience which alone would have marked the nationality of the
+robust actor, who was creating so much mirth out of the extremely
+hackneyed situation. He had got into the wrong bathing-machine
+(Lightmark seemed to find it intensely amusing) and the trousers of
+the rightful occupant only came down to his knees. Rainham at first
+was disconcerted, and then he began to feel bored. He fell into a
+semi-comatose state of contemplation, from which he was only aroused
+by the cadence on his ear of one of the most charming voices he had
+ever heard. So he characterized it, to Lightmark's amusement, when
+they were discussing their cigarettes and the _jeune premiere_ in the
+interval between the acts.
+
+"Oh for an epithet to describe her!" said Lightmark, catching his
+friend's enthusiasm. "She isn't exactly pretty--yes, she _is_ pretty,
+but she isn't beautiful! She's got any amount of what dramatic
+critics call _chic_. Don't shudder--I hate the word quite as much as
+you do, but it was inevitable. The only thing I feel sure about is
+that she's _espiegle_, and altogether delightful. And how funny that
+man is, or would be, if the authors had only given him a better
+chance! The fun of the piece is like those trousers--it only comes
+down to his knees."
+
+"What I admire most is her voice," said the other inconsequently.
+"How is it that French actresses have such beautiful voices? Freedom
+from fogs can't be the only cause. And it's got all that delicious
+plaintiveness----"
+
+"Yes," interposed Lightmark, "it's the voice of a true Parisian
+_femme de siecle, fin de siecle_. There's the bell, let's go and hear
+some more of it."
+
+After the second act Lightmark, in whom the influence of the evening
+was beginning to manifest itself in the shape of a geniality which
+was absent in a great degree from his more serious hours, and which
+had undoubtedly won him more friends than the other slightly
+pugnacious phase of his temperament, decided that Niniche was really
+very like Miss Sylvester, only less beautiful, and asserted that he
+was confident that she was younger than the newspapers made out.
+
+Later, before the two friends parted on the steps of the modest
+club, which included both in its list of town members, Lightmark
+assumed an air of mystery, sighed once or twice, and looked at his
+friend with an expression in which forgiveness, reproach, and the
+lateness of the hour were strangely commingled.
+
+"Old boy," he said, bending his eyebrows with an effort towards
+gravity, "I'm really rather cut up about that business--you thinking
+I was playing the gay deceiver, and all that sort of thing, you
+know. It was unworthy of you, Philip--it was, really. Dash it! I've
+been in love for ever so long. All the summer, seriously; I'm going
+to get married--settle down, range myself. Cut all you rips of
+bachelors.... But perhaps she won't see it. Oh, Lord!... Damn it
+all. Why don't you congratulate me, eh?"
+
+Rainham was growing more and more serious, and it was with a real
+heartache and a curious apprehension of a moral blow that he
+answered, as gaily as he could:
+
+"You're going a little too fast, Dick. If you haven't asked the
+girl, it's rather too early for congratulations, however
+irresistible your attractions may be. Who--who is it, Dick?"
+
+"Oh, come, you know well enough. Eve--I wonder if she'll let me call
+her Eve? Eve! Isn't it a pretty name?"
+
+"I wish you hadn't told me this, Dick," said the other, with more of
+the familiar weariness in his voice. "Are you sure you mean it? I
+don't believe you've thought it out. Why, what do you suppose Mrs.
+Sylvester will say, and Charles Sylvester?"
+
+"You think they won't have anything to do with a poor devil of an
+artist, I suppose? Right you are, sir; but when the poor devil has a
+rich and gouty uncle, who is disposed to be friendly.... See? I
+think that alters the complexion of the case. You know, the
+Sylvesters are awfully well connected, and so on, but they haven't
+got much money. Mrs. Sylvester has a life annuity, and Charles--whom
+I always want to call 'Chawles,' because he's so pompous--has got
+his professional income. And Eve has got a little, enough to dress
+her, I should think. 'Payable quarterly on her attaining the age of
+twenty-one years, or marrying under that age, whichever shall first
+happen.' I've looked it all up at Somerset House. Last will and
+testament of Sylvester Charles Sylvester, Esq. I know they're rather
+ambitious, and wouldn't look at me if it wasn't for the Colonel. But
+the Colonel is a solid fact, and I've no doubt they think he's
+richer than he is. And I am making money, though you mightn't think
+it."
+
+"I don't believe Mrs. Sylvester has thought about it at all," said
+Rainham doubtfully. "Eve is so young, and young artists are never
+looked on as marrying men. Take my advice and think about it."
+
+"_You_ call her Eve, do you? Ah, well, I won't be jealous of you, old
+boy. You shall come to the wedding and be best man; or no, the
+Colonel will be best man, I suppose? I can imagine him returning
+thanks for the bridesmaids in the most dazzling white waistcoat that
+was ever starched. Good-night; see you again soon."
+
+"I don't know how it is," thought Rainham, as he walked up Old
+Compton Street, on his way to the attic near the British Museum
+which he rented when he was in England, for use on occasions of this
+kind. "It's very stupid of me, but I can't bear the idea of Eve
+marrying. A species of jealousy, I suppose; not ordinary jealousy,
+of course. And yet why not? I have never thought of her as anything
+but a child ... why shouldn't Lightmark marry her? Eve's young, and
+good-looking, and sure to get on; and I'm a selfish old wreck. Yes,
+he shall marry her, and I will buy his pictures." Still, he shook
+his head even as he formulated this generous solution of the
+question, and could not induce himself to regard the position with
+equanimity, though he sat up till broad daylight wrestling with it.
+"I wonder if I am in love," he said, with a bitter laugh, as he
+shook the ashes out of his last pipe.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+The upper end of the Park is never so fashionably frequented as its
+southern regions, and Rainham, whose want of purpose had led him
+past gay carpet-beds and under branching trees nearly to the Marble
+Arch, was hardly surprised to recognise among the heterogeneous
+array of promenaders, tramps, and nursemaids, whom the heat of the
+slanting sun had prompted to occupy the benches dotted at intervals
+along the Row, a face whose weary pallor caused him a pang of
+self-reproach--Kitty!
+
+For the last few days, since his encounter with her portrait at
+Lightmark's studio, he had scarcely given her troubles a thought.
+When the girl saw him, after a startled look and movement, she
+seemed to shrink still further into the folds of her rusty black
+cloak, and, to avoid meeting Rainham's eyes, bent her head over the
+child who was seated at her side. He found something irresistibly
+charming and pathetically generous in the girl's spontaneous denial
+of any claim to his notice, although, except that he had promised to
+let her know anything he might learn of the whereabouts of the
+father of her child, he would have found it hard to establish in the
+mind of an outside critic that any such claim in fact existed.
+
+"Well, my poor child," he said softly, as he dropped into one of the
+vacant seats on the same bench, "how goes it with you and the little
+one?"
+
+"Oh, sir, you shouldn't speak to me--not here. Anyone might see you.
+Pray go. I know I shall get you into trouble, and you so kind!"
+
+These words were spoken in a rapid, frightened whisper, and with an
+apprehensive glance at the intermittent stream of carriages passing
+within a few yards of them. Rainham shrugged his shoulders
+pitifully, but found it rather difficult to say anything. Certainly,
+his reputation was running a risk, and he felt that his indifference
+was somewhat exceptional.
+
+"I'm sorry to say I've got no news for you," he said presently,
+after a silent pause, during which he had observed that the
+wide-eyed child was really far prettier than many who (as he had
+been assured by the complacent matrons who exhibited them) were
+"little cherubs," and that it was as scrupulously cared for as the
+little cherubs, even in their exhibition array. "I haven't been able
+to discover anything; but you mustn't despair, we shall find him
+sooner or later."
+
+The girl glanced at him irresolutely, and then dropped her eyes
+again, leaning over the child.
+
+"It's no good, sir," she said. "I'm only sorry to have given you so
+much trouble already. He won't come back--he's tired of me. He could
+find me if he wanted to, and watching and hunting for him like this
+would only set him more and more against me."
+
+Rainham, as he listened to her, rather puzzled by her sudden change
+of attitude since their last interview, was forced to admit mentally
+that her reasoning, if it lacked spontaneity, was, at all events,
+indisputably sound; and while he found himself doubting whether the
+victim was not better versed in worldliness than he had at first
+suspected, he still felt a curious reluctance which, though he was
+half ashamed of his delicacy, prevented him from suggesting that,
+sentimental reasons apart, the betrayer still ought to be
+discovered, if only in order to force him to provide for the
+maintenance of his child. It hardly, perhaps, occurred to him that
+he, after all, would be the person who would suffer most, and he
+certainly did not for an instant credit the girl with any ulterior
+designs upon his purse.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," he said feebly. "Perhaps he does not know where
+you are. And I dare say, if he saw the child----"
+
+"The child?" echoed the woman bitterly. "That's just the worst of
+it!"
+
+Rainham sighed, forced again to acknowledge his lower standing in
+the wisdom of the world. He would have given a great deal to be able
+to get up and go.
+
+"Then you don't want me to employ a detective, or to advertise,
+or--or to make an appeal to the editor of the _Outcry_?"
+
+Mrs. Crichton seemed to welcome the opportunity afforded by this
+direct questioning.
+
+"No," she said, "I think it would be better not. I don't want to
+seem ungrateful, sir--and I'm sure I thank you very, very much for
+all you have done for me--but I think you had better take no more
+trouble about it. If I can get work I shall do all right."
+
+In spite of the girl's evident attempt to pull herself together, her
+voice was less brave than her words, and they conveyed but little
+assurance to the listener. He shrugged his shoulders somewhat
+impatiently: the interview was beginning to tell upon his nerves.
+
+"Of course, it's for you to decide, and I suppose you have thought
+it well out, and have good reason for this alteration of purpose.
+But when you talk about work----?"
+
+He finished his sentence with a note of inquiry and a half
+apologetic glance at her slight form and frail, white fingers.
+
+"I haven't always been a model," she explained with some dignity.
+"Would to God I never had! I can sew better than most, and I can
+work a type-machine. That's what I used to do before he came. But
+type-writing work isn't so easy to get as it was, and I am out of
+practice."
+
+It occurred to him for a moment to ask the girl whether she could
+remember sitting for Mr. Lightmark, but he felt that Dick might
+resent the introduction of his name; and, remembering that she had
+told him that, for a time, before her health gave way, her artist
+patrons had been numerous, he dismissed the idea as not likely to be
+profitable.
+
+As they spoke, she with her mournful eyes turned on Rainham's
+sympathetic face, he absently following the movements of the child
+as it laboriously raised a small edifice of gravel-stones on the
+seat between them, neither of them noticed the severely correct
+figure in the frock-coat and immaculate hat who passed close behind
+with observant eyeglass fixed upon the little group, and with an air
+which, after the first flush of open-mouthed surprise, was
+eloquently expressive of regretful indignation and the highest
+motives.
+
+Charles Sylvester continued his walk for a distance of about fifty
+paces, and then seated himself in a position to command a view of
+the persons in whom he was interested.
+
+"I don't like watching Rainham like this," he said to himself; "but
+it's a duty which I owe to society."
+
+That the man was Rainham was as obvious as that the woman he was
+talking to was of a far lower rank in life than his own. And then
+there was the child!
+
+"By Jove!" said Sylvester sententiously, "it's worse than I thought.
+People really ought to be warned. I suppose it's that girl he was
+talking about at the studio the other day; and he tried to shift her
+on to Lightmark. What a hypocrite the man must be!"
+
+He was not, however, for long called upon to maintain, in the
+interests of society, his position of espionage; for Rainham, warned
+of the lapse of time by the clock which adorns the Park lodge,
+presently became aware that, if he was to fulfil his intention of
+calling on Mrs. Sylvester, he had no time to spare; and when he rose
+from his seat Charles Sylvester thought it advisable to resume the
+walk which his zeal had induced him to interrupt.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+After all, he need not have hurried. Mrs. Sylvester was out, he was
+told by the butler, who proceeded to suggest, with the freedom of an
+old friend, that he should make his way upstairs and find Miss Eve.
+
+"Yes, I think I will, Phelps," he said, after a moment's hesitation,
+"if she is disengaged."
+
+"Miss Eve is in the music-room playing, I think, sir. Will you go
+up?"
+
+They found the room empty, however, though an open violin-case on
+the table and a music-stand, on which leaflets of Schubert fluttered
+fitfully in the light breeze that entered through the open window,
+testified to its recent occupation.
+
+While the butler left Rainham, with apologies, to make further
+search, the latter stood, hat in hand, making a survey of the little
+wainscoted room, which he remembered as the schoolroom. Indeed,
+though the name, in deference doubtless to Eve's mature age, had
+been altered, it still retained much of its former aspect. From the
+little feminine trifles lying about, scraps of unfinished
+crewel-work and embroidery, and the fresh flowers in the vases, he
+gathered that it was still an apartment which Eve frequented. He
+recognised her cage of love-birds hanging in the window; the cottage
+piano with its frontal of faded silk, on which he could remember her
+first painful struggles with Czerny and scales; the pictures on the
+walls, many of them coloured reproductions from the Christmas
+numbers of the illustrated papers; the ink-stained tablecloth on the
+round table in the centre. He examined the photographs on the
+mantelpiece with a smile--Charles in his wig and gown, and Mrs.
+Sylvester with her pretty, faded face, gazed at each other, with a
+curious likeness in their disparity, from a double frame in the
+centre; the spectacled profile of the eminently respectable woman
+who had superintended Miss Eve's studies held another place of
+honour; and, opposite, Rainham recognised a faded photograph of
+himself, taken six years before in Rome. He turned from these to the
+bookshelves, which seemed to be filled with relegations from the
+rest of the house--children's story-books in tarnished bright covers
+and dilapidated school-books. He took down one of these latter and
+examined it absently, with a half-sigh. He had it still in his hand
+when the young girl fluttered in, looking very cool and fresh in her
+plain, white dress with a broad sash of apple-green ribbon.
+
+"I thought you were never coming to see us again, Philip," she said
+reproachfully, as she held out her little hand to him. "What
+possessed them to bring you here? It's awfully untidy."
+
+"Phelps had an idea you were making music," he explained; "and, for
+the untidiness, I suppose he remembered that I was used to it of
+old."
+
+"Yes, it's just the same. It is an untidiness of years, and it is
+hopeless to cope with it. What _have_ you got there?"
+
+He turned the book round to acquaint himself.
+
+"Ollendorf's 'Elementary German Grammar,'" he said with a smile;
+"it's an interesting work."
+
+She made a little _moue_ expressive of disapproval.
+
+"Ah, how nice it is to have done with all that, Philip! You can't
+believe how glad I am to be 'finished'; yes, I am finished now. I
+don't even have masters, and Miss Murison has gone away to Brighton
+and opened a school for young gentlemen. Poor little wretches! how
+sorry I am for them! Do you remember Miss Murison, Philip?"
+
+She had sunk down into an arm-chair, and Rainham stood, his stooping
+shoulders propped against the mantelpiece, smiling down at her.
+
+"Yes, I remember Miss Murison; and so you are glad her reign has
+come to an end, Eve? Well, I suppose it is natural."
+
+She nodded her pretty head.
+
+"Just a little, Philip. But how tired you look! Will you have some
+tea? I suppose you have just come from Blackpool?"
+
+His face darkened suddenly, and the smile for a moment died away.
+
+"No," he said shortly, "I have been in the Park."
+
+"Well," she remarked after a moment, "you must have some tea,
+anyhow. Of course you will wait and see mamma; she has gone to the
+Dollonds' 'at home,' you know. I an all alone. If you like, we will
+have it in here, as we did in the old days--a regular schoolroom
+tea."
+
+"It will be charming," said Rainham, seating himself; "it will only
+want the Murison to complete the illusion."
+
+"Oh, it will do just as well without her," said Eve, laughing; "ring
+the bell, please."
+
+Rainham sat back watching her with far-away eyes, as she moved
+lightly about, giving her orders with a childish imperiousness, and
+setting out the little tea-table between them.
+
+"It is delightful," he said again, when they were once more alone
+and he had accepted a well-creamed cup and a waferlike _tartine_; "and
+I feel as if I had turned back several years. But how is it,
+by-the-bye, that you have not gone to the Dollonds'?"
+
+She laughed up at him merrily.
+
+"Because I have had much more important things to do. I have been
+with my dressmaker. I am going to a dance to-night, and I have had a
+great deal of bother over my new frock. But it is all right now, and
+I shall wear it to-night; and it is perfectly sweet. Oh, you have
+never seen me at a party yet, Philip."
+
+"Never? My dear child, I have danced with you at scores."
+
+"Oh yes, at children's parties; but never since I have grown
+up--'come out,' I mean. Oh, Philip, is there anything in life so
+delightful as one's first ball? I wish you would come out with us
+sometimes. I should like to dance with you again now."
+
+"Ah," he said, "my dancing days are over. I am a wallflower, Eve,
+now; and my only use at balls is to fetch and carry for the
+chaperons."
+
+"Philip!" she cried reproachfully, "what a dreadful thing to say!
+Besides, you used to dance so splendidly."
+
+"Did I?" he asked; "I expect you would be less lenient now. Yes, I
+will have another cup, please."
+
+She filled it, and he took it from her in silence, wondering how he
+could least obtrusively gain the knowledge of her mind he sought. He
+had said to himself that if he could find her alone, it would be so
+easy; just a word, an accent, would tell him how far she really
+cared. But now that she was actually with him, it had become
+strangely difficult. Very sadly he reflected that she had grown out
+of his knowledge; away from her, she rested in his memory as a child
+whom he could help. The actual presence of this young girl with the
+deep eyes, in the first flush of her womanhood, corrected him; an
+intolerable weight sealed his tongue, forbidding him to utter
+Lightmark's name, greatly as he desired. He racked himself for
+delicate circumlocutions, and it was only at last, by a gigantic
+effort, when he realized that the afternoon waned, while he wasted
+an unique occasion in humorous commonplace, that he broke almost
+brutally into Eve's disquisitions on her various festivities to ask,
+blushing like a girl, if Lightmark's picture progressed.
+
+"I have had only a few sittings," she admitted, "and I expect they
+will be the last here. Perhaps they will be continued abroad. You
+know Mr. Lightmark is going to meet us in Switzerland, perhaps."
+
+"You will like that?" suggested Rainham gravely.
+
+She looked into her cup, beating a tattoo on the carpet with her
+little foot nervously.
+
+"Yes," she said, after a minute, "I think so."
+
+There was nothing in her words, her tone, to colour this bare
+statement of a simple fact. Only a second later, as if in a sudden
+need of confidence, a resumption of her old childish habit towards
+him, she raised her eyes to his, and in their clear, gray depths,
+before they drooped again beneath the long lashes, he read her
+secret. No words could have told him more plainly that she loved
+Lightmark--that Dick had merely to speak. Their silence only lasted
+a moment; but it seemed to Rainham, who had not shifted his position
+or moved a muscle, that it stretched over an interminable space of
+time. It was curiously intangible, and yet even then he realized
+that it would remain with its least accessories in his mind one of
+those trivial, indelible photographs which last a lifetime. The
+smell of mignonette that spread in from the window-box through the
+turquoise-blue Venetian blinds; the chattering of the love-birds;
+the strains of a waltz of Waldteufel's floating up from a German
+band in the street below--they ran into a single sensation that was
+like the stab of cold steel. He sat staring blankly at the tattered
+bookshelves, playing mechanically with his teaspoon; and presently
+he became aware that the young girl was talking, was telling him the
+route they should take next week, and the name of the hotel they
+were going to at Basel.
+
+"Yes," he hazarded, and "Yes," and "Yes," his smiling lips belying
+the lassitude of his eyes. Actually, he looked out and beyond her,
+at another Eve, to whom he now paid his adieux. It was the dainty
+little figure of her childish self which he saw, with its bright,
+long hair, and its confiding eyes, and its caressing little ways, in
+the deepening shadows between the bookshelves--and for the last
+time. It vanished like a shadow, smiling mockingly, and he knew it
+would never return. In its place abode henceforth the image of this
+stately maiden, comely and desirable, with the profound eyes which
+lighted up--for Dick. An unaccountable sense of failure stole over
+Rainham--unaccountable because he could lay his finger upon no
+tangible cause of his discomfiture.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The little town was brilliant with September sunshine; the blue
+smoke spired almost unbroken into the bluer vault above, and the
+cream-coloured facades of the houses, with their faded blue shutters
+and verandas, the gay striped awnings of the little fleet of rowing
+boats, the gray of the stone parapet, and the dull green of the
+mountainous opposite shore, were mirrored steeply in the bight of
+narrowing, sunlit lake. The wide, dusty esplanade was almost empty,
+except at the corners, where voluble market women gossiped over
+their fruit-baskets, heaped with purple-brown figs, little
+mountain-born strawberries, sweet, watery grapes, green almonds, and
+stupendous pears. At rare intervals a steamboat, bright and neat as
+a new toy, trailed a long feather of smoke from the foot of the
+Rigi, shed a small and dusty crowd into the sleepy town, and then
+bustled back, shearing the silken flood and strangely distorting its
+reflections.
+
+"The worst of Lucerne," said Mrs. Sylvester--"the worst of Lucerne
+is that one can't escape from Mount Pilatus and the Lion. The
+inhabitants all think that Pilatus regulates the weather, and they
+would certainly give their Lion the preference over the Venus of
+Milo."
+
+They were all sitting on the terrace in front of the Schweitzerhof;
+Lady Garnett and Mary, Mrs. Sylvester and Eve. Lady Garnett and her
+companion were but newly arrived, and, as birds of passage,
+preferred the hotel to a _pension_. The Sylvesters had been staying in
+the quaint, rambling town for nearly a fortnight. It was their usual
+summer resort, and although the spring of each year found them
+deciding to go elsewhere for a change, in the end they nearly always
+proved faithful to the familiar lake. Their _pension_--they regarded
+it almost as a country house--was such an inducement! The Pension
+Bungay was maintained by an old servant of the family, who, when he
+began to find the duties of butler too exacting for his declining
+years, gave a warning, which applied also to one of his
+fellow-servants, the cook, to wit, a lady of Continental origin, who
+had consented to become Madame Bungay; and the pair, having souls
+above public-houses, and relying on their not inconsiderable
+connection among the servants of Mayfair, had boldly and
+successfully launched into an independent career as sole proprietors
+and managers of the Pension Bungay, Lucerne.
+
+"Yes," said Lady Garnett sympathetically; "I suppose Pilatus _is_
+rather monotonous. It's rather too near, I think. It ought to be far
+away, and covered with snow, more like the Jungfrau, which we have
+been worshipping at Interlaken, where, by the way, there are
+positively more Americans than natives."
+
+"Oh," Mrs. Sylvester chimed in, "isn't it dreadful the way they
+overrun Europe nowadays! There are two American families staying at
+our _pension_, and you see them everywhere."
+
+"I think I rather like them. They amuse me, you know, and somehow,
+though it may be disloyal for me, as a naturalized Englishwoman, to
+say so, as a rule they comport themselves much better than the
+ordinary British tourist. Of course, the country is not so
+accessible for the Americans; it's out of the reach of their cheap
+excursionists. But how opportune that curious tower is, and the
+bridge! of course, it's correct to admire them?"
+
+Mary Masters and Eve, who had been quietly discussing _chiffons_, got
+up from their chairs with a preconcerted air.
+
+"We are so tired of sitting still," said the former, balancing
+herself with an air of indecision, and giving Mrs. Sylvester time to
+note the admirable taste of her simple, maize-coloured travelling
+dress, which did not suffer from contrast with the younger girl's
+brighter and more elaborately charming toilette. "Miss Sylvester
+wants to show me the uncatchable trout in the lake, and I want to go
+and see if the salon is empty, so that I can try the piano; and we
+can't decide which to do. I suppose, Mrs. Sylvester, that the hotel
+is more within the bounds of propriety?"
+
+"Oh, well," said Eve, laughing, "I don't care; anyhow, let's go and
+find the piano. Only, there is sure to be some one there already."
+
+"By the way," said Lady Garnett, when the girls had vanished into
+the building, "of course you know that Philip Rainham's friend--the
+young man who paints and has a moustache, I mean--is here, or will
+be very shortly? He was staying at our hotel at Berne."
+
+"Mr. Lightmark, I suppose?" answered the other, without showing her
+surprise except in her eyes. "We told him that we were coming to
+Lucerne, and it was more or less arranged."
+
+"Ah, yes," interposed Lady Garnett; "am I indiscreet in suggesting
+an exceptional attraction?"
+
+Mrs. Sylvester merely looked mysterious, and Lady Garnett was
+encouraged to continue.
+
+"Your daughter is very beautiful. This Mr. Lightmark has been
+painting her portrait, _n'est ce pas_? I should think it ought to be a
+success. Am I to congratulate him?"
+
+"Oh," said Mrs. Sylvester hurriedly, "dear Lady Garnett, it hasn't
+gone so far as that."
+
+"The portrait?" murmured the other innocently. "Ah, I'm afraid you
+misunderstood me."
+
+Mrs. Sylvester cast a meaning glance in the direction of Eve, who,
+sauntering along the terrace with Mary, was now behind their seat,
+and the conversation, which promised to become interesting, dropped,
+while Mary explained that they had found the music-stool occupied by
+a lady, who was superfluously protesting her inability to sing "the
+old songs"--the person who always _did_ monopolize hotel pianos, as
+Mary laughingly asserted.
+
+Two days later Lightmark presented himself at the Pension Bungay. He
+had come to Lucerne with the fixed purpose of definitely proposing
+marriage to Eve. He was far too worldly-wise to fail to perceive
+that, so far at least, Mrs. Sylvester had certainly taken no trouble
+to discourage his pretensions. His attentions, he argued, had been
+by no means obscure; his studio had been singularly honoured by the
+presence of Miss Sylvester and her mother, for the purposes of the
+portrait; he had even been granted a sitting at the house in Park
+Street, when a less rigid supervision had been exercised, and when,
+in the absence of the mother, he had been able to assure himself
+that the girl was far from despising his adoration. Before leaving
+town he had dined with his uncle, the Colonel, at his club, and the
+veteran had spontaneously and strenuously urged the step, and even
+thrown out promising hints as to settlements. He broke in upon the
+little circle at the hour of afternoon tea, and Eve found his gray
+travelling suit, and the bronze of his complexion, exceedingly
+becoming. He announced that he had come to stay for a week or two;
+he was going to make some sketches, and he couldn't tear himself
+away from that delightful bridge, and his lodgings!
+
+"My dear fellow," he said to Charles Sylvester, with an air of
+familiarity which gave one an insight as to the advance the artist
+had made in his relations with the family, "you must come and see my
+diggings. The most delightful old hostelry in Europe. Built straight
+up out of the lake, like the castle of Chillon. It's called the
+_Gasthof zum Pfistern_. I could fish out of my bedroom window. I
+assure you, it's charming. You must come and dine with me there. I
+hope you ladies will so far honour me?"
+
+This project, however, fell through, and by way of compensation
+Lightmark and Charles enjoyed the privilege of entertaining the
+party, including Lady Garnett and Miss Masters, at Borghoni's; after
+which the younger people chartered a boat, and floated idly about
+the star-reflecting lake, while the dowagers maintained a discreet
+surveillance from their seat on the esplanade.
+
+Of this last incident it may be said that Lightmark and Eve found it
+altogether delightful, the latter especially being struck by the
+romance of the situation; while Charles was inclined to be
+ponderously sentimental, and Miss Masters afterwards confessed to
+having felt bored.
+
+In the course of the next day Lightmark had the privilege of a
+confidential interview with the mother of his adored. Mrs. Sylvester
+had fully armed herself for the occasion, and presented an edifying
+example of matronly affection and prudence.
+
+"Of course, I was not altogether unprepared for this, Mr. Lightmark.
+In fact, I may as well own that I have talked it over with my son,
+and we agreed that the whole question resolved itself into--ah--into
+settlements. You must not think me mercenary." This was said with a
+dignified calm, which made the idea preposterous. "If you can"--here
+she seemed to refer to some mental note-book--"ah--satisfy Charles
+on that point, I am sure that it will give me great pleasure to
+regard you as a prospective son-in-law. Of course, you know, I can't
+answer for Eve, or Charles."
+
+"Ah, my dear lady," said the other, gracefully overwhelmed, "if I
+may count on your good offices I am very fortunate."
+
+That evening, as the two men sat discussing their cigars and coffee,
+Lightmark listened with wonderful patience to a disquisition on the
+subject of--he couldn't afterwards remember whether it was Strikes
+or the Sugar Bounty. He was rather afraid of the necessary interview
+with Charles. It would require some tact, and he was prepared to
+find him unpleasantly exacting as arbiter of his pecuniary status.
+
+"You ought to be in the House, by Jove! that's your line, Sylvester,
+with a clever wife, you know, to do the canvassing for you" ("and
+write your speeches," he mentally added).
+
+The other owned that he had thought of it.
+
+"But the wife," he added, with an attempt at levity, "that's the
+difficulty!"
+
+And the connection of a subsequent remark with this topic, though
+some conversation intervened, did not escape his astute companion,
+and he was careful to sing Miss Masters' praises with an absence of
+allusiveness, which showed the actor. Then he threw away the stump
+of his cigar, and mentally braced himself.
+
+"You have seen a good deal of me lately," he said. "I want to ask
+you if you have any objection to me as a possible brother-in-law; in
+fact, I want to marry your sister."
+
+"Yes?" said the other encouragingly.
+
+"I have, as you may know, spoken to Mrs. Sylvester about it, and I
+believe she will--that is to say, I think she has no personal
+objection to me."
+
+"Oh, of course, my dear fellow, my mother and I are flattered, quite
+flattered; but you will understand our anxiety that we should run no
+risk of sacrificing any of the advantages she has enjoyed hitherto.
+May I ask, er----"
+
+"What is my income from all sources?" suggested Lightmark rather
+flippantly. "Well, I have to confess that my profession, in which I
+am said to be rising, brings me in about four hundred and fifty a
+year, in addition to which I have a private income, which amounts
+to, say, three hundred; total, seven hundred and fifty." Then,
+seeing that Charles looked grave, he played his trump card: "And I
+ought to add that my uncle, the Colonel, you know, has been good
+enough to talk about making me an allowance, on my marrying with his
+approval. In fact he is, I believe, prepared to make a settlement on
+my marriage with your sister."
+
+Charles Sylvester pronounced himself provisionally satisfied, and it
+was arranged that he should communicate with Colonel Lightmark, and
+that meanwhile the engagement should not be made public.
+
+Eve was standing on the little balcony, appertaining to the
+sitting-room which had been dedicated to the ladies as a special
+mark of favour by the proprietor of the _pension_, and Lightmark
+hastened to join her there; and while Charles and his mother played
+a long game of chess, the two looked out at the line of moonlit
+Alps, and were sentimentally and absurdly happy.
+
+"Mrs. Sylvester," said Lightmark, when that lady thought it
+advisable to warn her daughter that there was a cold wind blowing
+off the lake, "we have arranged that a certain portrait shall figure
+in the Academy catalogue next spring as 'Portrait of the Artist's
+Wife.'"
+
+After which Mrs. Sylvester began to call him Richard, and Charles
+became oppressively genial: a development which led the embarrassed
+recipient of these honours to console himself by reflecting that,
+after all, he was not going to marry the entire family.
+
+"_Ma cherie_," said Lady Garnett, as the Paris train steamed out of
+Lucerne on the afternoon of the next day but one, "do you know that
+I feel a sensation of positive relief at getting away from those
+people? Eve is very _gentille_, but lovers are _so_ uninteresting, when
+they are properly engaged; and the excellent Charles! My child, I am
+afraid you have been very cruel."
+
+"Cruel, aunt?" said Mary, with a demure look of astonishment. "I
+like Eve very much, and I suppose Mr. Lightmark must be nice,
+because he's such a friend of Philip's. But I don't quite like the
+way he talks about Philip, and ... he's very clever."
+
+"Yes," said the old lady drowsily; "he's cleverer than Philip."
+
+"He may be cleverer, but----" Mary began with some warmth, and
+paused.
+
+Her companion opened her eyes widely, and darted a keen glance at
+the girl. Then, settling herself into her corner:
+
+"My dear child, to whom do you say it?"
+
+It was eminently characteristic of Lady Garnett that, even when she
+was sleepy, she understood what people were going to say long before
+the words were spoken, and, especially with her familiars, she had a
+habit of taking her anticipations as realized.
+
+Mary found something embarrassing in the humour of the old lady's
+expression, and devoted herself to gazing out of the window at the
+mountain-bound landscape, in which houses, trees, and cattle all
+seemed to be in miniature, until the sound of regular breathing
+assured her that the inquisitive eyes were closed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+During the long, hot August, which variously dispersed the rest of
+their acquaintances, the intimacy of that ill-assorted couple, the
+bird of passage Rainham, and Oswyn the artist, was able to ripen.
+They met occasionally at Brodonowski's, of which dingy restaurant
+they had now almost a monopoly; for its artistic session had been
+prorogued, and the "boys" were scattered, departing one by one, as
+their purses and inclinations prompted, to resume acquaintance with
+their favourite "bits" in Cornwall, or among the orchards and moors
+of Brittany, to study mountains in sad Merioneth, or to paint ocean
+rollers and Irish peasants in ultimate Galway. On the occasion of
+their second meeting, Rainham having (a trifle diffidently, for the
+painter was not a questionable man) evinced a curiosity as to his
+summer movements, Oswyn had scornfully repudiated such a notion.
+
+"Thank God!" he cried, "I have outworn that mania of searching for
+prettiness. London is big enough for me. My work is here, and the
+studies I want are here, and here I stay till the end of all things.
+I hate the tame country faces, the aggressive stillness and the
+silent noise, the sentiment and the sheep of it. Give me the streets
+and the yellow gas, the roar of the City, smoke, haggard faces,
+flaming omnibuses, parched London, and the river rolling oilily by
+the embankment like Styx at night when the lamps shine."
+
+He drew in a breath thirstily, as though the picture were growing on
+canvas before him.
+
+"Well, if you want river subjects you must come and find them at
+Blackpool," said Rainham; and Oswyn had replied abruptly that he
+would.
+
+And he kept his word, not once but many times, dropping down on
+Rainham suddenly, unexplainedly, after his fashion, as it were from
+the clouds, in the late afternoon, when the clerks had left. He
+would chat there for an hour or two in his spasmodic, half-sullen
+way, in which, however, an increasing cordiality mingled, making,
+before he retired once more into space, some colour notes of the
+yard or the river, or at times a rough sketch, which was never
+without its terse originality.
+
+Rainham began to look forward to these visits with a recurring
+pleasure. Oswyn's beautiful genius and Oswyn's savage humours
+fascinated him, and no less his pleasing, personal ambiguity. He
+seemed to be a person without antecedents, as he was certainly
+without present ties. Except that he painted, and so must have
+a place to paint in, he might have lodged precariously in a
+doss-house, or on door-steps, or under the Adelphi arches with those
+outcasts of civilization to whom, in personal appearance, one might
+not deny he bore a certain resemblance. To no one did he reveal his
+abiding-place, and it was the merest tradition of little authority
+that a man from Brodonowski's had once been taken to his studio. By
+no means a perspicuous man, and to be approached perhaps charily;
+yet Rainham, as his acquaintance progressed, found himself from time
+to time brought up with a certain surprise, as he discovered, under
+all his savage cynicism, his overweening devotion to a depressing
+theory, a very real vein of refinement, of delicate mundane
+sensibility, revealed perhaps in a chance phrase or diffidence, or
+more often in some curiously fine touch to canvas of his rare,
+audacious brush. The incongruities of the man, his malice, his
+coarseness, his reckless generosity, gave Rainham much food for
+thought. And, indeed, that parched empty August seemed full of
+problematical issues; and he had, on matters of more import than the
+enigmatic mind of a new friend, to be content at last to be tossed
+to and fro on the winds of vain conjecture.
+
+Lightmark and the Sylvesters occupied him much; but beyond a brief
+note from Mrs. Sylvester in Lucerne, which told him nothing that he
+would know, there came to him no news from Switzerland. In the
+matter of the girl whom he had befriended, recklessly, he told
+himself at times, difficulties multiplied. A sort of dumb devil
+seemed to have entered into her, and, with the best will in the
+world, it was a merely pecuniary assistance which he could give her,
+half angry with himself the while that his indolent good nature (it
+appeared to him little else) forbade him to cast back at her what
+seemed a curious ingratitude almost passing the proverbial feminine
+perversity, and let her go her own way as she would have it. On two
+occasions, since that chance meeting in the Park, he had called
+at the lodging in which he had helped her to install herself; and
+from the last he had come away with a distinct sense of failure.
+Something had come between them, an alien influence was in the
+air, and the mystery which surrounded the girl, he saw with
+disappointment, she would not of her own accord assist to dissipate.
+And yet there was nothing offensive in her attitude, only it had
+changed, lacked frankness.
+
+One afternoon, finding that he could leave the dock early, he made
+another effort. He stopped before one in a dingy row of small
+houses, uniformly depressing, in a street that ran into the
+Commercial Road, and rang the bell, which tinkled aggressively. A
+slatternly woman, with a bandage round her head and an air of
+drunken servility, responded to his inquiry for "Mrs. Crichton" by
+ushering him into a small back parlour, in which a pale girl in
+black sat with her head bent over a typewriter. She rose, as he came
+in, a little nervously, and stood, her thin hands clasped in front
+of her, looking up at him with expectant, terrified eyes.
+
+"I am sorry to alarm you," he said stiffly. "I came to see if I
+could do anything for you, and to tell you once more that I can do
+nothing for you unless you are open with me, unless you help me."
+
+The woman looked away to where the child sat, in a corner of the
+small room, playing with some disused cotton reels.
+
+"You are very kind, sir," she said in a low, uneasy voice; "but I
+want nothing, we want very little, the child and I; and with what
+your kindness in getting me the machine helps us to, we have
+enough."
+
+"You don't want to be reinstated, to get back your lover, to have
+your child acknowledged?"
+
+The girl flushed; her hands, which were still locked together,
+trembled a little.
+
+"I don't want for nothing, sir, except to be left alone."
+
+Then she added, looking him straight in the face now, with a certain
+rude dignity:
+
+"I wouldn't seem ungrateful, sir, for your great kindness. I think
+you are the best man I ever met. Oh, believe me, I am not
+ungrateful, sir! But it is no good, not a scrap, though once I
+thought it. We must get along as we can now, the child and I--shame
+and all."
+
+She sighed, gazed intently for a silent minute at the keys of the
+elaborate machine before her, and then continued, speaking very
+slowly, as if she were afraid of drawing too largely on her
+newly-found candour.
+
+"Why should I keep it from you? It makes me feel a liar every time I
+see you. I will be quite plain with you, sir; perhaps the truth's
+best, though it's hard enough. I've seen him; that's why I couldn't
+tell you any more. And it's all over and done, and God help us! We
+must make the best of it. You see, sir, he is married," said the
+girl, with a sharp intonation in her voice like a sob.
+
+Rainham had sunk into a chair wearily; he looked up at her now,
+drawing a long breath, which, for some reason he could not analyse,
+was replete with relief.
+
+"Married?" he ejaculated; "are you sure?"
+
+"Sure enough," said Kitty Crichton. "He told me so."
+
+"Do you care for this fellow?" he asked curiously after a while.
+
+The flush on her face had faded into two hectic spots on either
+cheek; there was a lack of all animation in her voice, whether of
+hope or indignation; she had the air of a person who gave up, who
+was terribly tired of things.
+
+"Care?" she echoed. "I don't rightly know, sir; I think it's all
+dead together--love and anger, and my good looks and all. I care for
+the child, and I don't want to harry or hunt him down for the sake
+of what has been,--that's all."
+
+He regarded her with the same disinterested pity which had seized
+him when he saw her first. There were only ruins of a beauty that
+must have once been striking. As he watched her a doubt assailed
+him, whether, after all, he had not been deceived by a bare
+resemblance; whether, in effect, she had ever been actually
+identical with that brilliant Pierrette whose likeness had so amazed
+him in Lightmark's rooms.
+
+"By the way," he asked suddenly, "you told me you have been a model:
+did--was this man a painter? Has he ever painted you?"
+
+The girl fell back a step or two irresolutely.
+
+"Ah! why do you trouble so? What does it matter?" Then she added
+faintly, but hurriedly stumbling over her words:
+
+"He wasn't a painter--only for amusement; he didn't exhibit. He was
+a newspaper writer. But he couldn't get work, and got a place in a
+foreign-going steamer, to keep accounts, I think. That was
+afterwards, and that's why I looked for him at your dock. They told
+me the ship had been there, but it wasn't true. Ah! let me be, sir,
+let me be!"
+
+She broke off hastily, clasping her hands across her breast.
+
+The story, though incoherent, was possible; Rainham could see no
+motive for her deceiving him, and yet he believed she was lying. He
+merely shrugged his shoulders, with a rising lassitude. He seemed to
+have been infected by her own dreariness, to labour under a
+disability of doing or saying any more; he, too, gave it up. He
+wanted to get away out of the dingy room; its rickety table and
+chairs, its two vulgar vases on the stained mantel, its gross
+upholstery, seemed too trenchantly sordid in the strong August sun.
+The child's golden head--she was growing intelligent now, and strong
+on her legs--was the one bright spot in the room. He stopped to pat
+it with a great pity, a sense of too much pathos in things flooding
+him, before he passed out again into the mean street.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+September set in cold, with rain and east winds, and Rainham, a
+naturally chilly mortal, as he handed his coat to Lady Garnett's
+butler, and followed him into the little library, where dinner was
+laid for three, congratulated himself that a seasonable fire
+crackled on the large hearth.
+
+"I hardly expected you back yet," he remarked, after the first
+greetings, stretching out his hands to the blaze; "and your note was
+a welcome surprise. I almost think we are the only people in town."
+
+Lady Garnett shrugged her shoulders with a gesture of rich
+tolerance, as one who acknowledged the respectability of all tastes,
+whilst preferring her own.
+
+"London has its charm, to me," she remarked. "We are glad to be
+back. I am getting too old to travel--that terrible crossing, and
+the terrible people one meets!"
+
+Rainham smiled with absent sympathy, looking into the red coals.
+
+"You must remember, I don't know where you have been. Tell me your
+adventures and your news."
+
+"I leave that to Mary, my dear," said the old lady.
+
+And at that moment the girl came in, looking stately and older than
+her age in one of the dark, high-cut dresses which she affected. She
+shook hands with Rainham, smiling; and as they went to table he
+repeated his question.
+
+"It is difficult," she said; "we seem to have been everywhere. Oh,
+we have been very restless this year, Philip. I think we were
+generally in the train. We tried Trouville----"
+
+"Detestable!" put in Lady Garnett with genial petulance; "it was too
+small. Half the world was crowded into it; and it was precisely the
+half-world----"
+
+"I can imagine it," interrupted Rainham, with his grave smile; "and
+then?"
+
+"Then we thought of Switzerland," continued the young girl. "We went
+to Geneva. We were almost dead when we arrived, because we had to go
+a very roundabout way to avoid Paris; we could not go to Paris,
+because we were afraid of seeing the Republic. It was very hot in
+Geneva. No place ever was so hot before. We lay on the sofa for
+three days, and then we were strong enough to run away."
+
+"It was purgatorial!" said the elder lady; "it was full of English
+governesses and Swiss pastors."
+
+"Then we went to look for cool places, and we had a charming week at
+Interlaken, and looked longingly at the Jungfrau, and contemplated
+the ascent."
+
+Lady Garnett laughed her quaint, little laugh.
+
+"Interlaken might have sufficed, my dear; but, unfortunately--it was
+one of Mary's ridiculous economies--we went to a _pension_; and we
+fell into the hands of an extraordinary woman with a fringe and a
+Bible, a native of North America, who endeavoured to persuade me
+that I was a Jewess."
+
+"No, no!" laughed Mary, "not quite so bad as that. It was one of the
+other tribes she would have us belong to--one of the lost tribes.
+It was not personal."
+
+"Ah, _Dieu merci_! if they are lost," ejaculated her aunt; "but you
+are wrong; it was most personal, Mary."
+
+"I will do her the justice to add that she only suggested it once,"
+continued the girl with a smile of elision. "However, we had to flee
+from her; and so we came to Lucerne."
+
+"That was worst of all," said Lady Garnett, arching her delicate
+eyebrows; "it was full of lovers."
+
+The solemn butler had placed a pair of obdurate birds before
+Rainham, which engrossed him; presently he looked up, remarking
+quietly:
+
+"Did you see the Sylvesters?"
+
+"Ah yes! we saw the Sylvesters; we walked with the Sylvesters; we
+drank tea with the Sylvesters; we made music with the Sylvesters; we
+went on the lake with the Sylvesters. That handsome artist, Mr.
+Lightmark, is it not, Mary? was there, making the running with Miss
+Eve. The marriage seems to be arranged."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders; the precise shade of meaning in the
+gesture escaped Rainham; he looked over to Mary inquiringly.
+
+"They seem very much attached to each other," she remarked.
+
+"Oh, they were imbecile!" added Lady Garnett; "try the Moselle, my
+dear, and leave that terrible sweet stuff to Mary. Yes, I was glad
+to come away from Lucerne. Everything is very bad now except my
+Constant's _vol-au-vent_, which you don't seem to have tried; but
+lovers are the worst of all. Though I like that young man,
+Lightmark; he is a type that interests me; he seems----"
+
+She looked round the room vaguely, as if the appropriate word might
+be lurking in some angle of the apartment; finally, the epithet
+proving difficult, she abandoned the search.
+
+"_Il ira loin_!" she said tersely; "he flatters me discreetly, as they
+did when I was young, before the Republic."
+
+The silent, well-trained man handed round caviare and olives; Mary
+trifled with some grapes, her brow knitted a little, thoughtfully.
+Lady Garnett poured herself a glass of maraschino. When they were
+left alone, the girl remarked abruptly:
+
+"I am not sure whether I quite like Mr. Lightmark; he does not seem
+to me sincere."
+
+Lady Garnett lifted up her hands.
+
+"Why should he be, my dear? sincerity is very trying. A decent
+hypocrisy is the secret of good society. Your good, frank people are
+very rude. If I am a wicked old woman, it is nobody's business to
+tell me so but my director's."
+
+Mary had risen, and had come over to the old lady's side.
+
+"But then, you are not a wicked old woman, my aunt," she observed
+gently.
+
+"Ah!" she threw back, "how do you judge? Do me the justice to
+believe, _cherie_, that, if I tell you a good deal, there is a good
+deal, happily, which I don't tell you."
+
+She pushed a box of cigarettes, which the man had placed on the
+table, toward Rainham. He took one and lit it silently, absently,
+without his accustomed protests; the girl looked up smiling.
+
+"That means that you want your _tete-a-tete_, Aunt Marcelle? I know
+the signal. Well, I will leave you. I want to try over that new
+march of Liszt's; and I expect, by the time I have grappled with it,
+you will be coming up for your coffee."
+
+"You are a good girl," answered the elder lady, stroking her hand.
+"Yes, run away and make music! When Philip and I have had enough
+scandal and frivolity, we will come and find you; and you shall play
+us a little of that strange person Wagner, who fascinates me, though
+you may not believe it."
+
+It was a habit of the house, on occasion of these triangular
+dinner-parties, that Lady Garnett should remain with Rainham in the
+interval which custom would have made him spend solitary over his
+wine. It was a habit which Mary sacredly respected, although it
+often amused her; and she knew it was one which her aunt valued.
+And, indeed, though the two made no movement, and for a while said
+nothing, there was an air of increased intimacy, if it were only in
+their silence, when the door had closed on the girl and left them
+together. Presently Lady Garnett began holding up her little glass
+of crystal maraschino that vied in the light of the candelabra with
+the diamonds on her fingers.
+
+"I had a conversation with that wearisome young man Charles
+Sylvester at Lucerne, Philip; he tried to sound me as to Mary's
+prospects and the state of her affections."
+
+Rainham looked up with quiet surprise.
+
+"Do you mean to say----?" he queried.
+
+"It is very obvious," she answered quickly; "I saw it long ago. But
+don't imagine that he got much out of me. I was as deep as a well.
+But what do you think of it?"
+
+"I hope they will be happy," he answered absently. She arched her
+expressive brows, and he coloured, recollected himself. "I beg your
+pardon," he said hastily; "I confess I was thinking of something
+else. You were talking of Mary; why should it not do? Does she care
+about him?"
+
+His companion laughed, and her laugh had more than its wonted
+suggestion of irony.
+
+"My dear Philip, for a clever man you can be singularly dense! Care
+for him! of course she does not."
+
+"She might do worse," he said; "Sylvester is not very bright, but he
+works hard, and will succeed after a fashion. His limitations
+dovetail conveniently with his capacities. What do you intend to
+do?"
+
+"Do I ever interfere in these things? My dear, you are remarkably
+dull to-night. I never make marriages, nor prevent them. With all my
+faults, match-making is not one of them. I think too ill of life to
+try and arrange it. You must admit," she added, "that, long as I
+have known you, I have never tried to marry you?"
+
+"Ah, that would have been too fatuous!" he remarked lightly.
+
+They were both silent for a while, regarding each other
+disinterestedly; they appeared to be following a train of thought
+which led no whither; presently Lady Garnett asked:
+
+"Are you going abroad this year?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "as soon as I can--about the middle of October; to
+Mentone or Bordighera, I suppose."
+
+"Do you find them interesting? Do they do you much good?"
+
+He smiled rather listlessly, ignoring her second question.
+
+"I confess," he said, "it becomes rather a bore. But, I suppose, at
+my time of life one finds nothing very interesting. The mere act of
+living becomes rather a bore after a time."
+
+"I wonder what you are thinking about, Philip?" she asked
+meditatively; "something has annoyed you to-night; I wonder if you
+are going to tell me."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Do we ever tell each other our annoyances? I think we sit and look
+at each other, and discover them. That is much more appropriate."
+
+"You take things too seriously," she went on; "my dear, they are
+really not worth it. That is my settled conviction."
+
+She sat and sipped her liqueur appreciatively, smiling
+good-humouredly, and Philip could not help regarding her with a
+certain admiration. Her small, sharp, subtile face, beneath its mask
+of smiling indifference, looked positively youthful in the judicious
+candle-light; only the little, bird-like, withered hands bore the
+stigmata of age. And he could not conceive her changing; to the
+last, those tell-tale hands apart, she would be comely and cynical,
+and would die as she had lived, secure "in the high places of
+laughter"--a laughter that, for all its geniality, struck him at
+times as richly sardonic--in the decent drapery of her fictitious
+youth; in a decorous piety, yet a little complicated, in the very
+reception of the last rites, by the amiable arching of her
+expressive eyebrows.
+
+"You are wonderful," he exclaimed, after an interval, "wonderful;
+that was what I was thinking."
+
+She smiled disinterestedly.
+
+"Because you don't understand me? My dear, nothing is so easy as
+mystification; that is why I don't return the compliment. Yourself,
+you know, are not very intelligible to-night."
+
+He looked away frowning, but without embarrassment; presently
+throwing up his hands with a little mock gesture of despair, he
+remarked:
+
+"I should be delighted to explain myself, but I can't. I am
+unintelligible to myself also; we must give it up, and go and find
+Mary."
+
+"Ah no! let us give it up, by all means; but we will not join Mary
+yet; smoke another cigarette."
+
+He took one and lit it, absently, in the blue flame of the
+spirit-lamp, and she watched him closely with her bright, curious
+eyes.
+
+"You know this Mr. Lightmark very well, don't you, Philip?"
+
+"Intimately," he answered, nodding.
+
+"You must be pleased," she said. "It is a great match for him, a
+struggling artist. Can he paint, by the way?"
+
+"He has great talent." He held his cigarette away from him,
+considered the ash critically. "Yes, he can certainly paint. I
+suppose it is a good thing--and for Eve, too. Why should it not be?"
+
+"He is a charming young man"--she spoke judicially--"charming! But
+in effect Mary was quite right; she generally is--he is not
+sincere."
+
+"I think you are wrong," said Rainham after a moment. "I should be
+sorry to believe you were not, for the little girl's sake. And I
+have known him a long time; he is a good fellow at bottom."
+
+"Ah!" cried Lady Garnett with a little, quick gesture of her right
+hand, "that is precisely what he is not. He exaggerates; he must be
+very secret; no one ever was so frank as he seems to be."
+
+"Why are you saying all this to me?" the other asked after a moment.
+"You know I should be very sorry; but what can I do? it's arranged."
+
+"I think you might have prevented it, if you had cared; but, as you
+say, it is too late now."
+
+"There was no way possible in which I could have prevented it," he
+said slowly, after an interval which seemed to strike them both as
+ponderous.
+
+"That was an admission I wanted," she flashed back. "You _would_ have
+prevented it--you would have given worlds to have prevented it."
+
+His retort came as quickly, accented by a smile:
+
+"Not a halfpenny. I make no admissions; and I have not the faintest
+idea of what you are driving at. I am a pure spectator. To quote
+yourself, I don't make marriages, nor mar them; I think too ill of
+life."
+
+"Ah no!" she said; "it is that you are too indolent; you disappoint
+me."
+
+"It is you, dear lady, who are inconsistent," he cried, laughing.
+
+"No, you disappoint me," she resumed; "seriously, my dear, I am
+dissatisfied with you. You will not assert yourself; you do nothing;
+you have done nothing. There never was a man who made less of his
+life."
+
+He protested laughingly:
+
+"I have had no time; I have been looking after my lungs."
+
+"Ah, you are incorrigible," she exclaimed, rising; "let us go and
+find Mary. I give you up; or, rather, I give myself up, as an
+adviser. For, after all, you are right--there is nothing worth doing
+in this bad world except looking after one's lung, or whatever it
+may be."
+
+"Perhaps not even that," said Philip, as he followed her from the
+room; "even that, after a time, becomes monotonous."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+It occurred to Lightmark one evening, as he groped through the gloom
+of his studio, on his way to bed, after assisting at a very charming
+social gathering at the Sylvesters', that as soon as he was married
+he would have to cut Brodonowski's. The reasons he gave himself were
+plausible enough, and, indeed, he would have found himself the only
+Benedict among this horde of wild bachelors. The informal circle was
+of such recent association that, so far, no precedent for matrimony
+had occurred, and it was more than doubtful how the experiment might
+be received. In any case, he told himself, he could not be expected
+to introduce people like Oswyn and McAllister to his wife--or,
+rather, to Mrs. Sylvester's daughter. Oswyn was plainly impossible,
+and McAllister's devotion to tobacco so inordinate that it had come
+to be a matter of common belief that he smoked short pipes in his
+sleep.
+
+Then he had dismissed the subject; the long, pleasant holiday in
+Switzerland intervened, and it was only on his return, late in the
+autumn, that the question again presented itself, as he turned from
+the threshold of the house in Park Street, where he had been dining,
+and half unconsciously took the familiar short cut towards Turk
+Street. He paused for a deliberate instant when he had hailed the
+first passing hansom, and then told the man to drive to Piccadilly
+Circus.
+
+"I _must_ go there a few times more, if only to break it off gently,"
+he reflected, "and I want to see old Rainham. It is stupid of me not
+to have written to him--yes, stupid! Wonder if he has heard? I
+mustn't give _him_ up, at any rate. We'll--we'll ask him to dinner,
+and all that sort of thing. And what the deuce am I going to send to
+the Academy? Thank goodness, I have enough Swiss sketches to work up
+for the other galleries to last me for years. But the Academy----"
+
+Then he lost himself in contemplative enjoyment of the familiar
+vista of Regent Street, the curved, dotted lines of crocus-coloured
+lamps, fading in the evening fog, the flitting, ruby-eyed cabs, and
+the calm, white arc-lights, set irregularly about the circus,
+dulling the grosser gas. He owned to himself that he had secretly
+yearned for London; that his satisfaction on leaving the vast city
+was never so great as his joy on again setting foot upon her
+pavements.
+
+The atmosphere of the long, low room, with its anomalous dark
+ceiling and grotesquely-decorated walls, was heavily laden with the
+incense of tobacco and a more subtile odour, which numbered among
+its factors whisky and absinthe. The slippered, close-cropped
+waiter, who, by popular report, could speak five languages, and
+usually employed a mixture of two or three, was still clearing away
+the debris of protracted dinners; and a few men sat about, in
+informal groups, playing dominoes, chatting, or engrossed in their
+Extra Specials. The fire shone cheerfully beneath the high mantel,
+and the pleasant lamplight lent a mellow glow, which was vaguely
+suggestive of Dutch interiors, as it flickered on the dark wooden
+floor, and glanced from the array of china on the dresser in the
+corner.
+
+When Lightmark entered, closing the door briskly on the foggy, chill
+October night, he was greeted warmly and demonstratively. The
+fraternity which made Brodonowski's its head-quarters generously
+admired his genius, and, for the most part, frankly envied his
+good-fortune. The younger men respected him as a man who had seen
+life; and the narratives with which he occasionally favoured them
+produced in such of his hearers feelings very different to those
+which older men, like Oswyn, expressed by a turn of the eyebrow or a
+shrug. They were always ready enough to welcome him, to gather round
+him, and to drink with him; and this, perhaps, expresses the limits
+of their relation.
+
+"Lightmark, by Jove!" cried one of them, waving his pipe in the air,
+as the new-comer halted in the low doorway, smiling in a rather
+bewildered manner as he unbuttoned his overcoat. "Welcome to the
+guerilla camp! And a dress suit! These walls haven't enclosed such a
+thing since you went away. This is indeed an occasion!"
+
+Lightmark passed from group to group, deftly parrying, and returning
+the chorus of friendly thrusts, and shaking hands with the
+affability which was so characteristic a feature of his attitude
+toward them. The man he looked for, the friend whom he intended to
+honour with a somewhat tardy confidence of his happiness, was not
+there. When he asked for Rainham, he was told that "the dry-docker,"
+as these flippant youngsters familiarly designated the silent man,
+whom they secretly revered, had gone for an after-dinner stroll, or
+perchance to the theatre, with Oswyn.
+
+"With Oswyn?" queried Lightmark, with the shadow of a frown.
+
+"Oh, Oswyn and he are getting very thick!" said Copal. "They are
+almost as inseparable as you two used to be. I'm afraid you will
+find yourself cut out. Three is an awkward number, you know. But
+when did you come back? When are you going to show us your sketches?
+And how long did you stay in Paris?... You _didn't_ stop in Paris?
+This won't do, you know. I say, Dupuis, here's a man who didn't stop
+in Paris! Ask him if he wants to insult you."
+
+"Ah, mon cher!" expostulated the Frenchman, looking up from his game
+of dominoes, "I would not stop in London if I could help it."
+
+"Oh, shut up, Copal!" said Lightmark good-humouredly. "I was with
+ladies--Dupuis will sympathize with me there, eh, _mon vieux_?--and
+they wanted to stay at Lucerne until the last minute. So we came
+straight through."
+
+"Then you haven't seen Sarah in 'Cleopatra,' and we were relying on
+you for an unvarnished account. Ladies, too! See here, my boy, you
+won't get any good out of touring about the Continent with ladies.
+Hang it all! I believe it'll come true, after all?"
+
+"Very likely--what?"
+
+"Oh, well, they said--I didn't believe it, but they said that you
+were going to desert the camp, and prance about with corpulent
+R.A.'s in Hanover Square."
+
+"And so would we all, if we got the chance," said McAllister
+cynically.
+
+And after the general outcry which followed this suggestion, the
+conversation drifted back to the old discussion of the autumn shows,
+the pastels at the Grosvenor, and the most recent additions to the
+National Gallery.
+
+When at last Rainham came into the room, following, with his
+habitual half-timid air, the shambling figure of the painter Oswyn,
+it struck Lightmark that he had grown older, and that he had, as it
+were, assimilated some of the intimate disreputability of the place:
+it would no longer have been possible to single him out as a foreign
+unit in the circle, or to detect in his mental attitude any of the
+curiosity of the casual seeker after new impressions, the Philistine
+in Bohemia. There was nothing but pleasure in the slight
+manifestation of surprise which preceded his frank greeting of
+Lightmark, a greeting thoroughly English in its matter-of-fact want
+of demonstrativeness, and the avoidance of anything likely to
+attract the attention of others.
+
+Oswyn seemed less at his ease; there was an extra dash of nervous
+brusqueness in the sarcastic welcome which he offered to the
+new-comer; and although there was a vacant seat in the little
+circle, of which Copal and Lightmark formed the nucleus, and to
+which Rainham had joined himself, he shuffled off to his favourite
+corner, and buried himself in "Gil Blas" and an abnormally thick
+cloud of tobacco-smoke.
+
+Rainham gazed after him for a moment or two with a puzzled
+expression.
+
+"Amiable as ever!" said Lightmark, with a laugh. "Poor old beggar!
+Have a cigarette? You ought to give up pipes. Haven't you been told
+that cigarettes are--what is it?--'the perfect type----?'"
+
+"Oh, chestnuts!" interposed Copal, "that's at least six months old.
+And it's rot, too! Do you know what McAllister calls them? Spittle
+and tissue. Brutal, but expressive. But I say, old man, won't Mrs.
+Thingumy drop on you for smoking in your dress-coat? Or--or---- No,
+break it to me gently. You don't mean to say that you possess _two_?
+I really feel proud of having my studio next door to you."
+
+"Copal is becoming quite an humorist," Lightmark suggested in an
+impartial manner. "What a wag it is! Keep it up, my boy. By the way,
+Mrs. Grumbit has been talking about your 'goings on,' as she calls
+them: she's apparently very much exercised in her mind as to the
+state of your morals. She told me she had to take you in with the
+matutinal milk three times last week. She wants me to talk to you
+like a father. It won't do, you know."
+
+"I should like to hear you, Dick," said Rainham lazily. "Fire away!
+But who is Mrs. Grumbit?"
+
+"Oh, she's our housekeeper--the lady who dusts the studio, you know,
+and gives the models tea and good advice. She's very particular as
+to the models: she won't let us paint from any who don't come up to
+her standard of propriety. And the worst of it is that the properest
+girls are always the ugliest. I don't know----"
+
+"Before you proceed with this highly original disquisition,"
+interrupted Copal, "I think you ought to be warned that we have
+recently formed a Society for the Protection of Reputations, models'
+and actresses' in particular. It was McAllister's idea. You now have
+the honour of being in the headquarters, the committee-room of the
+society, and anything like slander, or even truth, will be made an
+example of."
+
+"Don't you find it rather difficult to spread your sheltering wings
+over what doesn't exist?" hazarded Lightmark amusedly.
+
+"Ah, I knew you would say that! You see, that's just where we come
+in. We talk about their morals and reputations until they begin to
+imagine they have some, and they unconsciously get induced to live
+up to them. See? It's rather mixed, but it works beautifully. Ask
+the vice-president! Rainham holds that proud office. I may remark
+that I am treasurer, and the subscription is half a guinea, which
+goes towards the expenses of providing light refreshments for
+the,--the beneficiaries."
+
+"This is really very interesting! Rainham vice-president, too! I
+thought he looked rather--rather worn by the cares of the office.
+You must make me a member at once. But who's president?"
+
+"President? Who _is_ president, McAllister? I really forget. You see,
+whenever the president is caught speaking too candidly of any of our
+clients' characters, we pass a vote of censure, and depose him, and
+he has to stand drinks. The competition isn't so keen as it used to
+be. If you would like to stand--for the office, I mean--I dare say
+there will be an opening soon.... Well, I must be off: I'm afraid
+of Mrs. Grumbit, and--yes, by Jove!--I've forgotten my latchkey
+again! Of course you're not coming yet, Dick? Come and breakfast
+with me to-morrow. Good-night, you fellows!"
+
+"Copal has been in great form to-night," said Lightmark, after the
+door had closed on him, getting up and stretching himself. "What
+does it mean? Joy at my return? Fatted calf?"
+
+"No doubt, my boy, no doubt," growled McAllister humorously, on his
+way to the door. "But you must bear in mind, too, the circumstance
+that the laddie's just sold a picture."
+
+"Good business!" ejaculated Lightmark, as he reflected to himself
+that perhaps that despaired-of fiver would be repaid after all.
+
+About midnight most of the men left. Rainham remained, and
+Lightmark, who professed himself too lazy to move. Rainham lapsed
+into his familiar state of half-abstraction, while his friend
+cross-examined a young sculptor fresh from Rome.
+
+At the next table Oswyn was holding forth, with eager gesticulations
+and the excitement of the hour in his eyes, on the subject of a
+picture which he contemplated painting in oils for exhibition at the
+Salon next year. Rainham had heard it all before; still, he listened
+with a keen appreciation of the wonderful touch with which the
+little, dishevelled artist enlarged on the capabilities of his
+choice, the possibilities of colour and treatment. The picture was
+to be painted at the dock, and the painter had already achieved a
+daringly suggestive impression in pastels of the familiar night-scene
+which he now described: the streaming, vivid torches, their rays
+struggling and drowning in the murky water, glimmering faintly
+in the windows of the black warehouse barely suggested at the side;
+the alert, swarming sailors, busy with ropes and tackle; and in the
+middle the dark, steep leviathan, fresh from the sea-storms,
+growing, as it were, out of the impenetrable chaos of the foggy
+background, in which the river-lights gleamed like opals set in dull
+ebony.
+
+When the tide of inspiration failed the speaker, as it soon did,
+Lightmark continued to look at him askance, with an air of absent
+consideration turning to uneasiness. There was a general silence,
+broken only by the occasional striking of a match and the knocking
+of pipe against boot-heel. Soon the young sculptor discovered that
+he had missed his last train, and fled incontinently. Oswyn settled
+himself back in his chair, as one who has no regard for time, and
+rolled a cigarette, the animation with which he had spoken now only
+perceptible in the points of colour in either cheek. Rainham and
+Lightmark left him a few minutes later, the last of the revellers,
+drawing the cat with the charred end of a match on the back of an
+envelope, and too deeply engrossed to notice their departure.
+
+The fog had vanished, and the moon shone softly, through a white
+wreath of clouds, over the straggling line of house-tops. The
+narrow, squalid, little street was deserted, and the sound of wheels
+in the busier thoroughfare at the end was very intermittent.
+
+Lightmark buttoned his gloves deliberately, and drew a long breath
+of the night air before he broke the silence.
+
+"It's on occasions like this that I wish Bloomsbury and Kensington
+lay in the same direction--from here, you know; we should save a
+fortune in cab-fares.... But--but that wasn't what I wanted to say.
+Philip, my dear fellow, congratulate me."
+
+He paused for a minute looking at the other curiously, with
+something of a melodramatic pose. Rainham had his face turned rather
+away, and was gazing at the pale reflection of the moonlight in one
+of the opposite windows.
+
+"I know," he said simply. "I _do_ congratulate you--from the bottom
+of my heart. And I hope you will make her happy." Then he turned and
+looked Lightmark in the face. "I suppose you _do_ love her, Dick?"
+
+"I suppose I do. But how the deuce did you know anything about it? I
+have been blaming myself, needlessly it appears, for not letting you
+hear of it. Has it--has it been in the papers?"
+
+Rainham laughed in spite of himself.
+
+"Approaching marriage of a celebrated artist? No, Dick, I don't
+think it has. Lady Garnett told me more than a week ago."
+
+"Oh," said Dick blankly. "I--I'm much obliged to her. I thought
+perhaps it was the Colonel; I wrote to him, you know, and I thought
+he was a discreet old bird. But how did Lady Garnett know?"
+
+"She seemed to think it was no secret," said Rainham, with a
+suggestion of apology in his tone; "and, of course, she knows that I
+am----"
+
+"My best friend," interposed the other impulsively. "So you are. And
+I ought to have told you; I was a brute. And I feel like the devil
+about it.... Well, it can't be helped. Will you have this cab, or
+shall I?"
+
+Rainham drew back with a gesture of abnegation, as the driver reined
+the horse back upon its haunches with a clatter.
+
+"I'm going to walk, I think. Only up to Bloomsbury, you know.
+Good-night, Dick. I hope you'll be very happy, both of you."
+
+When the cab drove off, Rainham stood still for a minute and watched
+it out of sight. Then he started and seemed to pull himself
+together.
+
+"I wish I knew!" he said aloud to himself, as he stepped rapidly
+towards the East. "Well, we'll be off to Bordighera now, _mon vieux_.
+We've lost Dick, I think, and we've lost----"
+
+The soliloquy died away in a sigh and a pathetic shrug.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+A day or two later, when Rainham called in the afternoon at the
+Kensington studio to announce his approaching flight from England,
+he found Mrs. Sylvester and Eve in occupation, and a sitting in
+progress. His greeting of Eve was somewhat constrained. He seemed to
+stumble over the congratulations, the utterance of which usage and
+old acquaintance demanded; and he was more at his ease when the ice
+was fairly broken.
+
+"I expected to find you here," he said, addressing Mrs. Sylvester.
+"I have been to your house, and they told me you would probably be
+at the studio--_the_ studio--so I came on."
+
+"Good boy, good boy!" said Lightmark, with as much approbation in
+his voice as the presence of the stick of a paint-brush between his
+teeth would allow. "You'll excuse our going on a little longer,
+won't you? It'll be too dark in a few minutes."
+
+"You don't look well, Philip," remarked Mrs. Sylvester presently,
+with a well-assumed air of solicitude. "You ought to have come to
+Lucerne with us, instead of spending all the summer in town."
+
+"Yes; why _didn't_ you, Philip?" cried Eve reproachfully. "It would
+have been so nice--oh, I'm so sorry, Dick, I didn't mean to
+move--you really ought to have come."
+
+"Well, there was the dock, you see, and business and all that sort
+of thing. I can't always neglect business, you know."
+
+Lightmark asserted emphatically that he _didn't_ know, while, on the
+other hand, Mrs. Sylvester was understood to remark, with a certain
+air of mystery, that she could quite understand what kept Philip in
+town.
+
+"Don't you think I might have been rather--rather a fifth wheel?"
+suggested Rainham feebly, entirely ignoring Mrs. Sylvester's remark,
+to which, indeed, he attached no special meaning.
+
+"Spare our blushes, old man," expostulated Dick. "It would have been
+awfully jolly. You would have been such a companion for Charles, you
+know," he added, with a malicious glance over his shoulder. "Oh
+dear! fog again. I think I must release you now, Eve. Tell me what
+you think of the portrait, now that I've worked in the background,
+Philip. Mrs. Sylvester, now don't you think I was right about the
+flowers?"
+
+There was, in fact, a charming, almost virginal delicacy and
+freshness of air and tone about the picture. The girl's simple,
+white dress, with only--the painter had so far prevailed over the
+milliner,--only a suggestion of bright ribands at throat and waist;
+the quaint chippendale chair, the sombre Spanish leather screen,
+which formed the background, and the pot of copper-coloured
+chrysanthemums, counterparts of the little cluster which Eve wore in
+the bosom of her gown, on a many-cornered Turkish table at the side:
+it had all the gay realism of modern Paris without losing the poetry
+of the old school, or attaining the hardness of the new.
+
+Rainham looked at it attentively, closely, for a long time. Then he
+said simply:
+
+"It's the best thing you have done, Dick. It will be one of the best
+portraits in the Academy, and you ought to get a good place on the
+line."
+
+"I'm so glad!" cried Eve rapturously, clasping her hands. "On the
+line! But," and her voice fell, "it isn't to go to the Academy.
+Mamma has promised Sir--Dick is going to send it to the Grosvenor.
+But it's pretty much the same, isn't it? Oh, now show Philip the
+sketch you have made for your Academy picture," she added, pointing
+to a board which stood on another easel, with a protecting veil over
+the paper which was stretched upon it. "You know _he_ can tell us if
+it's like the real thing."
+
+"If it's the Riviera, or--or dry docks," added Rainham modestly.
+
+But Lightmark stepped forward hastily, after a moment's hesitation,
+and put his hand on the drawing just as Eve was preparing with due
+ceremony to unveil it.
+
+"Excuse me, I don't want to show it to Rainham yet. I--I want to
+astonish him, you know."
+
+He laughed rather uneasily, and Eve gave way, with some surprise in
+her eyes, and a puzzled cloud on her pretty brow, and went and
+seated herself on the settee at her mother's side.
+
+"He's afraid of my critical eye, Mrs. Sylvester," said Rainham
+gravely. "That's what it is. Well, if you don't show it me now, you
+won't have another opportunity yet awhile."
+
+"That's it, Eve," exclaimed Lightmark hastily. "I'm afraid of his
+critical what's-his-name. You know he can be awfully severe
+sometimes, the old beggar, and I don't want him to curl me up and
+annihilate me while you're here."
+
+"I don't believe he would, if it were _ever_ so bad," said Eve, only
+half satisfied. "And it isn't; it's awfully good. But it's too dark
+to see anything now."
+
+"By Jove, so it is! Mrs. Sylvester, I'm awfully sorry; I always like
+the twilight myself. Rainham, would you mind ringing the bell.
+Thanks. Oh, don't apologize; the handle always comes off. I never
+use it myself, except when I have visitors. I go and shout in the
+passage; but Mrs. Grumbit objects to being shouted for when there
+are visitors on the premises. Great hand at etiquette, Mrs. Grumbit
+is."
+
+The lady in question arrived at this juncture, fortified by a new
+and imposing cap, and laden with candles and a tea-tray, which she
+deposited, with much clatter of teaspoons, on a table by Mrs.
+Sylvester's side.
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Grumbit. And now will you come to a poor bachelor's
+assistance, and pour out tea, Mrs. Sylvester? And I'm very sorry,
+but I haven't got any sugar-tongs. I generally borrow Copal's, but
+the beggar's gone out and locked his door. You ladies will have to
+imagine you're at Oxford."
+
+Mrs. Sylvester looked bewildered, and paused with one hand on the
+Satsuma teapot.
+
+"Don't you know, mamma, it isn't--form, don't you say? to have
+sugar-tongs at Oxford? It was one of the things Charles always
+objected to. I believe he tried to introduce them, but people always
+threw them out of the window. _I_ think they're an absurd invention."
+
+Rainham, as he watched her slender fingers with their dimpled
+knuckles, daintily selecting the most eligible lumps out of the
+cracked blue-and-white china teacup which did service for a
+sugar-basin, unhesitatingly agreed with her; though Mrs. Sylvester
+seemed to think her argument that sugar-tongs could be so
+pretty--"Queen Anne, you know"--entirely unanswerable.
+
+It was not until Mrs. Grumbit broke in upon the cosy little party to
+announce that the ladies' carriage was at the door that Rainham
+remembered the real object of his expedition.
+
+Then, when Eve, warmly wrapped in her furs, and with the glow of the
+firelight still in her face, held out a small gloved hand with a
+smiling "Au revoir, Philip," he shook his head rather sadly.
+
+"I'm afraid it must be good-bye--for some time, at least. I came to
+tell you that I am on the wing again. Doctor's orders, you know. I
+shall be in Bordighera on Friday, I expect."
+
+"And to-day's Tuesday," complained Eve.
+
+"And I was just going to ask you to dine with us, one day soon,"
+expostulated her mother.
+
+"You must come over at Christmas, old man," said Dick cheerfully.
+"For the wedding, you know. You've got to give me away, and be
+bridesmaid, and all that sort of thing."
+
+Rainham shook his head again.
+
+"I'm afraid not. You don't know my doctor. He wouldn't hear of it.
+No, you won't see me in town again before May, unless there's a
+radical reform in the climate."
+
+"Couldn't--couldn't we put it off till May?" suggested Eve naively.
+
+But the suggestion was not received with anything approaching
+enthusiasm.
+
+"Good-bye, Philip," said Eve again, when her lover was handing Mrs.
+Sylvester into the little brougham. "Mind you take great care of
+yourself."
+
+Rainham returned the frank pressure of her hand.
+
+"Good-bye," he said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+After all, Philip Rainham loitered on his way South. He spent a week
+in Paris, and passing on by way of the Mont Cenis, lingered in
+Turin, a city with a treacherous climate and ugly rectangular
+streets, which he detested, out of sheer idleness, for three days.
+On the fourth, waking to find winter upon him suddenly, and the
+ground already dazzling from a night's snow, he was seized with
+panic--an ancient horror of falling ill in strange places returning
+to him with fresh force, as he felt already the chill of the bleak
+plains of Piedmont in his bones. It sent him hurrying to his
+destination, Bordighera, by the first train; and it was not too
+soon: the misused lung asserted itself in a haemorrhage, and by the
+time he reached the fair little town running out so coquettishly,
+amid its olive yards and palm-trees, into the blue Mediterranean, he
+was in no proper temper to soliloquize on its charms.
+
+The doctor had a willing slave in him for three weeks; then he
+revolted, and found himself sufficiently cured to sit when the sun
+shone--and sometimes when it did not--covered in a gray shawl,
+smoking innumerable cigarettes on a green, blistered seat in the
+garden of his hotel. He replied to the remonstrating that he had
+been ill before this bout, and would surely be ill again, but that
+temporarily he was a well man. It was only when he was alone that he
+could afford to admit how savage a reminder of his disabilities he
+had received. And, indeed, his days of captivity had left their mark
+on him--the increased gauntness of his figure apart--in a certain
+irritation and nerve distress, which inclined him for once to regret
+the multitude of acquaintance that his long habit of sojourning
+there had obtained. The clatter of English tongues at _table d'hote_
+began to weary him; the heated controversy which waged over the
+gambling-tables of the little principality across the bay left him
+arid and tired; and the gossip of the place struck him as even more
+tedious and unprofitable than of old. He could no longer feign a
+decent interest in the flirtations of the three Miss Smiths, as they
+were recounted to him nightly by Mrs. Engel, the sympathetic widow
+who sat next to him, and whose sympathy he began, in the
+enlightenment of his indisposition, to distrust.
+
+The relief with which he hailed the arrival of the post and a budget
+of letters from England surprised himself. It struck him that there
+was something feverish and strange in this waiting for news. Even to
+himself he did not dare to define his interest, confessing how
+greatly he cared.
+
+Lightmark's epistles just then were frequent and brief. The marriage
+was definitely fixed; the Colonel, his uncle, had been liberal
+beyond his hopes: a house in Grove Road of some splendour had been
+taken for the young couple, who were to install themselves there
+when the honeymoon, involving a sojourn in Paris and a descent into
+Italy, was done. Hints of a visit to Rainham followed, which at
+first he ignored; repeated in subsequent epistles with a greater
+directness, their prospect filled him with a pleasure so strangely
+mixed with pain that his pride took alarm. He thought it necessary
+to disparage the scheme in a letter to Lightmark, of a coldness
+which disgusted himself. Remorse seized him when it had been
+despatched, and he cherished a hope that it might fail of its aim.
+This, however, seemed improbable, when a fortnight had elapsed and
+it had elicited no reply. From Lady Garnett, at the tail of one of
+those long, witty, railing letters, in which the old lady excelled,
+he heard that the marriage was an accomplished fact, and the birds
+had flown. Mrs. Lightmark! the phrase tripped easily from his tongue
+when he mentioned it at dinner to his neighbour, Mrs. Engel, to whom
+the persons were known. Later in his room, face to face with the
+facts which it signified, he had an intolerable hour. He had
+extinguished his candle, and sat, partially undressed, in a mood of
+singular blankness by the fire of gnarled olive logs, which had
+smouldered down into one dull, red mass; and Eve's face was imaged
+there to his sick fancy as he had seen it last in Dick's studio in
+the vague light of an October evening, and yet with a certain new
+shadow, half sad and half reproachful, in the beautiful eyes. After
+all, had he done his best for the child? Now that this thing was
+irrevocable and complete, a host of old misgivings and doubts, which
+he had believed long ago banished, broke in upon him. He had only
+asked that she should be happy--at least, he said, it had never
+been a question of himself. He certainly knew nothing to Lightmark's
+discredit, nothing which could have justified him in interfering,
+even if interference could have prevailed. The two had fallen in
+love with one another, and, the man not being visibly bad, the
+marriage had come about; was there more to say? And yet Rainham's
+ill-defined uneasiness still questioned and explored. A hundred
+little episodes in his friendship with the brilliant young painter,
+dismissed as of no import at the time, returned to him--instances,
+as it seemed now to his morbid imagination, in which that character,
+so frank and so enigmatic, rang scarcely true. And suddenly the
+tragical story of Kitty Crichton intruded itself before him, with
+all its shameful possibilities. Could Lightmark have lied to him?
+Had not his sudden acquiescence in the painter's rendering of the
+thing implied a lack of courage--been one of those undue indolences,
+to which he was so prone, rather than any real testimony of his
+esteem? Would not a more rigorous inquiry, a little patient
+investigation into so curious a coincidence, have been the more
+seemly part, as much for his friend's sake as for Eve's, so that
+this haunting, intolerable doubt might have been for ever put
+away--as surely it would have been? The contrary issue was too
+horrible for supposition. And he ended by mocking at himself with a
+half-sigh for carrying fastidiousness so far, recognising the
+mundane fitness of the match, and that heroic lovers, such as his
+tenderness for the damsel would have had, are, after all, rare,
+perhaps hardly existing out of visions in a somewhat gross world,
+where the finest ore is not without its considerable alloy.
+
+Two days later, as he sat upon his wonted seat, in lazy enjoyment of
+the midday sun, a _vetturino_, heralded far down the road by the
+jingle of his horse's bells, deposited a couple at the door whose
+faces were familiar. At _table d'hote_, though he was separated from
+the new-comers by half a dozen covers, he had leisure to identify
+them as the Dollonds; and by-and-by the roving, impartial gaze of
+the Academician's wife encountering him, he could assure himself
+that the recognition was mutual. They came together at the end of
+_dejeuner_, and presently, at Mrs. Dollond's instigation, started for
+a stroll through the olives towards the old town.
+
+"Are you wintering here?" he asked after a moment, feeling that an
+affirmative answer would hardly be to his taste.
+
+But Mrs. Dollond, with an upward inclination of her vivacious
+shoulders, repudiated the notion. A whim of her own, she explained
+to Rainham confidentially, as they came abreast in the narrowing
+path, while Mr. Dollond strolled a little behind, cutting down
+vagrant weeds absently with his heavy oak stick.
+
+"Hugh wanted a month's holiday; and I wanted"--she dropped her
+voice, glancing over her shoulder with an air of mock mystery--"yes,
+Mr. Rainham, you must not be shocked, but I wanted a fortnight at
+Monte Carlo; and so I may as well tell you that our destination is
+there. We came from San Remo this morning, meaning to drive over
+right away; but this place was so pretty that Hugh insisted on
+staying."
+
+Rainham helped her up a difficult terrace, and remarked urbanely
+that he was in fortune's way.
+
+She threw him a brilliant smile.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Rainham, if we had only known that you were here! then we
+might have arranged differently; we could have stayed here
+pastorally, and driven up to that delightful little place on the
+hill. Tell me, how is it called?"
+
+She pointed with her scarlet parasol--they had emerged now on to the
+main road--at a little, turreted town perched far above them on the
+brow of an olive-crested hill.
+
+"It is Sasso," said Rainham. "I should have been delighted to come
+with you, but I am afraid it is out of the reach of carriages, and
+of invalids. You might go there on a mule."
+
+"Oh no!" she laughed; "I think on the whole we shall be more
+comfortable at the Hotel de Paris. Can't we induce you to come with
+us now?"
+
+Rainham lifted his eyebrows, smiling a little and groping vaguely
+for an excuse, while Mrs. Dollond turned to her husband with a look
+which demanded corroboration of her speech.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Rainham, do come, if you possibly can," supplemented Mr.
+Dollond, coming forward in burlesque obedience. "We are boring each
+other horribly--I can answer for myself--and it would be an act of
+real charity."
+
+"Well, Hugh, I am ashamed of you! You really ought not to say such
+things. If you can't behave better than that, you may go on
+maltreating those thistles. I declare we have left a regular trail
+of heads in our wake,--like the Revolution, or Judge Jeffreys."
+
+"Bloody Jeffreys!" suggested Mr. Dollond mildly.
+
+His wife turned to Rainham with the little despairing gesture which
+she reckoned one of her most effective mannerisms.
+
+"Is not he dreadful? But you _will_ come, Mr. Rainham? I am sure you
+know all about systems, and--and things. You know I insist on
+winning; so I must have a system, mustn't I?"
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Dollond," said her companion humorously, "you remind me
+that the only system I have is a very bad one. I am afraid my doctor
+would not trust me with it at Monaco."
+
+"Oh!" said Mrs. Dollond reflectively; "but you need not gamble, you
+know! You can help me, and see that I don't get cheated. Hugh and I
+will see your doctor, and promise to take care of you. Hugh shall
+carry your shawl--he likes carrying shawls."
+
+"He is getting used to it," interposed her husband dryly.
+
+"Ah, well, that is settled," continued the lady gaily, leaving her
+victim no time to formulate more than the lamest of protests.
+
+By this time they had reached the middle of the cape, and they stood
+for a moment by the lazy fountain looking down at the Marina
+straggling below the palms; and beyond, at the outline of the French
+coast, with white Mentone set in it, precisely, like a jewel.
+
+"The dear little place!" cried Mrs. Dollond in a rapture; "I suppose
+Monaco is behind that cape. I wish we could see it. And it would not
+look a bit wicked from here. I declare, I should like to live
+there!"
+
+"I've no doubt you would, my dear!" said her husband; "but you
+sha'n't, so long as I have any voice in the matter. I don't get so
+much for my pictures that I can afford to contribute to M. Blanc's
+support."
+
+Rainham followed the direction of her eyes absently. "I have half a
+mind to go with you after all," he said.
+
+"Of course," said Mrs. Dollond; "it will do you worlds of good; we
+will drive you over with us to-morrow. And now, Mr. Rainham, if you
+don't mind, I think we will sit down. I can see that Hugh is getting
+out his sketch-book."
+
+She sank down as she spoke upon one of the rough stone seats which
+are scattered about the cape. Mr. Dollond had ensconced himself
+behind them, and was phlegmatically starting on a rough study of the
+old town, which rose in a ragged, compact mass a hundred yards away,
+with its background of sad olives and sapphire sky.
+
+Rainham followed the lady's example, tired himself by their scramble
+under the hot sun, and contented himself for a while by turning a
+deaf ear and polite, little mechanical gestures to her perennial
+flow of inconsequent chatter, which seemed quite impervious to
+fatigue, while he rested his eyes on the charming prospect at their
+feet; the ragged descent of red rocks, broken here and there by
+patches of burnt grass and pink mallows, the little sea-girt chapel
+of St. Ampelio, and the waste of violet sea. His inattentive ear was
+caught at last by the name of Lightmark occurring, recurring, in the
+light eddy of his companion's speech, and he turned to her with an
+air of apologetic inquiry.
+
+"Yes," Mrs. Dollond was observing, "it was quite a grand
+wedding; rather pretentious, you know, we thought it, for the
+Sylvesters--but, oh, a great affair! We stayed in London for it,
+although Hugh wanted to take a holiday. I could tell you all about
+the bridesmaids' dresses, and Mrs. Lightmark's, but I suppose you
+would not care. She looked very charming!"
+
+"Yes?" said Rainham, with a curious light in his averted eyes. Then
+he added, somewhat abruptly, "Brides always do, I suppose?"
+
+"Of course, if they have a good dressmaker. And the presents--there
+was quite a show. Your pearl necklace--how I envied her that! But,
+after all, weddings are so much alike."
+
+"I have never been to one," said the other absently.
+
+"Ah, then you ought, if only to get a little experience before your
+own time comes, you know. Yes, you really ought to have been there.
+It was quite a foregone conclusion that you would be best man. It
+was so funny to see Colonel Lightmark in that _role_, with that young
+Mr. Sylvester giving away the bride. It would have been so much
+better if they could have changed parts."
+
+"I am sorry to interrupt you," said Mr. Dollond, getting up and
+putting away his sketch-book; "I can't sketch; the place is full of
+locusts, and they are getting into my boots."
+
+Mrs. Dollond started up, shaking her skirts apprehensively, with an
+affectation of horror.
+
+"How I do hate jumping things! And, anyhow, I suppose we ought to be
+getting back to our hotel, or we shall be late for dinner. You don't
+know what Hugh can be like when one is late for dinner. He is
+capable of beginning without me."
+
+Rainham had risen with a ready response to her words, bordering
+almost on the ludicrous; and half an hour later he was congratulating
+himself that at least six seats intervened between his place and
+that of Mrs. Dollond at the dinner-table.
+
+And yet on the morrow he found himself, and not without a certain
+relief, sitting beside the mundane, little lady, and turning to her
+incessant ripple of speech something of the philosophic indifference
+to which her husband had attained, while a sturdy pair of
+gaily-caparisoned horses, whose bells made a constant accompaniment,
+not unpleasing in its preciseness, to the vagueness of Rainham's
+thought, hurried them over the dusty surface of the Cornice.
+
+Certainly the excursion into which he had been inveigled, rather
+from indolence than from any freak of his inclination, afforded him,
+now that it was undertaken, a certain desultory pleasure to which he
+had long been a stranger. Into the little shrug, comic and
+valedictory, of Mrs. Dollond's shoulders, as they passed the _Octroi_,
+a gesture discreetly mocking of the conditions they had left, he
+could enter with some humour, the appreciation of a resident who
+still permitted himself at times the licence of a casual visitor on
+his domain.
+
+"Tell me," Mrs. Dollond had asked, as they rattled out of the
+further gate of Ventimiglia, "why did the excellent lady who tried
+to monopolize conversation in the _salon_ last night appear so
+scandalized when I told her where we were going? Was I--surely now,
+Mr. Rainham, I was not indiscreet?"
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Dollond," said Rainham humorously, "you know it was a
+delicate subject. At our hotel we don't recognise Monte Carlo. We
+are divided upon the other topics in which we are interested: the
+intrigues of the lawn tennis club, and the orthodoxy of the English
+chaplain. But we are all orthodox about Monte Carlo, and Mrs. Engel
+is the pillar of our faith. We think it's----"
+
+"The devil?" interrupted Mr. Dollond, bending forward a little, with
+his bland smile.
+
+"Precisely," said Rainham; "that is what Mrs. Engel would say. Oh
+no, Mrs. Dollond, we don't drive over to Monte Carlo from
+Bordighera. At Mentone it is more regular; you see, you can get
+there from Mentone pretty much by accident. But from Bordighera it
+has too much the appearance of being a preconcerted thing."
+
+"It was particularly preconcerted here," put in the Academician with
+a yawn, and Mrs. Dollond remarked innocently that people who
+wintered in these places must have very singular ideas.
+
+The prospect was increasing in beauty as they wound their way along
+the historical road, now rendered obscure by the thick groves of
+olives on either side, now varied by little glimpses of the sea,
+which again they skirted from time to time, and so nearly that, as
+Mrs. Dollond remarked, it was like driving along the sands. Rainham
+identified spots for them as the prospect widened, naming sea-girt
+Mortola with its snug chateau, Mentone lying placidly with its two
+bays in the westering sun, and, now and again, notorious peaks of
+the Alpes Maritimes which bounded the horizon beyond. At the
+frontier bridge of St. Louis, where they alighted to meet the
+requirements of the Douane, even Mrs. Dollond's frivolity was
+changed into silent admiration of the savage beauty of the gorge.
+They stood for a while leaning upon the desolate bridge, turning
+reluctantly from the great beetling rocks of the ravine above to
+gaze with strange qualms into the yawning precipice beneath. Rainham
+pointed out the little thread of white which was the one dangerous
+pathway down the gorge, confessing his sympathy with the fatal
+fascination with which it had filled so many--he mentioned the name
+of a young Englishman staying at Mentone the year before amongst the
+number--at the ultimate cost of their lives.
+
+"Horrible!" exclaimed Mrs. Dollond, retreating to the carriage,
+which awaited them on the French side of the bridge. "I shall dream
+of it to-night."
+
+"I have dreamt of it," said Rainham simply. "When I was a boy I used
+to dream of climbing to the edge of the world and falling over.
+Nowadays, I dream of dropping over the Pont St. Louis: the sensation
+is much the same."
+
+"A very disagreeable one, I should think," said Mrs. Dollond,
+settling herself in her wraps with a little shudder.
+
+"No," said Rainham, with a smile. "I think, Mrs. Dollond, it was
+rather nice: it was the waking up which was disagreeable."
+
+They made their breakfast--a very late one--at Mentone, and dawdled
+over it, Mr. Dollond having disappeared at the last moment, and been
+found, after a lengthy search, sketching, in serene disregard of the
+inappropriateness of the occasion, a doorway in St. Michele.
+
+When at last they drove into the principality, the evening was well
+advanced. Even the irrepressible Mrs. Dollond was not to be enticed
+by the brilliant windows of the Casino from the sofa upon which she
+had stretched herself luxuriously, when their extensive dinner was
+at an end; and Rainham with a clear conscience could betake himself
+immediately to bed. But, in spite of his fatigue, he lay for a long
+time awake; the music of the concert-room, the strains of M.
+Oudshorn's skilful orchestra, floated in through the half-closed
+_persiennes_ of his room, and later mingled with his dreams, tinging
+them, perhaps, with some of that indefinable plaintiveness, a sort
+of sadness essentially ironical, with which all dance music, even
+the most extravagant, is deeply pervaded.
+
+A week later, as from the window of the receding Italian train he
+caught a last glimpse of the Dollonds on the crowded platform, he
+waved a polite farewell to them with a sensible relief. It was a
+week in which Mrs. Dollond had been greatly on his hands, for her
+husband had made no secret of the willingness with which he had
+accepted Rainham's escort for the indefatigable lady amongst the
+miscellaneous company of the tables, leaving him free to study the
+picturesque in the less heated atmosphere which he preferred. And a
+week of Mrs. Dollond, as Rainham was obliged to confess, was not
+good for any man to undergo.
+
+Nor was Mrs. Dollond's verdict upon their acquaintance, who had
+become for the space of seven days an intimate, more complimentary.
+
+"I suppose he was better than nobody," she remarked with philosophy
+as they made their way up the terrace. "He looked after my stakes,
+and did not play much himself, and was always at hand; but he was
+really very dull."
+
+"Better than me, I suppose you mean, my dear?" suggested her husband
+humorously. "Was he so dull? You ought to know; I really have hardly
+spoken to him."
+
+"Don't be absurd!" she remarked absently. Then she said a little
+abruptly: "It seems funny, now that one knows him, that there should
+be those stories."
+
+"Stories? About Rainham?"
+
+Her husband glanced at her with some surprise.
+
+"Yes," she said. "Of course, you never know anything; but he is
+talked about."
+
+"Ah, poor man!" said Mr. Dollond. "What has he done?"
+
+Mrs. Dollond's fair eyebrows were arched significantly, and Mrs.
+Dollond's gay shoulders shrugged with a gesture of elision, in which
+the essence of many scandals, generated and discussed in the
+discreet undertones of the ladies' hour, was nicely distributed.
+
+"Don't be dense, Hugh! It is quite notorious!"
+
+Mr. Dollond laughed his broad, tolerant laugh.
+
+"Well," he said, "I should never have thought it."
+
+Rainham, reaching his hotel the same afternoon, met Mrs. Engel in
+the hall; her formal bow, in which frosty disapproval of the sin,
+and a widow's tenderness for the middle-aged sinner, if repentant,
+were discreetly mingled, amused if it scarcely flattered him. He was
+still smiling at his recollection of the interview when the Swiss
+porter, accosting him in elaborately bad English, informed him that
+a lady and gentleman, who had left on the previous evening, had made
+particular inquiries after him. The name, he confessed, escaped him,
+but if Monsieur pleased---- He produced the visitors' book, in which
+Rainham read, scarcely now with surprise, the brief inscription,
+"Mr. and Mrs. Lightmark, from Cannes."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+There was a ceaseless hum of voices in the labyrinth of brilliant
+rooms, with their atmosphere of transient spring sunshine and
+permeating, faint odour of fresh paint. Few people came to see the
+pictures, which covered the walls with a crude patchwork of seas and
+goddesses, portraits and landscapes: all that by popular repute were
+worth seeing had been exhibited already to the people who were now
+invited to view them,--at the studios on Show Sunday, and on the
+Outsiders' Day. One entered the gloomy gates of Burlington House on
+the yearly occasion of the Private View because it was, socially, a
+great public function, in order to see the celebrities, who were
+sure to be there, from the latest actress to the newest bishop. In
+one corner a belated critic endeavoured to scratch hasty impressions
+on his shirt-cuff or the margin of a little square catalogue; in
+another an interested dealer used his best endeavours to rivet a
+patron's attention on the merits of his speculative purchase. The
+providers of the feast were not so much in evidence as their wives
+and daughters; the artist often affects to despise the occasion, and
+contents himself with a general survey--frequently limited to his
+own pictures--on Varnishing Day.
+
+The Hanging Committee had dealt kindly with Lightmark's Academy
+picture. When it was passed in review before these veterans, after a
+long procession of inanely smiling portraits, laboured, wooden
+landscapes, and preternaturally developed heroes, the expression of
+satiated boredom and damnation of draughts, which variously pervaded
+the little row of arbitrators, was for a moment dissipated. There
+was a movement of chairs, followed by an exchange of complimentary
+murmurs; and the picture was finally niched into a space which
+happened to fit it between two life-size portraits on the line in
+one of the smaller rooms.
+
+On the fashionable afternoon Lightmark's work was never without the
+little admiring crowd which denotes a picture of more than usual
+interest. The canvas, which had loomed so large in the new studio in
+Grove Road, was smaller than many of its neighbours, but its sombre
+strength of colour, relieved by the pale, silvery gold of its wide
+frame, and the white dresses of the ladies portrayed in the pictures
+on either side, made it at once noticeable.
+
+The critics next day referred to it as a nocturne in black and gold,
+and more than one of the daily journals contained an enthusiastic
+description of the subject--an ocean-steamer entering a Thames
+graving-dock at night-time, with torch-light effects; and a mist on
+the river.
+
+Eve fluttered delightedly from room to room with her mother,
+recurring always to the neighbourhood of her husband's picture, and
+receiving congratulations by the score. It had been a disappointment
+to her when her husband, at the eleventh hour, expressed his
+inability to be present; but even Mrs. Sylvester's remonstrances had
+failed to move him, and the two ladies had come under the Colonel's
+escort.
+
+"I didn't know your husband was so nervous," said Mrs. Dollond
+sceptically. "Is this the effect of matrimony?... Oh, Mrs.
+Lightmark, do look at that creature in peacock blue! Did you ever
+see such a gown? Have you seen my husband's pictures? He's got one
+in every room, nearly. Between you and me, they're all of them
+pretty bad; but so long as people don't know any better, and buy
+them, what does it matter? Ah, Colonel Lightmark, how do you do? Of
+course I've seen your nephew's picture. I've been saying all sorts
+of nice things about it to Mrs. Lightmark."
+
+"It's pretty good, I suppose," suggested the Colonel radiantly.
+"Have you seen the _Outcry_ this week? There's no end of a good notice
+about it, and about your husband's pictures, too."
+
+"Really? I wonder who wrote it. I must ask him to dinner, if he's
+respectable. We never read critiques nowadays. They're so dreadfully
+rude to Academicians, you know--always talking about 'pot-boilers,'
+and suggesting that they ought to retire on their laurels. As if
+laurels were any good! One can't keep a carriage on laurels."
+
+"No, by Jove! it wouldn't be good for the horses. I say, though,
+Mrs. Dollond, is one supposed to go through all the rooms?"
+
+"Oh yes," replied the lady composedly; "all except the
+water-colours, and sculpture, and architecture. One only goes there
+to flirt, as a rule. Personally, I always get up the pictures from
+'Academy Notes,' when I haven't seen them at the studios, you know.
+Yes; I should like some tea, please, since Mrs. Lightmark has
+deserted you. Is that Lady Garnett with her? What lovely white hair!
+I wonder where she gets it."
+
+Lady Garnett shrugged her shoulders a little petulantly after she
+had made the ghost of a return to Mrs. Dollond's airy greeting.
+
+"My dear," she said, turning to Eve confidentially, "may I confess
+to you that I am not altogether too fond of that woman? Is she a
+great friend of yours, or don't you know her well enough to abuse
+her? I like the husband; he amuses me, though he is rather a bear.
+Otherwise, I should not see very much of Mrs. Dollond, I promise
+you."
+
+Eve smiled at the thought of Mr. Dollond's eccentricities, and then
+her face grew rather grave.
+
+"Shall we go into the lecture-room?" she suggested. "It is cooler
+there among the statues, and perhaps we shall be able to sit down."
+
+The old lady assented with alacrity.
+
+"Yes," she said; "by all means let us leave these painty pictures,
+and we will have a chat; you shall tell me of your wanderings.
+Apropos, did you see anything of our friend Philip? His last
+letter--a long time ago; he is becoming a bad correspondent--struck
+me as rather _triste_, even for him. I'm afraid he is not well."
+
+"Yes," said Eve slowly; "we went over to Bordighera one day while we
+were at Cannes, and we stayed a night at the hotel, but we didn't
+see Mr. Rainham. He had gone over to Monte Carlo."
+
+"Ah, poor fellow, what an idea! I wonder what dragged him there."
+
+Eve looked at the old lady questioningly for a minute.
+
+"I think he went with the Dollonds," she answered gravely.
+
+"Ah, my dear, no wonder his letter was dull! Then you didn't see
+him? Well, I suppose he will come back soon. You mustn't be jealous
+of him, you know. He is very much _lie_ with your husband, isn't he?"
+
+"I don't suppose he will see quite so much of him now."
+
+There seemed to be a trace of weariness in the girl's voice as she
+answered, and Lady Garnett glanced at her sharply before she let her
+eyes continue their task of wandering in a kind of absent scrutiny
+of the sculptured exhibits in the room.
+
+"But of course not.... How terrible all these great plaster figures
+are, and the busts, too! They are so dreary, they have the air of
+being made for a cemetery. Don't they make you think of tombstones
+and mausoleums?"
+
+Eve looked at her a little wonderingly.
+
+"Are they very bad? Do you know, I rather like them. Not so much as
+the pictures, of course; but still I think some of them are
+charming, though I am rather glad Dick isn't a sculptor. Don't you
+like that? What is it--Bacchus on a panther?"
+
+"My dear, you are quite right," said the old lady decisively,
+dropping her tortoise-shell lorgnon into her lap, and suppressing a
+yawn. "Only, it is you who are charming! I must go to the Grosvenor
+as soon as it opens to see if your clever husband, who seems to be
+able to paint everything and everybody, has done you justice.... But
+you mustn't sit talking to an old grumbler like me any longer. Go
+back to your picture; Mr. Dollond will pilot you. And if you
+encounter Mary on the way, tell her that a certain discontented old
+lady of her acquaintance wants to be taken home. Au revoir."
+
+About five minutes later Mary Masters found her aunt half asleep.
+The paint had made her stupid, she said. She could understand now
+why painters did not improve as they grew older; it was the smell of
+the paint.
+
+"Ah," she said, as they passed out into the busy whirl of
+Piccadilly, "how glad I shall be to get back to my Masons and
+Corots. Though I like that pretty little Mrs. Lightmark.... Poor
+Philip! Now tell me whom you saw. Charles Sylvester, of course? But
+no, I am too sleepy now; you shall tell me all about it after
+dinner."
+
+It was six o'clock before the Colonel was able to deposit his bulky,
+military person rather stiffly on a cushioned seat, and to remove
+his immaculate silk hat, with an expression of weary satisfaction.
+He had devoted all the sunny spring afternoon, (when he might have
+been at Hurlingham, or playing whist at the "Rag"), to making his
+way, laboriously and apologetically, from room to room in search of
+friends and acquaintances, whom, when found, he would convoy
+strategically into the immediate vicinity of No. 37 in the First
+Room.
+
+"My nephew's picture," he explained; "nice thing! I don't know much
+about painting" (he called it paintin') "and art, and all that sort
+of thing, but I believe it's about as good as they make them."
+
+He had accepted all the inconsistent, murmured criticism almost as a
+personal tribute; and for the greater part at least of the afternoon
+his beaming face had completely belied the discomfort occasioned by
+his severe frock-coat and tightly-fitting patent-leather boots; and
+his yearning for a comfortable chair, with a box of cigars and a
+whisky-and-seltzer at his elbow, had been suppressed, rigidly and
+heroically.
+
+"I suppose it's devilish good," he thought, as he sat waiting for
+the rest of his party. "People seem to admire those splashes of
+yellow and black, and all those dirty colours. Personally, I think I
+prefer the girl in white next door. Hullo, there's Eve!"
+
+"Don't get up, Colonel," said Mrs. Sylvester; "we want to sit here
+for a little and hear what people say about Richard's picture. They
+make such amusing remarks sometimes! Not always complimentary; but,
+then, they often don't know anything about art."
+
+"Yes," said Eve, seating herself, with a delicate consideration for
+the new dress, which the occasion had demanded, between the Colonel
+and her mother; "we heard someone say that the flesh in that big
+Roman picture with the temple, you know--I can't pronounce the
+name--was like cotton wool--pink cotton wool! Oh, and that the girl
+in black, with the yellow fan, whose portrait is in the big room,
+must be at least eight feet high!"
+
+"Now, how the dickens could he tell that!" interposed the Colonel.
+
+"Oh, he was talking very learnedly, about heads and things. How
+provoking of that old gentleman in the gold spectacles! Standing
+just in front of Dick's picture with his back to it. He looks just
+exactly like a millionaire, and he won't look, and he's preventing
+other people from looking! Do turn him round, uncle, or move him on,
+or something!"
+
+"Do you see that man there?" whispered Mrs. Sylvester presently,
+"the tall man with the sandy hair and beard? I think he's a painter.
+He said just now that Richard's picture was amazingly good, and that
+he thought he knew where he got the idea from."
+
+"Why, of course," said the Colonel carelessly; "Dick got the idea
+from that beggar what's-his-name's dock--and a thundering good idea
+too! I wonder what time they close? Perhaps----"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Sylvester, buttoning her gloves, "I suppose we had
+better go."
+
+The room was nearly empty when McAllister passed before his friend's
+picture again, after a satisfactory interview with a gentleman from
+Bond Street on the subject of one of his own. McAllister, whose
+criticism Mrs. Sylvester had overheard and reported, had recently
+been elected Associate, owing the honour, according to some
+malicious people, more to his nationality than to his merit as a
+painter of cattle and landscapes. The _Outcry_, indeed, with reference
+to this promotion, and the continued neglect of older artists of
+greater public repute, had suggested, with its usual impertinence,
+that the motto of _Lasciate ogni speranza_, which was reported in
+certain circles to be almost visibly inscribed over the door of the
+Academicians' Committee-room, should be supplemented by the legend,
+"No English need apply."
+
+"It's good," he said reflectively, as he stopped in front of the
+picture, with something like a chuckle on his lips, and a twinkle in
+his shrewd, gray eyes. "More than good. You can see the clever
+French trick in every line of it, and they'll call it one of the
+pictures of the year. So it is, though there are dozens in the
+vaults downstairs worth two of it. But I thought this was Oswyn's
+subject? He was always talking about it. Well, I should like to see
+what he would have made of it!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+As the clock struck five Rainham looked up with an air of relief,
+flipping negligently across the table the heap of papers which had
+occupied him since lunch-time.
+
+"We must go into this some other time, Bullen," he remarked with a
+certain petulance. "I confess things look rather bad; but I suppose
+they can hold over till to-morrow?"
+
+The foreman assented dubiously, gathering together the despised
+sheets, and preparing for departure.
+
+"I've done my best, sir," he said a little sullenly; "but it is
+difficult for things to go smoothly when the master is always away;
+and you never will take no notice of business letters, you know,
+sir."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Rainham wearily; "I am sure you have, Bullen. If I
+go into the Bankruptcy Court, as you so frequently prophesy, it will
+be entirely my own fault. In the meantime you might tell your wife
+to send me up some tea--for two, Bullen, please. Mr. Oswyn will be
+up presently."
+
+The man retired, shutting the door with some ardour. Rainham rose,
+and, with the little, expansive shrug with which he usually
+discarded his commercial worries, wandered towards the window. The
+dock was empty and desolate: the rain, which had prevailed with a
+persistent dreariness since the morning, built morasses at regular
+intervals along the dock-side, splashed unceasingly into the
+stagnant green water which collected in slack seasons within the
+dock-gates. The dockman stood, one disconsolate figure in the
+general blankness, with his high boots and oilskins, smoking a short
+clay pipe by the door of the engine-room; and further out, under the
+dripping dome of an umbrella, sat Oswyn in a great pea-jacket,
+smoking, painting the mist, the rain, the white river with its few
+blurred barges and its background of dreary warehouses, in a supreme
+disregard of the dank discomfort of his surroundings.
+
+Rainham had tapped three times against the streaming pane before he
+succeeded in attracting his attention, and then the painter only
+responded to the wonted signal by an impatient, deprecating flourish
+of the hand which held the palette. The tea was already simmering on
+the rickety table in the bow-window, when Oswyn, staggering under
+his impedimenta, climbed the staircase, and shouldered his way
+familiarly into the room.
+
+"How fearfully wet you must be!" said his host lazily from the
+depths of an arm-chair. "Help yourself to a pair of slippers and a
+dry coat, and have some tea. It's strong enough even for you by this
+time."
+
+The other had disembarrassed himself of his dripping jacket and
+overalls, and now kicked off his shoes, with a short laugh. He was
+never a great talker in the daytime, and the dreary charm of the
+river world outside was still upon him. He dropped the sketch upon
+which he had been working rather contemptuously against the wall,
+where Rainham could see it, and selected a pair of slippers from
+quite a small heap in the corner by the fireplace.
+
+"I don't mind _your_ seeing my work, because you don't talk about it,"
+he said, glancing at Rainham quickly. "I hate people who try to say
+complimentary things; they don't often mean them, and when they do
+they talk absolute rot."
+
+"Yes," said the other sympathetically. "Shall I put a slice of lemon
+in your tea? I suppose I must live up to my reputation and say
+nothing about your sketch. But I must have it when it's finished!
+It's always most embarrassing to have to pay personal compliments,
+though I suppose some people like them."
+
+The painter grunted inarticulately between two sips of tea.
+
+"Like them! Don't your society artists and authors simply wallow in
+them? Have you got any cigarettes, or papers? I dropped mine into a
+puddle. Ah, thanks.... That's a pretty face. Whose is it?"
+
+The cigarette case, which Rainham handed to his guest, was a
+well-worn leather one, a somewhat ladylike article, with a
+photograph fitted into the dividing flap inside. Before answering
+the question he looked at the photograph absently for a moment, when
+the case had been returned to him.
+
+"It's not a very good photograph. It's meant for--for Mrs.
+Lightmark, when she was a little girl. She gave me the case with the
+portrait years ago, in Florence."
+
+Oswyn glanced at him curiously and shrewdly through a thin haze of
+blue smoke, watching him restore the faded, little receptacle almost
+reverentially to the breast-pocket of his coat.
+
+"Have you been to the Chamber of Horrors?" he asked suddenly, after
+a silent pause, broken only by the ceaseless lashing of the window
+by the raindrops.
+
+Rainham looked up with a start, half puzzled, seeking and finding an
+explanation in the faint, conscious humour which loosened the lines
+about the speaker's mouth.
+
+"The Chamber of---- Do you mean the R.A.? You do, you most
+irreverent of mortals! No, I have not been yet. Will you go with
+me?"
+
+"Heaven forbid! I have been once."
+
+"You have? And they didn't scalp you?"
+
+"I didn't stay long enough, I suppose. I only went to see one
+picture--Lightmark's."
+
+"Ah, that's just what I want to see! And you know I still have a
+weakness for the show. I expect you would like the new Salon
+better."
+
+"There are good things there," said Oswyn tersely, "and a great many
+abominations as well. I was over in Paris last week."
+
+Rainham glanced at him over his cup with a certain surprise.
+
+"I didn't know you ever went there now," he remarked.
+
+"No, I never go if I can help it. I hate Paris; it is _triste_ as a
+well, and full of ghosts. Ghosts! It's a city of the dead. But I had
+a picture there this time, and I went to look at it."
+
+"In the new Salon?"
+
+"In the new Salon. It was a little gray, dusky thing, three foot by
+two, and their flaming miles of canvas murdered it. I am not a
+scene-painter," he went on a little savagely. "I don't paint with a
+broom, and I have no ambition to do the sun, or an eruption of
+Vesuvius. So I doubt if I shall exhibit there again until the vogue
+alters. Oh, they are clever enough, those fellows! even the
+trickiest of them can draw, which is the last thing they learn here,
+and one or two are men of genius. But I should dearly like to set
+them down, _en plein air_ too, if they insist upon it, with the
+palette of Velasquez. I went out and wandered in the Morgue
+afterwards, and I confess its scheme of colour rested my eyes."
+
+"Do I know your picture?" asked Rainham to change the subject,
+finding him a little grim. "Is it the thing you were doing here?"
+
+Oswyn's head rested on one thin, colour-stained hand which shaded
+his eyes.
+
+"No," he said with a suggestion of constraint, "it was an old sketch
+which I had worked up--not the thing you knew. I shall not finish
+that----"
+
+"Not finish it!" cried Rainham. "But of course you must! why, it was
+superb; it promised a masterpiece!"
+
+"To tell you the truth," said Oswyn, "I can't finish it. I have
+painted it out."
+
+Rainham glanced at him with an air of consternation, of reproach.
+
+"My dear fellow," he said, "you are impossible! What in the world
+possessed you to do such a mad thing?"
+
+The painter hesitated a moment, looking at him irresolutely beneath
+his heavy, knitted brows.
+
+"I meant to tell you," he said, after a while; "but on the whole I
+think I would rather not. It is rather an unpleasant subject,
+Rainham, and if you don't mind we will change it."
+
+Oswyn had risen from his chair, with his wonted restlessness, and
+was gazing out upon the lazy, evening life of the great river. The
+monotonous accompaniment to their conversation, which had been so
+long sustained by the drip and splash outside, had grown
+intermittent, and now all but ceased; while a faint tinge of
+yellowish white upon the ripples, and a feathery rift in the gray
+dome of sky, announced a final effort on the part of the setting
+sun.
+
+The yard door swung noisily on its hinges, and a light step and
+voice became audible, and the sound of familiar conference with the
+dockman. Rainham lifted his head inquiringly, and Oswyn, shrugging
+his shoulders, left the window and regained his seat, picking up his
+sketch on the way.
+
+"Yes," he said in answer to a more direct inquiry on the other's
+part, "I think it was Lightmark."
+
+Almost as he spoke there was a step on the stair, followed by a
+boisterous knock at the door, and Dick entered effusively.
+
+"Well, _mon vieux_, how goes it? Why, you're all in the dark! They
+didn't tell me you were engaged.... Oh, is that you, Oswyn? How do
+you do?"
+
+"Quite an unexpected pleasure?" suggested Oswyn sardonically,
+nodding over his shoulder at the new-comer from his seat by the
+fire.
+
+Rainham's greeting had been far more cordial, and he still held his
+friend's hand between his own, gazing inquiringly into his face as
+if he wished to read something there.
+
+"Yes, I am back, you see," he said presently, when Dick had found
+himself a chair. "I have been here two days, and I was just
+beginning to think of looking you up. I was very sorry to miss you
+at Bordighera. How is Eve? It's very good of you to come all this
+way to see me; you must be pretty busy."
+
+"Oh, Eve is tremendously well! Thanks, no, I won't have any tea, but
+you might give me a whisky-and-soda. I had to come down into these
+wilds to look at a yacht which we think of taking for the summer.
+Quite a small one," he added half apologetically, as he detected the
+faint, amused surprise in the other's expression; "and as I found
+myself here, with a few minutes to spare before my train goes, I
+thought I would look in on the off chance of finding you. How is
+business just now? The dock didn't strike me as looking much like
+work as I came in. Pretty stagnant, eh?"
+
+Rainham shook his head.
+
+"Oh, it's much as usual--perhaps a little more so! Bullen continues
+to threaten me with bankruptcy, but I am getting used to it.
+Threatened men live long, you know."
+
+"Oh, you're all right!" answered Dick genially. "As long as Bullen
+looks after you, you won't come to grief."
+
+While the two were thus occupied in reuniting the chain of old
+associations, Oswyn had been silently, almost surreptitiously,
+preparing for departure; and he now came forward awkwardly, with his
+hat in one hand and the tools of his trade under his arm.
+
+"May I leave some of these things, here, or will they be in your
+way?"
+
+"But you're not going?" said Rainham, rising from his seat with a
+constraining gesture; "why, don't you remember we were going to dine
+together? Dick will stay too, _n'est ce pas_? It will be like old
+times. Mrs. Bullen has been preparing quite a feast, I assure you!"
+
+Oswyn paused irresolutely.
+
+"Don't let me drive you away," said Dick. "In any case I'm going
+myself in a few minutes. Yes," he added, turning to Rainham, "I'm
+very sorry, but I've got to take my wife out to dinner, and I shall
+have to catch a train in, let me see, about ten minutes."
+
+"Really? Well, then, clearly you must sit down again, Oswyn; I won't
+be left alone at any price. That's right. Now, Dick, tell me what
+you have been doing, and especially all about your Academy picture;
+I haven't seen even a critique of it. Of course it's a success? Have
+you sold it?"
+
+"Oh, spare my modesty!" protested Lightmark somewhat clumsily, with
+a quick glance at Oswyn. "It's all right, but we mustn't talk shop."
+
+"Yes, for God's sake spare his modesty!" supplemented the other
+painter almost brutally. "Look at his blushes. It isn't so bad as
+all that, Lightmark."
+
+"I don't even know the subject," pursued Rainham. "You might at
+least tell me what it was. Was it the canvas which you wouldn't show
+me, just before I went away--at the studio? The one about which you
+made such a mystery----?"
+
+"Oh bosh, old man!" interrupted Dick hurriedly, "I never made any
+mystery. It--it wasn't that. It's quite an ordinary subject, one of
+the river scenes which I sketched here. You had better go and see
+it. And come and see us. You know the address. I must be off!"
+
+"Wait a minute," interposed Oswyn, with a cadence in his voice which
+struck Rainham as the signal of something surpassing his wonted
+eccentricity. "Don't go yet. I said just now, Rainham, that I
+wouldn't tell you why I had painted out that picture, the picture
+which I had been fool enough to talk about so much, which I had
+intended to make a masterpiece. Well, I have changed my mind. I
+think you ought to know. Perhaps you would prefer to tell him?" he
+added, turning savagely to Lightmark, and speaking fast and loud
+with the curious muscular tremor which betokens difficult restraint.
+"No? Of course you will have the impudence to pretend that the
+conception was yours. Yes, curse you! you are quite capable of
+swearing that it was all yours--subject and treatment too.... But
+you can't deny that you heard me talking of the thing night after
+night at the club, when I have no doubt you hadn't even begun on
+your bastard imitation. One of the pictures of the year as they call
+it, as you and your damned crew of flatterers and critics call it...."
+
+He stopped for breath, clutching at the table with one hand and
+letting the other, which had been upraised in denunciation, fall at
+his side. He had meant to be calm, to limit himself strictly to an
+explanation; but in the face of his wrong and the wrong-doer the
+man's passionate nature had broken loose. Now, when he already half
+repented of the violence with which he had profaned the house of his
+friend, his eyes fell upon Rainham, and he felt abashed before the
+expression of pain which he had called into the other's face.
+
+"I don't know what all this means," said Rainham wearily, turning
+from Oswyn to Dick as he spoke; "but surely it is all wrong? Be
+quiet, Dick; you needn't say anything. If Oswyn is accusing you of
+plagiarism, of stealing his ideas, I can't believe it. I can't
+believe you meant to wrong him. The same thing must have occurred to
+both of you. Why, Oswyn, surely you see that? You have both been
+painting here, and you were both struck in the same way. Nothing
+could be simpler."
+
+Now Lightmark seemed to assume a more confident attitude, to become
+more like himself; and he was about to break the chain of silence,
+which had held him almost voiceless throughout Oswyn's attack, when
+Rainham again interrupted him.
+
+"I am sure you needn't say anything, Dick. We all know Oswyn; he--he
+wasn't serious. Go and catch your train, and forget all about it."
+
+The first words which Rainham spoke recalled to Oswyn the powerful
+reason which had determined him to preserve his old neutrality, and
+to make an offering of silence upon the altar of his regard for the
+only man with whom he could feel that he had something in common. If
+his vengeance could have vented itself upon a single victim, it
+would have fallen, strong and sure; but it was clear to his calmer
+self that this could not be; the consequences would be too
+far-reaching, and might even recoil upon himself. After all, what
+did it matter? There was a certain luxury in submission to
+injustice, a pleasure in watching the bolt of Nemesis descend when
+his hands were guiltless of the launching. And as he struggled with
+himself, hunting in retrospect for some excuse for what his passion
+railed at as weakness, a last straw fell into the scale, for he
+thought of the faded portrait in the cigarette-case.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+"My dear," said Lady Garnett, accepting a cup of tea from the hands
+of her niece, and regarding her at the same time, from her low
+cushioned chair, with a certain drollery, "do you know that it is
+exactly one week since Mr. Sylvester called?"
+
+Mary Masters' head was bent a little over her long _Suede_
+gloves--they had just returned from their afternoon drive in the
+Park--and she paused to remove her hat and veil before she replied.
+
+"And it is at least three weeks since Mr. Rainham was here."
+
+"Ah, poor Philip!" remarked the old lady, "he is always irregular;
+he may come, or he may not. I must ask him to dinner, by the way,
+soon. But I was talking of Mr. Sylvester, who is a model of
+punctuality. (Give me a piece of _baba_ for Mefistofele, please!) Mr.
+Sylvester was here last Saturday, and the Saturday before that. I
+think it is highly probable, Mary, that we shall be honoured with a
+visit from Mr. Sylvester to-day."
+
+"I hope not!" said the girl with some energy. "I have a couple of
+songs that I must positively try over before to-night. Surely, it is
+a little late too, even for Mr. Sylvester."
+
+"It is barely half-past five," said Lady Garnett, lazily feeding her
+pug, "and he knows that we do not dine till eight. Resign yourself,
+_cherie_; he will certainly come."
+
+She glanced across at the young girl, pointing, with her keen gaze,
+words which seemed trivial enough. And Mary, her calm forehead
+puckered with a certain vague annoyance which she disdained to
+analyse, understood perfectly all that the elder lady was too
+discreet to say. She sat for a little while, her hands resting idly
+in her lap, or smoothing the creases out of her long, soft gloves.
+Then she rose and moved quickly across to Lady Garnett's side, knelt
+suddenly down by her chair.
+
+"Ah, my aunt!" she cried impulsively, "tell me what is to be done?"
+
+Lady Garnett glanced up from the novel into which she had subsided;
+she laid it on the little tea-table with a sigh of relief at this
+sudden mood of confidence, coming a little strangely amidst the
+young girl's habitual reticence.
+
+"We will talk, my dear," she said, "now you are practical. I
+suppose, by the way, he has not proposed?"
+
+Mary shook her head.
+
+"That is it, Aunt Marcelle! That is exactly what I want to prevent.
+Is--is he going to?"
+
+Lady Garnett smiled, and her smile had a very definite quality
+indeed.
+
+"I would not cherish any false hopes, my dear. Charles Sylvester is
+a young man--not so very young though, by the way--whose conclusions
+are very slow, but when they arrive, _mon Dieu_! they are durable. I
+am sure he is terribly tenacious. It took him a long time to
+conclude that he was in love with you; at first, you know, he was a
+little troubled about your fortune, but at last he came to that
+conclusion--at Lucerne."
+
+"Oh, at Lucerne!" protested the young girl with a nervous laugh.
+"Surely not there!"
+
+"It was precisely at Lucerne," continued Lady Garnett, "that he
+decided you would make him an adorable wife, and, in effect, it was
+a considerable piece of wisdom. And since then his conclusions have
+been more rapid. The last has been that he will certainly marry
+you--with or without a _dot_--before the elections. You are serious,
+you know, my dear, though not so serious as he believes; you are a
+girl of intelligence, and he is going to stand for some place or
+other, and candidates with clever wives often obtain a majority over
+candidates who are clever but have no wives. Yes, my dear, he is
+certainly going to propose. You may postpone it by the use of great
+tact for a month or so; you will hardly do so for longer."
+
+"I don't want to postpone it," said Mary ruefully; "if it be
+inevitable, I would sooner have it over."
+
+"It will never be over," remarked Lady Garnett decisively. "Did I
+not say that he was tenacious--_comme on ne l'est plus_? You may
+refuse him once--twice; it will all be to go over again and again,
+until you end by accepting him."
+
+"Oh, Aunt Marcelle!" protested the young girl, with little flush of
+righteous wrath.
+
+"After all," continued the elder lady, ignoring her interruption,
+"are you so very sure that--that it would not do? There are many
+worse men in the world than Sylvester. Both _my_ husbands were
+profligates, in addition to being fools. At any rate, this dear
+Charles is very correct. And remember, the poor man is really in
+love with you."
+
+"I know," said Mary plaintively; "that is why I am so sorry. He is a
+good man, a conscientious man, and a gentleman; and really,
+sometimes lately, he has been quite simple and nice. Only----"
+
+Lady Garnett completed the sentence for her with an impartial shrug.
+
+"Only he is perfectly ridiculous, and as a lover quite impossible?
+My dear, I grant it you with all my heart, and I think he has all
+the qualities which make an excellent husband."
+
+As the young girl was still silent, unconvinced, she went on after a
+little while:
+
+"You know, Mary, I have never tried to marry you. Frankly, my dear,
+I do not believe very much in pushing marriages. My own, and most
+others that I have known intimately, might have been very reasonably
+made--let us say--in purgatory. But a girl must marry some time or
+other, if she be rich. And you will have plenty of money, my poor
+child! You shall do exactly as you please, but I must admit that
+Charles is a most unobjectionable _parti_. After all, there is only
+one other man I would sooner give you to, Mary, and he is
+impossible."
+
+"Aunt Marcelle! Aunt Marcelle!" pleaded the young girl faintly, her
+dark head bent very low now over the arm of the chair.
+
+Lady Garnett had been talking so far in a somewhat desultory
+fashion, interspersing her words with brief caresses to the pug who
+was curled up in her lap. Now she put down the little dog with a
+brusqueness which hurt his dignity; he pawed fretfully at Mary's
+dress, and, attracting no attention, trotted of to his basket on the
+rug, where he settled himself with a short growl of discontent. And
+Lady Garnett, with a sudden change of tone and a new tenderness in
+her voice, just stooped a little and touched the young girl's
+forehead with her thin lips.
+
+"My poor child!" she said, "my dear little Mary! Did you suppose I
+didn't know? Did you think I was blind, as well as very old, that I
+shouldn't see the change in you, and guess why?"
+
+"Ah!" cried the girl with a break in her voice. "What are you
+saying? What do you make me say?"
+
+"Nothing! nothing!" said the old lady; "you need not tell me
+anything. It is only I who tell you--like the old immortal in
+Daudet, _J'ai vu ca moi_!--and it will pass as everything passes. That
+is not the least sad part, though now you will hardly believe it.
+You see, I don't lie to you; I tell you quite plainly that it is no
+good. Some men are made so--_vois tu, ma cherie_!--to see only one
+woman, an inaccessible one, when they seem to see many, and _he_ would
+be like that. Only it is a pity. And yet who would have foreseen
+it--that he should charm you, Mary? He so tired and old and _use_--for
+he is old for you, dear, though he might be my son--with his
+humorous, indolent, mocking talk, and his great, sad eyes. It's
+wicked of me, Mary, but I love you for it; so few girls would have
+cared, for he _is_ a wretched match. And I blame myself, too."
+
+"Because I am foolish and utterly ashamed?" cried the girl from her
+obscurity, in a hard, small voice which the other did not know.
+
+"Foolish!" she exclaimed. "Well, we women are all that, and some
+men--the best of them. But ashamed? Because you have a wise mother,
+my darling, who guesses things? I have never had any children but
+you and him. And no one but I can ever know. No; I was sorry because
+I had to hurt you. But it was best, my dear, because you are so
+strong. Yes, you are strong, Mary!"
+
+"Am I?" said the girl wearily. "What is the good of it, I wonder?
+Except that it makes one suffer more and longer."
+
+"No," said Lady Garnett. "It makes one show it less, and only that
+matters. Aren't we going to Lady Dulminster to-night? Ah, my dear,
+the play must go on; we mustn't spoil the fun with sour faces,
+masks, and dominos except now and then! Believe me, _cherie_,
+underneath it all we are much the same--very sad people. Only it
+wouldn't do to admit it. Life would be too terrible then. So we
+dance on and make believe we enjoy it, and by-and-by, if we play
+hard enough, we do believe it for a minute or two. From one point of
+view, you know, it is rather amusing."
+
+Mary looked up at last; her eyes, shining out of the white face,
+seemed to have grown suddenly very large and bright.
+
+"Does it go on always, Aunt Marcelle?" she asked with a child's
+directness.
+
+"Always!" said Lady Garnett promptly. "Only there are interludes,
+and then sometimes one guest steals away with his bosom friend into
+a corner, and they look under each other's masks. But it isn't a
+nice sight, and it mustn't happen very often, else they wouldn't be
+back in their places when the music began. Ah, my child!" she broke
+off suddenly, "I am talking nonsense to amuse you, and making you
+sadder all the time. But you know I think nobody was ever consoled
+by consolations unless it were the consoler."
+
+She drew the girl's blank face towards her, clasped the smooth brown
+head against her breast with two bird-like hands on which the
+diamonds glittered.
+
+"Cry, my dear!" she said at last; "that is the best of being
+young--that gift of tears. When one is old one laughs instead; but
+ah, _mon Dieu_! it is a queer kind of laughter."
+
+They sat locked together in silence until the room was quite dark,
+lit only by the vague lamplight which shone in through the fine lace
+curtains from the street. Then Mary rose and played a little, very
+softly, in the darkness, morsels of Chopin, until the footman came
+in with a bright lamp, announcing that dinner was on the table. And
+Charles Sylvester had not arrived.
+
+He atoned for this breach of his habit, however, on the morrow by
+making an early call upon the two ladies, whom he found alone,
+immediately after luncheon. He was very clean shaven, very carefully
+dressed, and with his closely buttoned frock-coat and his
+irreproachable hat, which he held ponderously in his hand during his
+protracted visit, he had the air of having come immediately from
+church.
+
+Lady Garnett taxed him with this occupation presently, suppressing
+her further thought that he looked still more like an aspirant to
+matrimony, and Charles admitted the impeachment; he had been in the
+morning with his sister, Mrs. Lightmark, to the Temple Church. His
+severe gaze was turned inquiringly upon Mary. Lady Garnett responded
+for her a little flippantly.
+
+"Oh, Mary went nowhere this morning, Mr. Sylvester--not even to the
+church parade. We were very late last night, at Lady Dulminster's.
+London grows later and later; we shall be dining at midnight soon."
+
+"I should like to go to the Temple Church sometimes," said Mary,
+"because of the singing, only it is so very far."
+
+Charles Sylvester bent forward with bland satisfaction; he had it so
+obviously on the tip of his tongue that he would be charmed to be
+her escort, that the girl hastened to interrupt him.
+
+"You were not at Lady Dulminster's, Mr. Sylvester? We quite expected
+to see you."
+
+"If I had known that you were to be there!" he exclaimed. Then he
+added: "I had a card, and, indeed, I fully intended to look in. But
+one is always so pressed for time just before the long vacation, and
+yesterday I was quite exhausted. Did you see any of my people?"
+
+"Yes," said Mary, "Eve was there; we expected her to play. It is a
+very musical house."
+
+"Ah, yes! I have heard so from my sister, and from Colonel
+Lightmark. He says that Lady Dulminster is really a most
+accomplished woman."
+
+"He looks as if he found her charming," put in Lady Garnett with a
+shrug. Then she added, suppressing a yawn, her thin fingers dallying
+regretfully with the leaves of her novel: "I suppose your exertions
+are nearly over, Mr. Sylvester. You will be going away soon?"
+
+He shook his head gravely.
+
+"I fear not for long. I may have a week's cruise with my
+brother-in-law--you know, he has a yacht for the summer--but my
+labours are only beginning. I have the elections in view. You agree
+with me, no doubt, Lady Garnett, that the Government is bound to go
+to the country in the autumn; you know, of course, that I am
+thinking of standing for----"
+
+"I congratulate you in advance, Mr. Sylvester! I am sure you will
+get in, especially if you have your sister down to canvass."
+
+"I am afraid Eve is not sufficiently interested in politics to be of
+much assistance," said the candidate. Then he went on, a little
+nervously, pulling at his collar: "You will wish me success, Miss
+Masters?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" said the girl hastily; "I am sure we both wish you that,
+Mr. Sylvester. We shall be most interested, shall we not, Aunt
+Marcelle?"
+
+Lady Garnett came to her assistance with smiling promptitude.
+
+"Of course, Mr. Sylvester; we will even wear your colours, if they
+are becoming, you know; and I am sure you would not fight under any
+others. And, mind, we will have no reforms--unless you like to try
+your hand on the climate. But nothing else! You are so fond of
+reforming, you English--even the most Conservative of you--that I
+live in constant fear of being reformed away. I hope, Mr. Sylvester,
+you are more Conservative than that."
+
+Charles Sylvester flushed a little; he cleared his throat
+elaborately before he replied:
+
+"I fear I have failed to make myself understood, Lady Garnett; in no
+sense do I call myself a Conservative, though I am prepared to vote
+with the party on the Irish Question. I am a Liberal Unionist, Lady
+Garnett. I may almost call myself a Radical Unionist. My views on
+the emancipation of labour, for instance, are quite advanced. I am
+prepared----"
+
+Mary interrupted him, absently, demurely, with a little speech that
+appeared to be a quotation.
+
+"Labour is a pretty beast in its cage to the philanthropic visitor
+with buns; its temper is better understood of the professional
+keeper."
+
+Lady Garnett arched her eyebrows pensively; Charles looked
+surprised, displeased; Mary hastened to explain, blushing a little:
+
+"I beg your pardon! the phrase is Mr. Rainham's. I believe it is the
+only political principle he has."
+
+Charles's displeasure at the maxim cooled to lofty disdain of its
+author.
+
+"Ah, yes!--pretty, but cynical, as I should say most of Mr.
+Rainham's principles were."
+
+Lady Garnett was aroused out of her state of vacant boredom for the
+first time into a certain interest. Mary sat, her hands clasped in
+her lap, the flush just dying away out of her pale cheeks, while Mr.
+Sylvester embarked upon an elaborate disquisition of his principles
+and his programme--it might have been an expansion of his
+Parliamentary address--which the elder lady, whom a chance phrase
+had started upon a new line of thought, scarcely considered.
+
+Does he know? she asked herself. Has this rather stupid young man
+grown suddenly acute enough to be jealous? Certainly there had been
+a flash, a trace of curious rancour in his brief mention of
+Rainham's name, for which it was scarcely easy to account. That the
+two men, in spite of their long juxtaposition, had never been more
+than acquaintances, had never been in the least degree friends, she
+was perfectly well aware; it was not in the nature of either of them
+to be more intimately allied.
+
+Rainham's indolent humour and fantastic melancholy, his genial
+disregard of popularity or success, could not but be displeasing to
+a man so precise and practical as the barrister. Only now she had
+scented, had dimly perceived beneath his speech, something more than
+the indefinable aversion of incompatible tempers, a very personal
+and present dislike. Had things passed between them, things of which
+she was ignorant? Was the sentiment, then, reciprocal? She hardly
+believed it: Rainham's placid temper gave to his largest hostilities
+the character merely of languid contempt; it was not worth the
+trouble to hate anyone, he had said to her so often--neither to hate
+nor to love. She could imagine him with infidelities on occasion to
+the last part of his rule; yes, she could imagine that--but for
+hatred, no! he had said rightly he was too indolent for that. It
+must be all on one side, then, as happens so frequently in life with
+love and hate, and the rest--all on one side. And the barrister had
+risen to take his leave before her reflections had brought her
+further than this.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+It must be admitted that when Lady Garnett insinuated, for the
+benefit of her half-incredulous inward counsellor, that Charles
+Sylvester, in spite of his almost aggressive panoply of
+self-assurance, had been smitten by the fever of jealousy, she fully
+sustained her reputation for perspicacity. Her conclusions were
+seldom wrong, and, indeed, the barrister, although he had
+professional motives for endeavouring to cloak himself with
+something of the wisdom of the serpent, was characterized far more
+by the somewhat stolid innocence of that proverbially moral, but
+less interesting creature, the dove; and it was an easy task for a
+keen observer, such as her ladyship undoubtedly was, to read him
+line upon line, like the most clearly printed of books. As in the
+case of a book, what one read was not always intelligible, and it
+might even on occasion be necessary to read between the obvious
+lines; but in this particular instance the page contained no
+cryptogram, and the astute old lady had read it without her
+spectacles.
+
+Charles was jealous; he had not insulted himself by admitting it
+even for an instant, but he was jealous; and his jealousy was more
+than the roving fever of all lovers, in that it had a definite,
+tangible object.
+
+It would have been contrary to his nature to allow either his love
+or the ensuing passion to interfere in any way with his professional
+duties or instincts; he was a lawyer, and an embryo Member of
+Parliament first, a man afterwards; and it was not until late in the
+afternoon of the day which followed his last recorded interview with
+Lady Garnett and her niece that he dismissed from his brain the
+complexities of "Brown and another _versus_ Johnson," and drew from an
+orderly mental pigeon-hole the bundle of papers bearing the neat
+endorsement, "_Re_ Miss Masters." When, to the ecstatic joy of his
+clerk, he had withdrawn himself from his chambers in Paper
+Buildings, and was walking briskly along the dusty Embankment in the
+direction of his club, he found himself, by a sequence which was
+natural, though he would have been the last to own it, already
+thinking of Rainham, and wondering, with a trace of dignified
+self-reproach, whether he had not been guilty of some remissness in
+the performance of his duty towards society, in the matter of that
+reprehensible individual and his aberrations from the paths of
+virtue. He did not stop to question himself too strictly as to the
+connection between his matrimonial aspirations and Rainham's
+peccadilloes; but he was able to assure himself that the assertion
+of his principles demanded a closer investigation, a more crucial
+analysis of certain ambiguous episodes.
+
+"Supposing," he argued, "supposing Rainham had given signs of a
+desire to marry my sister, or my cousin, or any other girl in whom I
+was interested, or, in short, whom I knew, it would obviously have
+been my duty, before giving my consent or approval, to find out all
+about his relations with that girl, that person whom I saw with him
+in the park--ah, yes! Kitty, that was her name. And, in a way, don't
+I owe far more to society in general than I do to any of my immediate
+friends in particular? Well, then I ought to know more about
+Kitty, so as to be prepared in case--that is, for emergencies....
+Why, for all I know, I may have been suspecting Rainham all this
+time quite unjustly. I'm sure I hope so." Here he shook his head
+sorrowfully. "But I'm afraid there's not much chance of that. The
+question remains, how am I to find out anything? It's no good asking
+Rainham; that goes without saying. It would be equally useless to
+try Lightmark: they're as thick as thieves, and he's not the sort of
+man to be pumped very easily. And yet, if Rainham's friends are out
+of the question, what's to be done? He hasn't got any enemies--that
+sort of man never has, except himself. How can I get hold of the
+girl? I suppose some people would set a detective to watch Rainham,
+and so on; but that's not to be thought of, in this case." He
+stopped close to Cleopatra's Needle, and frowned abstractedly over
+the stone parapet, absently following the struggles of a boy who was
+laboriously working a great, empty lighter across the wide,
+smoke-coloured river at a narrow angle with the shore. An idea
+suggested itself in flattering colours for a moment: he might pay a
+visit to the little restaurant or club in Turk Street, the shady
+place with a foreign name which he had forgotten. At the expense of
+a little tact, he might very probably succeed in inducing some of
+the careless, disreputable young artists who formed the
+frequentation of the place to talk about Rainham's amours. It even
+occurred to him that at a late hour Kitty herself might be seen
+there, dancing a can-can with Rainham, or singing songs with a
+riotous chorus. But in spite of this prospect, the notion was not
+sufficiently attractive. He had not enjoyed his introduction to the
+eccentric fraternity, on the occasion when he had been fired by
+Lightmark's early enthusiasm about the place to request to take him
+there to dine. He had felt, almost as much as the men to whom he was
+introduced, that he had no business there, that he was an outsider;
+he had even been snubbed. "And, after all," he said impatiently,
+resuming his homeward direction, "though I've got enough evidence to
+damn him twice over in the eyes of any man in the world, I suppose
+it wouldn't be enough to convince a woman, if she believed in him. I
+must get hold of Kitty--it's the only way to arrive at a certainty."
+
+After much deliberation to the same effect, he determined, somewhat
+reluctantly, that there was nothing for it but to endeavour to
+enlist the sympathies of one of Rainham's more intimate friends. He
+had recurred by this time to the unstable hypothesis that he was
+acting primarily in Rainham's interest, that his real motive was to
+arrive at the truth on the chance that it might be favourable to his
+unadmitted rival. It only remained for him to select out of the
+limited material at his disposal the man whom he should invite to
+enter upon this alliance. And when he reached the gloomy library of
+the eminently respectable club, where he was accustomed, before
+dining, to study the evening papers and to write his letters, the
+choice had been made; and after one or two abortive efforts, he
+composed to his satisfaction a diplomatic epistle, which he
+addressed to Oswyn (with whom he enjoyed a nodding acquaintance) at
+the restaurant in Turk Street.
+
+Late in the afternoon of the next day Sylvester sat alone and
+expectant before a pile of temporarily neglected papers, telling
+himself that Rainham ought to be very grateful for these strenuous
+efforts in the interests of his injured reputation. He was beginning
+to wonder nervously whether Oswyn would fail him, when he heard a
+knock at the outer door, followed by an unfamiliar step, and the
+clerk announced that a gentleman wished to see him by appointment on
+private business. The barrister rose from his seat with a portentous
+display of polite, awkward cordiality, and motioned his guest into a
+chair.
+
+"It's extremely good of you to take the trouble to come," he said
+tentatively.
+
+"That depends upon what you want of me," answered Oswyn shrewdly.
+"You said in your note that it was on a matter of vital importance
+to a friend of mine. I haven't so many friends that I can afford to
+shirk a little trouble in a matter which vitally concerns one of
+them. May I ask, in the first place, who is the friend?"
+
+Sylvester picked up the open brief which lay before him on the
+table, and folded it scrupulously.
+
+"Philip Rainham," he answered, and then shot a quick glance at
+Oswyn.
+
+"Rainham?" echoed the other with an air suggestive at once of
+surprise and relief, as if, perhaps, he had been expecting to hear
+another name. "You are right, he is a friend," he added simply.
+"What can I do for him?"
+
+"Well, the fact is, I'm afraid he's got into difficulties--a scrape,
+an imbroglio, with a woman!"
+
+The painter lifted his expressive eyebrows incredulously.
+
+"Since I last saw him--three days ago?"
+
+"Oh, dear, no; the thing's been going on, I should say, for quite a
+long time--more than a year to my knowledge."
+
+Oswyn reflected for a moment, gazing at Sylvester with some
+suspicion.
+
+"I don't think it troubles him much," he said brusquely. "Is it any
+business of mine--or of yours? Has he spoken to you about it?"
+
+Sylvester uttered a hasty negative.
+
+"Oh, no! He is not the sort of man who would. But other people talk.
+You see, I'm afraid there's some sort of black-mail going on, and he
+oughtn't to submit to it. His friends oughtn't to allow it. If--if
+one could see the woman and frighten her a little----"
+
+"Is that what you wanted me for?" asked Oswyn impatiently. "If so,
+allow me----"
+
+The other hastened to reassure him.
+
+"Oh, no, not at all. But I thought you might be able to tell me
+where the person is to be found, her address, or something about
+her. I understand that she was a model; you probably know her...."
+
+The painter shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Who is she? What is her name?"
+
+"Kitty--that's all I know."
+
+"Kitty? Kitty Crichton, I suppose."
+
+A light dawned on him; the name opened a door to many forgotten
+trivial incidents. He did not speak again for a minute, and when he
+broke the silence there was a harder tone in his voice, and he rose
+from his chair at the same time.
+
+"I don't see how this can concern me, or you, either. You must
+pardon me if I say that I dislike meddling, and people who meddle."
+
+Sylvester blushed hotly.
+
+"You don't suppose I want to do him anything but good," he said
+diplomatically, trying to convince himself that he was not damaging
+the reputation for perfect candour which he hoped that he enjoyed.
+"It's not a pleasant task, but there are circumstances in which one
+has to sacrifice one's scruples--one's feelings."
+
+Oswyn glanced at him again, with some contempt in the lines of his
+worn face.
+
+"Excuse me if I refrain from sounding your motives."
+
+Then he paused, fingering his soft felt hat. Suddenly his face was
+illumined by a remarkably grim smile, and it became evident to the
+man who was watching him so anxiously that there had occurred some
+change in his mental perspective.
+
+"I don't quite understand why you brought me into this," he added,
+the smile still hovering very lightly on his lips. "However, under
+the circumstances, I think I can't do much harm by putting you in
+the way of finding Mrs. Crichton. Let me recommend you to inquire
+for her at the office of the _Outcry_, the newspaper--she used to work
+for it, I believe--in Took's Court. They will know her address
+there. Took's Court--it's only a few minutes' walk from here.
+Thanks, I can find my way out...."
+
+"I suppose that was rather a stupid thing to do," he said
+regretfully, as he stopped in the doorway below to light a
+cigarette, "though not such a _betise_ as his, _mon dieu_!... But I
+couldn't resist the temptation. Now, I wonder if he's clever enough
+to find out the truth?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+The night was dark and still--so dark that above the tree-tops all
+was a soft, abysmal blank, so still that the Japanese lanterns
+scarcely swung on their strings among the apple-trees, and the
+leaves almost forgot to rustle. From the tent in the corner of the
+little garden (little, but large for a garden in London) the quaint,
+rapturous music of the Hungarian band floated in fitful
+extravagance, now wildly dominating, now graciously accompanying the
+murmur of many voices, the mingled pace of feet, and the lingering
+sweep of silken skirts upon the shadowed grass. The light streamed
+in broad, electric rays from the open windows of the low, wide
+house, and from the tall double doors of the studio, which had been
+added at the side, broken continually by the silhouettes of guests
+who entered the rooms or sought the cooler air outside, and dulling
+to the quiet glow of old stained glass the rich radiance of the
+fantastic coloured lanterns.
+
+It was one of the series of summer evenings on which, according to
+the cards which had been so widely circulated, Mr. and Mrs.
+Lightmark were "at home" to their friends and to their friends'
+friends; and Rainham, who was a late arrival at the elaborate house
+in Grove Road, was able after a time to recognise many familiar
+faces, some of them almost forgotten, among those who had elected to
+be present. The rooms, in spite of the outlet afforded by the
+garden, were all surprisingly full; and after a hurried exchange of
+greetings, which Eve's duties as hostess had compelled her to
+curtail, he had passed through a jungle of brilliant toilettes and
+unfamiliar figures into the newly-built, bright studio, where he had
+been told that he would find his friend. He had abundant leisure to
+corroborate the first impression of a splendour for which he was
+hardly prepared, which had seized him when he entered the hall and
+surrendered his coat to a courteous servant in livery, before
+Lightmark, radiant and flushed with success, singled him out in the
+corner to which he had retreated in loneliness.
+
+"So glad to see you, old man! we were hoping you would turn up.
+Better late than never. Isn't it a crush? I assure you our evenings
+are becoming quite an institution. You will find scores of people
+you know here. Excuse my leaving you. Not much like the old
+studio days, eh? Afternoon tea with Copal's cups and saucers, and
+Mrs. Thingumy's tea-cakes. Your friend Lady Garnett is here
+somewhere--I'll be shot if I know where. Try the garden; you can
+get out this way. See you again later."
+
+"All right, Dick," he answered with equanimity, smiling with a
+little inward amusement; "you look after your people. I will find my
+way about."
+
+As he made his way discreetly among the little groups of people who
+strolled processionally along the gravel walks and beneath the
+trees, or disposed themselves in basket chairs upon the lawn,
+feeling himself vaguely exhilarated by the not too abstruse music of
+the posturing fiddlers, his eyes caressed by the soft glow of the
+Japanese lanterns, strung like antique jewelled necklets against the
+almost tangible blackness of the night, he found himself listening
+with an half-malicious amusement to the commonplace of the
+conversational formulae affected by the young world of society, the
+well-worn, patched-up questions, the anticipated answers. It was
+very little changed since the time when he had not yet emancipated
+himself from the dreary bondage of such functions. It was croquet
+then, lawn-tennis now; for the rest only the names were different.
+Presently he encountered McAllister, a solitary wanderer like
+himself, and they found themselves seats before long in the darkest
+corner of the garden, where a few chairs had been placed, outside
+the radius of the lanterns, underneath a weeping willow.
+
+"And they say painting doesn't pay," said the Scotchman, extending
+his long hands comprehensively, with a quiet chuckle. "And I'm not
+saying that it does, mind you, when a man has notions like that
+queer, cantankerous devil Oswyn. He wouldn't make anything pay in
+this world. But if a man's clever and canny, and has the sense to
+see on which side his bread's buttered ... why, it's just easier
+than nothing. And to think that the laddie isn't even an Associate."
+
+"Yes. I suppose he's getting on pretty well," suggested Rainham,
+with a lazy enjoyment of this frank worldliness.
+
+"Getting on! Doesn't it look like it? Isn't he entertaining his
+friends like--like a Rothschild? You know, of course, that he has
+sold his Academy picture, and next year's as well--and four figures
+for each of them?"
+
+"Yes; and he's commissioned to paint a life-size portrait of the
+Hereditary Grand-Duchess of Oberschnitzelsteinwurst--an undertaking,
+by the way, for which I don't envy him. Oh, Dick's all right! What
+have you got in the Academy this year, by the way? I'm ashamed to
+say I haven't been there yet."
+
+"You haven't! But you have seen Lightmark's picture? No? Well, it's
+a fine thing, and just as clever as---- But, mind you, I'm not
+prepared to say that Oswyn wouldn't have made something better out
+of it."
+
+"Yes," said Rainham slowly, with the chill of the old misgiving
+about his heart, as he remembered the stormy encounter at the dock,
+with the haunting shadow of doubt in his mind, laboriously dismissed
+as an offence against his loyalty. "It seems to me that Oswyn has
+more real genius in his little finger than Dick has in his whole
+body; I am sure of it. It was a pity that they should both have
+chosen the same subject, especially as their ideas, as to colour and
+treatment and so on, are so much the same. But, of course, Dick had
+a perfect right to finish and exhibit his picture, even if he knew
+that Oswyn was thinking of the same thing."
+
+McAllister assented hastily.
+
+"No doubt, no doubt; though Oswyn was just wild about it--you know
+his uncivilized ways--and I must admit I was a bit astonished
+myself, at first, when I saw the picture at Burlington House with
+Lightmark's signature to it. But then I didn't know anything of the
+rights of the case. He's a queer, cantankerous devil, and he's
+always being wronged, according to his own accounts, and not only by
+the critics. No one pays much attention to what he says nowadays.
+It's just that absinthe and the cigarettes that are the ruin of him,
+day and night. Poor devil! why can't he stick to whisky and a pipe,
+like a decent Christian!"
+
+"His queerness is all on the surface," said Rainham gravely. "You
+have to dig pretty deep to find out what he's really worth."
+
+Just then Eve hurried towards them through the trees, looking about
+her with an air of hesitation, carrying the train of her pale-gray
+brocade dress over one bare, girlish arm.
+
+"Is that you, Mr. McAllister?" she asked, recognising first in the
+darkness the gaunt figure and tawny beard of the Scotchman. "Oh, and
+Mr. Rainham too! This is really very wrong of you, monopolizing each
+other in this way. And don't you know," she added laughingly, "that
+this corner is especially dedicated to flirtations? You must really
+come and do your duty. Mr. McAllister, won't you take Miss Menzies
+in to have some supper? You know her, I think--a compatriot, isn't
+she? You will find her close to the tent. And you," she pursued,
+turning to Rainham, "you must take some one in, you know. Will you
+come this way, please, and I will introduce you to somebody. I am so
+sorry I was not at home when you called the other day," she said
+conventionally, as they edged their way by degrees towards the
+house.
+
+"Yes; I seem to have an unfortunate capacity for missing you
+nowadays. At Bordighera, for instance. I have certainly had no luck
+at all lately. I haven't even had an opportunity of telling you how
+charming I find your house."
+
+"Ah!" said Eve vaguely, her eyes wandering over the people who were
+grouped upon the gravel walk and under the veranda outside the
+windows of the supper-room, "we really seem to see nothing of you
+now. Oh, let me introduce you to Mrs. Gibson--Mrs. Everett P.
+Gibson. She's American; you'll find her very amusing."
+
+Rainham followed her obediently, thinking, with a quickly repressed
+passion of regret, of the child who would have confided to him her
+latest impressions of sorrow, of joy; finding something, which
+hardly emanated from himself, which made it seem difficult for him
+to gather up the threads of the old, charming intimacy with this new
+Eve--this woman, with her pretty, dignified bearing, and
+self-possessed, almost cold attitude. The introduction was duly
+effected, and for the next half-hour Rainham devoted himself
+heroically to the mental and physical entertainment (he was not
+obliged to do much talking) of the American lady, who hailed from
+the Far West, and lectured him volubly, with an exorbitant accent
+and a monotony of delivery, which began to tell on his nerves to an
+alarming degree, on her impressions of Europe, and especially
+England; the immense superiority of gas as a cooking and heating
+agent; the phenomenal attainments of her children; and the
+antiquities of Minneapolis.
+
+After supper he found himself listening to the band in the garden
+with a sentimental young lady, who made him fully conversant with
+her adoration of moonlit nights, waltzing, the latest tenor, and the
+scenery of Switzerland.
+
+It was already growing late, and people had begun to leave, when it
+struck him that, through no active fault of his own, other than a
+certain complaisant indolence, he had as yet exchanged only the
+briefest of greetings with Lady Garnett, while of Miss Masters only
+a glimpse had been vouchsafed to him, at the further end of the
+crowded supper-room. He wandered into the studio, where a little,
+intimate party had assembled around an easel, and he was fortunate
+enough in a few minutes to find himself invited to take possession
+of a vacant seat precisely by Mary's side.
+
+"Oh, you wicked person!" said Mary reproachfully. "Why do you never
+come to see us? and where have you been hiding yourself all the
+evening?"
+
+Rainham laughed gently.
+
+"I feel rather guilty, I own; but you know there is an execrable
+proverb which says, 'Duty first, and pleasure afterwards.' I have
+been living up to it, that's all. If you only knew how I have been
+longing to talk to somebody who wouldn't ask me whether the music
+didn't fill me with a passionate desire to dance! And how good it is
+to be with a person who doesn't ask you whether you play much
+lawn-tennis, or whether you prefer London to the country on the
+whole. Ah, Mary! I consider myself a model of self-denial; but I am
+rewarded now."
+
+"That's rather pretty for you," answered the girl approvingly; "and
+you are forgiven, though you have still to make your peace with Aunt
+Marcelle. Tell me what you have been doing, and what you have been
+reading...."
+
+The conversation drifted on, now and again becoming general, and
+including the rest of the circle, but always recurring and narrowing
+into the deeper stream of their old intimacy.
+
+"You are the only really satisfactory people I know," he said
+presently--"the only people who know how to enjoy life, so far as it
+is to be enjoyed."
+
+"You mustn't give me any credit for it; it's all Aunt Marcelle's
+doing. But I don't think I know what you mean exactly. Perhaps we
+oughtn't to feel flattered?"
+
+"I mean, you are the only people who understand that happiness
+doesn't depend on what one does or doesn't do--that it all depends
+on the point of view."
+
+"The way of looking at life generally?" she hazarded.
+
+"Precisely. True philosophy only admits one point of view--from
+outside. Aren't we always being told that life is only a play? Well,
+we clever people are the spectators, the audience. We look at the
+play from a comfortable seat in the stalls; and when the curtain
+drops at the end, we go home quietly and--sleep."
+
+Mary looked at him for a moment silently.
+
+"I'm not at all sure that we ought to feel flattered! You consider
+that you and I and her ladyship are spectators, then. Isn't it very
+selfish?"
+
+"More or less. Of course, it's impossible to do the thing thoroughly
+without being absolutely selfish--a hermit, in fact. I sometimes
+think I was intended for a hermit."
+
+Mary sighed covertly, though the smile still lingered in her brown
+eyes.
+
+"I'm afraid I only take a kind of sideways view of things. I should
+like to--to----"
+
+"To go up in a kind of moral balloon," suggested Rainham laughingly,
+"and get a bird's-eye view of life?"
+
+"Exactly; and drift about. Only then one would never get really
+interested in anything or anybody. I should want someone else in the
+balloon."
+
+"You must take me," said Rainham, still smiling.
+
+Mary looked at him quickly, and then turned away, shivering a
+little.
+
+"What nonsense we are talking!" she said suddenly. "And I'm afraid
+it isn't even original nonsense. We don't, really, want to be
+selfish, and we're not; you needn't pretend you are. And isn't it
+getting very, very late? Don't you think Mrs. Lightmark looks as if
+we ought to go? I don't mean that she looks inhospitable. But isn't
+she rather pale and tired? This sort of thing doesn't seem to suit
+her as well as her husband. Yes, I must really go."
+
+When Miss Masters had deserted him, after extracting a promise that
+he would take an early opportunity of paying his over-due respects
+to her aunt, and had gone with Mrs. Lightmark in search of the old
+lady, Rainham made his adieux, leaving Lightmark still radiant, and
+protesting hospitably against such early hours; and as he walked
+homewards, with a cigar unlighted between his lips, he smiled rather
+bitterly, as he thought how little he was able to adhere to the
+tenets of his philosophy. Why else should he regret so much and so
+often the act which had been rung down when ... And how many more
+acts and scenes were there to be?
+
+"Well, I suppose one must stay to the end," he said finally. "One
+isn't obliged to sit it out, but the audience are requested to keep
+their seats until the fall of the curtain. Yes, leaving early
+disturbs the other spectators."
+
+While Lady Garnett was being wrapped up with the attention due to
+her years and dignity, Mary and Eve sat talking in the hall, a
+square, wainscoted little room, hung with pale grass matting, and
+decorated brightly with quaint Breton faience and old brass sconces.
+
+"I was so glad to see Philip here to-night," Mary was saying, while
+Eve fastened for her the clasp of a refractory bracelet. "We were
+afraid he was becoming quite a recluse, and that must be so bad for
+him!"
+
+"Almost as bad as too much society."
+
+"Yes; it's only another form of dissipation."
+
+"I'm not sure that it isn't better to have too much of other
+people's society than too much of one's own."
+
+"I don't think I ever regarded him from a--a society point of view.
+You know what I mean--like Colonel Lightmark, for instance. When I
+was a child I always thought of him as a sort of fairy godmother--a
+person who was always dropping from the clouds to take one for
+drives in the country, or with a box for the pantomime."
+
+Eve laughed at herself, and then sighed. Mary looked at her
+curiously for a moment, finding something cold, a trace of weariness
+or disdain in the clear voice and the pretty, childish face.
+
+"Philip was always like that, the kindest---- He has always been
+quite a hero for me--a kind of Colonel Newcome." Then she broke off
+rather suddenly, finding Eve in turn looking at her inquiringly.
+"Isn't it curious that we should both have known him so long without
+knowing each other?"
+
+"I suppose it was because we all lived so much abroad. And I don't
+think Philip talks about his friends very much...."
+
+Lady Garnett interrupted the _tete-a-tete_ conversation at this point,
+and when her little brougham had rolled away, and a few other late
+guests had left Eve alone with her husband, she sat for a few
+minutes in the deserted drawing-room, among a wilderness of empty
+chairs, meditating, with her chin resting on one hand, and her eyes
+absently contemplating the scattered petals of a copper-coloured
+rose, which had fallen from some dress or bouquet upon one of the
+Oriental rugs which partly covered the parquet floor.
+
+"Dick," she said presently to her husband, who was leaning against
+the rails of the veranda, lazily enjoying a final cigarette, "did it
+ever strike you that Philip Rainham was in love with anybody?"
+
+Lightmark turned and gazed at her through the open window
+wonderingly, almost suspiciously, and then broke into a laugh.
+
+"Or that anyone was in love with him?" she pursued gravely.
+
+"I don't think I ever noticed it," he answered, with another display
+of mirth. "What have you discovered now, little matchmaker?"
+
+"Not much. I was only thinking.... What a pity Charles wasn't here
+to-night!"
+
+"Oh, you little enigma! Is it that dear Charles who is to be pitied,
+or who? We, for instance?"
+
+But Eve assumed a superior air, and Lightmark, who hated riddles,
+dismissed the subject and the end of his cigarette simultaneously.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+One afternoon, three months later, Rainham, finding himself in the
+neighbourhood of Parton Street, took the occasion of knocking at
+Lady Garnett's door, and found, somewhat to his surprise, that the
+two ladies were returned. Introduced into their presence--they were
+sitting in the library, in close proximity to a considerable
+fire--he learnt that their summer wanderings that year had been of
+no extensive nature, and that they had come into residence a week
+ago.
+
+They had spent a month in a country house in Berkshire, the old lady
+told him presently, adding, with an explanatory grimace, that it was
+a house which belonged to a relation--the sort of place where one
+had to visit now and again; where a month went a very long way;
+where one had to draw largely on one's courtesy--on one's hypocrisy
+(if he preferred the word), not to throw up the cards at once, and
+retire after the first week.
+
+Rainham gathered from her resigned animadversions that the relations
+must be by marriage only: there was no Gallic quality in the
+atmosphere she described.
+
+It was a very nice house--Jacobean, she believed--or, rather, it
+would have been nice if they had had it to themselves. Unfortunately,
+it was very full: there were a great many stupid men who shot all
+day, and as many stupid women who talked scandal and went to
+sleep after dinner; also there were several pairs--or did one say
+"brace"?--of young people who flirted, but they lived in the
+conservatories. When one did not go to sleep after dinner, one
+played round games, or baccarat. She herself had refused to play,
+although they had wished to make her; personally, she preferred to
+go to sleep, or to listen to Mary's music. Yes, Mary was more
+fortunate: they had a very good piano, and an organ. Mary's music
+was a great success, although her admirers were apt to confuse
+Offenbach with Chopin; and some of the women appeared to think it
+was not quite ladylike to play so well, with such a professional
+manner. Still, Mary's music was a success, and that was more than
+could be said of her own conversation. That had been a distinct
+failure! They seemed to think she wished to make fun of things--of
+sacred things, the game laws, and agriculture, and the Established
+Church. Of course, she had no such intention: it was only that she
+wished for information, for instruction in these difficult national
+institutions, which, long as she had made her home in England, she
+feared she would never thoroughly comprehend.
+
+Mary had sat silently, with her hands clasped across her knees,
+while her aunt placidly poured forth these and similar comments
+(which were interspersed by questions and sympathetic monosyllables
+from Rainham), not so much acrimoniously, as in the tone of the
+humorous reporter, who is too indifferent to be actuated by a sense
+of injury.
+
+The girl struck him as having grown tired and listless--more
+listless than a merely physical fatigue would warrant. He
+interrupted now to ask her with a touch of compassion if she too had
+been very much bored.
+
+Her fine eyes were averted as she answered him, smiling a little:
+
+"I am rather glad to be back. It was a pretty place, and the gardens
+were charming, when it did not rain."
+
+Lady Garnett was overheard to murmur into the black ear of
+Mefistofele that it always rained.
+
+"But on the whole--yes, I was rather bored," the girl continued
+abruptly.
+
+"The rain and the round games and the people?" Rainham echoed. "You
+have my sympathy."
+
+"I believe I rather liked the round games," said Mary, with a little
+laugh. "They were less tiresome than the rest; and the organ was a
+great solace; it was very perfect."
+
+"Ah, yes, she liked the round games," put in Lady Garnett; "and if
+two of her admirers had played them more, and turned over her music
+less, the organ might have been a greater solace."
+
+"They were very foolish," sighed the girl rather wearily.
+
+"Mr. Sylvester was there for the last fortnight," continued Lady
+Garnett, with some malice. "He succeeded Lord Overstock, as Mary's
+musical acolyte. In revenge, Lord Overstock wished to teach her
+baccarat, and Mr. Sylvester remonstrated. It was sublime! It was the
+one moment of amusement vouchsafed me."
+
+Mary flushed, locking her hands together nervously, with a trace of
+passion.
+
+"It was ridiculous! intolerable! He had no right----!"
+
+Lady Garnett bent forward, taking her hand.
+
+"Forgive me, _cherie_! I did not mean to annoy you.... You can imagine
+how glad we were to see you," she added, with a sudden turn to
+Rainham. "It was charming of you to call so soon; you could hardly
+have expected to find us."
+
+"You must not give me too much credit. I happened to be quite near,
+in Harley Street. I could not pass without inquiring."
+
+"Ah, well," she said, "since you are here----"
+
+She was looking absently away from him into an antique, silver
+basket which lay on the little table by her side, in which were
+miscellaneous trifles, odd pieces of lace, thimbles which she never
+used, a broken fan, a box of chocolates.
+
+"Mary, my dear," she said quickly, "I am so stupid! The old
+_bonbonniere_, with the brilliants? I must have left it on my
+dressing-table, or somewhere. That new housemaid--we really know
+nothing about her--it would be such a temptation. Would you
+mind----"
+
+"Is this----" Rainham began, and stopped short.
+
+Lady Garnett's brilliant eyes, and a little admonitory gesture of
+one hand, restrained him. When the girl had shut the door behind
+her, the elder lady turned to him with a quaint smile.
+
+"Is that it? Of course it is, my friend. You are singularly obtuse:
+a woman would have seen through me at once."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Rainham, somewhat mystified. "You mean it
+was a pretext?"
+
+"It was for you that I made it," she replied with dignity. "What was
+it you came to say?"
+
+The other was silent for a moment, cogitating. When he looked up at
+last, meeting her eyes, it was with something like a shiver, in a
+tone of genuine dismay, that he remarked:
+
+"Dear lady, there are times when you terrify me. You see too much.
+It is not--no, it is not human. I had meant to tell you nothing."
+
+He stopped short, lowering his voice, and looking from the depths of
+his low chair into the red fire.
+
+"It is not necessary, Philip," she continued presently, "that you
+should tell me; only, if you will be so secret, you should wear
+smoked glasses. Your eyes were so speaking that I was afraid--yes,
+afraid--when you came into the room. They looked haunted; they had
+the air of having seen a ghost!"
+
+"It was a very respectable ghost," he said grimly, "with a
+frock-coat and a bald head. You know Sir Egbert, I suppose?"
+
+"Only by name. I imagined that he was your spectre, when you spoke
+of Harley Street. Does he send you South again?"
+
+"No," said Rainham shortly; "he thinks it would be inexpedient--that
+was his phrase, inexpedient--in an hotel, you know, and all that....
+I was obliged to him, because in any case it would have been
+inconvenient to me to be abroad this year. I suppose, though, that
+if it would have done me any good I should have gone; but I have a
+great deal to arrange."
+
+He went on composedly to tell her of the most important of these
+arrangements--the disposal of his business. He had systematically
+neglected it for years, he explained, and it had ended by going to
+the dogs. So long as his foreman was there, that had not mattered so
+much; but Bullen had decided to desert him, and very wisely. He had
+accepted an offer to manage the works of a firm of North-Country
+shipbuilders; he was to shake the dust of Blackpool from off his
+feet in a very few months, and would probably make his fortune. And
+as he himself was not equal to bearing his incubus alone, he had put
+it in the market. A brand new company had bought it--that is to say,
+they had made him an offer--a ridiculously inadequate one, he was
+told, but which he was determined to accept; at any rate, it would
+leave him enough, when everything was paid, to live upon, for the
+rest of his life. The legal preliminaries were now being settled:
+they appeared to be interminable; but as in the meantime the
+dock-gates were shut, and the clerks had departed, he could not, so
+far as he saw, be losing money; that was a consolation.
+
+He had not come to the end of his disquisition before he discovered
+that he spoke to deaf ears. The old lady for once was inattentive:
+she had sat screening her face from the fire with a large palm fan
+while he unburdened himself, and she began now with a certain
+hesitation:
+
+"My pretext, Philip! When I said that I made it for you it was
+only half true. In effect, my dear, I had something to tell
+you--something disagreeable."
+
+"Concerning me?" he asked.
+
+"Certainly," she said--"something I have heard."
+
+He looked vaguely across at her, finding her obscurity a little
+strained, waiting for her to speak. The silence that intervened was
+beginning to harass him, when she said suddenly:
+
+"I will be quite plain. I think you ought to know. There is a
+scandal abroad about you--about you and some woman."
+
+"Some woman!" he repeated blankly. "What woman?" He leant back in
+his chair, laughing his pleasant, low laugh. "I am sorry," he said,
+"I can't be as seriously annoyed as I ought; it is too foolish. My
+conscience really does not help me to discover her--this woman. Do
+you know any more?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"It is not a nice story," she said. "No, I have heard no name; only
+the story is current. I have heard it from three sources. I thought
+you had better know of it."
+
+"Thank you," he answered, rising to go. "Yes, it is a thing one may
+as well know. It is very kind of them, these people, to take such
+trouble, to be sufficiently interested. Upon my honour, I do not
+know that I very much care. After all, what does it matter?"
+
+"Nothing to me," said Lady Garnett, with a little shrug of
+disdain--"nothing, _Dieu me pardonne_! even if it were true."
+
+"Well, good-bye," he said.
+
+As he held her hand for a moment between his own he thought it
+trembled slightly.
+
+"Ah, no!" she said quickly; "it is a phrase I decline. Come and see
+me soon. I am an old woman, my friend, and I have outlived my
+generation. I have said too many good-byes in my time. It is _au
+revoir_."
+
+"With all my heart," he said, smiling. "_Au revoir_."
+
+Her quaint intimation--that was the manner in which he characterized
+it--was already dismissed from his mind when he emerged into the
+street.
+
+He had too many graver preoccupations to be greatly troubled by this
+grotesque slander. Going on his way, however--a temporary cessation
+of the soft, persistent rain which had been falling for most of the
+day suggested a walk--a chance recollection brought him to a sudden
+stop, changing his indifference for a moment into the shadow of pale
+indignation. How dull of him not to have guessed at once! it must be
+that unfortunate girl, Kitty Crichton, with whom busybodies were
+associating his name. He wondered how they had discovered her, and
+by whom the stupid story had been set afloat. The baselessness of
+the scandal, conjoined with his immense apathy just then as to
+anything more that the malice of men could do, inclined him to
+amusement, the more so as he reflected how many months it was since
+the girl and her wretched history had passed from his ken. He had
+found her gone on his return from Italy in the spring, leaving no
+address and but the briefest acknowledgment of his good-will in a
+note, which stated that she had no longer any excuse for imposing on
+his kindness--had found friends. The letter closed, as he imagined,
+a painful history, which, since his service had been, after all, so
+fruitless, he could see ended with relief. To his interpretation,
+the girl had recovered her scoundrel journalist, or at least
+compelled him to contribute to her support; and after all, as it
+seemed, he had not done with her yet, though the fashion of her
+return was ghostly and immaterial enough. The subject galled him;
+there were always dim possibilities lurking in the background of it
+which he refused to contemplate; he dismissed it. His meditation had
+carried him through the bustle of Oxford Street to the Marble Arch,
+and, the weather still encouraging him, he decided to turn into the
+Park. Many rainy days had made the air exceedingly soft, and in his
+enjoyment of this unusual quality, and of the strangely sweet odour
+of the wet earth and mildewing leaves, he forgot for a while a
+certain momentous sentence of Sir Egbert Rome's, which had jingled
+in his head all that afternoon. Presently it tripped him up again,
+like the gross melody of a music-hall song, and caused him to drop
+absently upon the first seat, quite unconscious that it was in an
+unwholesome condition of moisture. He had turned his back on the
+brilliant patches of yellow and copper-coloured chrysanthemums on
+the flower-plots facing Park Lane, and he looked westwards over a
+wider expanse of grass and trees: the grass bestrewed with bright
+autumnal leaves, the trees obscured and formless, in a rising white
+mist, through which a pale sun struggled and was vanquished. He had
+never been in a fitter mood to appreciate the decay of the year, and
+suddenly he was seized, in the midst of his depression, with an
+immense thrill, almost causing him to throw out his arms with an
+embracing gesture to the autumn, the very personal charm, the
+mysterious and pitiful fascination of the season whose visible
+beauty seems to include all spiritual things. It cast a spell over
+him of a long mental silence, as one might say, in which all
+definite thought expired, from which he aroused himself at last with
+a shrug of self-contempt, to find inexplicable tears in his eyes.
+And just then an interruption came, not altogether unwelcome, in the
+greeting of a familiar voice. It was Lightmark, who had discovered
+him in the course of a rapid walk down the Row, and had crossed over
+the small patch of intervening grass to make his salutations.
+
+"I knew you by your back," he remarked, after they had shaken
+hands--"the ineffable languor of it; and, besides, who else but you
+would sit for choice on an October evening in such a wretched
+place?"
+
+He looked down ruefully at his patent leather shoes, which the damp
+grass had dulled.
+
+Rainham smiled vaguely; he needed an effort to pull himself
+together, to collect his energies sufficiently to meet the
+commonplace of conversation, after the curious detachment into which
+he had fallen; and he wondered aimlessly how long he had been there.
+
+"I suppose, like everyone else, Dick," he remarked after a while,
+"it is the weather which has brought you home at such an
+unfashionable date."
+
+"Yes," answered Lightmark; "it was very poor fun yachting. I shall
+stay in town altogether next year, I think. And you--you are not
+looking particularly fit; what have you done with yourself?"
+
+"Oh, I am fit enough," said Rainham lightly; "I have been in London,
+you see."
+
+"Well, I can't let you go now you are here. Won't you dine with us?
+Or rather--no, I believe we dine out. Come back and have some tea;
+Eve will be enchanted. I really decline to sit in that puddle."
+
+Rainham rose slowly.
+
+"Perhaps I will," he said. "I would have called before, if I had
+thought there was the least chance of finding you. And how do things
+go?"
+
+As they strolled along through the deserted Park, and Lightmark
+entertained his friend with an extravagant narration of their
+miseries on the _Lucifer_, the chronic sea-sickness of the ladies, the
+incapacity and intoxication of the steward, and the discontent of
+everybody on board--he spoke as if they had entertained a
+considerable party--Rainham's interested eyes had leisure to note a
+change in him, not altogether unexpected. He presented the same
+handsome, well-dressed, prosperous figure; and yet prosperity had
+in some degree coarsened him. The old charm of his boyish
+carelessness had been succeeded by a certain hard assurance, an air
+of mundane, if not almost commercial shrewdness, which gave him less
+the note of an artist than of a successful man of business. And
+where the old Lightmark, the Lightmark of the Cafe Grecco days,
+broke out at times, it was less pleasantly than of old, in a curious
+recklessness, a tendency, which jarred on Rainham's susceptible
+nerves, to dilate with a vanity which would have been vulgar, had it
+not been almost childish, on his lavish living, the magnitude of his
+expenditure.
+
+"You must find that sort of thing rather a tax?" he asked
+tentatively, after a description which struck him as unnecessarily
+exuberant of a hospitality in the summer.
+
+"Oh, it pays in the long run," remarked the other easily, "to keep
+open house and go everywhere. Thank Heaven, the uncle is liberal! I
+admit we have been going at rather a pace lately. But, then, I can
+knock off a couple of pictures as soon as I have a little time,
+which will raise the wind again. I know what the public wants, bless
+it!"
+
+Rainham shrugged his shoulders rather wearily.
+
+"Poor public! If it wants art made in that spirit, it is worse than
+I believed."
+
+Lightmark looked askance at him, frowning a little, pulling at his
+long moustache. He was absorbed for some time--they had turned into
+the Edgware Road, and the soft rain had begun again--in ineffectual
+pursuit of cabs. When at last he had caught a driver's eye, and they
+had settled themselves on the cushions of a hansom, he turned
+abruptly to his companion to ask him if he had seen the Academy
+before it closed.
+
+"You recognised your domain?" he asked lightly, when the other had
+responded in the affirmative--"in my picture, I mean?"
+
+He spoke quickly, in his accustomed blithe habit; it might have been
+merely a morbid fancy of Rainham's which traced a note of anxiety,
+of concealed uneasiness, in his accent, that the bare question
+scarcely justified.
+
+Rainham paused a moment: it was not only a passing thought of
+Oswyn's acrimony, and of the difficult minutes during which he had
+been thrown across Lightmark at the Dock, that constrained him; it
+was rather the recollection of his own careful scrutiny of the
+disputed canvas, when he had at last dragged himself with a
+disagreeable sense of moral responsibility into Burlington House,
+and had come away at last strangely dissatisfied. Acquitting Dick of
+any conscious plagiarism, of a breach of common honesty, he was
+disagreeably filled with a sense of the work's immeasurable
+inferiority to Oswyn's ruined masterpiece. It was clever, and
+audacious, and striking; it had had the fortune to be splendidly
+hung, and that was all, for all his goodwill, he could say. And
+since, after all, that was so little, would strike his friend as but
+a cold tribute after the panegyrics of the morning papers, he
+preferred to say nothing, deftly dropping the subject, and
+responding to the first half of his friend's question alone.
+
+"My domain, Dick? Ah, I forgot; you can hardly have heard that it is
+my domain no longer--or ceases to be very shortly. That has come to
+an end; I have sold it."
+
+Lightmark whistled softly.
+
+"Well, you surprise me! Of course I am glad; we will be glad too. We
+shall see more of you now, I suppose? or will you live abroad?"
+
+"Abroad?" echoed Rainham absently. "Oh, yes, very probably. But tell
+me, how is--Eve?"
+
+"As we seem to be arriving, I think I will let her tell you
+herself."
+
+They descended, and Rainham waited silently while his friend
+discharged the cabman, and let him in with his latch-key into the
+bright, spacious hall. Then, after glancing into the empty
+drawing-room, Lightmark preceded him up the thick carpeted stairs,
+on which their footsteps scarcely sounded, and stopped at the door
+of Eve's boudoir, through which a woman's voice, speaking rather
+rapidly, and, as it struck him, in a key of agitation, fell upon
+Rainham's ear with a certain familiarity, though he was sure it was
+not Eve's, and could not remember when or where he might have heard
+it. After a moment they went in.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+There are occasions when thought is terribly and comprehensively
+sudden: the rudimentary processes of reasoning, by analogy and
+syllogism, so slow and so laborious, turn to divination. We have an
+occult vision, immediate and complete, into the obscure manner of
+life, and crowd an infinity of discovery into a very few seconds. It
+was so with Philip Rainham now. Lightmark had scarcely closed the
+door, against which he now stood in a black silence, with the air of
+a man turned to stone; Rainham's eyes had only fallen once upon the
+two figures on the sofa--Eve crushed in a corner, a sorrowful,
+dainty shape in the silk and lace of her pretty tea-gown, with the
+white drawn face of a scared child; Kitty Crichton, in her cloak and
+hat, bending forward a little, the hectic flush of strong excitement
+colouring her checks, that were already branded by her malady--when
+he underwent a moral revolution. He had no more to learn. He glanced
+at Lightmark curiously, almost impartially, his loathing strangely
+tempered by a sort of self-contempt, that he should have been so
+deluded. The clumsy lies which this man had told him, and which he
+in his indolent charity had believed! All at once, and finally, in a
+flash of brutal illumination, he saw Lightmark, who had once been
+his friend, as he really was, naked and unclean. It stripped him of
+all his superficial qualities; the mask of genial good-nature, the
+air of good-fellowship, under which his gross egoism lay concealed
+that it might be more securely mischievous when it went loose. His
+amiability was an imposture, a dangerous harlequinade; the man was
+bad. It was a plausible scoundrel, a vulgar profligate with a
+handsome face and a few cheap talents--had he not been reduced to
+stealing the picture of his friend?--whom these two women had loved,
+to whom one of them was married. Ah, the sting of it lay there! Good
+or bad, he was Eve's husband, and she was his wife, bound to him
+until the end. And then, for the first time, seeing her there,
+helpless and terrified, in her forlorn prettiness, he deceived
+himself no longer, wrapped up his tenderness for the woman, his
+angry pity for her misery that was coming, in no false terms. Such
+self-deception, honest as it had been, was no longer possible. He
+knew now that he loved her, and all that his love had been--the very
+salt and savour of life to him, the one delicious and adorable pain
+relieving the gray _ennui_ of the rest of it, to remain with him
+always (even, as it seemed now, in the very article of death) as a
+reminder of the intolerable sweetness which life, under other
+conditions, might have contained. And inexplicably, in the midst of
+his desolation, his heart sang a sort of fierce paean: as a woman,
+delivered of a man-child, goes triumphing to meet the sordidness of
+death, so was there in Rainham's rapid acceptance of his fruitless
+and ineffectual love a distinct sense of victory, in which pain
+expired--victory over the meanness and triviality of modern life,
+which could never seem quite mean and trivial again, since he had
+proved it to be capable of such moments; had looked once--and could
+so sing his "Nunc Dimittis"--upon the face of love. And it all
+happened in a second, and in a further second--for his thought,
+quickened by the emergency, still leapt forward with incredible
+swiftness--a great audacity seized Philip Rainham, to save the
+beloved woman pain. The devil would be at him later, would beset
+him, harass him, madden him with hint and opportunity of profiting
+by Lightmark's forfeiture. But the devil's turn was not yet; he was
+filled only with his great and reverent love, his sublime pity for
+the little tragical figure in front of him, whose house of painted
+cards tumbled. Well! he might save it for her for a little
+longer--at least, there was one desperate chance which he would try.
+
+He had lived too long, unconsciously, in the habit of seeking her
+happiness, that it should fail him now in her evil hour, in the
+first flush of his new consciousness (ah, yes, there was beauty in
+that, and victory!), for any base personal thought or animosity
+against the man. He would have given her so easily his life; should
+he grudge her his reputation? The reputation of a man with one foot
+in the grave--what did it matter? And it all came about in a few
+seconds.
+
+Before any one of that strange company had found time to speak,
+Rainham had grasped the situation, knew himself at last and the
+others, and was prepared, scarcely counting the cost, with his
+splendid lie. He made a step forward, then stopped suddenly, as if
+he were bracing himself for a moral conflict. His face was very
+white and rigid, his mouth set firmly; and the other three watched
+him with a strange expectancy depicted on all their countenances,
+amidst the various emotions proper to each of them; for he alone had
+the air of being master of the situation. And his resolve had need
+to be very keen, for just then Eve did a thing which might have
+wrecked it. She rose and came straight towards him; her pretty,
+distressed face was raised to his, still, in spite of its womanly
+anguish, with some of the pleading of a frightened child, who runs
+instinctively in its extremity to the person whom it knows best; and
+she gave him her two little trembling hands, which he held for a
+moment silently.
+
+"Philip," she said, in a low, constrained voice--"Philip, I have
+known you all my life--longer than anyone. You were always good to
+me. Tell me whether it's true or not what this woman has told me.
+Philip, I shall die if this be true!"
+
+He bent his head for a moment. He had a wild longing to give up,
+simply to clasp her in his arms and console her with kisses and
+incoherent words of tenderness, as he had done years ago, when she
+was a very small child, and ran to him with her tear-stained cheeks,
+after a difficulty with her governess. But he only put her away from
+him very quietly and sadly.
+
+"It is not true," he said quietly, "if it is anything against your
+husband."
+
+The girl on the sofa, Kitty Crichton, rose; she made a step forward
+irresolutely, seemed on the point of speaking, but something in
+Rainham's eyes coerced her, and Eve was crying. He continued very
+fast and low, as though he told with difficulty some shameful story,
+learnt by rote.
+
+"I tell you it is not true. Lightmark," he added sternly, "there has
+been a mistake--you see that--for which I apologize. Wake up, for
+God's sake! Come and see after your wife; some slander has upset
+her. This woman is--mine; I will take her away."
+
+The girl trembled violently; she appeared fascinated, terrified into
+a passive obedience by Rainham's imperious eyes, which burnt in his
+white face like the eyes of a dying man. She followed, half
+unconsciously, his beckoning hand. But Eve confronted her before she
+reached the door.
+
+"Whom am I to believe?" she cried scornfully. "Why did you say it?
+What was the good of it--a lie like that? It is a lie, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, yes!" said the girl hysterically, "it seems so. Oh, let me go,
+madam! I'm sorry I told you. I'll trouble nobody much longer. Call
+it a lie."
+
+She threw out her hands helplessly; she would have fallen, but
+Rainham caught her wrist, drew her toward him, supporting her with
+an arm.
+
+"Come," he said firmly, "this is no place for us."
+
+Eve regarded them all strangely, vaguely, the terror gradually dying
+out of her eyes--Lightmark expressionless and silent, as he had been
+all through the interview; the woman trembling on Rainham's arm, who
+stood beside her with his downcast eyes, the picture of conscious
+guilt. A curious anguish too pale to be indignation plucked at her
+heart-strings--anguish in which, unaccountably, the false charge
+against her husband was scarcely considered; that had become
+altogether remote and unreal, something barely historical, fading
+already away in the dim shadows of the past. What hurt her, with a
+dull pain which she could not analyse, was the sudden tarnishing of
+a scarcely-admitted ideal by Rainham's deliberate confession, making
+life appear for the moment intolerably sordid and mean. Would she
+have owned to herself that, with an almost unconscious instinct, she
+had judged these two men all along by a different standard? Hardly:
+she loved her husband, and her marriage had not yet dissipated the
+memory of those golden days of illusion preceding it, in which her
+love had been of a finer kind. Only that time, in which it would
+have been impossible for her to judge him, in which he could only do
+right in her eyes, was gone. Occasions had arrived when they had
+inevitably to differ, on which the girl had gently acquiesced--if
+not without a touch of scorn--in his action, but had not felt
+obliged to accept his point of view. There had been times when her
+pride had suffered--for underneath her childish exterior, her air of
+being just a dainty little figure of Watteau, she had a very
+sensitive and delicate pride of her own--and then, if she had
+succeeded in forgiving Lightmark, it had not been without an effort
+which had made it difficult for her to pardon herself. Sometimes,
+though she would scarcely have confessed it, her husband's mere
+approbativeness had almost shocked her. It was good, no doubt, to be
+popular, harmless even, to care for popularity--at least, one's
+traditions declared nothing to the contrary; but to care so
+exorbitantly as Lightmark appeared to do, to sacrifice so much to
+one's enthusiasm for pleasing inferior people--people whom, behind
+their backs, one was quite ready to tear to pieces, allowing them
+neither intelligence nor virtue--in just that there seemed to her
+some flaw of taste that was almost like a confession of failure.
+Surely she loved him, and was ready to forgive him much: not for
+worlds would she have confessed to disillusion. And yet, now and
+again, when the rush and ostentation of their new life, with its
+monotony of dinners and dances--so little like that which she had
+anticipated as the future lot of a painter's wife--had left her
+rather weary, a trifle sad, she had thought suddenly of her old
+friend Philip Rainham, and the thought had solaced her. There is a
+sort of pleasure, even when one is married to the most amiable of
+husbands, and is getting quite old--very nearly twenty--in turning
+from time to time to a person who has known one in the very shortest
+of frocks, and whose intimate connection with chocolates and
+"treats" is among one's earliest traditions. She made no contrasts;
+and yet when occasionally on one of those afternoons--there seemed
+to be so many of them--when she was "at home," when her bright,
+large drawing-room was fullest, and she was distracted to find
+herself confusing, amidst the clatter of teacups, dear Mrs.
+Henderson, who painted wild-flowers so cleverly, with dear Lady
+Lorimer, who was going on the stage, she looked up and saw Rainham
+hovering in the near distance, or sitting with his teacup balanced
+in one long white hand as he turned a politely tolerant ear to the
+small talk of a neighbour, she felt strangely rested. Trouble or
+confusion might come, she told herself, and how suddenly all these
+charming people, who were so surprisingly alike, and whose names
+were so exasperatingly different, would disappear. Dear Mrs.
+Henderson and dear Lady Lorimer, and that odious Mrs. Dollond--what
+was she saying to Dick now which had to be spoken with an air of
+such exaggerated intimacy in so discreet an undertone?--how swiftly
+they would all be gone, like the snows of last year! Only Philip
+Rainham, she was sure, would be there still, a little older,
+perhaps, with the air of being a little more tired of things, but
+inwardly the same, unalterably loyal and certain. The prospect was
+curiously sustaining, the more in that she had no tangible cause of
+uneasiness, was an extremely happy woman--it was so that she would
+have most frequently described herself--only growing at times a
+little weary of the fashionable tread-mill, and the daily routine of
+not particularly noble interests which it involved. Catching his
+eyes sometimes, as he sat there, looking out idly, indifferently,
+upon it all--this success which was the breath of life to
+Dick--she found him somewhat admirable; disdainful, fastidious,
+reserved--beneath his surface good-humour, his constant kindness, he
+could scarcely be a happy man. In flashes of sudden gratitude, she
+would have been glad often to have done something for him, had there
+been anything in the world to do. And then she laughed at herself
+for such a vain imagination. Had it not been his proper charm all
+along that he was a man for whom one could do nothing? precisely,
+because he wanted nothing, was so genuinely indifferent to anything
+that life could offer? And now all that was at an end; by his own
+confession he had finished it, admitting himself, with a frankness
+almost brutal, a man like other men, only with passions more sordid,
+and a temper more unscrupulous, in that he had ruined this wretched
+woman, whose coming there had left a trail of vileness over her own
+life.
+
+"Ah, yes, go!" she said, after a while, answering Rainham's
+exclamation. "For pity's sake, go!"
+
+Rainham bowed his head, obeyed her; as the door closed behind them
+he could hear that she cried softly, and that Lightmark, his silence
+at last broken, consoled her with inaudible words.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+Rainham turned at random out of Grove Road, walking aimlessly, and
+very fast, without considering direction. He had passed the girl's
+arm through his own as they left the house; and in a sort of
+stupefied obedience she had submitted. To her, too, one way was the
+same as another, as dreary and as vain. With Rainham, indeed, after
+the tension of the last few minutes, into which he had crowded such
+a wealth of suffering and of illumination, a curious stupor had
+succeeded. For the moment he neither thought nor suffered: simply,
+it was good to be out there, in the darkness--the darkness of
+London--after that immense plunge, which was still too near him,
+that he should attempt to appreciate it in all its relations.
+By-and-by would be the season of reckoning, the just and delicate
+analysis, by nicely critical nature, of all that he had deliberately
+lost, when he might run desperately before the whips of his own
+thought; now he felt only the lethargy which succeeds strenuous
+action, that has been, in a measure, victorious; the physical
+well-being of walking rapidly, vaguely, through the comfortable
+shadows, allowing the cold rain to pelt refreshingly upon his face
+and aching temples. And it was not until they had gone so through
+several streets, whose names were a blank to him, that Rainham
+bethought him, with a touch of self-reproach, of his companion, and
+how ill her thin garments and slender figure were calculated to
+suffer the downpour, which he only found consoling. He drew her into
+the shelter of a doorway, signalled to a passing cab; and just then,
+the light of an adjacent street lamp falling upon her face, he
+realized for the first time in its sunken outline the progress of
+her malady.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said gently; "I did not understand that you
+were ill. You must tell me where you are lodging, and I will take
+you back." Then, as though he anticipated her hesitation, a tribute
+to her old ambiguity, become so useless, he added dryly: "You can
+tell me your address; you have no reason to hide yourself now."
+
+She glanced up at him furtively, shrinking back a little as though
+she feared his irony.
+
+"I live in Charlotte Street, No. --. But pray let me go alone, sir!
+It will not be your way."
+
+"I have rooms in Bloomsbury," he answered. "It will be entirely on
+my way."
+
+And the girl made no further protest, when he handed her into the
+cab, an inconvenient four-wheeler which had responded to his signal,
+and, after giving the driver the address which she had indicated,
+took his place silently beside her. Perhaps something of Rainham's
+own lethargy had infected her, after a scene so feverish; or perhaps
+she could not but feel dimly, and in a manner not to be analysed,
+how that, distant and apart as they two seemed, yet within the last
+hour, by Rainham's action, between her life and his a subtile,
+invisible chord had been stretched, so that the order of her going
+might well rest with him.
+
+She cast furtive glances at him from time to time as he sat back,
+obscure in his corner, gazing out with eyes which saw nothing at the
+blurred gas-lamps, and the red flashes of the more rapid vehicles
+which outstripped them. And now that the first stupefying effect of
+his intervention was wearing away--it seemed like a mad scene in a
+theatre, or some monstrous dream, so surprising and unreal--her
+primitive consciousness awoke, and set her wondering, inquiring,
+with bewilderment that was akin to terror, into the motives and
+bearing of their joint conduct. It had seemed to her natural enough
+then, as do the most grotesque of our sleeping visions when they are
+passing; but now that she was awake, relieved from the coercion of
+his eyes, she was roundly amazed at her own complicity in so
+stupendous a fiction. What had he made her do? Why had he taken this
+sin of another's on his own shoulders? Eve's piteous cry of
+"Philip!" at his entry recurred to her--the intimate nature of her
+appeal. The scent was promising; but it opened out vistas of a
+loyalty too fantastic and generous to be true. Her mature cynicism
+of a girl of the people, disillusioned and abused, flouted the idea.
+Did she not know "gentlemen" and the nature of their love? The girl
+was hardened by ill-usage, bitter from long brooding over her
+shame. She was glad when he turned to her at last, breaking a
+silence which the sullen roar of London outside and beyond them, the
+dreary rattling of the cab, seemed only to heighten, with a sudden
+gesture of despair.
+
+"If I had only known! If you had only told me two years ago!"
+
+The suppressed passion in his voice, his air, terrified the girl.
+She bent forward trembling.
+
+"Ah! what have I done, what have I done?" she moaned. "How did I
+know that it would all come like this? I meant no harm, sir. He
+persuaded me to deceive you after I had found out who he really was,
+to put you off the scent, keeping his name a secret. He said he had
+a right to ask that. He told me he was married, though he wasn't
+then. And afterwards he made me move, when you were abroad: he
+wanted my address not to be known. That was the condition he made of
+his seeing after the child; he swore he would provide for her then,
+and bring her up like a lady. And he sent me the money for a bit
+pretty regular. Oh, it was only for her sake, I promise you that! I
+wouldn't have touched a brass farthing for myself. But, after all,
+she _was_ his child. And then, somehow or other, the money didn't
+come. He went away--he was away all the summer--and he said he had
+so many calls on him, such expenses."
+
+"Ah, the scoundrel!" cried Rainham, between his set teeth.
+
+The girl took him up, hardly with an echo of his own resentment,
+rather with a sort of crushed directness, as one who acknowledged a
+bare fact, making no comment, merely admitting the obscure
+dreariness of things.
+
+"Yes; he was a scoundrel. He was bad all along. I think he has no
+heart. And he has made me bad too. I was a good enough girl of old,
+before I knew him. Only something came over me to-night when I found
+_her_ there, with that big house and the servants, and all that
+luxury, and thought how he couldn't spare a few pounds to bring his
+own child up decent. Oh, I was vile to-night. I frightened her.
+Perhaps it was best as it happened. It dazed her. She'll remember
+less. She'll only remember your part of it, sir."
+
+She glanced across at him with timid eyes, which asked him to be so
+good as to explain: all that had confused her so.
+
+"I don't understand," she murmured helplessly--"I don't understand."
+
+He ignored the interrogation in her eyes with a little gesture, half
+irritable and half entreating, which coerced her.
+
+"How did you come there?" he asked. "What was the good----"
+
+His question languished suddenly, and he let both hands fall slowly
+upon his knees. In effect, the uselessness of all argument, the
+futility of any recrimination in the face of what had been
+accomplished, was suddenly borne in upon him with irresistible
+force: and his momentary irritation against the malice of
+circumstance, the baseness of the man, was swallowed up in a rising
+lassitude which simply gave up.
+
+The girl continued after a while, in a low, rapid voice, her eyes
+fixed intently upon the opal in an antique ring which shone faintly
+upon one of Rainham's quiet hands, as though its steady radiance
+helped her speech:
+
+"It was all an accident--an accident. I was sick and tired of
+waiting and writing, and getting never a word in reply. My health
+went too, last winter, and ever since I have been getting weaker and
+worse. I knew what that meant: my mother died of a decline--yes, she
+is dead, thank God! this ten years--and it was then, when I knew I
+wouldn't get any better, and there was the child to think of, that I
+wanted to see him once more. There was a gentleman, too, who
+came----"
+
+She broke off for a moment, clasping her thin hands together, which
+trembled as though the memory of some past, fantastic terror had
+recurred.
+
+"It doesn't matter," she went on presently. "He frightened me, that
+was all. He had such a stern, smooth-spoken way with him; and he
+seemed to know so much. He said that he had heard of me and my
+story, and would befriend me if I would tell him the name of the man
+who ruined me. Yes, he would befriend me, help me to lead a
+respectable life."
+
+Her sunken eyes flashed for a moment, and her lip was scornfully
+curled.
+
+"God knows!" she cried, with a certain rude dignity, "I was always
+an honest woman but for Cyril--Dick she called him."
+
+The intimate term, tossed so lightly from those lips, caused Rainham
+to quiver, as though she had rasped raw wounds. It was the concrete
+touch giving flesh and blood to his vision of her past. It made the
+girl's old relation with Eve's husband grow into a very present
+horror, startlingly real and distinct.
+
+"Go on," he said at last, wearily.
+
+"Ah, I didn't tell him, sir," she explained, misinterpreting his
+silence. "I wouldn't have done that. He sore angered me, though he
+may have meant well. He was set on seeing the child then, but I
+wouldn't let him. It came over me after he was gone that that,
+maybe, was what he came for--the child. Someone might have put him
+on to take her from me--some society. Oh, I was at my wits' end,
+sir! for, you see, she is all I have--all--all! Then I made up my
+mind to go and see him. Bad as he is, he wouldn't have let them do
+it. Oh, I would have begged and prayed to him on my knees for that."
+
+She stopped for a moment, hectic and panting. She pressed both hands
+against her breast, as though she sought composure. Then she
+continued:
+
+"It was all a mistake, you know, my being shown in there to-night! I
+would never have sought her out myself, being where she is. Oh, I
+have my pride! It was the servant's mistake: he took me for a
+fitter, no doubt, from one of the big dressmakers. Perhaps there was
+one expected, I don't know. But I didn't think of that when I came
+in and found her sitting there, so proud and soft. It all came over
+me--how badly he had used me, and little Meg there at home, and hard
+Death coming on me--and I told her. It seemed quite natural then, as
+though I had come for that, just for that and nothing else, though,
+Heaven knows, it was never in my mind before. I was sorry
+afterwards. Yes, before you came in with _him_ I was sorry. It wasn't
+as if I owed her any grudge. How could she have known? She is an
+innocent young thing, after all--younger than I ever was--for all
+her fine dresses and her grand ladyish way. It was like striking a
+bit of a child.... God forgive him," she added half hysterically,
+"if he uses her as bad as me!"
+
+Rainham's hand stole to his side, and for a moment he averted his
+head. When he turned to her again she was uncertain whether it was
+more than a pang of sharp physical pain, such as she well knew
+herself, which had so suddenly blanched his lips.
+
+"For pity's sake, girl," he whispered, "be silent."
+
+She considered him for a moment silently in the elusive light, that
+matched the mental twilight in which she viewed his mood. His
+expression puzzled, evaded her; and she could not have explained the
+pity which he aroused.
+
+"I am sorry," she broke out again, moved by an impulse which she did
+not comprehend. "You did it for her."
+
+"Oh, for her! What does it matter since it is done? Say that it was
+an accident--a folly--that I am sorry too."
+
+"No," said the girl softly; "you are glad."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders with increasing weariness, an immense
+desire to have the subject ended and put away with forgotten things.
+
+"I am glad, then. Have it as you like."
+
+But she resumed with a pertinacity which his irritated nerves found
+malignant.
+
+"If it was that," she said ambiguously, "you had better have held
+your tongue. You had only to gain---- Ah, why did you do it? What
+was the good?"
+
+He made another gesture of lassitude; then, rousing himself, he
+remarked:
+
+"It was a calculation, then, a piece of simple arithmetic. If it
+gives her a little peace a little longer, why should three persons
+suffer--be sacrificed--when two might serve?"
+
+"Oh, him!" cried the girl scornfully; "he can't suffer--he hasn't a
+heart!"
+
+Rainham looked up at her at last. His fingers ceased playing with
+his ring.
+
+"Oh, let me count for a little," he murmured, with a little, ghastly
+laugh.
+
+The girl's eyes looked full into his, and in a moment they shone out
+of her face, which was suffused with a rosy flush that made her
+almost beautiful, with the illumination of some transcendent idea.
+
+"Ah, you _are_ a gentleman!" she cried.
+
+In the tension of their nerves they were neither aware that the cab
+had come to a standstill, and before he could prevent her, she had
+stooped swiftly down and caught his hand passionately to her lips.
+
+"Heaven forgive me! How unhappy you must be!" she said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+After all, things were not so complicated as they seemed. For Kitty
+was nearly at the end of her troubles; her trivial little life, with
+its commonplace tale of careless wrong and short-lived irony of
+suffering, telling with the more effect on a nature at once so light
+and so wanting in buoyancy, was soon to be hurried away and
+forgotten, amid the chaos of things broken and ruined.
+
+"I don't want to die," she said, day after day, to the sternly
+cheerful nurse who had her in charge at the quiet, sunny hospital in
+the suburbs, where Rainham had gained admission for her as
+in-patient. "But I don't know that I want to live, either."
+
+And so it had been from the beginning, poor soul, poor wavering
+fatalist! with a nature too innately weak to make an inception
+either of good or evil, the predestined prey of circumstance.
+
+As she lay in the long, white room dedicated to those stricken, like
+herself, with the disease that feeds on youth, her strength ebbing
+away quite painlessly, she often entered upon the pathless little
+track of introspection, a pathetic, illogical summing up of the
+conduct of her life, which always led so quickly to the same broad
+end of reassurance, followed by unreasoned condemnation--the
+conventional judgement on her very inability to discover where she
+had so gravely sinned, how and when she had earned the extreme
+penalty of reprobation and of death. She was too wicked, she
+concluded hopelessly, vaguely struggling with the memories of the
+teaching of her Sunday-school, too wicked to find out wherein her
+exceeding wickedness lay.
+
+One comfort she took to her sad heart, that Rainham had not
+condemned her; that he had only pitied her, while he reserved his
+damnation for the iron-bound, Sabbatarian world which had ruined and
+spurned another helpless victim. Rainham she believed implicitly,
+obeyed unquestioningly, with a sense of gratitude which had been
+largely mingled with self-reproach, until he had told her that, so
+far as he was concerned, she had nothing to reproach herself with.
+It never occurred to her for a moment now to question or to resent
+the part he had made her play on that tragical afternoon in Grove
+Road. Why should she? The imputation of a lie, what was that to her?
+Had he not taken it all, all her misery upon himself? Had he not
+fed, and clothed, and lodged her like the most penitent of
+prodigals, although she had no claim upon him until he chose to give
+it to her? Her benefactor could do no wrong, that was her creed; and
+it made things wonderfully smooth, the future on a sudden strangely
+simple. She had lied to him at the bidding of the other, and he had
+not resented it when he came to know the truth: she had brought
+shame on him, and he had not reproached her. A man like this was
+outside her experience; she regarded him with a kind of grateful
+amazement--a wondering veneration, which sometimes held her dumb in
+his presence.
+
+If she had felt unhappy at first about the future of her child--and
+there had been moments when this thought had been more bitter than
+all the rest of her life together--this care was taken from her when
+Rainham promised to adopt the little girl, or, better still, to
+induce Mrs. Bullen to open her motherly heart to her. "They'll be
+only too glad to get her," he had said decisively, interrupting her
+awkward little speech of thanks. "That will be all right. Mrs.
+Bullen hasn't known what to do with herself since her son went to
+sea; she wants a child to care for. You needn't worry yourself about
+that."
+
+It was after this that Kitty had owned to the nurse that she had no
+desire to live; and though the shifting of this burden enabled her
+to carry her life for a time less wearily, the end was not far; and
+the news of her death came to Rainham just after the first snowfall,
+in the middle of a dreary, cruel December.
+
+The winter wore on, and still Rainham was to be seen almost nightly
+in his now familiar corner by the fireside at Brodonowski's, in the
+seat next that which had become Oswyn's by right of almost
+immemorial occupation. His negotiations with the company who were to
+buy him out of his ancestral dock were still incomplete, and now he
+felt a strange reluctance to hurry matters, to hasten the day on
+which he should be forced to leave the little room looking out upon
+the unprofitable river which he loved.
+
+The two men would sit together, sometimes talking, but far more
+often not, until a very late hour; and when the doors were closed
+upon them they often wandered aimlessly in the empty streets,
+dismissing their cares in contemplation of great moonlit buildings,
+or the strong, silent river, sliding under the solemn bridges;
+united from day to day more closely by the rare sympathy which asks
+no questions and finds its chief expression in silence. One thing
+they both hated--to be alone; but loneliness for them was not what
+most mortals understand by the name. There was company for them in
+inanimate things--in books, in pictures, and even in objects less
+expressive; they were men who did not fear their thoughts, who
+looked to the past for their greatest pleasures. And now for Rainham
+the whole of life was a thing so essentially weary and flavourless
+that the _ennui_ of little things seemed hardly worth consideration.
+He was dumbly content to let destiny lead him whither it would,
+without apprehension, without expectation. Oswyn had asked him, one
+evening, just before they parted on the doorstep of the club, with a
+certain abruptness which the other had long since learnt to
+understand, why he was in London instead of being at Bordighera.
+Rainham sighed, echoing the question as if the idea suggested was
+entirely novel.
+
+"Why, because---- Well, for one thing, because you are in London and
+the Dollonds are at Bordighera. You don't know Mrs. Dollond?" he
+added, seeing that the other looked at him with a certain air of
+wistful distrust, a momentarily visible desire to see behind so
+obvious a veil.
+
+"No, thank God!" said Oswyn devoutly, shrugging his bent shoulders,
+and turning away with a relapse into his unwonted impassiveness.
+
+"But you have apparently heard of her," continued Rainham, with an
+effort toward humour. "And I am afraid people have been slandering
+her. She is a very excellent person, the soul of good-nature, and as
+amusing as--as an American comic paper! But in my present state of
+health I'm afraid she would be a little too much for me. I can stand
+her in homeopathic doses, but the Riviera isn't nearly big enough
+for the two of us as permanencies. No, I think I shall wait until
+next winter now."
+
+Oswyn shot a quick glance at him, and then looked away as suddenly,
+and after a brief silence they parted.
+
+Rainham was already beginning to consider himself secure from the
+inconvenient allusions to Lightmark and their altered relations,
+which he had at first nervously anticipated. Oswyn rarely mentioned
+the other painter's name, and accepted, without surprise or the
+faintest appearance of a desire for explanation, the self-evident
+fact of the breach between the two quondam allies; regarding it as
+in the natural course of events, and as an additional link in the
+chain of their intimacy. Indeed, Lightmark had long ceased to be a
+component element of the atmosphere of Brodonowski's: he no longer
+brought the sunshine of his expansive, elaborate presence into the
+limits of the dingy little place; nor did its clever, shabby
+constituents, with their bright-eyed contempt for the popular
+slaves of a fatuous public, care to swell the successful throng who
+worshipped the rising genius in his new temple in Grove Road. The
+fact that in those days Rainham avoided Lightmark's name, once so
+often quoted; his demeanour, when the more ignorant or less tactical
+of their mutual acquaintances pressed him with inquiries as to the
+well-being and work of his former friend, had not failed to suggest
+to the intimate circle that there had been a rupture, a change,
+something far more significant than the general severance which had
+gradually been effected between them, the unreclaimed children of
+the desert, and Richard Lightmark, the brilliant society painter;
+something as to which it seemed that explanation would not be
+forthcoming, as to which questions were undesirable. The perception
+of this did not demand much subtlety, and, in accordance with the
+instincts of their craft, Rainham's reticence was respected.
+
+"It was curious, when you come to think of it," Copal said
+reflectively one evening after his return from a late autumnal
+ramble in Finistere, and while the situation was still new to him,
+"very curious. Rainham and Lightmark were inseparable; so were
+Rainham and Oswyn. And all the time Lightmark and Oswyn were about
+as friendly as the toad and the harrow. Sounds like Euclid, doesn't
+it? Things equal to the same thing, and quite unequal to one
+another."
+
+"Yes," assented McAllister, thoughtfully stroking his reddish beard.
+"And there was a time--not so very long ago, either--when Lightmark
+and Oswyn were on pretty good terms too!"
+
+"Ah, well; most people quarrel with old Oswyn sooner or later. But
+it certainly does look a little as if--as if Lightmark had done
+something and the other two had found it out--Oswyn first. However,
+it's no business of ours. I suppose he's safe to be elected next
+week,--though he isn't a Scotchman, eh, Sandy old man?"
+
+"Quite," said the other laconically.
+
+And then their conversation was modulated into a less personal key
+as they resumed their discussion of the colony of American
+_pleinairistes_ with whom Rathbone had foregathered at Pontaven, and
+of the "paintability" of fields of _sarrasin_ and poplars.
+
+Rainham found it rather difficult to satisfy his inner self as to
+his real, fundamental motive for wintering in England. Sir Egbert's
+orders? They had not, after all, amounted to much more than an
+expression of opinion, and it was somewhat late for him to begin to
+obey his doctors. The transfer of his business? That could have been
+carried out just as well in his absence by his solicitors.
+
+For some time after Kitty's death--and her illness had certainly at
+first detained him--he was able to assure himself that he was
+waiting until little Margot (so he called the child) should have
+secured a firm foothold in the affections of his foreman's family;
+the fact that the Bullens were so soon to leave him seemed to render
+this all more necessary. But now, in the face of Bullen's somewhat
+deferential devotion and his wife's vociferous raptures, there
+hardly seemed to be room for doubt on this score. For the present,
+at least, the child ran no risk greater than that of being too much
+petted.
+
+And at last he was obliged to own that his inability to follow his
+established precedent was due to some moral deficiency, a species of
+cowardice which he could only vaguely analyse, but which was closely
+connected with his reluctance to isolate himself among the
+loquacious herd of those who sought for health or pleasure. If Oswyn
+would have accompanied him to the Riviera he would have gone; but
+Oswyn was not to be induced to forsake his beloved city, and so he
+stayed, telling himself that each week was to be the last.
+
+On a bright day, when spring seemed to be within measurable distance
+in spite of the cold, he made an expedition with Margot to
+Kensington Gardens; and they passed, on their way through the Park,
+the seat on which he had rested after his interview with Lady
+Garnett on that far-away October evening--the memory struck him now
+as of another life. It was frosty to-day, and the seat raised itself
+forlornly from quite a mound of snow. And when they left the Gardens
+he hailed a cab, and, before they had reached the Circus on their
+homeward journey, bade the man turn and drive northward, up Orchard
+Street and into Grove Road.
+
+It was dusk now, and there were bright touches of light in the
+windows of the low, white house, which he glanced at almost
+surreptitiously as they passed, and two carriages waited before the
+outer door.
+
+"My dear child," he remarked suddenly to the little girl, who was
+growing almost frightened by his frowning silence, "you should
+always, always remember that when a man has made a fool of himself,
+the best thing he can do is to clear out, and not return to his
+folly like the proverbial dog!"
+
+Margot looked solemnly puzzled for a moment, and then laughed,
+deciding boldly that this was a new and elaborate game--a joke,
+perhaps--which she was too little to understand, but which
+politeness and good-fellowship alike required her at least to
+appear to appreciate. They were great friends already, these two.
+Children always recognised an ally in the man who made so few
+friends among his peers, and for children--especially for pretty
+children of a prettiness which accorded with his own private
+views--Rainham had an undeniable weakness.
+
+On slack days--and they were always slack now--loungers about the
+precincts of the dock often caught a glimpse of the child's fair
+hair above the low level of the dark bow-window which leaned
+outwards from Rainham's room; and the foreman had even gone so far
+as to suggest that his master was bringing her up to the business.
+"Pays us for looking after her," he confided to his wife, "and looks
+after her himself!"
+
+Mrs. Bullen laughed and then sighed, being a soft-hearted woman,
+and inclined to grieve over their impending desertion of their
+unbusinesslike master.
+
+"Mr. Philip couldn't do more for her if he was her own father," she
+acknowledged appreciatively.
+
+Whereat Bullen had smiled with the superior air of one who knew--of
+one who had been down to the sea in ships, and was versed in the
+mysteries of the great world, of fathers and of children.
+
+"Right you are, old woman," he chuckled, "no more he could. Blessed
+if he could! And there's no mistake about that. And when you and me
+go North in the spring, why, it strikes me that we shall have to
+leave missie behind. Yes, that we shall: though I'd take her, glad
+enough, without the money."
+
+If at first his association with Margot reminded Rainham of another
+little girl whom he had loved, and whose place she could never even
+approximately fill, the memory was not a bitter one, and he was soon
+able to listen to her childish questioning without more than a
+gentle pang. In time, he even found a dreary transient pleasure in
+closing his eyes on the dank dun reality of Blackpool, while the
+child discoursed to her doll in the nook of the bow-window, and his
+fancy wandered in another sunnier, larger room, with open windows,
+and the hum of a softer language rising in frequent snatches from
+the steep street outside; with a faint perfume of wood fires in the
+balmy, shimmering air, a merry clatter and jingle of hoofs, and
+bells, and harness; and another daintier child voice ringing quaint,
+colloquial Italian in his ears. The awakening was certainly cruel,
+sometimes with almost the shock of a sudden savage blow, but the
+dream lasted and recurred: he had always been a dreamer, and every
+day found him more forgetful of the present, more familiar with the
+past.
+
+Upon his return, rather late, to the dock, he recognised, with a
+thrill of pleasure tinged with something of self-reproach, among the
+little pile of business letters which Mrs. Bullen brought to him
+with his tea-tray, the delicate angular handwriting of Lady Garnett,
+and he made haste to possess himself of the secret of the narrow
+envelope, of a by-gone fashion, secured with a careful seal.
+
+
+"MY DEAR" (so she wrote): "This is very absurd; yes, at the risk of
+offending you, I must tell you that it is not clever of you to take
+things so very much _au serieux_. I know more than you think, Philip.
+Mrs. Sylvester, who means well, doubtless--but, _mon Dieu_, what a
+woman!--Mrs. Sylvester has been here; she has spoken to me, and I am
+afraid I have scandalized her. 'You don't suppose he has married
+her,' I said, I confess not altogether disingenuously, and how
+mystified she looked! You will say that Mrs. Sylvester ought to mind
+her own affairs, and you will even find me a trifle impertinent,
+perhaps. But I claim my privilege. Am I not your godmother? Still, I
+am rather intrigued, I own. I don't want to ask what you have done,
+or why; whatever it is, I approve of it. What I find fault with is
+what you are doing, the part you are playing. You must not give me
+the chagrin of seeing Mrs. Sylvester and the admirable Charles
+triumphant at your expense, Philip. You must show yourself: you must
+come and see me; you must come to dinner forthwith, or I shall have
+to make you a visit at your dock. I must talk to you, mon cher! I am
+troubled about you, and so is Mary. Come to us, and Mary shall play
+to you and exorcise your demons. Besides, I am bored--horribly
+bored. Yes, even Mary bores me sometimes, and I her, doubtless; and
+we want you. We will own that we are selfish, after all, but you
+must come!"
+
+
+Then there was a postscript: "Mary suggests that possibly you are
+not so incomprehensible as I think; perhaps you are at Bordighera?
+But you ought to let us know."
+
+
+Rainham sat with the letter before him until Margot came to bid him
+good-night. And then he decided to take advantage of the suggestion
+of the postscript: surely, if he did not answer the dear old lady's
+letter, she would conclude that he was indeed upon his travels.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+If Eve could have mended her idol discreetly and permanently, so
+that for the outward world it would still present the same
+uncompromising surface, so that no inquisitive or bungling touch
+could bring to light the grim, disfiguring fracture which it had
+sustained, it is probable that she would have chosen this part, and
+hidden the grief of her life from the eyes of all save those who
+were so inseparably connected with the tragedy of that autumnal
+afternoon. But it was so completely shattered, the pieces were so
+many; and, worst of all, some of them were lost. To forget! What a
+world of bitter irony was in the word! And she could not even bury
+her illusions quietly and unobserved of uncharitable eyes; there was
+the sordid necessity of explanation to be faced, the lame pretexts
+to be fashioned, and the half-truths to be uttered, which bore an
+interpretation so far more damning than the full measure which it
+seemed so hard to give.
+
+Mrs. Sylvester, whose jealous maternal instincts continued to be on
+the alert hardly less keenly after her daughter's marriage than
+before, had soon detected something of oppression in the atmosphere;
+an explanation had been demanded, and the story, magnified somewhat
+in its least attractive features by Eve's natural reticence, had
+gone to swell the volume of similar experiences recorded in Mrs.
+Sylvester's brain. That she felt a genuine sorrow for Rainham is
+certain, for the grain of her nature was kindly enough beneath its
+veneer of worldly cleverness; but her grief was more than tempered
+by a sense of self-congratulation, of unlimited approval of the
+prudence which had enabled her to marry her daughter so
+irreproachably before the bubble burst. Indeed, the little glow of
+pride which mingled quite harmoniously with her nevertheless
+perfectly sincere regret, was an almost visible element in her moral
+atmosphere, as she emerged from the door of her daughter's house
+after this momentous interview, drawing her furs about her with a
+little shiver before she stepped into her well-appointed brougham.
+She had the air of saying to herself, "Dear me, dear, dear! it's
+very sad, it's very terrible; but I! how clever I have been, and how
+beautifully I behaved!" There was nothing particularly novel from
+her point of view in the story which she had just extracted from her
+reluctant daughter; the situation called for an edifying,
+comfortable sorrow, but by no means for surprise. It was what might
+have been expected--though this (which was somewhat hard) did not
+render the episode any the less reprehensible.
+
+And it was this feeling which had predominated during the lady's
+homeward drive, and the half hour's _tete-a-tete_, before dinner,
+which she had utilized for an exchange of confidences with her son.
+
+"I didn't know that there had been an--an exposure," he said, as he
+stood, a stiff, uncompromising figure, before the fire in the little
+drawing-room. "But I had an idea that it was inevitable from--from
+certain information which I have received. In fact, I have been
+rather puzzled. You must do me the justice to remember that I never
+liked the man--though he had his good points," he added a little
+awkwardly, as inconvenient memories of the many kindnesses which he
+had received at Rainham's hands thrust themselves upon him. "But I'm
+afraid he's hardly the sort of person one ought to be intimate with.
+Especially you, and Eve. Of course, for her it's out of the
+question."
+
+"Oh, of course," said Mrs. Sylvester decisively; "and they haven't
+seen him since, I need hardly say. In fact, they haven't even heard
+of him. They haven't told a soul except me, and of course I sha'n't
+tell anybody," the lady concluded with a sigh, as she remembered how
+difficult she had found it to drive straight home without breaking
+the vow of secrecy which her daughter had exacted from her.
+
+Whatever Mrs. Sylvester may have thought, it is certain that the
+interview, from which she enjoyed the impression of having emerged
+so triumphantly, had brought anything but consolation to her
+daughter, whose first impulse was to blame herself quite angrily for
+having admitted to her secret places, after all so natural a
+confidante.
+
+Nor had Eve repented of this feeling. As time went on she found her
+mother's somewhat too obviously complacent attitude more and more
+exasperating, and she compared her want of reserve very unfavourably
+with her husband's demeanour (it must be owned that he had his
+reasons for a certain reticence). Against Colonel Lightmark, also,
+she cherished something of resentment, for he, too, more especially
+in collaboration with her mother, was wont to indulge in elderly,
+moral reflections, which, although for the most part no names were
+mentioned, were evidently not directed generally and at hazard
+against the society of which the Colonel and Mrs. Sylvester formed
+ornaments so distinguished.
+
+Upon one afternoon, when Christmas was already a thing of the past,
+and the days were growing longer, it was with considerable relief
+that Eve heard the outer door close upon her mother, leaving
+her alone in the twilight of the smaller portion of the double
+drawing-room. She was alone, for Mrs. Sylvester had been the last
+to depart of a small crowd of afternoon callers, and Dick was
+interviewing somebody--a frame-maker, a model, or a dealer--in
+the studio. She sat with a book unopened in her hand, gazing
+intently into the fire, which cast responsive flickers over her
+face, giving a shadowed emphasis to the faint line which had begun
+to display itself, not unattractively, between her eyebrows and the
+irregular curve of her brown hair. She was growing very weary of it
+all, the distraction which she had sought, the forgetfulness of self
+which she had hoped to achieve, by living perpetually in a crowd.
+Indeed, to such a point had she carried her endeavours, that Mrs.
+Lightmark's beauty was already becoming a matter of almost public
+interest. She was a person to be recognised and recorded by
+sharp-eyed journalists at the play-houses on "first nights"; her
+carriage-horses performed extensive nightly pilgrimages in the
+regions of Kensington and Mayfair; and she had made a reputation for
+her dressmaker. And already she realized that her efforts to live
+outside herself were futile; moments like these must come, and the
+knowledge that, in spite of her countless friends and voluminous
+visiting list, she was alone.
+
+Her mother? Dick? After all, they were only in the position of
+occupying somewhat exceptionally prominent places on the
+visiting-list.
+
+As for her husband, after all these long months of married life, she
+could not say that she knew him. She regarded him with a kind of
+admiration of his personal, social attractions, in which she
+recognised him as fully her equal, with a kind of envy of the
+genius, which she could not entirely comprehend, but which seemed to
+make him so vastly her superior. And yet there was a shadow of doubt
+about it all: there had been sinister flashes, illumining, dimly
+enough, depths which the marital intimacy still left unfathomed,
+making her wonder whether her husband's candour might not mask
+something more terrible than forgotten follies, something that might
+prove a more real and irremovable barrier between them than even
+that indefinable want of a mutual horizon, of common ground upon
+which their traditions could unite themselves.
+
+So long as Dick had remained cheerfully masterful, and picturesquely
+_flamboyant_, without even an occasional betrayal of the bitterness
+which makes the one attribute savour of insolence, and the other of
+oppression, his wife had regarded him as exactly fulfilling the part
+for which he had obviously been cast--of a good-humoured,
+ornamental, domestic tyrant, to be openly obeyed and covertly
+coerced. A husband who assisted her acquisition of social laurels;
+who gave her more money than she asked for; who designed for her the
+most elaborate and enviable dresses--yes, her mother certainly had
+reasons for declaring him a paragon! But still Eve was vaguely
+conscious of a defect, a shortcoming. It was all very well so far as
+it went, but the prospect was by no means unbounded. And, then, had
+he not also designed gowns for Mrs. Dollond, and succeeded (there
+was a sting in this) where success was somewhat more difficult of
+achievement?
+
+Now, moreover, he had begun to carry an aggrieved air--an air which
+suggested that he pitied himself, that he considered that he had
+been unfairly dealt with, that he was entitled to assume the
+attitude of an innocent, injured victim of some blindly-dealt
+retribution. What did that mean? The only explanation which his wife
+could find for this symptomatic manifestation had its origin in the
+unhappy episode of which the memory was always on the threshold of
+her solitary thoughts, and, perhaps, of his. She began to feel, with
+a certain compunction, that Dick must resent the circumstances which
+obliged him practically to sever his acquaintance with a man who had
+indisputably figured for so many years as his nearest friend; and
+she asked herself sometimes whether the circumstances in question
+did not, in effect, centre in herself.
+
+Although the world was as yet far from being an open book for her,
+it was conceivable that Philip Rainham (even if one judged by
+appearances) had done nothing which need necessarily cast him beyond
+the pale of the unregenerate society of bachelordom. It never
+occurred to her that, so far as she herself was concerned, a renewal
+of the old relation was among possible things: if she had met Philip
+in public she would have made it clear to him that he was no longer
+on the same plane with her; that, from her point of view, he had
+practically ceased to exist.
+
+It was only when she was alone, and pleasant, bitter memories of the
+old days recurred, that she owned to herself how hard it was to
+think of this intimacy as severed by a rule of moral conduct no less
+inexorable, and even more cruel, than death. And yet there were
+moments--and this was one of them--when her husband's bearing seemed
+more portentous, when the explanation she had found possible seemed
+no longer probable, and uncomfortable doubts as to the real meaning
+of his uneasiness assailed her mind.
+
+A fragment of burning coal fell with a clatter into the grate: she
+welcomed the interruption, and for the moment abandoned her
+thoughts, only, however, to enter upon them again by a different
+path.
+
+"I wonder why I don't hate him?" she asked herself, almost
+wistfully. (She was not now thinking of her husband.) "I ought to
+hate him, I suppose, and to pity her. But I pity him, I think, and I
+hate--her."
+
+The fire still crackled cheerfully, and she began to feel its heat
+oppressive; she let her hands fall with a gesture half of contempt,
+half of despair, and then rose abruptly, and walked into the
+darkness of the larger room, from the unshuttered windows of which
+she could see the dark bulk of her husband's studio looming against
+the gray, smoke-coloured sky.
+
+While she stood, leaning with something of a forward tilt of her
+gracile figure, upon the ledge of the low, square window, the side
+door of the studio opened, letting a flood of light out upon the
+lawn, and with absent eyes she saw that her husband's visitor was
+taking his leave. Presently the door closed; the broad rays which
+had shone coldly from the skylight of the building died out, so
+abruptly that the change seemed almost audible; and simultaneously
+she heard her husband's careless step in the long glazed passage,
+half conservatory, half corridor, which led from her domain to his.
+He came in, softly humming an air from a comic opera, and then
+paused, peering into the darkness for an instant before he
+distinguished his wife's shape in dusky relief against the pale
+square of window.
+
+"Don't light the room!" she said quickly, as she saw him stretch his
+hand towards the little button which controlled the electric light;
+"we can talk in the dark."
+
+He stopped with his hand on the porcelain knob, breaking off his
+ditty in the middle of a bar.
+
+"By all means, if you like," he said, "though I should prefer to see
+you, you know."
+
+Then he dropped luxuriously into an easy-chair by the side of the
+fire, which continued to exhibit a comfortable, glowing redness.
+
+But very soon Lightmark became aware of a certain weight of
+apprehension, which took from him the power to enjoy these material
+comforts; unattractive possibilities seemed to hover in the silent
+darkness, and his more subtile senses were roused, and brought to a
+state of quivering tension, which was almost insupportable. His wife
+moved, and he felt that she had directed her eyes towards him,
+though he could not see her; and he winced instinctively, seeking to
+be first to break the silence, but unable to find a timely word to
+say. The blow fell, and even while she spoke he felt a quick
+admiration for the instinct which had enabled him to anticipate her
+thought.
+
+"Dick," she said quietly, without moving from her place by the
+window, "have you seen _him_ since----?"
+
+There was no need of names; he did not even notice the omission.
+Could she see his face, he wondered, in the firelight?
+
+"No!" he sighed, "no!"
+
+She came nearer to him, so near that he could hear her breathing,
+the touch of her fingers upon the back of a chair; and presently she
+spoke again:
+
+"You think there was no excuse for him?"
+
+"Ah--for excuse! She was pretty, you know!"
+
+He got up, and stood facing her for a moment in the darkness, and
+then, while she appeared to consider, glanced at his watch, and made
+a suggestion of movement towards the door.
+
+"Only a minute, Dick," she said, in the same set voice. "You will do
+me the justice to admit that I haven't alluded to this before. But I
+have been thinking--I can't help it--and I want to know----"
+
+"To know?" he echoed impatiently.
+
+"To know your position--our position; what you had to do with it
+all."
+
+"What is the good? What difference can it make?"
+
+"It's the doubt," she said--"the doubt. I thought you might like to
+explain."
+
+"To explain? Good Lord! what have I to explain? Is it not all
+settled, all clear? My dear child, let us be reasonable, let us
+forget; it's the only way."
+
+There was less of anger in his voice, but if Eve could have seen his
+eyes in the firelight, she might have noticed that they were very
+bright, and their pupils were contracted to hard, iridescent points.
+
+"How can it be settled," she asked wearily, "while there is this
+shadow of doubt? And to forget--Heaven knows I have tried!"
+
+Dick shrugged his shoulders tolerantly.
+
+"What do you want me to say?--to explain?"
+
+"Could you not have warned him, Dick? Did you not see it coming?
+She, that woman, was she not your model? Did he not meet her at your
+studio? Was not that the beginning of it all? Ah, can you say that
+you were not to blame?"
+
+She spoke fast, following question with question, as if she
+anticipated the answer with mingled feelings of hope and fear, and
+there was more of entreaty than of denunciation in her last words.
+
+"It's such an old story," he rejoined, with an air of feeble
+protest. "How could I foresee what would happen? And," he added,
+hardening himself, "they did not meet for the first time at my
+studio; on the contrary, it was he who brought her to me, and I
+suspected nothing. What more can I say? Surely it is all plain
+enough!"
+
+Eve sighed. It seemed to her husband that she was on the whole
+disappointed, and he felt that, while he was about it, he might have
+given himself a freer hand, and made himself emerge, not only
+without a stain upon his character--the expression occurred to him
+with a kind of familiar mockery--but with beaten drums and flying
+colours.
+
+He reflected that this was another example of the folly of
+attempting to economize. At the same time he was gently thrilled by
+what he owned to himself was a not ignoble emotion: that sigh seemed
+to speak so naturally and pathetically of disillusionment, it was
+such a simple little confession of a damaged ideal. It did not occur
+to him to suspect that the character of which his wife had formed
+too proudly high an estimate was his own.
+
+"Don't you think you might trust me?" he said presently in a milder,
+almost paternal tone, magnanimously prepared for a charming display
+of penitence, which it would be his duty rather to encourage than to
+deprecate.
+
+"To trust you?" replied Eve quickly. "Haven't I the appearance of
+trusting you? Don't I accept your explanations?"
+
+It was Lightmark's turn to sigh. His wife moved away, with an air of
+dismissing the subject.
+
+"It is quite dark; it must be time to dress for dinner. Please turn
+on the light." Then she added as she left the room, without waiting
+for an answer: "And you, do you find it so easy to forget?"
+
+When Lightmark was alone, he stood for a few minutes before the fire
+in meditation; then he clenched his fist viciously.
+
+"Confound the girl, and him, too! No, poor devil! he meant well. It
+was just the senseless, quixotic sort of thing one would have
+expected of him. But I don't know that it has done much good. It has
+made me feel a sneak, though I've only been lying to back him up.
+Why couldn't he let it alone? There would have been a storm, of
+course, but it would soon have blown over, and no one else need have
+known."
+
+He stopped in front of a mirror--he had been pacing up and down the
+room--and found himself looking rather pale in the soft, brilliant
+glow of the incandescent lamps. Moreover, the clock pointed to an
+hour very near that for which the carriage had been ordered.
+
+While he was dressing for dinner, it occurred to him--it was not
+for the first time--that, after all, it would take very little to
+render Rainham's bungling devotion, and his own meritorious
+aberrations from the path of truth, worse than nugatory. For what if
+Kitty should split?--so he elegantly expressed his fears--what if
+the girl, of whom he had heard nothing since the day of that
+deplorable scene, should break loose, and throw up the part which
+she had undertaken upon such very short notice?
+
+Decidedly, he felt that he was abundantly justified in resenting the
+false position into which he had been thrust; the imposture was too
+glaring. Would it not even now be well to remodel the situation with
+a greater semblance of adherence to facts--to make a clean breast of
+it? The crudity of the idea offended him; the process would
+necessarily be wanting in art. But possibly it was not yet too late
+to substitute a story which, if it caused him temporary discomfort,
+would at least leave him more certain of the future, the master of
+an easier, a less violently outraged conscience.
+
+At dinner the taciturnity, bordering on moroseness, of a talker
+usually so brilliant led his host to surmise that Lightmark had
+ruined a picture, his hostess to conclude that he had quarrelled
+with his wife. He came home early, and occupied the small hours of
+the morning in forming an amended plan of campaign, of which the
+first move took the shape of a somewhat voluminous letter, addressed
+to Philip Rainham.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+Charles Sylvester was a man of a somewhat austere punctuality, and
+there were few of his habits in which he took a juster pride than in
+the immemorial regularity with which he distributed the first few
+hours of his day. To rise at half-past seven, whatever might be the
+state of the temperature or the condition of the air; to reach the
+breakfast-room on the stroke of eight, and to devote half an hour to
+the perusal of the _Times_ and of his more intimate correspondence--of
+course, there were certain letters which he reserved until his
+arrival in chambers--while he discussed a moderate breakfast which
+seldom varied; to ride in the Row for another half-hour; and
+finally, having delivered his horse to a groom, who met him at the
+corner of Park Lane, to enter the precincts of the Temple, after a
+brisk walk through Piccadilly and the Strand, shortly after
+ten--these were infallible articles in his somewhat rigid creed.
+
+Mrs. Sylvester, therefore, was struck with all the surprise which
+results from an unprecedented breach of custom when, descending to
+breakfast at her own laxer hour one dark morning in February, she
+found her son still presiding at the table, absorbed in his letters.
+He pushed aside these and a packet of telegram forms as she entered,
+and, rising to accept her discreet kiss, responded to her implicit
+inquiry as to whether anything was wrong--her eyes had strayed
+involuntarily to the clock--by pointing her attention to a paragraph
+in the morning paper. His manner was more solemn than usual; it
+betrayed an undercurrent of suppressed excitement.
+
+"This is unusual," he remarked; "but, you see, I have an excuse."
+
+She followed the direction of his finger: "Death of the Member for
+North Mallow." The cream of the news was contained for her in the
+heading, and so she did not read the rest of the notice, which was a
+short one.
+
+Now, North Mallow was the respectable constituency in which a
+coalition of two parties had selected Mr. Sylvester to be their
+candidate at the next election, which this death had transferred
+into the immediate present.
+
+"My dear boy!" said Mrs. Sylvester sympathetically.
+
+Then she checked herself, recognising that a too open satisfaction
+in the event--opportune as it might be--would be hardly decent.
+
+"Of course, it is very sad for him, poor man!" she remarked. "But I
+cannot help feeling glad that you should be in the House, and so
+much sooner than we expected."
+
+He interrupted her with another discreet embrace.
+
+"My dear boy!" she said again vaguely, contentedly, as she poured
+herself a cup of tea.
+
+"He has been in bad health for some time," continued Charles. "He
+died two days ago at Cannes. It is astonishing that I did not hear
+the news before. I have wired to Hutchins, my election agent, and if
+I can manage it, I shall run down to Mallow. Of course one is sorry,
+but since it has been ordered so, after all, one has to think of the
+party."
+
+"Ah yes, the party," murmured Mrs. Sylvester sympathetically; "of
+course that is the great thing. I am sure you will distinguish
+yourself. I suppose there is no danger of a defeat?"
+
+"Oh, it is a safe seat! But one has always to canvass; there is
+always a certain risk. I sometimes wish----" He stopped short,
+pulled nervously at his collar, finding it a little difficult to
+express his meaning. "I think," he went on at last with a visible
+effort, flushing somewhat, "that I must marry. An intelligent woman
+devoted to my interests would be of great service to me now."
+
+Mrs. Sylvester allowed her eyes to remain in discreet observation of
+the tablecloth.
+
+"I have often thought so," she said at last quietly.
+
+"Indeed!" he remarked politely. "Yes; it is a matter, perhaps, which
+I should have discussed with you before. I am fully aware of the
+right you have---- I would not, I mean, have failed----"
+
+"Oh, my son!" she protested, "I am sure you have always been most
+correct."
+
+"I have tried to be," he said simply. "If I have said nothing to
+you, it has been because I wished to be cautious, not to commit
+myself, to be very sure----"
+
+"Of the lady's affection, do you mean?"
+
+"Ah, can one ever be sure of that? No; I mean rather of my own
+attitude, of my own situation. It has always seemed to me that
+marriage is a very great undertaking, a thing to be immensely
+considered, not to be embarked on rashly."
+
+"You view everything so justly!" she exclaimed. "Have you--am I to
+understand that you have a particular person in view?"
+
+He waved aside the compliment with a bland gesture, which asserted
+that only his magnanimity prevented him from acknowledging its
+truth.
+
+"Surely, surely!" he said. "You are perhaps aware how immensely
+I admire Miss Masters; that I have paid her very great
+attention--marked attention, I may say?"
+
+"I observed something of the kind at Lucerne. I did not know if it
+had continued; sometimes I thought so. Have you proposed to her?"
+
+"No," he said slowly; "I have not yet proposed to her. Naturally, I
+wished to consult you first."
+
+"I am sure, Charles," said his mother cheerfully, "that I shall be
+extremely pleased. She is a very nice girl. She is a great-niece of
+Lord Hazelbury, and connected with the Marshes, and I know she will
+have at least sixty thousand pounds."
+
+He glanced across at her, frowning a little, with a certain
+irritation.
+
+"I shall not marry her for her money," he said.
+
+"My dear boy," she retaliated, "I did not suppose you would be
+mercenary; only, a little money is very desirable; and Lady Garnett
+has a great deal, and Mary will certainly get her share of it."
+
+"Ah, I don't like her," put in Charles inconsequently; "she is a
+profane old woman."
+
+"Neither do I; but one must accept her. And Mary, after all, is only
+her niece."
+
+"She has a beautiful character," he continued slowly. (This time he
+was not speaking of Lady Garnett.) "I admire it more than I can say;
+it has very great depths."
+
+His mother looked up at him quickly, struck by his strenuous accent,
+for which she was scarcely prepared. She had a high notion of his
+character, of his ability, and was pleased, more pleased than she
+cared to admit, at the suitability of the match. He had always been
+an excellent, even a sympathetic son; and it had been part of his
+excellence that whenever he should marry, she had been quite certain
+that he would marry like this, selecting with dignity a young woman
+whom one could emphatically approve--a testimony to his constancy in
+certain definite traditions in which he had been reared, traditions,
+it may be said, which he adhered to with a tenacity that even
+exceeded her own.
+
+It had never entered into her calculations, however, to look upon
+him as an ardent lover, and yet it was as an ardent lover that he
+had just spoken. She recognised the tone.
+
+And, strangely enough, for the moment it happened to touch her, to
+give her an increased interest in the affair, though afterwards she
+could reflect that in a man of Charles' character, so soberly
+practical and mature, it was perhaps a trifle incongruous, and, at
+the best, not precisely the tone by which women are most likely to
+be won.
+
+She said placidly:
+
+"I hope you will succeed. If you take my advice, you will speak at
+once."
+
+"I had meant to take the first occasion," he said.
+
+"Ah, my dear," she put in, "you had better make one yourself."
+
+Charles simply smiled. Her approbation of his views, and the
+unwonted dissipation of a prolonged and indolent breakfast, together
+with the pleasant excitement of shortly taking the political field,
+had rendered him singularly mild.
+
+He remembered that he was invited that night to a dance of some
+magnitude, at a house big enough for privacy to be easily secured,
+and where Mary would certainly be.
+
+"Perhaps I will," he said, gathering up his voluminous papers as he
+prepared for departure, "this evening."
+
+He was still in the same mood of cheerful resolution when, after an
+exceptionally busy day, which had also ministered in an exceptional
+degree to his self-esteem (it had included an interview with one of
+the whips of his party, as well as a satisfactory conversation with
+his agent on the temper of the constituency whose member was so
+seasonably deceased), he had dressed at his club, and dawdled at his
+accustomed table in the large bright room over a solitary dinner.
+
+His head had been very full of his political ambitions, into which
+the image of Miss Masters had not inconveniently intruded. He had
+eminently that orderly faculty of detachment which allows a man to
+separate and disconnect the various interests of his life, admitting
+each only in its due order and place; but none the less had he been
+conscious all along that somewhere in the background of his mind her
+image subsisted, and now that he was at leisure again to give her
+that place of honour in his consideration which she had long been
+insensibly acquiring, he was more than ever determined to do all
+that lay in his power to make her his wife.
+
+It amazed him almost that he had not put the important question long
+before, so vital and inevitable had it become; and he scarcely
+considered, in his curious egoism, his scant acquaintance with the
+subtilty of a woman's mind, how much Mary herself might have
+contributed to the delay by her careful avoidance of intimate
+topics, by the cloak of elaborate indifference in which she had
+wrapped herself whenever she had not been able to avoid being alone
+with him; so that, however much he had desired it, he could never,
+without doing her gross violence, have succeeded in striking the
+precisely right personal note.
+
+To-night, however, there should be no more fencing; of that he was
+thoroughly resolved. He would be eloquent and sustained,
+impassioned, and, if necessary, humble--but, above all, perfectly
+direct; he would brook no faltering, feminine evasions; would insist
+on an answer, and on a right answer too, pointing out, with the
+close reasoning acquired in his profession, the superb propriety of
+the match. And he believed that she would be convinced. Was it not
+half of her attraction that she was a woman of intelligence, not a
+silly school-girl, who flirted and danced?
+
+In spite of his self-esteem, however, he was not unwise enough to
+feel sure of the result. Were not all women, even the best of them,
+notoriously perverse? And there was always, conceivably, that
+inopportune third party, a preferred rival, to be counted with, who
+might have been first on the field.
+
+Considering these things, he allowed himself a glass of chartreuse
+with his coffee, and the unwonted luxury of a cigar, over which he
+lingered, growing more nervous as its white ash lengthened and the
+occasion drew near. Yet he could remind himself at last that--at any
+rate, to his knowledge--there was no one else whose pretensions the
+lady preferred, since Rainham, the man whom he had marked as
+dangerous, was socially damned, and no longer to be feared.
+
+It was very nearly eleven before he reached the house to which he
+had been invited, and where he found a very brilliant party already
+in progress. The house was chiefly a legal and political one,
+although there seemed to be a fair leaven of literary and artistic
+celebrities among the more solid reputations; and for some time he
+was engrossed by various of his Parliamentary acquaintances, who
+questioned and encouraged him. Two or three had newly arrived from
+the House, where an important division had just been declared; and
+Charles listened with some impatience to their account of it, gazing
+absently, over their heads, at the maze of pretty toilettes, which
+made an agreeable _frou-frou_ over the polished floor, although the
+debate had been upon a question in which he was warmly interested.
+
+He escaped from them at last with a murmured apology, an intimation
+that he wished to find somebody, and made his way slowly into the
+adjoining room, from which the strains of waltz music floated in,
+and where they danced. His friends found his demeanour noticeable,
+and were inclined to wonder with some amusement, knowing his
+habitual equanimity, that the vacancy at North Mallow should have
+undermined it. When he entered the ball-room he stopped for a
+moment, flushing a little. The first person he had seen, between the
+heads of the floating couples, was Lady Garnett, on a little raised
+seat at the further end of the large room, engaged in an animated
+conversation with an ambassador. He realized quickly that she would
+not have come alone.
+
+He waited until the music ceased and the dispersal of the dancers
+made the passage of the floor practicable, then he set off in her
+direction, trusting that he might find her niece in the vicinity.
+Halfway down he stopped again; he had recognised his sister, who
+fanned herself languidly, seated on one of two chairs partially
+concealed by a great mass of exotic shrubbery, in pots, which formed
+almost an alcove. She removed her long soft skirt, which she had
+thrown over the vacant seat, as he approached; and at this tacit
+invitation he accepted it.
+
+"Only until the rightful owner comes," he explained. "But I see you
+so seldom now that I must not lose this chance. I suppose you are
+keeping it for someone?"
+
+"It is for Miss Masters," said Mrs. Lightmark; "but she won't want
+it yet. She has just gone down to supper."
+
+"Ah, so much the better. I want to see her."
+
+"Do you?" she asked indifferently. "Well, you had better keep me
+company until she comes. It is a long time since I saw you."
+
+He considered her for a moment with a heavy, fraternal appreciation.
+
+"Yes," he said--"yes, it is a long time, Eve. But, of course, we
+have each our own occupations, our own duties now. And being the
+wife of a successful painter must involve almost as many as
+being--if I may say so--a fairly successful barrister. Gratified as
+we are, my dear--my mother and I--at the success of your marriage,
+which has proved more brilliant even than we hoped, I must say that
+we often regret having lost you. We are duller people, I fear, since
+you have left us. However, we can still think of the old days, as
+you, no doubt, do sometimes."
+
+She gave a faint, little, elusive smile, behind her fan.
+
+"Oh, I am afraid I have forgotten them," she said. Then she went on
+quickly, before he had time to reply: "Another thing, too, I had
+almost forgotten--to congratulate you--on Mr. Humphrey's death."
+
+"My dear Eve!" He looked at her with some reproof, with an air of
+finding her a little crude. "You should not say such things, Eve! I
+deeply deplore----"
+
+"Shouldn't I?" she asked flippantly. "Dick told me you were to
+succeed to his seat. Isn't it true?"
+
+He ignored her question, busied himself with an obdurate button on
+his glove. She watched him over her fan, half smiling, with her
+brilliant eyes.
+
+"You are cynical," he remarked at last. "I dare say I shall get in.
+Is Lightmark here?"
+
+"Yes, he is here. He has taken Mrs. Van der Gucht--the American
+Petroleum Queen they call her, don't they?--down to supper. She
+wants him to paint her portrait, at his own price. He will be here
+to fetch me at half-past eleven. I believe we have to move on
+then."
+
+"Move on?" he asked, with an air of mystification.
+
+"Show ourselves at another house," she replied. "It's a convenient
+practice, you know; one gets two advertisements in one night.
+Besides, one saves one's self a little that way; one sometimes gets
+an evening off."
+
+"You talk as if you were an actress," he said, with offended irony.
+"I don't understand your tone. Does Miss Masters accompany you?"
+
+"I think not. Did you say you wanted to see her?"
+
+"Particularly; it is chiefly for that I am here."
+
+"She is a very nice girl," remarked his sister gently. "I hope----"
+She hesitated slightly; then held out her hand to him, which
+involuntarily he clasped. "I hope you will have a satisfactory
+conversation, Charles."
+
+He glanced at her for a moment silently, feeling a secret pleasure
+in her discrimination.
+
+"You look very well," he said at last, "only rather tired. That is a
+very pretty dress."
+
+She smiled vaguely.
+
+"I didn't know you ever noticed dresses. Yes, I am rather tired. Ah,
+there is Mary--and Dick."
+
+The girl came towards them at this moment, looking pretty and
+distinguished in her square-cut, dark gown; and Lightmark followed,
+carrying her bouquet of great yellow roses, which he held
+appreciatively under his nose.
+
+He nodded to Charles Sylvester, who was shaking hands with Mary;
+then he turned to his wife.
+
+"If you are ready, dear," he said lightly, "I expect the carriage
+is. Miss Masters, you know we have another dance to do. My
+brother-in-law will see after you and your bouquet, if you will
+allow me."
+
+"Oh, give it me, please," cried the girl, with a nervous laugh. "I
+really did not know you were carrying it. Thanks so much."
+
+She had succeeded almost mechanically to Mrs. Lightmark's vacated
+chair; and as she sat there, with her big nosegay on her lap, he was
+struck by her extreme pallor, the lassitude in her fine eyes. He
+ventured to remark on it, when the other two had left them, and she
+had not made, as he had feared and half anticipated, any motion to
+rise.
+
+"Yes, the rooms are hot and dreadfully full. There are too many
+sweet-smelling flowers about; they make one faint. It's a relief to
+sit down in comparative quiet and calm for a little."
+
+He was emboldened by her quiescence to resume his chair at her side.
+
+"I won't ask you to dance, then," he said; "and allow me to hope
+that no one else has done so."
+
+She glanced indifferently at her card.
+
+"No. 10," he added anxiously; "a waltz, after the Lancers."
+
+"I see some vague initials," she said; "but probably my partner will
+not be able to find me, thanks to these shrubs."
+
+"I hope not, with all my heart," said Charles devoutly. "At any
+rate, I can sit with you until you are claimed."
+
+"As you like," she replied wearily. "Are you not anxious to dance?"
+
+"I am not a great dancer at any time," he protested; "and to-night
+my heart would be particularly out of it. I came for another
+purpose."
+
+He spoke tensely, and there was a slight tremor in his voice,
+ordinarily so clear and dogmatic, which alarmed the girl so that she
+forgot her weariness and meditated a retreat.
+
+"Oh, so did I," she replied with forced gaiety. "I came to look
+after my aunt, which reminds me that this is hardly the way to do
+it. Will you please take me to her?"
+
+"I assure you she does not want you," cried Charles eagerly. "I saw
+her not ten minutes ago with M. de Loudeac. They seemed to be
+talking most intimately."
+
+"He is an old friend," said Mary; "but, still, they may have
+finished by this time. One can say a great deal in ten minutes."
+
+"Ah!" he put in quickly, "only give me them, Miss Masters."
+
+"I really think it is unnecessary," she murmured with a rapid flush.
+She made another movement, as if she would rise, dropping her
+bouquet in her haste to prevent his speech. He picked it up quickly
+and replaced it in her hands.
+
+"No, don't go, Miss Masters," he insisted. "I surely have a right to
+be heard. After all, I do not require ten minutes, nor five. Only I
+came to say----"
+
+"Ah, don't say it, Mr. Sylvester," she pleaded. "What is the good?"
+
+"I mean that I love you! I want you immensely to be my wife."
+
+She bent her head over her flowers, so that her eyes were quite
+hidden, and he could not see that they were full of tears; and for a
+long time there was silence, in which Sylvester's foot kept time
+nervously with the music. The girl bitterly reproached her
+tiredness, which had dulled apprehension so far that she had not
+realized at once the danger of the situation, nor retreated while
+there was yet time. She had always dreaded this; and now that it was
+accomplished, an illimitable vista of the disagreeable consequences
+broadened out before her. The ice being once broken, however she
+might answer him now, a repetition, perhaps even several, could
+scarcely be avoided; she foresaw that his persistence would be
+immense, so that with whatsoever finality she might refuse him, it
+would all be to go over again. And with it all was joined her
+natural reluctance to give an honest gentleman pain, only heightened
+by her sense that, for the first time in her knowledge of the man,
+the evident sincerity of his purpose had given simplicity to his
+speech. He for once had been neither formal nor absurd, and the
+uniqueness of the fact, taken in conjunction with her share in it,
+seemed to have given him a claim on her consideration. He had cast
+aside the armour of self-conceit at which she could have thrown a
+dart without remorse, and the man seeming so defenceless, she had a
+desire to deal gently with him.
+
+"Mr. Sylvester," she said at last, looking up at him, "I am so
+sorry, but please do not speak of this any more. Believe me, it is
+quite impossible. I am sensible of the honour you do me, deeply
+sensible, only it is impossible. Let us forget this--this mistake,
+and be better friends than we have ever been before."
+
+"Ah, Mary," he broke out, "you must not answer me like that, without
+consideration. Why should it be impossible?"
+
+"Forgive me," she said gently; "only I am tired now. And
+consideration would not alter it. Let me go."
+
+He put one hand out detaining her, and she sank back again wearily
+on her chair.
+
+"If you are tired, so much the more reason that you should hear me.
+You will not be tired if you marry me. If you are tired, it is
+because your life has no great interests: it's frivolous; it is
+dribbled away on little things. You don't really care for it--you
+are too good for it--the sort of life you lead."
+
+"The sort of life I lead?"
+
+"The ideals of your set, of the people who surround your aunt, of
+your aunt herself. The whole thing is barren."
+
+"Are we more frivolous than the rest?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"You are better than the rest," he said promptly. "That is why I
+want you to marry me. You were made for great interests--for a large
+scene."
+
+"What are they--your great interests, your ideals?" she asked
+presently. "How are they so much better than ours?--though I don't
+know what ours may be."
+
+"If you marry me, you will find out," he said. "Oh, you shall have
+them, I promise you that! I want you immensely, Mary! I am just
+going into public life, I mean to go far--and if I have your
+support, your sympathy, if you become my wife, I shall go much
+farther. And I want to take you away from all this littleness, and
+put you where you can be felt, where your character--I can't say how
+I admire it--may have scope."
+
+"I am sorry," she said again; "you are very good, and you do me
+great honour: but I can only answer as before--it is not possible."
+
+"Ah, but you give no reason!" he cried. "There is no reason."
+
+"Is it not a good enough one that I do not love you?" said the girl.
+
+"Only marry me," he persisted, "and that will come. I don't want to
+hurry you, you know. I would rather you would take time and
+consider; give me your answer in a week or two's time."
+
+They were silent for a little; Sylvester was now perfectly composed:
+his own agitation seemed to have communicated itself to the girl,
+whom he watched intently, with his bland, impartial gaze. She had
+closed her eyes, was resting her chin on her bouquet, and appeared
+to be deeply meditating his words. She looked up at last with a
+little shiver.
+
+"I am very tired," she said. "If I promise to think over what you
+have said to-night and to give you my answer in a month's time, will
+you try and find Lady Garnett for me now?"
+
+"Ah, Miss Masters--Mary!" he said, "that is all I want."
+
+"And in the meantime," she pursued gently, "to allow the subject to
+drop?"
+
+"You must make your own terms," he said; "but surely I may come and
+see you?"
+
+"Very well," she consented, after a moment; "if it gives you any
+pleasure, you may come."
+
+At which Charles simply took her cold, irresponsive hand in his own,
+with a silent pressure. Irresponsive as it was, however, he reminded
+himself, she had made no effective protest against the gesture.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+At Lady Day, when the negotiations for the sale of his unprofitable
+riverside domain were finally concluded, Rainham scarcely regretted
+to find that an ample margin had been left before the new company
+took possession; and he had still several months, during which he
+might remain in occupation of his old habitation, and arrange
+leisurely for the subsequent disposition of his books and more
+intimate personal chattels. The dilapidated old house was to be
+pulled down by the new owners (the plans for an extensive warehouse,
+to be erected on the site of it, were already in the hands of the
+builders), and this also was a fact from which Rainham derived a
+certain satisfaction.
+
+Insensibly, the spot had discovered a charm for him: the few rooms,
+which had been his for so long, although, actually, so small a
+proportion of his days had been spent in them, had gradually taken
+the impress of his personality--the faded carpets, the familiar
+grouping of pictures and books, the very shape of the apartment, and
+the discoloured paper on the walls, expressed him in a way that
+certainly no other abiding place, which might conceivably await him,
+could ever do. And he took a dreary pleasure in the consideration
+that, after he had gone, the rooms would know no other occupant;
+that from the glazed and barred windows of the dreary building,
+which was to take the place of the quaint old house, when it was
+levelled to the ground, no person would ever gaze out, exactly as he
+had done, at the white and melancholy river; in which, as he said to
+himself fantastically, he had cast, one by one, as the days
+lengthened, his interests, his passions, his desires.
+
+Years before, by an accident of inheritance, he had come into the
+property with an immense antipathy:--a white elephant that would
+bring him neither profit nor honour, but which the modest competence
+that he had previously enjoyed did not allow him to refuse. It had
+altered the tenor of his existence, destroyed his youth and his
+ambitions, and represented for many years, more completely than
+anything else, the element of failure which had run through his
+life.
+
+And, after all, now that deliverance was at hand, he was by no means
+jubilant. In escaping from this thraldom of so many years, he felt
+something of the chagrin with which a man witnesses the removal of
+some long-cherished and inveterate grievance; the more so, in that
+he could now remind himself impartially how small it had been, how
+little, after all, he had allowed it to weigh upon him. In effect,
+had he not always done very much as he liked, lived half his time
+abroad in his preferred places, chosen his own friends, and followed
+his own tastes without greatly considering his inherited occupation?
+He must look deeper than that, he reflected, within himself, or into
+the nature of things themselves, actually to seize and define that
+curious flaw which had made life seem to him at last (from what
+wearied psychologist, read long ago and half forgotten, did he cull
+the phrase?) "a long disease of the spirit."
+
+For appreciations of this kind, he had, nowadays, ample leisure; and
+unprofitable as it appeared (he did not even pretend to himself that
+it would lead anywhere, since what faint illumination he might
+strike from it could only refer to the past), he was seldom tired of
+searching for them.
+
+A hard March, cited generally as the coldest within the memory of a
+generation, following a winter of fog and rain, had made him an
+inveterate prisoner within the four walls of his apartment. He had,
+indeed, the run of others at this time, for the Bullens had left him
+(at the last there had been no question of little Margot's
+appropriation; Rainham had taken it so serenely for granted that she
+would remain with him), but this was a privilege of which he did not
+avail himself. And the place, stripped of all its commercial
+attributes, had fallen into an immense desuetude, to which the charm
+of silence, and of a deeper solitude than it had ever possessed
+before, was attached.
+
+The dock gates were finally closed; a hard frost of many days'
+duration had almost hermetically sealed them, and the drip of Thames
+water through the sluices formed immediately into long, fantastic
+stalactites of clear ice. Rainham found it difficult to believe, at
+times, that the bustle of the wharves, the roar of maritime London,
+still went on at his elbows, the deserted yard cast such a panoply
+of silence round him. It was as though he had fallen suddenly from
+the midst of men into some wholly abandoned region, a land of
+perpetual snows. It symbolized well for him the fantastic separation
+which he had suffered from the rest of the world; so that, but for
+the painter Oswyn, who was a constant visitor, and had, indeed,
+since the departure of the Bullens, a room set apart for him in the
+house, he might have been already dead and buried, and his old life
+would not have seemed more remote. And if he found the atmosphere of
+Blackpool, more often than not, to be of soothing quality, or at
+least a harmonious setting to the long and aimless course of
+introspection on which he had embarked, there were also times when
+it had a certain terror for him.
+
+It came upon him in the evening, as a rule, when Margot had been
+carried away to bed by the hard-featured old woman who had succeeded
+Mrs. Bullen in the superintendence of his household; for the child,
+with her sweet, shrill voice and her infantile chatter, had come to
+seem to him far more even than Oswyn, about whom there would always
+lurk something shadowy and unreal, a last link with the living; when
+the tide was nearly out, so that the stillness was not even broken
+by the long, lugubrious syren of a passing steamer, his isolation
+was borne in upon him with something of the sting of sharp, physical
+pain.
+
+The dark old room, with its mildewing wainscot, became full of
+ghosts; and he could fancy that the spirits of his ancestors were
+returned from the other side of Styx to finger the pages of bygone
+ledgers, and to mock from between the shadows of his incongruous
+bookshelves, at their degenerate descendant. And these did but give
+place, amid strange creaking and contortions of the decaying walls,
+to spectres more intimate, whose reprobation moved him more: the
+faces of many persons whom he had known forming themselves, with
+extraordinary vividness, out of the darkness, and in the red embers
+of the fire, and each adding its item of particular scorn to the
+round accusation of futility brought by the rest. They were part of
+his introspection, all those--he was not sick enough to hold them
+real--but nevertheless they gave him food for much vigilant thought,
+which came back always to the great interest of his life. Futility!
+Did she too, the beloved woman, point an accusing finger, casting
+back at him a sacrifice which, certainly, in his then disability
+seemed to him vain enough? For all his goodwill, had he gained any
+more for her than a short respite, the temporal reconstruction of a
+fading illusion?--and at what a price! The irony of things was just
+then so present to him that he could readily believe he had done no
+more than that--enough merely to embitter her knowledge when it
+should finally come. And an old saying of Lady Garnett's returned to
+him, which, at the time, he had disputed; but which struck him now
+with the sharp stab of an intimate truth. "You could have prevented
+it, had you wished." Yes, he might have prevented it, if only he had
+foreseen; the wise old woman had not made a mistake. And yet he had
+wished to prevent it, in a manner, only his colder second
+thoughts--he made no allowance now for their generous intention--had
+found propriety in the match, and his long habit of spectatorship
+had made the personal effort, which interference would have
+involved, impossible.
+
+Harking back scrupulously to the remote days of Eve's girlhood, his
+morbid recollection collected a variety of scattered threads, of
+dispersed signs and tokens, which led him to ask at last, with a
+gathering dread, whether he had not made a mistake, must not plead
+guilty to a charge of malingering, or, at least, of intellectual
+cowardice in acquiescing so supinely in defeat?
+
+Was it true, then, that a man found in life very much what he
+brought to the search?
+
+Certainly, the world was full of persons who had been broken on the
+wheel for their proper audacity, because they had sought so much
+more than was to be found; but might it not be equally true that one
+could err on the other side, expect, desire too little, less even
+than was there, and so reap finally, as he had done, in an immense
+lassitude and disgust of all things, born neither of satiety nor of
+disappointment, the full measure of one's reward? Perhaps success in
+the difficult art of life depended, almost as much as in the plastic
+arts, upon conviction, upon the personal enthusiasm which one
+brought to bear upon its conduct, and was never really compatible
+with that attitude of half-disdainful toleration which he had so
+early acquired.
+
+Yet that was a confession of failure he was loath to make, or admit
+that he had been too much afraid of high passions and great affairs,
+had been fastidious and reserved only to dissipate his life on whims
+and small interests--those seemed to him now too great refusals to
+be contemplated without regret. His depression had reached its
+lowest pitch when he had asked himself whether in love, as in life,
+his error might not have been the same; and his passion, like the
+rest, a thing without conviction, and thereby foredoomed to fail.
+And it was a sensible alleviation of his mood when he could answer
+this question finally with a firm negative.
+
+Certainly, his vain desire for her personal presence, for the
+consolation of her voice and eyes, was with him always, like the
+ache of physical hunger or thirst--the one thing real in a world of
+shadows.
+
+Reaching this point one night, and relapsing, as was his wont, into
+a vaguer mood of reminiscence, not wholly unpleasant, which the
+darkness of the quiet room, lit only by the fire of logs, turned at
+last into drowsiness, he looked up presently, with a sudden start,
+to find Oswyn standing over him.
+
+"I am sorry," said the painter; "I am afraid I have awaked you. The
+room was so dark that I imagined you had gone to bed. I came to warm
+myself before turning in."
+
+Rainham shifted his chair a little, and watched the other as he
+extended his thin, nervous hands to the glow.
+
+"Don't apologize," he said; "I haven't so many visitors that I can
+afford to miss the best of them. Besides, I was only half asleep, or
+half awake, as you like to look at it."
+
+"Oh, look at it!" cried Oswyn. "My dear fellow, I don't, and won't."
+
+He pointed his words, which Rainham found meaningless enough, with
+an impatient dig of his rusty boot against the fragrant wood, and
+his friend considered him curiously in the light of the blaze which
+his gesture had provoked.
+
+"Is there anything wrong?" he asked. "More wrong than usual, I
+mean."
+
+"As you like to look at it," echoed the other; "a mare's nest--a
+discovery of the blessed public--oh, but a discovery! Two or three
+clever young newspaper men, with a tip from Paris to help them, have
+made a discovery; they have unearthed a disreputable painting
+genius, one Oswyn, and found the inevitable Jew of culture--you know
+the type, all nose and shekels--to finance their boom. Oh, it's
+genuine! I have Mosenthal's letter in my pocket--it was handed me by
+McAllister--offering his gallery, the pick of Bond Street. Oswyn's
+Exhibition, with expurgations and reservations, of course, but an
+exhibition! Don't you congratulate me?"
+
+Rainham glanced up at him, smiling; at last he said whimsically:
+
+"If you don't want me to, of course I won't. But _apres_, where's the
+harm?"
+
+"Ah, they don't understand," cried the other quickly, acridly. "They
+don't understand."
+
+He had drawn his chair beside Rainham, and sat with his large,
+uncouth head propped on one hand, and the latter could perceive that
+his mouth was twisted with vague irony and some subtile emotion
+which eluded him.
+
+"You are the great paradox!" he sighed at last. "For Heaven's sake,
+be reasonable! It is a chance, whoever makes it, and you mustn't
+miss it, for the sake of a few--the just, the pure, the discreet,
+who do know good work--as well as for your own. After all, we are
+not all gross, and fatuous, and vulgar; there are some of us who
+know, who care, who make fine distinctions. Consider us!"
+
+"Consider you?" cried the other quickly. "Ah, _mon gros_, don't
+I--more than anything?"
+
+Then he continued in a lighter key:
+
+"However, I don't refuse; you take me too literally. It was the last
+bitter cry of my spleen. I have put myself in Mosenthal's hands;
+I've sold him two pictures."
+
+"In that case, then, why am I not to be glad?"
+
+"Oh, it's success!" said Oswyn. He glanced contemptuously at his
+frayed shirt-cuff, with the broad stains of paint upon it. "Be glad,
+if you like; I am glad in a way. God knows, I have arrears to make
+up with the flesh-pots of Egypt. And I have paid my price for it.
+Oh, I have damnably paid my price!"
+
+Rainham shrugged his shoulders absently.
+
+"Yes, one pays," he agreed--"one pays, some time or other, to the
+last penny."
+
+His friend rose, pushed his chair back impatiently: he had the air
+of suppressing some fierce emotion, of anxiously seeking
+self-control. At last he moved over to the black square of window,
+and stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out at nothing, at
+the frosty fantasies which had collected on the glass.
+
+"If it had come ten years ago," he said in a low, constrained voice,
+"ten years ago, in Paris.... Oh, man, man!" he went on bitterly, "if
+you could know, if you could dimly imagine the horrors, the mad,
+furious horrors, the things I have seen and suffered, since then."
+
+He pulled himself up sharply, and concluded with a little mirthless
+laugh, as though he were ashamed of his outburst.
+
+"You would consume a great deal of raw spirit, to take the taste out
+of your mouth. And my 'Medusa' is to hang for the future in Mr.
+Mosenthal's dining-room! Will he understand her, do you think?"
+
+Rainham was silent, wondering at his friend's departure from his
+wonted reticence, which, however, scarcely surprised him. He had
+never sought to penetrate the dark background, against which the
+painter's solitary figure stood. He was content to accept him as he
+was, asking no questions, and hardly forming, even in his own mind,
+conjectures as to what his previous history and relations might have
+been. He was not ignorant, indeed, that he was a man who had been in
+dark places; it had always seemed possible to account for him on the
+theory that he lived on the memory of an inextinguishable sorrow.
+
+And now this possibility had received corroboration from his own
+words, shedding a new light, in which both his character and his
+genius became more intelligible. He had only stood out of the
+shadows which obscured him for one instant; but that instant had
+been enough.
+
+And Rainham did not find the occasion less valuable, nor the
+impression which he had received less pitiful, because he believed
+it to be ultimate and unique; his friend would make no vain,
+elaborate confidences; he would simply step back into his old
+obscurity, leaving Rainham with the memory of that instructive cry
+which had been wrung from him by the irony of tardy recognition,
+when he had seen him luridly standing over the wreck of his honour
+and of his life. And with his pity there came to him a fresh sense
+of the greatness of the painter's work. His genius, so full of
+suffering, and of the sense of an almost fiendish cruelty in things,
+was, simply, his life, his experience, his remorse.
+
+With the hand of a master, with the finest technique, which made his
+work admirable even to persons who misinterpreted or were revolted
+by its conception, he rendered the things he had known, so that his
+art was nothing so much as an expression of his personal pain in
+life.
+
+In the light of this vision into the bottom of Oswyn's soul,
+Rainham's own pain seemed suddenly shallow and remote; he had gazed
+for a moment upon a blacker desolation than any which he could know.
+He felt a new, a tolerant sympathy towards his friend, and it struck
+him, not for the first time, but with an increased force, as he
+reminded himself how his days were bounded, that they had many
+things which they had still to say, things which must certainly be
+said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+In the same room one afternoon a fortnight later, Oswyn sat,
+absently correcting the draft catalogue of his exhibition, when he
+received an intimation, which for some days he had expected--his
+friend felt strong enough to see him. He put down his pen, glancing
+up inquiringly at the bearer of this message, a young woman in the
+neat, depressing garb of a professional nurse; but for answer she
+slightly shook her head with the disinterested complacency of the
+woman used to sickness, who would encourage no false notions.
+
+"It is only temporary," she said with deliberation. "I fear there
+has been no real improvement; the patient is steadily losing
+strength. Only he insists on seeing you; and when they are like
+that, one must give them what they want. I must beg you to excite
+him as little as possible."
+
+Oswyn bowed a dreary assent, and followed her up the obscure
+staircase, which creaked sullenly beneath his tread. And he stood
+for a few moments in silence, until his eyes were accustomed to the
+darkened room, when the nurse had gently closed the door behind him,
+leaving him alone with his friend.
+
+He almost believed, at first, that Rainham must be sleeping, he lay
+back with such extreme quietness in the large old-fashioned bed. And
+seeing him there in that new helplessness, he realized, almost for
+the first time, how little there was to say or to hope.
+
+He had never, indeed, been ignorant that his friend's hold on life
+was precarious; some such scene as this had often been in his mind
+before; only, insensibly, Rainham's own jesting attitude towards his
+disabilities had half imposed on him, and made that possibility
+appear intangible and remote. But now, in view of the change which
+the last fortnight had wrought in him, he could cherish no
+illusions; the worst that was possible was all now that one could
+expect. He was a charming, generous, clever fellow, and he was
+dying; that was a thing one could not get over.
+
+He moved across to the bedside, and Rainham's eyes suddenly opened.
+They were immensely large, strangely brilliant; his face had fallen
+in, was so white and long and lean, that these tremendous eyes
+seemed almost all of the man that was still to be accounted.
+
+Oswyn derived the impression from them that, while his friend's body
+had been failing, his mind had never been more vigorous; that,
+during these long nights and days, when he had lain so motionless,
+in so continued a silence, it had only been because he was thinking
+with redoubled intensity.
+
+Presently, as Rainham's lips moved slightly, he drew nearer, and
+bent his head over him.
+
+"Don't talk," he said nervously, as Rainham appeared to struggle
+with the difficulty of utterance; "don't tire yourself. I've only
+come to look at you. Wait until you are a little stronger."
+
+Rainham raised his hand impatiently.
+
+"It won't tire me, and tired or not there are things I must speak
+of. Is she in the room--the nurse?"
+
+He spoke slowly, and with a visible effort; but his voice, although
+it scarcely rose above a whisper, and seemed shadowy and far away,
+was deliberate and distinct. Oswyn shook his head.
+
+"She has given me half an hour; you must not abuse it. I have
+promised to keep you quiet. I really believe you are a little
+better."
+
+"I am well enough for what I want--to talk to you. After that, I
+will be as quiet as you like, for as long as you like. Only I have
+been keeping myself for this all these last few days that I have
+lain here like a log, listening to the ticking of that merciless
+clock. They thought I was sleeping, unconscious, very likely. I have
+been collecting myself, thinking immensely, waiting for this."
+
+"I have always been here," said the other simply, "in case you
+should send for me. I have been painting Margot. She is a dear
+little soul; she misses you sadly."
+
+"It is of her partly that I must speak. I have left all I can to
+her. If you will sometimes give her a thought; she is absolutely
+without belongings. I don't wish to make it a charge on you, a
+burden, only sometimes it has struck me lately that you were
+interested in the child, that you liked her, and I have taken the
+liberty of making you a sort of guardian. She could live with the
+Bullens----"
+
+"Oh, I like her--I like her!" cried Oswyn, with a short laugh. Then
+he went on more seriously, half-apologetically, as though the other
+might have found his mirth ill-timed: "My dear friend, it is a great
+honour, a great pleasure, you give me. I, too, have no belongings,
+no interests; this might be a great one. I never thought of it
+before, I must admit; but I will adopt her. She shall live with me,
+if it's necessary. Only, ah! let us hope still that this may not be
+necessary, that it is premature."
+
+The other held up a thin hand deprecatingly.
+
+"Ah, don't let us fence with the truth. I have always seen it
+coming, and why should I lie about it, now that it is come? When one
+is as tired as I am, there is only one other thing which
+happens--one dies. You don't suppose I should have sent for you like
+this if it hadn't been so?"
+
+He lay very still for a moment or two with his eyes closed, as if
+the effort which speech cost him was considerable. At last he said
+abruptly:
+
+"There are things you should know; she is Lightmark's child."
+
+Oswyn had seated himself on a low chair by the bed; he kept his head
+averted, as does a priest who hears confessions; and he gazed with
+absent eyes at the fire which burned sulkily, at the row of
+medicine-bottles on the mantelpiece, at all the dreary paraphernalia
+of a sick-room.
+
+"Yes, she is Lightmark's child," continued Rainham; "and the mother
+was that girl whom we found two years ago--do you remember?--the
+night of your first visit here outside the gates. She called herself
+Mrs. Crichton. It's a miserable story; I only discovered it quite
+recently."
+
+Oswyn drew in a deep breath, which sounded like a sigh in the
+strangely still room.
+
+It did not so much suggest surprise as the indefinable relief which
+a man feels when accident permits him to express cognizance of some
+fact of which he has long been inwardly assured.
+
+"I knew that long ago," he said at last. "I suspected it when I
+first saw the girl; but I said nothing to you at the time; perhaps I
+was wrong. Afterwards, when we knew each other better, there seemed
+no occasion; I had almost forgotten the episode."
+
+"Yes," went on the other faintly; "we have all made mistakes--I more
+than most folk, perhaps."
+
+Then he asked suddenly:
+
+"Had you any motive, any reason for your suspicion?"
+
+"It was the name Crichton--the man's pseudonym on the _Outcry_. It
+flashed across me then that she was after Lightmark. He was just
+severing his connection with the paper. He had always kept it very
+close, and I dare say I was one of the few persons who were in the
+secret. That is why, at the bottom of his heart, he is afraid of
+me--afraid that I shall bring it up. It's the one thing he is
+ashamed of."
+
+"I see, I see," cried Rainham wearily; "the wretched fellow!"
+
+"Dear man, why should we think of him?" broke in Oswyn; "he isn't
+worth it. Now of all seasons can't we find a topic less unsavoury?"
+
+"You don't understand," continued Rainham, after a slight pause in
+his thin, far-away voice. "I am not thinking of him, or only
+indirectly. I have found him out, and I should be content enough to
+forget him if it were possible. Only, unfortunately, he happens to
+be inextricably entangled with all that is most sacred, most
+important to me. It is of his wife--Mrs. Lightmark: do you know
+her?--that I think."
+
+Oswyn shook his head.
+
+"I know her only by sight, as we all do; she is very beautiful."
+
+"I don't mind telling you that I have considered her a great
+deal--yes, immensely. I should not speak of it--of her--unless I
+were dying; but, after all, when one is dying, there are things one
+may say. I have held my peace so long. And since I have been lying
+here I have had time to ponder it, to have thought it all out. It
+seems to me that simply for her sake someone should know
+before--before the occasion passes--just the plain truth. Of course,
+Sylvester by rights ought to be the man, only I can't ask him to
+come to me--there are reasons; and, besides, he is an ass."
+
+"Yes, he is an ass," admitted Oswyn simply; "that is reason enough."
+
+And just then there flashed into his mind the one notable occasion
+on which the barrister had run across him, his intriguing letter and
+the ineffectual visit which had followed it--ineffectual as he had
+supposed, but which might nevertheless, he reflected now, have had
+its results, ironical and inopportune enough. It was a memory of no
+importance, and yet it seemed just then to be the last of a long
+train of small lights that led to a whole torch of illumination, in
+which the existence of little Margot and her quaint juxtaposition
+with his friend, which in his general easy attitude towards the
+fantastic he had not troubled to investigate, was amply and
+generously justified. He turned round suddenly, caught his friend's
+thin hand, which he held.
+
+"Ah, don't trouble to explain, to make me understand," he murmured.
+"It's enough that I understand you have done something very fine,
+that you are the most generous of men."
+
+Rainham was silent for a moment: he had no longer the physical
+capacity of smiling; but there was a gleam of the old humour in his
+eyes, as he replied:
+
+"Only the most fortunate--in my friends; they are so clever, they
+see things so quickly. You make this very easy."
+
+Oswyn did not shift for a while from his position: he was touched,
+moved more deeply than he showed; and there was a trace of emotion
+in his voice--of something which resembled envy.
+
+"The happy woman! It is she who ought to know, to understand."
+
+"It is for that I wished to tell you," went on Rainham faintly,
+"that she might know some day, that there might be just one person
+who could give her the truth in its season. Yes! I wanted her to be
+always in ignorance of what she had made of her life, of the kind of
+man she has married. She was such a child; it seemed too pitiful. It
+was for that I did it, damned myself in her eyes, to give her a
+little longer--a sort of respite. Very likely I made a mistake!
+Those things can't be concealed for ever, and the longer the
+illusion lasts, the more bitter the awakening. Only if it might
+serve her later, in her darkest hour, as a sort of after-thought, it
+won't have been quite vain. That is how I see it now: I want her to
+know immensely--to know that she has always been unspeakably dear to
+me. Ah, don't mistake me! It's not for myself, it's not yet; I shall
+have done with life, done with love, by that time. When one is as
+tired as I am, death seems very good; only it hasn't those things.
+Nothing can make any difference to me; I am thinking of her, that
+some day or other it will be for her benefit to understand, to
+remember----"
+
+"To remember?"
+
+"Yes, to remember," repeated Rainham quietly, "that her unhappiness
+has its compensation; if she has been bitterly wronged, she has also
+been fervently loved."
+
+The other said nothing for a long time, simply considered the
+situation which Rainham's words, and still more even than anything
+that he had said, the things that he had not said, had strikingly
+revealed to him, leaving him, at the last, in a state of mingled
+emotions over which, perhaps, awe predominated.
+
+At last he remarked abruptly:
+
+"It _is_ you who are fortunate; you are so nearly done with it all;
+you've such a long rest before you." Then he added with a new
+solemnity: "You may trust me, Rainham. When it is seasonable, Mrs.
+Lightmark shall know the truth. Perhaps she will come to me for it--
+Heaven knows!--stranger things have happened. You have my hand upon
+it; I think you are right."
+
+"Right? You mean that it wasn't a mistake, a _betise_?"
+
+"_Felix culpa_! If it was a mistake it was a very fine one."
+
+"Ah! I don't regret it," said Rainham, "only----"
+
+"Only it was a mistake to suppose that life was to be arranged. That
+was all I meant. Yes; I don't believe in much, but I believe in
+necessity. You can't get over it yourself, and you can't--no, not
+for all your goodwill, your generosity--get over it for another.
+There are simply inevitable results of irrevocable causes, and no
+place for repentance or restitution. And yet you help her, not as
+you meant to, and not now; but ah, you help her!"
+
+"So long as I do that----" murmured Rainham, with a deep inhalation,
+closing his eyes wearily, in a manner which revealed how severely
+the intimate strain of conversation had told upon him.
+
+Oswyn waited a little longer, in half expectation of his further
+utterance; but Rainham made no sign, lay quite motionless and
+hushed, his hands clasped outside of the counterpane as if already
+in the imitation of death; then the other rose and made a quiet
+exit, imagining that his friend slept, or would soon sleep.
+
+And yet actually, in spite of the extreme physical weariness which
+had gradually stolen over him, dulling his senses, so that he was
+hardly conscious of Oswyn's departure, or of the subdued entrance of
+the nurse, who had been discreetly waiting for it, Rainham's mind
+was still keenly vigilant; and it was in the relief of a certain new
+lucidity, an almost hieratic calm, that he reviewed that recent
+interview, in which he had so deliberately unburdened himself. It
+seemed as if, in his great weakness, the ache of his old desire, his
+fever of longing, bad suddenly left him, giving place (as though the
+literal wasting away of his body had really given freer access to
+that pure spirit, its prisoner), to a love now altogether purged of
+passion, and become strangely tolerable and sweet.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+If Philip Rainham's name, during that long, hard winter and
+ungracious spring--near the close of which he turned his face, with
+the least little sigh of regret, to the wall--was not often
+mentioned in the house in Parton Street, at whose door he had
+formerly knocked so often, it must not be supposed that by its
+occupants it had been in any way forgotten. He had not committed the
+discourtesy of leaving Lady Garnett's note unanswered; on the
+contrary, he had answered it both promptly and--as it seemed to
+him--well, in a letter which was certainly diplomatic, suggesting as
+it did--at least, to Mary Masters, to whom it had been shown--that
+he was on the point of an immediate flight South.
+
+Whether the elder lady was equally deceived by his ambiguous
+phrases, it was not so easy to declare. She had, at this time less
+than ever, the mode of persons who wear their hearts upon their
+sleeves; her mask of half-cynical good-humour was constantly up; and
+she met the girl's hinted interrogations--for directly the nature of
+their uneasiness, by a sort of tacit agreement, was not alluded
+to--with the same smiling indifference, the same air of bland
+reassurance which she brought to the discussion of a sauce or an
+_entremet_ at one of those select little dinner-parties on which she
+piqued herself, and which latterly had been more incessant and more
+select than ever.
+
+Only on Mary's sensitive ear something in the elaborately cheerful
+tone in which she mentioned their vanished friend would occasionally
+jar. It was too perfectly well done not to appear a little
+exaggerated; and though she could force a smile at Lady Garnett's
+persistent picture of the recalcitrant godson basking, with his
+pretext of ill-health, on the sunny terraces of Monte Carlo, she
+none the less cherished a suspicion that the picture was as little
+convincing to its author as to herself, that her aunt also had
+silent moments in which she credited the more depressing theory.
+
+And the long silence simply deepened her conviction that, all the
+time they were imposing upon themselves with such vain conjectures,
+he was actually within their reach, sick and sorry and alone, in
+that terrible Blackpool, which she peopled, in her imagination of a
+young lady whose eastward wanderings had never extended beyond a
+flower show in the Temple Gardens, with a host of vague,
+inconceivable horrors.
+
+From Bordighera, from Monaco, she argued, he would certainly have
+written, if it were only a line of reassurance, for there his
+isolation was impregnable. Only the fact that he had stayed on in
+London could account for the need of this second arm of silence, as
+well as of solitude, to enforce his complete withdrawal from the
+torment of tongues.
+
+Certainly, wherever he might actually be, the girl had never
+realized more fully than just then what an irreparable gap
+estrangement from him made in her life.
+
+There was, indeed, no pause in the stream of clever, cultivated,
+charming persons who rang daily at their discriminating door, who
+drank tea in their drawing-room, and talked felicitously for their
+entertainment.
+
+It was a miscellaneous company, although the portal was difficult in
+a manner, and opened only on conditions of its own--conditions, it
+may be said, which, to the uninitiated, to the excluded, seemed
+fantastic enough.
+
+One might be anything, Lady Garnett's constant practice seemed to
+enunciate, provided one was not a bore; one could represent
+anything--birth or wealth, or the conspicuous absence of these
+qualities--so long as one also effectively represented one's self.
+This was the somewhat democratic form which the old lady's
+aristocratic tradition assumed.
+
+It was not, then, without a certain pang of self-reproach that Mary
+wondered one evening--it was at the conclusion of one of their most
+successful entertainments--that a company so brilliant, so
+distinguished, should have left her only with a nervous headache and
+a distinct sense of satisfaction that the last guest had gone.
+
+Was she, then, after all an unworthy partaker of the feast which her
+aunt had so long and liberally spread for her delectation?
+
+As she sat in her own room, still in her dress of the evening,
+before the comfortable fire, which cast vague half-lights into the
+dark, spacious corners--she had extinguished the illumination of
+candles which her maid had left her, a sort of unconscious tribute
+to the economical traditions of her youth--she found herself
+considering this question and the side issues it involved very
+carefully.
+
+Was it for some flaw in her nature, some lack of subtilty, or inbred
+stupidity, that she found the inmates of Parton Street so
+uninspiring, had been so little amused?
+
+The dozen who had dined with them to-night--how typical they might
+be of the rest!--original and unlike each other as they were, each
+having his special distinction, his particular note, were hardly
+separable in her mind. They were very cultivated, very subtile, very
+cynical. Their talk, which flashed quickest around Lady Garnett, who
+was the readiest of them all, could not possibly have been better;
+it was like the rapid passes of exquisite fencers with foils. And
+they all seemed to have been everywhere, to have read everything,
+and at the last to believe in nothing--in themselves and their own
+paradoxes least of all. There was nothing in the world which existed
+except that one might make of it an elegant joke. And yet of old,
+the girl reflected, she had found them stimulating enough; their
+limitations, at least, had not seemed to her to weigh seriously
+against their qualities, negative though these last might be.
+
+Had it been, then, simply the presence of Mr. Rainham which had
+leavened the company, and the personal fascination of his
+friendship--indefinable and unobtrusive as that had been--which had
+enabled her to adopt for the moment their urbane, impartial point of
+view?
+
+Perhaps there had been a particle of truth in the charge so solemnly
+levelled at her by Mr. Sylvester: it was a false position that she
+maintained.
+
+The attitude of Lady Garnett and her intimates, of persons (the
+phrase of Steele's recurred to her as meeting it appropriately) "who
+had seen the world enough to undervalue it with good breeding," must
+seem to her at last a little sterile when she was conscious--never
+more than now--of how clearly and swiftly the healthy young blood
+coursed through her veins, dissipating any morbid imaginations that
+she might feel inclined to cherish. She looked out at life, in her
+conviction that so little of it had yet been lived, that for her it
+might easily be a long affair, with eyes which were still full of
+interest and, to a certain degree, of hope; and this did not detract
+from at least one "impossible loyalty," from which it seemed to her
+she would never waver. And Charles Sylvester's infelicitous proposal
+recurred to her, and she was forced to ask herself whether, after
+all, it was quite so infelicitous as it seemed. Might not some sort
+of solution to the difficulties which oppressed her be offered by
+that alliance? Conscientiously she considered the question, and for
+a long time; but with the closest consideration the prospect refused
+to cheer her, remained singularly uninviting. And yet, arid as the
+notion appeared of a procession hand-in-hand through life with a
+husband so soberly precise, to the tune of political music, she was
+still hardly decided upon her answer when she at length reluctantly
+left her comfortable fire and composed herself to sleep.
+
+It was not until a day or two later that a prolonged visit from the
+subject of these hesitations reminded her--perhaps more forcibly
+than before--that, however in his absence she might oscillate, in
+his actual presence a firm negative was, after all, the only answer
+which could ever suffice.
+
+At the close of what seemed a singularly long afternoon, during
+which her aunt, who was confined to her room with a bad headache,
+had left to her the burden of entertaining, Mary came to this
+conclusion.
+
+Mr. Sylvester had come with the first of her callers, and had made
+no sign of moving when the last had gone. And in the silence, a
+little portentous, which had ensued when they were left together,
+the girl had read easily the reason of his protracted stay. She
+glanced furtively, with a suggestion of weariness in her eyes, at
+the little jewelled watch on her wrist, wondering if in the arrival
+of a belated visitor there might not still be some respite.
+
+"You are not going out?" he asked tentatively, detecting her. "I
+expect my sister will be here soon."
+
+"No, I am not going out," admitted the girl reluctantly. "I am on
+duty, you know. Somebody may arrive at any minute," she added, not
+quite ingenuously. "Let us hope it will be your sister."
+
+"I hope not--not just yet," he protested. "It is so long, Miss
+Masters, since I have seen you alone. That is my excuse for having
+remained such an unconscionable time. I have to seize an
+opportunity."
+
+She made no remark, sitting back in the chair, her fine head bent a
+little, thoughtfully, her hands folded quietly in her lap, in an
+attitude of resignation to the inevitable.
+
+"You can't mistake me," he went on at last eagerly. "I have kept to
+the stipulation; I have been silent for a long time. I have been to
+see you, certainly, but not so often as I should have liked, and I
+have said nothing to you of the only thing that was in my head.
+Now"--he hesitated for an instant, then completed his phrase with an
+intonation almost passionate--"now I want my reward! Can't
+you--can't you give it me, Mary?"
+
+The girl said nothing for a moment, looking away from him into the
+corners of the empty room, her delicate eyebrows knitted a little,
+as though she sought inspiration from some of Lady Garnett's choicer
+_bibelots_, from the little rose and amber shepherdess of Watteau, who
+glanced out at her daintily, imperturbably from the midst of her
+_fete galante_. At last she said quietly:
+
+"I am sorry, Mr. Sylvester, I can only say, as I said before, it is
+a great honour you do me, but it's impossible."
+
+"Perhaps I should have waited longer," suggested Charles, after a
+moment's silence, in which he appeared to be deeply pondering her
+sentence. "I have taken you by surprise; you have not sufficiently
+considered----"
+
+"Oh, I have considered," cried the girl quickly, with a sudden
+flush. "I have considered it more seriously than you may believe,
+more, perhaps, than I ought."
+
+"Than you ought?" he interrupted blankly.
+
+"Yes," she said simply. "I mean that if it could ever have been
+right to answer you as you wished, it would have been right all at
+once; thinking would not alter it. I am sorry, chiefly, that I
+allowed this--this procrastination; that I did not make you take my
+decision that night, at Lady Mallory's. Yes, for that I was to
+blame. Only, some day I think you will see that I was right, that it
+would never have done."
+
+"Never have done!" he repeated, with an accent full of grieved
+resentment. "I think it would have done so admirably. I hardly
+understand----"
+
+"I mean," said poor Mary helplessly, "that you estimated me wrongly.
+I _am_ frivolous--your interests would not have been safe in my hands.
+You would have married me on a misunderstanding."
+
+"No," said Charles morosely, "I can't believe that! You are not
+plain with me, you are not sincere. You don't really believe that
+you are frivolous, that we should not suit. In what way am I so
+impossible? Is it my politics that you object to? I shall be happy
+to discuss them with you. I am not intolerant; I should not expect
+you to agree with me in everything. You give me no reasons for
+this--this absurd prejudice; you are not direct; you indulge in
+generalizations."
+
+He spoke in a constrained monotone, which seemed to Mary, in spite
+of her genuine regret for the pain she gave him, unreasonably full
+of reproach.
+
+"Ah!" she cried sharply, "since I don't love you, is not that a
+reason? Oh, believe me," she went on rather wearily, "I have no
+prejudice, not a grain. I would sooner marry you than not. Only I
+cannot bring myself to feel towards you as a woman ought to the man
+she marries. Very likely I shall never marry."
+
+He considered her, half angrily, in silence, with his unanimated
+eyes; his dignity suffered in discomposure, and lacking this,
+pretentious as it was, he seemed to lack everything, becoming
+unimportant and absurd.
+
+"Oh, you will marry!" he said at last sullenly, an assertion which
+Mary did not trouble to refute.
+
+He returned the next minute, with a persistency which the girl began
+to find irritating, to his charge.
+
+"I don't understand it. They seem to me wilful, unworthy of you,
+your reasons; it's perverse--yes, that is what it is, perverse! You
+are not really happy here; the life doesn't suit you."
+
+"What a discovery!" cried the girl half mockingly. "I am not really
+happy! Well, if I admit it?"
+
+"I could make you so by taking you out of it. You are too good for
+it all, too good to sit and pour out tea for--for the sort of people
+who come here."
+
+"Do you mean," she asked, with a touch of scorn in her voice, "that
+we are not respectable?"
+
+"That is not you who speak," he persisted; "it is your aunt who
+speaks through you. I know it is the fashion now to cry out against
+one, even in good society, to call one straitlaced, if one respects
+certain conventions. There are some I respect profoundly; and not
+the least that one which forbids right-minded gentlewomen to receive
+men of notoriously disgraceful lives. One should draw the line; one
+should draw it at that Hungarian pianist who was here this
+afternoon. Your aunt, of course, is a Frenchwoman; she has different
+ideas. But you, I can't believe that you care for this society, for
+people like Kronopolski and--and Rainham. Oh, it hurts me, and I
+imagine how distasteful it must be to you, that you must suffer
+these people. I want to take you away from it all."
+
+The girl had risen, flushing a little. She replied haughtily, with a
+vibration of passion in her voice:
+
+"You are not generous, Mr. Sylvester. You are not even just. What
+right have I ever given you to dictate to me whom I shall know or
+refuse to know? I, too, have my convictions; and I think your view
+is narrow, and uncharitable, and false. You see, we don't agree
+enough.... Ah, let it end, Mr. Sylvester!" She went on more gently,
+but very tiredly, her pale face revealing how the interview had
+strained her: "I wish you all the good in the world, but I can't
+marry you. Let us shake hands on that, and say good-bye."
+
+Sylvester had also risen to his feet, and he stood facing her for a
+moment indecisively, as though he hardly credited the finality of
+his rejection.
+
+They were still in this attitude, and the fact gave a certain tinge
+of embarrassment to their greetings, when the door opened, and Mrs.
+Lightmark was announced.
+
+"I was on the point of going," explained Charles nervously. "I
+thought you were not coming, you know."
+
+Eve made no effort to detain him, half suspecting that she had
+appeared at a strenuous moment. When the barrister had departed
+(Mary had just extended to him the tips of her frigid fingers), and
+Eve's polite inquiries after Lady Garnett's health had been
+satisfied, she remarked:
+
+"I really only came in for a cup of tea. I walked across from Dorset
+Square. I have sent the carriage to pick up my husband at his club:
+it's coming back for me. You look tired, Mary. I think I oughtn't to
+stay. You look as if you had been having a political afternoon. Poor
+Charles, since he has been in the House, can think of nothing but
+blue-books."
+
+"Tired?" queried the girl listlessly; "no, not particularly.
+Besides, I am always glad to see you, it happens so seldom."
+
+"Yes; except in a crowd. One has never any time. Have you heard, by
+the way, that my husband is one of the new Associates?"
+
+She went on quickly, preventing Mary's murmured congratulations:
+
+"Yes, they have elected him. I suppose it is a very good thing. He
+has his hands full of portraits now."
+
+Then she remarked inconsequently--the rapidity with which she passed
+from topic to topic half surprised Mary, who did not remember the
+trait of old:
+
+"We are going to the theatre to-night--that is to say, if my husband
+has been able to get seats. It's the first night of a new comedy. I
+meant to ask you to come with us, only it was an uncertainty. If the
+box is not forthcoming, you must come when we do go. Only, of
+course, it will not be the _premiere_."
+
+"I should like to," said Mary vaguely. "I don't care so much about
+first nights. I like the theatre; but I go so seldom. Aunt Marcelle
+does not care for English plays; she says they are like stale
+bread-and-butter. I tell her that is not so bad."
+
+"The _mot_, you mean?"
+
+"Partly; but also the thing. Bread-and-butter is a change after a
+great many _petits fours_."
+
+Mrs. Lightmark smiled a little absently as she sat smoothing the
+creases out of her pretty, fawn-coloured gloves.
+
+"Oh, the _petits fours_," she said, "for choice. One can take more of
+them, and amuse one's self longer."
+
+They heard a carriage draw up suddenly in the street below, and Eve,
+who had been glancing from time to time expectantly at the window,
+went over and looked out. She recognised her liveries and the two
+handsome bays.
+
+"Perhaps I had better not let him come up," she said; "it is late
+already, and you will be wanting to dress."
+
+Lightmark had just alighted from the carriage when his wife joined
+him in the street. He held the door for her silently, and stopped
+for a moment to give the direction, "Home," to the coachman before
+he took the place at her side.
+
+She turned to him after a while inquiringly, finding something of
+unwonted gravity in his manner.
+
+"Did you get the box?" she asked.
+
+"The box?" he repeated blankly. Then, pulling himself up, "No," he
+said quickly, "I forgot all about it. The fact is, I heard something
+this afternoon which put it out of my head. I am afraid," he went
+on, with a growing hesitation, "you will be rather shocked."
+
+"Ah," she cried quickly, catching at her breath, "something has
+happened. Tell me. Don't preface it; I can bear anything if you will
+only tell me straight out."
+
+"It's Rainham," he murmured. "He died last night at Blackpool. I
+heard it from McAllister, at the club."
+
+He looked away from her vaguely out of his window at the pale
+streets, where a few lamps were beginning to appear, waiting in a
+fever of apprehension, which he vainly sought to justify, for some
+word or comment on the part of his wife.
+
+As none came, and the silence grew intolerable, he ventured at last
+to glance furtively across at her. Her face seemed to him a shade
+paler than before, but that might be exaggerated by the relief of
+her rich and sombre furs. Her eyes were quite expressionless and
+blank, although she had the air of being immensely thoughtful; her
+mouth was inscrutable and unmoved. And he experienced a sudden pang
+of horror at the anticipation of a dinner alone with her, with the
+ghostly presence of this news dividing them, before he reminded
+himself that Colonel Lightmark was to be of the party.
+
+For, perhaps, the first time in his life the prospect of his uncle's
+company afforded him a sensation of relief.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+When Oswyn emerged from the narrow doorway of the gallery in Bond
+Street, which on the morrow was to be filled with the heterogeneous
+presence of those who, for different reasons, are honoured with
+cards of invitation to private views, it was still daylight,
+although the lamps had been lighted; and the east wind, which during
+the earlier hours of the day had made the young summer seem such a
+mockery of flowery illusions, had taken a more genial air from the
+south into alliance; and there was something at once caressing and
+exhilarating in their united touch as they wandered in gentle eddies
+up the crooked thoroughfare.
+
+Oswyn paused upon the pavement, outside the showroom which Mosenthal
+called a gallery, gazing up the road towards Oxford Street, with a
+momentary appreciation of the subtile early evening charm, which
+lent so real a beauty even to a vista of commonplace shop-fronts and
+chimney-pots, straightening his bent figure, and wondering whither
+to betake himself.
+
+He had not allowed his friend's death to be an excuse for abandoning
+the projected exhibition; indeed, when this event occurred, he was
+already too far compromised; and he even found the labour involved
+in the preparations for the new departure a very welcome
+distraction--the one thing which made it possible for the desolate
+man to stay on in London, which, he assured himself dogmatically,
+was the only place on earth where he could face life with an
+indifference which was at least a tolerable imitation of equanimity.
+
+To get together the materials for even a modest exhibition of the
+kind which he contemplated, it became necessary for him to ransack
+old portfolios, and to borrow from dealers, and from his few
+discriminating private patrons, works which had but recently left
+his studio and could still be traced; to utilize all the hours of
+daylight accorded to him by a grudging season for finishing,
+mounting, and retouching.
+
+The man who made frames for Oswyn knew him of old as an exacting
+customer and hard to please, who insisted on a rigid adherence to
+his own designs, and was quick to detect inferior workmanship or
+material; but during the last few days he had been driven almost to
+rebellion by the painter's exigencies; never had such calls been
+made upon him for flawless glass, and delicately varied shades of
+gold and silver; never had artist's eye been so ruthless in the
+condemnation of imperfect mitres and superfluous plaster.
+
+But now the work of preparation was at an end: the catalogues had
+been printed, and his _impresario_ had judiciously circulated
+invitations to press and public: the work was done, and the workman
+felt only weary and indifferent. If the public howled, what did it
+matter? Their hostility would be for him a corroboration, for his
+Jew an invaluable advertisement. If they fawned, so much the better:
+it would not hurt him, and Mosenthal would still have his
+advertisement. If they were indifferent, well, so was he.
+
+The question of pecuniary profit troubled him not at all (though
+here his Jew joined issue): what in the world could he do with
+money, now? He could paint a picture in a month which would keep him
+for six, and the dealer who bought it probably for a year.
+
+Margot was already provided for, even handsomely: in that respect,
+at least, her first adopted father had left no void for his
+successor to fill.
+
+So again he shrugged his shoulders. And upon that evening, for the
+first time since Rainham's death, he dined, more solitary and more
+silent than ever, at his familiar table at Brodonowski's. He found
+that, after all, his nervous anticipation of inconvenient
+protestations of sympathy was not fulfilled; there were not many men
+who knew him more than by sight at Brodonowski's, and the few of his
+old associates who were there had the good sense to exhibit nothing
+extraordinary in their demeanour towards him. Only they were a
+little less wildly humorous than of old, and more forbearing in
+their sallies; the conversation died out for an instant as he made
+his way quickly, with the faintest sign of recognition, through
+their midst--and that was all.
+
+Rainham's death had affected some of them for a few days perhaps,
+but it had not the shock of the unexpected; they chiefly wondered
+that he had dragged his life through so cruel a winter. And his
+close alliance with Oswyn had, as a natural consequence, debarred
+him from a real intimacy with any of the other men, who, for the
+most part younger, cultivated different friendships and different
+pursuits.
+
+They had missed Oswyn during his seclusion of the last few weeks; he
+was so essentially the presiding, silent genius of the place--a man
+to be pointed out to new-comers, half ironically, as the greatest,
+most deeply injured, of them all; the possessor of a talent
+unapproached and unappreciated. They felt that his presence lent a
+distinction to the dingy resort which it otherwise frequently
+lacked: and he had come to be so far regarded as a permanent
+institution, of an almost official nature, that even on the coldest
+nights his chair by the fireside had remained untenanted.
+
+When the next morning came, Oswyn felt desperately inclined to break
+the promise which Mosenthal had, with some difficulty, exacted from
+him, and to keep far from Bond Street and the crowd who even then
+were assembling to cast their careless glances and light words at
+the work of his life; it was only the fear of the taint of
+cowardice, and a certain perversity, which induced him eventually to
+present himself within the gallery rather late in the afternoon.
+
+As he entered the room, looking about him with a kind of challenge,
+many eyes were turned upon him (for people go to private views not
+to see pictures--that is generally impossible--but to see and be
+seen of men), but few had any suspicion that this strange man, with
+the shabby, old-fashioned apparel, and expression half nervous, half
+defiant, was the painter whose pictures they were pretending to
+criticise.
+
+Very few of those present--hardly half a dozen perhaps--knew him
+even by sight; and while his evident disregard for social convention
+marked him, for the discerning observer, as a person of probably
+artistic distinction, the general conjecture set him down, not as a
+painter--he did not seem to be of that type--but as a man of
+letters--probably a maker of obscure verse.
+
+When he had mastered the first wild impulse which prompted him to
+tear his pictures down, to turn their faces to the wall--anything to
+hide them from this smiling, languid, well-dressed crowd--and
+resigned himself to observation, he saw that Mosenthal was beaming
+at him complacently, through the massive gold spectacles which
+adorned and modified the bridge of his compromising nose, from his
+seat behind the table, where information as to the prices of the
+exhibits could be obtained.
+
+There were exactly forty drawings and paintings to be seen upon the
+sparsely-covered walls, which had been draped for the occasion with
+coarsely-woven linen of a dull olive-green, and about half of these
+were drawings and studies, small in point of size, executed in chalk
+and pastels.
+
+The greater part of these represented ordinary scenes of London
+outdoor life--a deserted corner of Kensington Gardens, with tall
+soot-blackened trees lifting their stately tracery of dark branches
+into the sky; a reach of the wide, muddy river, with a gaunt bridge
+looming through the fog; a gin-palace at night time, with garish
+lamps shining out upon the wet streets and crouching beggars.
+
+Of the remainder, which included a few portraits and some
+imaginative subjects, the greater number were painted in oils, and
+the largest canvas would not have seemed out of place on the walls
+of an ordinary room.
+
+Oswyn smiled grimly as he noticed that the portrait of Margot, which
+he had begun for Rainham and finished for himself, was a
+considerable centre of attraction; there was quite a dense crowd in
+the vicinity of this canvas (it is true, it was near the tea-table),
+and it included two bishops, a duke, and an actress, of whom the
+last-named was certainly more stared at than the picture.
+
+It irritated him, in spite of his contempt for the throng, to see
+people standing, chatting, with their backs turned towards his
+creations; and when Mosenthal informed him in a triumphant
+stage-whisper, leaning across the table littered with catalogues,
+that nine of the pictures had already found purchasers, he was
+almost inclined to rebel, to refuse to ratify the sales.
+
+The only friendly face which he encountered during the afternoon was
+that of McAllister, who presently brought his congratulations and
+conspicuous presence to the corner to which Oswyn had betaken
+himself; and for a time he found himself listening, while the
+Scotchman enlightened him, somewhat against his will, as to the
+names and celebrity of the distinguished visitors whom he was
+supposed to be receiving.
+
+He was assured that the press notices could not fail to be
+favourable (he mentally promised himself that nothing should
+induce him to read a newspaper for at least a fortnight),
+and the flattering comments of Mr. This and Lady That were
+half-apologetically retailed for his presumed delectation.
+
+As his eyes wandered, with his attention, furtively round the room,
+they presently encountered, in their passage from group to group, a
+face which seemed vaguely familiar--the face of a woman, whom he
+certainly had never known, but whose beauty, he thought, was not
+appealing to his admiration for the first time.
+
+She was standing with her profile turned towards him, gazing gravely
+at his study of a pale figure, with beautiful eyes and an armful of
+wonderfully coloured poppies, which he called "Thanatos, the
+Peace-bearer."
+
+When she moved, presently, her gaze rested on him for a moment, with
+the faintest note of inquiry interrupting the smile with which she
+was listening to the sallies of her escort for the time being; the
+smile and glance revealed her more perfectly to Oswyn, and he was
+prepared to hear McAllister greet her as Mrs. Lightmark when, a few
+minutes later, she passed them on her way round the room.
+
+Eve had spent the week which followed the afternoon upon which her
+husband had stunned her with the news of Philip Rainham's death
+almost in solitude.
+
+Lightmark had been obliged to pay a hasty visit to Berlin, on
+business connected with an International Art Congress, and his wife
+at the last moment decided, somewhat to his relief, that she would
+not accompany him. A man of naturally quick perception, and with a
+certain vein of nervous alertness underlying his outer clothing of
+careless candour, he could not help feeling that when he was alone
+with his wife he was being watched, that traps were set for him--in
+short, that he was suspected. And not only when they were alone had
+he cause for alarm: in crowded rooms, at mammoth dinner-parties,
+and colossal assemblies he frequently became aware, by a sense even
+quicker than vision, that his wife's eyes were directed upon him
+from the farther side of the room, the opposite end of the
+dinner-table, with that wistful, childish expression in their
+depths, which, growing sterner and more critical of late, had ended
+by boring him.
+
+Before Rainham's death, Eve, in her private discussions of the
+situation, had generally concluded by dismissing the subject
+petulantly, with a summing-up only partially convincing, that
+everything would come right in the end; that in time that miserable
+scene would be forgotten or explained away; and that the old
+intimacy, of which it was at once so bitter and so pleasant to
+dream, would be restored.
+
+Her training--of which her mother was justly proud--had endowed her
+with a respect for social convention too great to allow her to think
+of rebelling against the existing order of things. She consoled
+herself by the reflection that at least she had committed no fault,
+and that no active discipline of penitence could justly be expected
+of her.
+
+Concerning the truth of Rainham's story she could not fail to
+harbour doubts; that her husband was concealing something was daily
+more plainly revealed to her.
+
+It was hard that she should suffer, but what could she do? At the
+bottom of her heart, in spite of the feeling of resentment which
+assailed her when--as it often did--the idea occurred to her that he
+had not exhibited towards her the perfect frankness which their old
+friendship demanded, she pitied Rainham. There were even times--such
+was her state of doubt--when she pitied her husband, and blamed
+herself for suspecting him of--she hardly owned what.
+
+But, most of all, she pitied herself. She felt that in any case she
+had been wronged, whether Philip's ill-told tale was true or false.
+
+But her pride enabled her to keep her doubts locked within her own
+heart, to present a smiling, if occasionally pale, face to the
+world, in whose doings she took so large a part, and even to deceive
+Mrs. Sylvester.
+
+And now Philip was dead! The severance, which she had persuaded
+herself was only temporary, was on a sudden rendered inexorably
+complete and eternal.
+
+The blow was a cruel one, and for a time it seemed to be succeeded
+by a kind of rebellious insensibility. Eve felt demoralized, and
+careless of the future; her frame of mind was precisely that of the
+man who is making his first hasty steps along the headlong road
+which is popularly spoken of as leading to the devil.
+
+Later she began to reproach herself. She reflected, with a kind of
+scornful wonder at her weakness, that she had allowed all chance of
+explanation to escape; the one man whom she could trust, who would
+surely give her a straightforward answer if she appealed to him by
+the memory of the old days, was beyond the reach of her questions,
+silent to eternity. Her former sorrow seemed trivial by comparison
+with this.
+
+On his return, Lightmark found his wife looking so pale and tired
+that he broke off in the middle of the story of his flattering
+reception at the German Court to express a suggestion for her
+benefit, that she had better go to Brighton or somewhere to recruit.
+She would never get through the season at this rate. Yes, she must
+certainly take a holiday, directly after the Academy Private View.
+
+Eve caught at the idea, only she did not wait for the Academy to
+open. She went for a fortnight, accompanied by an old servant of the
+family, who regarded her mistress's birth as quite a recent event,
+to Mrs. Sylvester's cottage in Norfolk.
+
+When Mrs. Lightmark came back to town her face was still pale, but
+her brow wore a serener air, and her eyes had lost their look of
+apprehension. The woman had arisen triumphant out of the ashes of
+her childhood, with a heart determined to know the truth, and to
+face it, however bitter it might prove to be. Meanwhile, she would
+not judge hastily.
+
+As she drove up Bond Street one day soon after her return to town,
+the advertisement of Oswyn's exhibition caught her eye. She would
+probably have remembered a name so uncommon if she had only heard it
+once, and, as it was, she had heard it several times, and associated
+with it, moreover, a certain reticence which could not fail to
+arouse a woman's curiosity.
+
+Later, when Mosenthal's card of invitation for the Private View
+arrived, she noted the day upon her list of engagements.
+
+On the morning of Oswyn's ordeal, Eve sent a message to her husband,
+who was engaged with a model in the studio, to notify to him her
+intention of taking the carriage into town later in the afternoon;
+to which he had returned a gallant reply, expressing a hope that, if
+it would not bore her too much, she would pick him up somewhere and
+drive him home. Where and when could he meet her? The reply, "At
+Mosenthal's at five o'clock," did not surprise him. He did not
+happen to have the vaguest idea as to what was the attraction of the
+day at that particular gallery. It might be Burmese landscapes, or
+portraits of parrots; it was all one to him. It was extremely
+decorous in his wife to affect picture-galleries, and Mosenthal's
+place was conveniently near to his favourite club.
+
+A few minutes before the appointed hour he made his way, from the
+new and alarmingly revolutionary club-house, where he had been
+indulging in afternoon tea in company with Felicia Dollond, to the
+gallery, outside which his horses were already waiting, and,
+perceiving Oswyn's name on the placards disposed on either side of
+the entrance, he felt only a momentary hesitation.
+
+Oswyn would probably not be there; and, after all, why should he not
+inspect the man's pictures?
+
+Before reasons had time to present themselves he had passed into the
+room, and had been deferentially welcomed and presented with a
+catalogue by the proprietor in person.
+
+The room was still crowded, and it was oppressively warm, with an
+atmosphere redolent of woollen and silken fabrics, like a milliner's
+shop on the day of a sale.
+
+At first he made no effort to join his wife, whom he discerned from
+afar talking to a pillar of the Church in gaiters and a
+broad-brimmed hat.
+
+He looked at the pictures whenever there was a break in the sequence
+of bows and greetings which had to be exchanged with two-thirds of
+the people in the room; and as he looked he was smitten with a quick
+thrill of admiration: he was still young enough to recognise the
+hand of the master. And in his admiration there was a trace of a
+frank envy, a certain unresentful humiliation--the feeling which he
+could remember to have experienced many times in the old days, when
+he put aside the sonnet he had just finished for some fashionable
+magazine, and took down from his limited bookshelf the little
+time-worn volume which contained the almost forgotten work of a poet
+whose name would have fallen strangely on the editorial ear.
+
+Before long there was a general departure, and Lightmark, flushed
+with the triumphs of a conversation in which, in the very centre of
+an admiring group of his antagonist's worshippers, he had
+successfully measured swords with a notorious wit, turned to look
+for his wife; and, for the first time, meeting Oswyn's eye,
+half-involuntarily advanced to greet him.
+
+"This is an unexpected honour," said Oswyn coldly, disregarding the
+proffered hand; "unexpected and unwelcome!"
+
+Then he would have turned away, leaving his contempt and hatred
+unspoken, but his passion was too strong.
+
+"Have you come to seek ideas for your next Academy picture," he
+continued quickly, with a sneer trembling on his lips, "or for the
+_Outcry_?"
+
+Lightmark grew a little pale, biting his lip, and frowning for a
+moment, before he assumed a desperate mask of good-humour.
+
+"Hang it, man!" he answered quickly, "be reasonable! Haven't you
+forgiven me yet? Though what you have to forgive---- I only want to
+congratulate you, to tell you that I admire your work--immensely."
+
+"I don't want your congratulations," interrupted the other hoarsely.
+"I might forget the wrong which, as you well know, you have done me;
+that is nothing! But have you forgotten your--your friend, Rainham?
+You had better go," he added, with a savage gesture. "Go! before I
+denounce you, proclaim you, you pitiful scoundrel!"
+
+The man's forced calm had given way to a quivering passion; his lips
+trembled under the stress of the words which thronged to them; and
+as he turned on his heel, with a glance eloquent of loathing, he did
+not notice that Eve was standing close behind her husband, with
+parted lips, and intent eyes gleaming out of a face as pale as his
+own.
+
+Lightmark recovered himself quickly, shrugging his shoulders as soon
+as the other was out of earshot. He glanced at his wife, who was
+following Oswyn with her eyes; he did not dare to ask, or even to
+think, what she might have heard.
+
+"The man's mad," he said lightly, "madder than ever!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+It was Margot who gave him the letter: Oswyn remembered that
+afterwards with a kind of superstition. She came to meet him,
+wearing an air of immense importance, when his quick step fell upon
+the bare wooden stairway which led to his rooms.
+
+"There's a letter for you," she said, nodding impressively, "a big
+letter, with a seal on it; and Mrs. Thomas had to write something on
+a piece of green paper before the postman would give it to her."
+
+Then she followed him into the twilight of the attic which was his
+studio, and watched him gravely while he lighted the gas and, in
+deference to her curiosity, broke the seal.
+
+The envelope contained a letter, and a considerable bundle of
+papers, folded small, and neatly tied together with red tape.
+
+When he had read the letter, he turned the package over with a sigh,
+reflectively eying it for some minutes, and then put it aside.
+
+Later, when Mrs. Thomas, his landlady, had carried the child away to
+bed, he took, the papers up again, and, after some hesitation,
+slowly untied the tape which encircled them.
+
+The letter was from Messrs. Furnival and Co., the firm of solicitors
+who had acted for Rainham, and were now representing Oswyn as his
+friend's sole executor.
+
+It contained a brief intimation that the grant of probate of the
+late Mr. Rainham's will had been duly extracted, and ended with a
+request that the executor would consider the inclosed bundle of
+documents, which appeared to be of a private nature, and decide
+whether they should be preserved or destroyed.
+
+When he had removed the tape, Oswyn noticed that a great many of the
+letters had the appearance of being in the same handwriting; these
+were tied up separately with a piece of narrow faded silk riband,
+and it was evident that they were arranged more or less in order of
+date; the writing in the case of the earliest letter being that of a
+child, while the most recent, dated less than a year ago, was a
+short note, an invitation, with the signature "Eve Lightmark."
+
+Oswyn contemplated the little bundle with an air of indecision,
+falling at last into a long reverie, his thoughts wandering from the
+letters to the child, the woman who had written them, the woman
+whose name his friend so rarely breathed, whose face he had seen for
+the first time, proud, and cold, and beautiful, that very afternoon.
+Did she, too, care? Would she guard her secret as jealously?
+
+Suddenly he frowned; the thought of Lightmark's effrontery recurred,
+breaking his contemplative calm and disturbing his speculations. He
+laid the papers aside without further investigation, and, after
+gazing for a few minutes vacantly out of the uncurtained window,
+rolled a fresh cigarette and went out into the night.
+
+Next morning he made an expedition to Lincoln's Inn Fields to see
+Messrs. Furnival and Co., taking the packet with him. The partner
+who had the matter in hand was engaged, and he was kept waiting for
+nearly half an hour, in a dusty room with an elaborately moulded
+ceiling, and a carved wooden chimney-piece and scrolled panelling of
+some beauty, both disfigured with thick layers of dingy brown paint.
+A fire had just been lighted, in deference to the unseasonable
+coldness of the June day, and the room was full of pungent smoke.
+
+As he waited his irritation increased. Lightmark's impertinent
+intrusion (such it appeared to him) and the scene which had ensued,
+had entirely aroused him from the state of indifference into which,
+when the incident occurred, he was beginning to relapse. The man was
+dangerous; a malign passion, a craving for vengeance, slept in him,
+born of his southern blood, and glancing out now and again at his
+eyes, like the fire which darts from the windows of a burning
+building.
+
+He wondered now, as he thought of the wrongs he had borne, as it
+seemed to him, so patiently; in Rainham's lifetime there had
+doubtless been reasons, but was he never to retaliate? Had not he
+considered other people enough? His forbearance struck him now as a
+kind of weakness, as something almost contemptible, to be thought of
+with a feeling akin to shame.
+
+Finally he was ushered up into Mr. Furnival's room, a pleasant
+apartment on the first floor, with windows looking out upon a
+charming oasis of grass and trees. The lawyer apologized for keeping
+him waiting, intimated delicately that he had a pressing appointment
+in five minutes' time, and expressed his sympathy with Oswyn's
+difficulty as to the letters.
+
+"It's quite a matter for you to decide," he said. "If you like to
+take the responsibility you may burn them forthwith, unread; or you
+may give them to me, to file with the other papers. But I should
+advise you to glance through the later letters, at all events. May I
+look at them? Thanks."
+
+Oswyn had given him the packet of letters, and he spread them out on
+the table at which he was sitting, methodically, in little heaps,
+clearing a space among the piles of drafts and abstracts which lay
+before him.
+
+"I think we may destroy these," said Oswyn, pointing to the little
+bundle tied up with riband. "I think I know what they are."
+
+"As you like," said Mr. Furnival; "they appear to be from a lady.
+Yes, I don't think you need read them."
+
+"And these," continued Oswyn. "They are all from Lady Garnett, and
+it is extremely unlikely that they can have any business reference."
+
+"That disposes of nearly all," said the lawyer cheerfully. "I may
+put them on the fire, then?"
+
+Oswyn bowed a grave assent, and Mr. Furnival dropped the little
+packets quickly into the hottest part of the fire.
+
+"Now, here is a letter with a very recent postmark," he continued.
+"A man's writing, too, I should say. Will you read this, while I go
+through the others? It looks like rather a long epistle."
+
+The handwriting seemed familiar to Oswyn, and his hand trembled
+slightly as he turned to the signature for corroboration. As he
+guessed, it was from Lightmark.
+
+"I think I had better read this," he said grimly, half to himself.
+
+He glanced quickly through the letter, and then read it a second
+time slowly, and while he was reading it his expression was such as
+to confirm the solicitor's previous opinion, that the man was a
+little bit mad.
+
+When he had finished his perusal (he thought at the time that he
+should never forget a single word of that disgraceful letter), Oswyn
+sat in silence for some minutes, intently watching Mr. Furnival's
+struggles with a large bundle of papers and a small black bag.
+
+The letter had, if such a thing were possible, increased his
+contempt for the writer; that the man was insincere (Oswyn would
+have used a far stronger term) he had been aware from the beginning;
+now he knew that he was a coward, a creature almost unworthy of his
+hatred.
+
+A quick thought struck him, and he smiled.
+
+"We won't burn this--at present, at any rate," he said quietly. "Is
+there anything else for me to read?"
+
+The lawyer shuffled the remaining papers together quickly.
+
+"I think not: these are chiefly bills which have since been paid.
+Will you keep that letter, or do you wish us to do anything about
+it?"
+
+Oswyn deliberated for a moment, with a curious expression flitting
+over his face, biting his lip and frowning slightly, as he gazed at
+the fireplace, where Rainham's long-cherished letters from Eve and
+Lady Garnett's delicate, witty compositions were represented by a
+little heap of wavering black ashes.
+
+The lawyer looked at his watch uneasily.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Oswyn quickly; "I needn't keep you any
+longer. Will you let me have an envelope? I dare say they can give
+me Mr. Sylvester's address downstairs--Mr. Charles Sylvester, the
+barrister?"
+
+"The new member, you mean, of course?" said the lawyer. "He has
+chambers in Paper Buildings, No. 11. Do you know him?"
+
+"I am going to send him this letter," said Oswyn briefly, folding it
+up and bestowing it in the envelope which Mr. Furnival had given
+him. "Thanks, no, I needn't trouble you to have it posted: I prefer
+to leave it at Mr. Sylvester's chambers myself."
+
+"He was a great friend of the late Mr. Rainham, as, of course, you
+know," said the lawyer, as they parted at the door. "Mr. Rainham
+introduced him to us when he was quite a young man--soon after he
+was called, in fact, and we gave him his first brief--the first of a
+good many! He's been one of our standing counsel for years.
+Good-day!"
+
+As he made his way towards the Temple, Oswyn smiled to himself
+rather savagely, tasting in anticipation the sweets of long-deferred
+revenge. The flame of his ancient discontent with the academical art
+of the day, which had been fed by his personal hatred of one
+particularly successful exponent of it, was fanned into fury. And,
+at the same time, as he proceeded, with short, hasty steps, amply
+armed for the vindication of his friend, in his grim fatalism he
+seemed to himself immensely the instrument of destiny, which had so
+given his enemy into his hands.
+
+He paused when he reached Fleet Street; entering the first
+public-house, at haphazard, to order six pennyworth of brandy, which
+he drank neat across the counter, with slow, appreciative sips, as
+he reminded himself that, the excellence of his ammunition
+notwithstanding, he was still without any definite plan of campaign.
+
+Would his luck desert him again? Would Sylvester be away, or refuse
+to see him? or, while receiving him, contrive by some sinuous legal
+device, adroitly to divert his attack? The mere contemplation of any
+such frustration dulled him strangely.
+
+He called for his glass to be replenished, and emptied it sharply:
+and immediately the generous spirit moved his pulse, rebuked him for
+his depression, sent him briskly on on his way.
+
+As he lifted the ponderous knocker upon Sylvester's door, he
+remembered vividly the only other occasion upon which he had visited
+those chambers. With the member for Mallow, too, indiscreet busybody
+that he was, had he not a reckoning to settle? The choice of him as
+an instrument of his punishment, which, if it was primarily directed
+against another, should not leave him wholly unscathed, gave a zest
+to his malice, and increased firmness to his manner, as he curtly
+ordered the clerk to take in his card.
+
+"Is it an appointment?" this youth had asked dubiously, "because if
+it isn't----"
+
+"Mr. Sylvester will see me," said Oswyn with irritation, "if you
+will have the goodness to do as you are told, and give him my name."
+
+At which the youth had smiled loftily and retired, only to return
+five minutes later with an air of greater humility and information
+that the legislator was disengaged.
+
+Charles looked up at him from the table at which he was sitting,
+with an open volume of Hansard before him, coldly waving him to a
+chair--an offer which Oswyn, mentally damning his superciliousness,
+ignored.
+
+"My business is very brief," he said quickly; "I can explain it
+standing."
+
+"I understand that it is urgent, Mr.--Mr. Oswyn. Otherwise, you
+know, I am a busy man."
+
+"You mean that my call is inconvenient? I can quite imagine it. I
+should hardly have troubled you if you had not once taken the
+trouble to send for me--you, perhaps, have forgotten the occurrence;
+that seemed to give me a sort of right, a claim on your attention."
+
+"I recognised it," said Charles gravely, in a tone which implied
+that, had he not given this nicety the benefit of his liberal
+consideration, the intruder would never have penetrated so far.
+"Since that is agreed, may I ask you to explain your business as
+expeditiously as possible?"
+
+Oswyn smiled with some irony; and Sylvester suppressed a little
+shudder, reflecting that the man's uncouthness almost transgressed
+the bounds of decency.
+
+"I can quote your own words on a previous occasion: it concerns the
+honour of a friend--the honour of your family, if you like it
+better."
+
+Sylvester shut his volume sharply, glanced up at the other with
+suppressed irritation.
+
+"That is not a matter I can discuss with you," he said at last.
+
+"I simply intend you to read," went on Oswyn calmly, "a letter which
+your brother-in-law wrote to my friend, Philip Rainham, a few weeks
+before his death."
+
+Charles rose from his chair quickly, avoiding the other's face.
+
+"I regret that I can't assist you," he said haughtily; "I have no
+interest whatever in the affairs of the late Mr. Rainham, and I must
+decline to read your letter."
+
+He glanced significantly at the door, not suppressing a slight yawn;
+it was incredible how this repulsive little artist, with his
+indelicate propositions, bored him.
+
+But Oswyn ignored his gesture; simply laid the missive in question
+on the table; then he glanced casually at his watch.
+
+"I can't compel you to read this letter," he said in the same
+studiously calm voice. "I warn you that your honour is gravely
+interested in its contents, and I will give you five minutes in
+which to decide. If you still persist in your determination, I have
+no course left but to send copies of it to some of Rainham's most
+intimate friends, and to your sister, Mrs. Lightmark."
+
+He had his watch in one hand, but his gaze, curiously ironical,
+followed the direction of Charles's irresolute eyes, and the five
+minutes had not elapsed before he realized--and a touch of triumph
+mingled with his immense contempt of the man and his pompous
+unreality--that Charles's resolution had succumbed.
+
+He stretched out his hand for the letter, unfolded it deliberately,
+and read it once, twice, three times, with a judicial slowness,
+which the other, who was now curiously moved, found exasperating.
+
+When at last he looked up at Oswyn he shaded his eyes with one hand,
+but his face remained for the rest imperturbable and expressionless.
+The painter saw that his discretion was larger than he had imagined.
+
+If the reading had been disagreeably illuminative--and Oswyn
+believed that under his surface composure he concealed, at least, a
+terrible wound to his pride--he was not going to allow this
+impression to appear.
+
+"I might suggest that this document is a forgery," he said after a
+moment.
+
+Oswyn indulged in a little, harsh laugh, shrugging his shoulders.
+
+"That would be too fatuous, Mr. Sylvester."
+
+"I might suggest it," went on Charles slowly. "Perhaps, then, you
+will be surprised when I tell you that I believe it to be genuine.
+May I ask, Mr. Oswyn, why you move in this matter?"
+
+"As Rainham's friend," said Oswyn quickly, "I intend to expose the
+miserable calumny which clouded his last days."
+
+"A public scandal would be greatly to be deplored," Charles hazarded
+inconsequently, in the tone of a man who argued with himself.
+
+Oswyn made as if he would have taken up the letter with a gesture of
+sudden impatience; but Charles intercepted him quickly, and his
+voice had a grave simplicity in it which arrested the other's
+attention.
+
+"Don't mistake me, Mr. Oswyn; I have not the least desire or
+intention to suppress this document. I must expect you to judge me
+harshly; but you will surely see that my honour is as deeply
+concerned in the redressing of Mr. Rainham's reputation as anyone's
+can be, only I am naturally desirous of sparing my--of sparing the
+innocent persons who are unfortunately mixed up in the affair
+unnecessary pain, the scandal of publicity."
+
+"There are certain persons who must absolutely know the truth," said
+Oswyn bluntly.
+
+"If I pledge you my word that the persons whom you mean shall be
+immediately enlightened, will you leave me to act alone?"
+
+The other was silent for a moment revolving the proposition, half
+surprised at the unwonted humility of the barrister's eagerness. At
+last he said, with a short, ambiguous laugh:
+
+"I will leave it in your hands, Mr. Sylvester."
+
+He underwent a momentary repentance of his own readiness when he was
+in the street, and had turned his face to Soho again; it seemed
+almost childishly trusting. But presently, remembering he knew not
+what shade of curious sternness in Sylvester's manner, he decided
+that he had done wisely--it was on some such result as this that he
+had counted in his coming--and that the score, stupendous as it was,
+would be accurately settled.
+
+For a long while, after his unwelcome visitor had departed, Charles
+sat silent and buried in deep thought.
+
+From time to time he glanced vaguely at the letter which Oswyn had
+abandoned, and he wondered--but quite inconsequently, and with no
+heart to make the experiment--whether any further perusal of those
+disgraceful lines could explain or palliate the blunt obloquy of the
+writer's conduct. His concise, legal habit of mind forbade him to
+cherish any false illusions.
+
+Lightmark, writing in an hour of intimate excitement, when the
+burden of his friend's sacrifice seemed for a fleeting moment more
+intolerable than the wrench of explanation with his wife, had too
+effectually compromised himself. He had cringed, procrastinated,
+promised; had been abject, hypocritical, explicit.
+
+It seemed to Sylvester, in the first flush of his honourable
+disgust, that there was no generous restitution which the man had
+not promised, no craven meanness to which he had not amply
+confessed.
+
+He dropped his correct head upon his hands with something like a
+moan, as he contrasted the ironical silence which had been Rainham's
+only answer to this effusion--a silence which had since been
+irrevocably sealed. He had never before been so disheartened, had
+never seemed so intimately associated with disgrace.
+
+Even the abortive ending of his passion--he knew that this was
+deep-seated and genuine, although its outward expression had been
+formal and cold--seemed a tolerable experience in comparison.
+
+But this was dishonour absolute, and dishonour which could never be
+perfectly atoned.
+
+Had not he in his personal antipathy to Philip Rainham--the tide of
+that ancient hostility surged over him again even while he vowed
+sternly to make the fullest amends--had he not seized with indecent
+eagerness upon any pretext or occasion to justify his dislike?
+
+He had, at least, assisted unjustly to destroy Rainham's reputation,
+giving his adherence to the vainest of vain lies; and however
+zealous he might be in destroying this elaborate structure which he
+had helped to build, however successful the disagreeable task of
+enlightening his sister and the maligned man's most interested
+friends might prove, the reproach upon his own foresight would
+remain.
+
+It was notable that, in the somewhat hard integrity of his
+character, he did not for a moment seek to persuade himself, as a
+man of greater sympathy might have done, that Eve was a person to
+whom the truth could legitimately be spared.
+
+How she would suffer it, and whither her indignation might lead her,
+he did not care to inquire; these were matters with which henceforth
+he should decline to meddle. His part would be done when he had
+given her the simple information that was her due--that they had
+made a great mistake; that her husband was not to be trusted.
+
+He tried to prepare the few set phrases in which the intelligence
+would be couched, but found none that were satisfactory. The effort
+appeared more and more stupendous as the afternoon advanced, until
+at last, with astonishment at his weakness which refused to be
+analysed, he recognised that, after all, it was not possible. It was
+news which he could not give to his sister with his own lips.
+
+Mary Masters as a possible mediator suddenly occurred to him. He
+recognised by some occult instinct that she was one of the persons
+for whom Oswyn had stipulated, to whom restitution was due, and at
+once he resolved to appeal to her.
+
+He reminded himself that the Lightmarks were entertaining that
+evening on a scale of quite exceptional grandeur, that he had a card
+for their fancy-dress ball, from which Lady Garnett and her niece
+would hardly be absentees. If he could see the girl beforehand, she
+would doubtless find the time and occasion to say what was
+necessary.
+
+He had recovered his composure when, at no considerable interval
+after the formation of this resolve, he was ushered into Lady
+Garnett's drawing-room. It was his first appearance there since the
+rejection of his suit (he had not had the courage to renew it,
+although he was by no means prepared to admit that it was hopeless),
+and in the slight embarrassment which this recollection caused him
+he hardly regretted the presence of a second visitor, although his
+identification as a certain Lord Overstock, whom he believed to be
+opposed to him in more ways than in his political views (he was a
+notorious Tory), was not made without a jealous pang. He greeted
+Mary, however, without undue formality, and went over to Lady
+Garnett.
+
+The old lady glanced up at him rather listlessly. She was growing
+deaf, or feigned deafness. He said to himself that perhaps she was
+much older than they knew--was growing tired. Her _persiflage_, which
+Charles had never much appreciated, was less frequent than of old,
+and she no longer poured out her witticisms with the placid
+sweetness of a person offering you _bonbons_. There were sentences in
+her talk--it was when she spoke of the couple opposite them, who
+were conveniently out of ear-shot--which the barrister found
+deliberately malignant.
+
+"You mean that it is settled?" she asked, affecting to misunderstand
+some trivial remark. "Ah, no, but it will arrange itself--it is
+coming. You think she will make an admirable duchess? She has
+sometimes quite the grand air. Have you not found that out? You know
+his father is very old; he cannot in reason live much longer. And
+such estates! Personally, too, the nicest of boys, and as proper as
+if he had something to gain by it. And yet, in England, a Duke can
+do almost anything and be respected. Ah, Mr. Sylvester, you did not
+use your opportunity!"
+
+"I want one now," he said rather coldly, "of saying two words to
+Miss Masters."
+
+She just raised her delicate eyebrows.
+
+"Will it be very useful?"
+
+Charles flushed slightly, then he frowned.
+
+"It has nothing to do with myself. I have some news she should hear.
+Perhaps you yourself----"
+
+She interrupted him with a little mirthless laugh.
+
+"I will not hear anything serious, and you look to me very serious.
+I am old enough to have promised never again to be serious in my
+life."
+
+She submitted, however, to listen to him, seeing that his weighty
+confidences would not be brooked; and when he had finished--he said
+what he had to say in very few words--she glanced up at him with the
+same air of impenetrable indifference.
+
+"Come!" she said, "what does it matter to me that you acted in
+exceedingly bad taste, and repent it? It made no difference to me--I
+am not the _police des moeurs_. If I were you, I would hold my tongue."
+
+Then she added, as he glanced at her with evident mystification,
+shrugging her shoulders:
+
+"When one is dead, Mr. Sylvester, what does it matter?"
+
+He turned away rather impatiently, his eyes following the fine lines
+of Mary's face, which he saw in profile.
+
+He noticed that she talked with animation, and that Lord Overstock's
+expression was frankly admiring. At last the old lady said:
+
+"But, yes; you must tell Mary--by all means. To her it will mean
+much. See, the Marquis is going; if you wish I will leave you alone
+together."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+"Now, isn't it a pretty dance?" murmured Mrs. Dollond rapturously,
+as she sank into a low chair in a corner secure from the traffic of
+the kaleidoscopic crowd which had invaded Mrs. Lightmark's
+drawing-room, and opened her painted fan with a little sigh intended
+to express her beatitude.
+
+Colonel Lightmark, to whom Mrs. Dollond addressed this complimentary
+query (which, after all, was more of an assertion or challenge, in
+that it took its answer for granted), was arrayed in the brilliant
+scarlet and silver of the regiment which had once the honour of
+calling him Colonel; his tunic was so tight that sitting down was
+almost an impossibility for him, and Mrs. Dollond, who looked
+charming in her powder and brocade, could not help wondering whether
+any mortal buttons could stand the strain; and, on the other hand,
+the dimensions of his patent leather boots were such that standing,
+for a man of his weight, involved a torture which it was hard to
+conceal. And yet the veteran was happy--he was positively radiant.
+He felt that his nephew's success in the world of Art and of Society
+considerably enhanced his own importance; he was not ashamed to owe
+a portion of his brilliance to borrowed light--and tonight one could
+not count the celebrities on the fingers of both hands.
+
+The old hero-worshipper gazed complacently at the little
+ever-shifting crowd which surrounded his nephew and his niece (so he
+called her) at their post near the doorway, and he listened to Mrs.
+Dollond's sparkling sallies with a blissful ignorance of her secret
+ambition in the direction of a partner who would make her dance, and
+for whose edification she would be able to liken the Colonel's
+warlike figure to a newly-boiled lobster, or a ripe tomato.
+
+"Regular flower-show, isn't it?" he suggested, naively reinforcing
+his simile. "I don't know what the dickens they're all meant
+for, but a good many of them seem to have escaped from the
+Lyceum--Juliets, and Portias, and Shylocks, and so forth."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Dollond. "I think the Shylocks must be
+picture-dealers, you know. But their conversation isn't very
+Shakespearian, is it? I heard Hamlet say, just now, that the floor
+was too perfect for anything, and Ophelia--she was dancing with a
+Pierrot _incroyable_--told her partner that she adored waltzing to a
+string band!"
+
+They both laughed, the Colonel shortly and boisterously, Mrs.
+Dollond in a manner which suggested careful study before a
+looking-glass, with an effect of dimples and of flashing teeth.
+
+"What wicked things you say, Colonel Lightmark," she added demurely.
+"Who is that stately person in the dark figured silk, with a
+cinque-cento ruff? Isn't it Lady Garnett's niece?"
+
+"Yes, that's Miss Masters," said the Colonel, "and I suppose that's
+Lady Garnett with her. I don't think I've ever met Lady Garnett,
+though I've often heard of her. What is her dress--whom is she
+intended to represent? I don't see how the dickens one's expected to
+know, but you're so clever."
+
+"Oh, she's dressed as--as Lady Garnett! What a lot of people--_real_
+people, you know--there are here to-night! Dear me, there's the
+music again already. I believe I've got to dance this time. I do
+hope my partner's dress won't clash with mine too awfully. That's
+the worst of fancy dress balls; they really ought to be
+stage-managed by a painter, and the period ought to be limited.
+One's never safe. Our dance, Mr. Copal? Number six? Yes, I think it
+must be! A polka? Then we'll waltz!"
+
+And the Colonel, who was not a dancing man, was left in not
+unwelcome solitude to reflect somewhat ponderously on the advantages
+of possessing a nephew and niece young enough, brilliant enough, and
+rich enough--though that was partly _his_ affair--to cultivate the
+very pink and perfection of smart society. He regarded Dick in the
+light of a profitable investment.
+
+When the young people, so to speak, came to the rescue of the
+avuncular hulk, it was already beginning to drift into the corner of
+the harbour devoted to derelicts.
+
+The friends who had developed about his path in such flattering
+numbers when he came home from India, and retired, with a
+newly-acquired fortune and a vague halo of military distinction
+about his person, into the ranks of the half-paid, were beginning to
+find him rather old and, frankly, a considerable bore; but the
+timely benevolence which he had extended to his nephew was, it
+appeared, to have its reward in this world in the shape of a kind of
+reflected rejuvenescence, a temporary respite from the limbo of (how
+he hated the word!) fogeydom.
+
+When Dick married, his uncle was already settling down in a narrow
+groove among the people of yesterday; now he felt that he had once
+more established his foothold among the people of to-day.
+
+Presently he noticed that Lady Dulminster had arrived, and he made
+his way across the room to meet her with a quite youthful
+bashfulness, cannoning apologetically against Romeos and
+Marguerites, hoping that she would like his uniform.
+
+There was one person, at least, in the room who made no attempt to
+assure herself that she was enjoying the vivid gaiety of these
+parti-coloured revels.
+
+Mary Masters, when she had time for solitary thought, found that the
+atmosphere of the charming room was full of mockery. For her, the
+passionate vibrations of the strained, incessant strings seemed to
+breathe the wild complaint of lost souls; the multitudinous tread of
+gliding feet, the lingering sweep of silken skirts, the faint, sweet
+perfume of exotic flowers, all had a new and strange significance;
+the effect of an orchestral fugue wearily repeating the expression
+of a frenzied heartlessness, a great unrest.
+
+The girl was completely unstrung. Since Charles had brought her
+news, which, after all, had been merely a corroboration, her nerves
+had played her false; the balance of her mind was thrown out of
+poise; and the fact that she was there at all seemed only a part of
+her failing, an additional proof of her moral collapse.
+
+Seated on a low ottoman, in a little recess among the tall palms and
+tree-ferns, which lined the passage leading from the ball-room to
+the studio, she was startled presently from her reverie by Mrs.
+Lightmark, who confronted her, a dainty figure in the pale rose
+colour and apple-green of one of Watteau's most unpractical
+shepherdesses.
+
+"Not dancing, Mary!" she protested, smiling a little languidly.
+"What does it mean? Why are you sitting in stately solitude with
+such an evident contempt for our frivolity?"
+
+"Frivolity!" echoed Miss Masters. "I _have_ been dancing, this last
+waltz, with Lord Overstock. I have sent him to find my fan. I told
+him exactly where to look, but I suppose he can't discover it. He's
+not very clever, you know!"
+
+"Poor Lord Overstock! I hope he won't find it just yet and come to
+turn me out of his seat. I'm _so_ tired of standing, of introducing
+men whose names I never knew to girls whose names I have forgotten,
+and of trying to avoid introducing the same people twice over. It's
+so difficult to recognize people in their powder and patches!"
+
+"Yes," said Mary slowly, with a kind of inward resentment which she
+could not subdue, although she felt that it was unreasonable, "I
+almost wonder that you recognised me."
+
+Eve glanced at her, struck by her tone, trying to read her
+expression in the dim light, a shadow of bewilderment passing over
+her own face and for a moment lowering the brilliancy of her eyes.
+Then she smiled again, dismissing her thought with a little laugh
+which broke off abruptly.
+
+"One so soon forgets!" the other added, with an intention in her
+voice, an involuntary betrayal which she almost immediately
+regretted.
+
+"Forgets!"
+
+Eve caught up the word eagerly, almost passionately, her voice
+falling into a lower key.
+
+"Forget! Forgive and forget!" repeated Mary quickly and recklessly,
+letting her eyes wander from her own clasped hands to Eve's bouquet
+of delicate, scentless fritillaries, which lay neglected where it
+had fallen on the floor between their feet. "How easy it sounds!--is
+perhaps--and yet--I have not so much to forget--or to be forgiven!"
+
+The last words were almost whispered, but for Eve's imagination,
+poised on tiptoe like a hunted creature blindly listening for the
+approach of the Pursuer, they were full of suggestion, of
+denunciation.
+
+She remembered now, with a swiftly banished pang of jealousy, that
+this girl had loved him.
+
+Her thought sped back to a summer evening nearly a year ago, when it
+had seemed to her that she had surprised her friend's secret.
+
+"What do you mean, Mary?" she demanded courageously. "What have I to
+be forgiven? Don't despise me; don't, for Heaven's sake, don't play
+with me! I am all in the dark! Are you accusing me? Do you think
+because I say nothing that I have forgotten--that I can forget? Is
+it something about--him?"
+
+Mary cast a rapid glance at her.
+
+"Are you afraid of his name, then?"
+
+Eve dropped her hands despairingly.
+
+"Ah, you do! You _are_ playing with me! About Philip Rainham, then!
+For Heaven's sake speak! Do you know what I only guess--that he was
+innocent? For God's sake say it!"
+
+It was Mary's turn to look bewildered, to feel penitent. She began
+to recognise that there were greater depths in Eve's nature than she
+had suspected, that her indifference might, after all, prove to have
+been merely a mask.
+
+"You guess--innocent--don't you know, then?"
+
+"Nothing, nothing! I only suspect--believe! I have been groping
+alone in the darkness--and yet I _do_ know! He was innocent--he played
+a part?"
+
+"Yes," said Mary gently; "he sacrificed himself, for another!"
+
+"He sacrificed himself--for me. Ah, say it! say it!"
+
+Mary was greatly puzzled and at the same time moved--filled with a
+supreme compassion for this woman who was yet such a child, so
+dainty and frail a thing to confront the deadly knowledge that she
+had made a shipwreck of a life, of lives.
+
+And yet, was there not also a ring of exultation, a challenge in her
+last words?
+
+At least, her sorrow was ennobled. She was invested with a sombre
+glory, as one who had inspired a rare and perfect devotion.
+
+And, after all, had she not already been considered enough?
+
+A silence ensued, during which Eve seemed to be wrapped in steadfast
+thought.
+
+She grew calmer, picking up her bouquet, and sedulously arranging
+its disordered foliage; while Lord Overstock, who had arrived with
+Mary's fan, poured forth elaborate apologies, protesting that she
+must give him another dance--the second extra--to make up for the
+time he had lost.
+
+Already the music was beginning for the next dance, and people
+passed in couples, laughing and talking gaily, a motley procession,
+on their way into the ball-room.
+
+"I thought your brother would have told you," said Mary softly,
+bending over her programme and gathering her skirts together with a
+suggestion of departure.
+
+"Charles? He was always prejudiced against him--always his enemy!"
+
+"That is why; he is very just, very conscientious. He told me this
+afternoon."
+
+Mary's voice sank a little lower. She was standing now. She could
+see her prospective partner looking for her. She wondered vaguely
+whether Eve accepted the alternative, whether she realized that, to
+prove Philip innocent, was to establish her husband's guilt, his
+original wrong-doing, and subsequent cowardice.
+
+"But--Charles! How did he know? Does he believe it? Who told him?"
+
+Mary had gently disengaged her arm from Eve's restraining hand. She
+stepped back for an instant, excusing herself to her expectant
+cavalier.
+
+"One of Philip's friends told him to-day--proved it to him, he says.
+It was a Mr. Oswyn."
+
+A minute later Mary found herself in the ball-room, making heroic
+efforts to divide her entire attention impartially between the
+strains of the band and the remarks of her partner.
+
+She was afraid to pass in review the conduct of those few minutes
+which had seemed so long. Had it really all occurred in the interval
+between two waltzes?
+
+For the present she drew a mental curtain over the scene. She lacked
+the courage to gaze upon her handiwork, although she was not without
+a hopeful instinct that, when she criticised it in sober daylight,
+she would even approve of what she had done. Her determination did
+not, however, carry her further than the middle of the dance.
+
+The room was now crowded to repletion, and she readily fell in with
+her partner's suggestion that they should take a turn in the cooler
+atmosphere of the garden; and as she passed the threshold, a rapid,
+retrospective glance informed her that Eve was once more playing her
+arduous part of hostess.
+
+Never had actress more anxiously awaited the fall of the curtain
+upon her scene. Her husband, in the gallant russet of a falconer,
+was dancing now with Mrs. Dollond: she could hear his frequent
+laughter, and, though she turned her eyes away, see him bending over
+his partner to catch the words, trivial enough no doubt, which she
+seemed to whisper with such an air of confidence. But, though she
+had heard him address Mrs. Dollond by her Christian name, she did
+not pay him the compliment of being jealous: the time for that had
+passed. The account which she had to demand of him related to a
+matter far more serious than the most flagrant of flirtations--she
+only longed to confront him, to tear from him a confession, not so
+much with a view to humiliate him as to enlighten herself, and to
+force him to make the only reparation in his power.
+
+When the music had ceased, and the measured tread of feet lapsed
+into the confusion of independent wanderings, Eve turned to find her
+husband close behind her, and Mrs. Dollond firing off a neat little
+speech of congratulation, panting a little, and making play with her
+elaborate fan.
+
+She was quick to seize the opportunity for which she had waited so
+eagerly; with a few words of smiling apology to Mrs. Dollond and the
+others who were gathered round her, she intimated to her husband
+that she wished him to come with her, to attend to something: she
+assumed a playful air of mystery.
+
+"Oh, you must go!" said Mrs. Dollond, "your wife is planning some
+delightful surprise for us: I can see it in her eyes! Though, what
+one could want more----"
+
+The music began again, and the couples took their places for the
+Lancers: there was to be a Shakespearian set, and another of
+Waverley notabilities.
+
+Under cover of the discussion and confusion which this scheme
+involved, Eve withdrew, leading the way into the room which they
+called the library, and which was full of superfluous furniture,
+removed from the drawing-room to make space for the dancers. Her
+husband followed, lifting his eyebrows, with a chivalrous but not
+wholly successful attempt to disguise his impatience.
+
+When he had closed the door, Eve turned suddenly and confronted him,
+interrupting the question which was on his lips. He noticed, with a
+quick apprehension, that she was very pale, that the smile which she
+had worn for her guests had given place to an expression even more
+ominous than her pallor and the trembling of her lips.
+
+"Why have I brought you here?" she echoed. "I don't know, I might
+have asked you before them all--perhaps you would have preferred
+that! But I won't keep you long. The truth! That is all I want!"
+
+He frowned, with a vicious movement of his lips: then meeting her
+gaze, made an awkward effort to seem at ease.
+
+"My dear child!" he said, stepping back and leaning his back against
+the door, "what melodrama! The truth! what truth?"
+
+"How often you must have withheld it from me, to ask like that! The
+truth about Philip Rainham, and that woman: that is what I ask!"
+
+Lightmark exclaimed petulantly at this:
+
+"Haven't we discussed it all before? Haven't you questioned me
+beyond all limits? Haven't you said that you believed me? And what a
+time----"
+
+"Yes, I have asked you before. Is it my fault that you have lied? Is
+it my fault that you have made it possible for--for someone else to
+prove to me, to-night, that you have deceived me? The time is not of
+my making. But now, I must have the truth; it is the only
+reparation, the last thing I shall ask of you!"
+
+"You must be mad!" he stammered, his self-possession deserting him;
+"you don't know--you have no right to speak to me like this. You
+don't understand these things; you must let me judge for you----"
+
+"The only thing I understand clearly is that you have blackened
+another man's--your friend's--memory. Isn't that enough? Can you
+deny that you have allowed him to bear your shame? I know now that
+he was innocent; I insist that you shall tell me the rest!"
+
+"The rest!" he repeated impatiently, shifting his attitude. "I won't
+submit to this cross-examination! I have explained it all before; I
+decline to say any more!"
+
+"Then you cling to your lie?"
+
+"Lie? Pray, don't be so sensational; you talk like the heroine of a
+fifth-rate drama! Who has put such a mad idea into your head? Let me
+warn you that there are limits to my patience!"
+
+"I will tell you, if you will come with me and deny it to his
+face--if you will refute his proofs."
+
+"Proofs! You have no right to ask such a thing! I tell you, I have
+acted for the best. Why should you believe the first comer rather
+than me?"
+
+"Why? You can ask why!" she interposed.
+
+"Let me beg of you to come back with me to our guests; we shall be
+missed--people will talk!"
+
+Eve shrugged her shoulders defiantly, ironically.
+
+"You prevaricate; you won't, you can't be candid! There is only one
+other man who can tell me the truth--you make it necessary, I must
+go to him."
+
+Lightmark clenched his hand viciously upon the handle of the door.
+
+"I decline to discuss this damnable folly any longer; if you won't
+come with me I shall go alone; I shall say that you are ill--really,
+I think you must be!"
+
+"Go by all means!" she replied indifferently, "but tell me first,
+where can I find Mr. Oswyn?"
+
+He paused, gazing at her blankly.
+
+"Oswyn?"
+
+"Yes. The man who is not afraid to denounce you. If you won't
+enlighten me, if you won't clear your--your friend's memory--it may
+be at the expense of your own--perhaps he will."
+
+"Oswyn!" he stammered, "Oswyn!"
+
+"His address!" she demanded quickly. "Please understand that for the
+future I am independent; I will go to him at once! If you won't give
+me his address, if---- Would you prefer that I should ask my brother
+for it? That is my alternative!"
+
+Lightmark found something very disconcerting in his wife's steadfast
+gaze, in the uncompromising calm, the quiet passion of her
+demeanour; his one desire was to put an end to this scene, which
+oppressed him as a nightmare, before he should entirely lose all
+power of self-control.
+
+He felt himself almost incapable of thought, unable to weigh the
+meaning of her words, her threats; the readiness of resource which
+served him so deftly in little things had deserted him now, as it
+invariably did in the face of a real emergency.
+
+If he could temporize, he might be able to arrive at something more
+like a plan of action, to concentrate his efforts in one direction.
+
+He realized that if his wife fulfilled her threat, which was the
+more alarming in that it was not an angry one, but had every
+appearance of being backed by deliberate intention--if she appealed
+to her brother, whose moral principles he estimated more highly than
+his tact or worldly wisdom--there appeared to be every prospect of
+an aggravated scandal. For if Charles Sylvester (who was
+unfortunately among the revellers) declined to furnish his sister
+with Oswyn's address, was it not certain that she would apply
+elsewhere? And, after all, might not Oswyn adhere to the silence
+which he had so long maintained?
+
+He reasoned quickly and indeterminately, vaguely skimming the
+surface of many ominous probabilities and finding no hopeful
+resting-place for conjecture, finally allowing a little desperate
+gesture to escape him.
+
+The music had stopped amid the desultory clapping of hands, and he
+could hear people passing outside on their way into the garden. He
+turned the handle slowly without opening the door.
+
+"Be reasonable!" he appealed. "There is still time; let us go into
+the ballroom; let us forget this folly!"
+
+"You may go," she replied contemptuously; "I have no wish to detain
+you--far from it. But if you leave me without giving me Mr. Oswyn's
+address I shall ask Charles for it, and if Charles----"
+
+Her husband interrupted her savagely.
+
+"Oh, if you are bent on making a fool of yourself, I suppose I can't
+prevent you. The man lives at 61, Frith Street. Now you have it. I
+wash my hands of the whole affair."
+
+He opened the door, and she passed out gravely before him, holding
+her bouquet to her down-turned face; and then they parted tacitly,
+the husband turning towards the door which led into the garden, the
+wife making her way into the ball-room, and thence towards the
+studio.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+In the empty studio, from which, for one night, most of her
+husband's impedimenta had been removed to allow place for the long
+supper-table, which glistened faintly in the pale electric light,
+she paused only long enough to wrap her fantastic person in the dark
+cloak which she had caught up on her way.
+
+Then she let herself out quietly by the private door into the road.
+And she stood still a moment, blotted against the shadows,
+hesitating, vaguely considering her next step.
+
+The honey-coloured moon, casting its strange, silken glamour over
+the white house, over the black outline of the trees in the garden,
+spangled here and there with Japanese lanterns, gave an air of
+immense unreality to the scene; and the tremulous notes of the
+violins, which floated faintly down to her from the half-opened
+windows of the ball-room, only heightened this effect, seeming just
+then to be no more than the music of moonbeams to which the fairies
+dance.
+
+For a moment a sudden weakness and timidity overcame her. In a world
+so transcendently unreal--had not she just seen her happiness become
+the very dream of a shadow?--was it not the merest futility to take
+a step so definite, to be passionate or intense? Better rather to
+rest for a little in this vague world of half-lights into which she
+had stepped, under the cooling stars, and then to return and take up
+one's old place in the masque.
+
+But her fantasy passed. In the distance two glowing orbs of a hansom
+came slowly towards her, and her purpose grew suddenly very strong.
+
+The man reined in his horse with an inquiring glance at the hooded
+figure on the pavement, seeking a fare. And it was without
+hesitation that she engaged him, giving him the number of Oswyn's
+house in Frith Street, Soho, in her calm, well-bred voice, and
+bidding him be quick.
+
+But the horse was incapable--tired, perhaps (she recalled the fact
+long afterwards, and the very shape and colour of the bony,
+ill-groomed animal, as one remembers trivial details upon occasions
+of great import); and after a while she resigned herself to a
+tedious drive.
+
+As they rattled along confusedly through the crowded streets she
+caught from time to time the reflection of her own face in the two
+little mirrors at each side, and wondered to find herself the same.
+For she did not deceive herself, nor undervalue the crushing force
+of the blow which she had received.
+
+To her husband, when she turned scornfully from his clumsy
+evasions--for a moment, perhaps, to herself--she had justified the
+singular course she was taking by an overwhelming necessity of
+immediately facing the truth, in which, perhaps, there still lurked
+the dim possibility of explanation whereby her husband's vileness
+might find the shadow of an excuse.
+
+But with further reflection--and she was reflecting with passionate
+intensity--this little glow-worm of hope expired. The truth! She
+knew it already--had known before, almost instinctively--that Philip
+Rainham's justification could only be the warrant of her husband's
+guilt; no corroboration of Oswyn's could make that dreary fact any
+plainer than it was already.
+
+No, it was hardly the truth which she desired so much as an act of
+tardy expiation which she would make. For with the bitterness of her
+conviction that, for all her wealth, and her beauty, and her youth,
+she had, none the less, irretrievably thrown away her life, there
+mingled an immense contrition at having been so blind and hard, so
+culpably unjust to the most generous of men, who had deliberately
+effaced himself for her good.
+
+And the exceeding bitterness of her self-reproach, which alone saved
+her composure, forbidding the mockery of tears, was only exaggerated
+when she remembered how vain her remorse must remain. It mattered no
+jot that she was sorry, since death had sealed their estrangement
+ironically for all time.
+
+In her passionate recognition of his constant justice and kindness,
+which of old, vainly striving to perpetuate the fading illusion of
+her husband's honour (her generosity did not pause to remember how
+vain these efforts had been), she had discounted for hypocrisy, she
+felt that no price of personal suffering would have been too heavy
+if only for one hour, one moment, she could have recalled him from
+the world of shadows to her side.
+
+She could figure to herself, refining on her misery, his attitude in
+such a case: the half sad, half jesting reassurance of his gravely
+pardoning eyes.
+
+They haunted her just then, those eyes of Philip Rainham, which had
+been to the last so ambiguous and so sad, and were now perpetually
+closed.
+
+And for the first time a suspicion flashed across her mind, which,
+while it made her heart flutter like a frightened bird, seemed to
+her the one drop hitherto lacking in the cup of her unhappiness.
+Had, then, after all, that gentle indifference of her friend masked
+an immense hunger, a deeply-felt need of personal tenderness, which
+she might have supplied--ah, how gladly!--if she had known? Could he
+have cared more deeply than people knew?
+
+She reminded herself the next moment, as they came to a sudden
+standstill before a dark-green door, how idle all such questions
+were--vain beating of the hands against the shut door of death!
+
+She alighted and dismissed her cab, and in the interval which
+elapsed before her ring was answered by a slovenly little servant,
+who gaped visibly at the lady's hurried request that her name should
+be taken up to Mr. Oswyn, she had leisure for the first time to
+realize the strangeness of her course.
+
+Her mother, Charles, her guests--Felicia Dollond and the rest--how
+would they consider the adventure if ever they should know? It was
+easy to imagine their attitude of shocked disapproval, and her
+brother's disgusted repudiation of the whole business as a thing,
+most emphatically, which one did not do. Ah, no! it was not a
+departure such as this that a well-bred society Spartan could even
+decently contemplate! And it was almost with a laugh, devoid,
+indeed, of merriment, that Eve tossed consideration of these
+scruples contemptuously away.
+
+At last she was in revolt against their world and the pedantry of
+its little inflexible laws; and all her old traditions had become
+odious to her, seeming, for the moment, deeply tainted with
+dishonour, and partly the cause of her disastrous plight. A great,
+ruining wave had broken over her life, and in her passionate
+helplessness she cried only for some firm and absolute shore, else
+the silence of the engulfing waters, not for the vain ropes of
+social convention with which they would drag her back into the
+perilous security from which she had been swept; and she had
+forgotten everything but her imperative need, which had brought her
+there, when the lodging-house drudge returned and ushered her
+clumsily into Oswyn's presence.
+
+It was a sitting-room on the second floor which the artist occupied,
+by no means an uncomfortable apartment, though Eve's first
+impression of it was immeasurably sordid, and she realized, with a
+touch of pity, that the painter's difficult genius had no tact of
+application to his surroundings.
+
+Had, then, the painter of "Thanatos the Peacebearer"--that
+incomparable work!--no personal taste, to be violated by the crude
+wall-paper and the vulgar vases, containing impossible flowers,
+which jostled against broken tobacco-pipes and a half empty bottle
+of milk on the mantelpiece?
+
+There was an immense untidiness everywhere; a disorder of children's
+toys and torn picture-books would have prepared Eve for the
+discovery of a sleeping child with brilliant hair coiled up in a rug
+on the sofa, if her eyes had not been arrested by an unframed canvas
+on an easel, the only picture, save some worthless prints in common
+gilt frames, which was visible. It was the head of Philip Rainham,
+immortalized by the brush of his friend, which awaited her--the eyes
+already closed, the pale lips still smiling with that superbly
+ironical smile of the dead.
+
+She had not greeted Oswyn on her entrance, and now she had ceased to
+remember that he was there, as she stood contemplating the portrait
+with her rapt and sorrowful gaze, while Oswyn, leaning across the
+table, implicitly accepting the situation, which had to him all the
+naturalness of the unexpected, considered her in his turn.
+
+He had never before seen her to such advantage, and, remembering
+that early presentment of her which Lightmark had exhibited in the
+Grosvenor, he realized how much she had developed. The singular
+nobility and purity of her beauty amazed him; it shone out like the
+starry night; and, standing there remote and silent (in her
+abstraction she had let her cloak slide to the ground, revealing her
+white arms, her fanciful, incongruous attire), she seemed, indeed, a
+creature of another world.
+
+When she turned to him at last there was an immense and solemn
+entreaty in her eyes for candour and directness, an appeal to be
+spared no bitter knowledge that he might possess--for the whole
+truth.
+
+"Tell me," she began slowly, calmly, though he was not ignorant that
+her composure was the result of an immense inward effort. "I can't
+explain why I have come to you--perhaps you yourself can explain
+that better than I. I don't know what you may think of me--I am too
+unhappy to care. I have no claim upon you. I only entreat you to
+answer me a question which perhaps no one now living can answer but
+you. Ah!"--she broke off with a gesture of sudden passion--"I have
+been so cruelly kept in the dark."
+
+Oswyn lowered his eyes for a moment, considering. A curious wave of
+reminiscence swept over him, giving to this strange juxtaposition
+the last touch of completion.
+
+He remembered Rainham's long reticence, and his unburdening himself
+at the last, in a conviction that there would be a season when the
+truth would be best. And he said to himself that this time had come.
+
+"Mrs. Lightmark," he said at last, in a low, constrained voice, "I
+promise to answer any question that is within my knowledge."
+
+"It is about my--my husband and Philip Rainham. What passed between
+them in the autumn of last year? Who was that woman?"
+
+He did not reply for a moment; but unconsciously his eyes met hers
+full, and in their brief encounter it was possible that many truths
+were silently told. Presently she continued:
+
+"You need not tell me, Mr. Oswyn. I can see your answer as plainly
+as if you had spoken. It is my husband----"
+
+She broke off sharply, let her beautiful head droop with a movement
+of deep prostration upon her hands.
+
+"What have I done, what have I done," she moaned, "that this
+dishonour should come to me?"
+
+It was a long time before she looked up at him.
+
+"Why did he do it?" she whispered.
+
+"Have you never guessed?" he asked in his turn. "I will tell you,
+Mrs. Lightmark. I was with him when he was dying. He wished you to
+know; he had some such time as this in his mind. It was a sort of
+message."
+
+"He wished me to know--a sort of message," she repeated blankly. "He
+spoke of me, then--he forgave me for my hard judgement, for knowing
+him so ill?"
+
+"It was himself that he did not forgive for not having guarded you
+better, for having been deceived by your husband. He spoke of you to
+me very fully at the last when we both saw that his death was merely
+a question of days. I saw then what I had sometimes suspected
+before, that you had absorbed his whole life, that his devotion to
+you was a kind of religion."
+
+"He loved me?" she asked at last, in a hushed, strange voice, white
+to the lips.
+
+Oswyn bowed his head.
+
+"Ever since you were a child. It was very beautiful, and it was with
+him at the last as a light. Don't reproach yourself; it was to
+prevent that that he wished you to be told."
+
+"To prevent it!" she cried, with tragical scorn. "Am I not to
+reproach myself that I was hard and callous and cold; that I never
+understood nor cared; that I was not with him? Not reproach myself?
+Oh, Philip, Philip!" she called, breaking down utterly, laying her
+face in her hands.
+
+Oswyn averted his eyes, giving her passion time to appease itself.
+When he glanced at her again, she had gathered her cloak round her,
+was standing by the picture from which she seemed loath to remove
+her eyes.
+
+"You gave him great happiness," he suggested gently, "in the only
+manner in which it was possible. Remember only that. He must in any
+case have died."
+
+He imagined that she hardly heard him, absorbed in the desolation of
+her own thought; and when she turned to him again, quite ready for
+departure now, he saw by the hard light in her eyes that she had
+recurred to her husband, to the irreparable gulf which must
+henceforth divide them.
+
+"I can't go back to him," she whispered, as if she communed with
+herself. "I hate him; yes, I hate him, with my whole soul. He has
+lied to me too much; he has made me do such a cruel wrong. There are
+things which one can't forgive. Ah, no! it's not possible."
+
+Oswyn viewed her compassionately, while a somewhat bitter smile
+played about his mouth.
+
+"No, you will go back, Mrs. Lightmark! Forgive me," he added,
+raising his hand, interrupting her, as she seemed on the point of
+speech. "I don't want to intrude on you--on your thoughts, with
+advice or consolation. They are articles I don't deal in. Only I
+will tell you--I who know--that in revolt also there is vanity. You
+are bruised and broken and disillusioned, and you want to hide away
+from the world and escape into yourself, or from yourself; it's all
+the same. Ah, Mrs. Lightmark, believe me, in life that is not
+possible, or where it is most possible is in a crowd. Go back to
+your guests; I know, you see, whence you come; take up your part in
+the play, the masque; be ready with your cues. It's all masks and
+dominoes; what does the form or colour of it matter? Underneath it
+all you are yourself, with your beautiful sorrow, your memories,
+your transcendent happiness--nothing can touch that; what does it
+matter?"
+
+"Happiness!" she ejaculated, rather in wonder than in scorn, for in
+spite of her great weariness she had been struck by the genuine
+accent struggling through his half ironical speech.
+
+"Most happy," he said, with a deep inhalation. "Haven't you an ideal
+which life, with its cruelties, its grossness, can never touch?"
+
+Then he added quickly, in words of Philip Rainham, which had flashed
+with sudden appositeness across his mind.
+
+"Your misery has its compensation; you have been wronged, but you
+have also been loved."
+
+"Ah, my friend!" she cried, turning toward the picture with a new
+and more beautiful illumination in her eyes, "was it for this that
+you did it?"
+
+Oswyn said nothing, and Eve moved towards the door, discovering for
+the first time, on her way, the sleeping child. She stopped for a
+moment, and the other watched her with breathless curiosity,
+uncertain how far her knowledge might extend.
+
+And as she stood there, wondering, a great wave of colour suffused
+her white face; the next moment she was gone, but in the light of
+that pure blush Oswyn seemed to have discovered that her tragical
+enlightenment was complete.
+
+When she turned once more into the street, she had already set
+herself gravely, with a strange and factitious composure, to face
+her life. It stretched itself out before her like a great, gray
+plain, the arid desolation of the road being rendered only more
+terrible by the flowers with which it would be strewn. For suddenly,
+while Oswyn had been speaking, she had recognised that after all she
+would go back; the other course had been merely the first bitter
+cry, half hysterical, of her grief.
+
+By her husband's side, with the semblance of amity between them
+still, utterly apart and estranged as they must in reality
+henceforth perpetually be, it seemed to her that she could none the
+less religiously cherish the memory of her friend because she would
+turn a smiling mask to the world's indifference, wearing mourning in
+her heart. And deeply as she had suffered, in the midst of her
+remorse she could still remind herself that in the last half hour
+she had gained more than she had lost; that life, however tedious it
+might be, was in a manner consecrated by this great devotion, which
+death had embalmed, to be a light to her in lonely places and dark
+hours, a perpetual after-thought against the cynicism or despair to
+which her imitation of happiness might conduce.
+
+The mask of a smile, and mourning in her heart! Yes, it was in some
+such phrase as that that the life which began then for her must be
+expressed--for her, and perhaps, she reflected sadly, for others,
+for many, the justest and the best.
+
+And in the meantime she would go back to her dancers, resume once
+more her well-worn _role_ of the brilliant and efficient hostess. She
+wondered if it would be difficult to account for herself, to explain
+an absence so unprecedented, if, as was doubtless the case, her
+figure had been missed. But the next moment she smiled a trifle
+bitterly, for she had reminded herself of her husband's proved
+facility of prevarication, which she felt certain would already have
+been usefully employed.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A COMEDY OF MASKS***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 16703.txt or 16703.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/7/0/16703
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/16703.zip b/16703.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..29a77fa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/16703.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2e4eeda
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #16703 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16703)